I have multiple questions regarding sqlserver. This will probably get me a reprimand for violating the rules, but I would appreciate someone's overview of where I've been and where I am going. Here goes:
I've been developing in ASP.NET/VB for about a year on a Vista machine using Visual Web Developer Express. I am now using a trial of VS2010 which will expire in a short time and I still have not got a final confirmation that I can deploy my applications to my hosted server. Most of my time has been spent in determining how to install one version of this and that and then reinstall and hope for better results. My database application is really the only thing that is keeping me from moving ahead. My host tells me that I need to convert the server 2008 database to a 2008 R2 format to run the application.
Here come the questions.
1. I was told by my host to simply run sqlserver management console to run the conversion. I acquired this animal to no avail. Whatever I tried, I was told to try something else.
2. I got a very respectable answer the other day that told me that all I need to do to convert from 2008 to 2008R2 is to do a backup of 2008 and a restore to a 2008R2 instance. The only question raised by this easy-to-understand process is what must I do to do a backup. I have been programming for a long time and always understood backup to mean a simple process of copying a file for safekeeping. Not so here! It seems that I would have to read for a very long time to understand how to go about in this environment. I saw no option to do this backup within the sqlserver2008 software. I suspect that I need to run setup again to obtain that option. Since I installed server 2008 myself, I do not understand why the proper setup option was not given me. Nonetheless, my first question is merely a confirmation that this is what I need to do to obtain a backup capability.
3. Assuming that I have the backup capability, what is the next stumbling block? Will a 2008R2 instance be required in order to do the restore? I do not have a 2008 R2 instance so how will I do the restore? Do I need to be running ss2008R2? If so, then that leads me to the next question.
4. If I was running 2008R2 server, then I presume I would not need to do any kind of conversion, backup/restore and I would be ready to deploy the application and the database, correct? The only question this raises is whether a sqlserver2008R2 is compatible with VS2010 which is what I am running now.
I hope these questions are easy for a knowledgeable respondee. Thanks anyone.
eps123