Website Under Maintenance

If you’ve visited my site tonight, you may have noticed that it’s currently down for maintenance. What does this mean? Well, nothing bad of course, just migrating from SQL 2000 to SQL 2005 which will hopefully allow me to utilize some fancier features with the new website coming in a few weeks (hint hint). This migration hasn’t been easy as I started off with high hopes from my hoster. 24 hours later I have a working plan - which involves the following steps…

1. Backup my SQL 2000 database
2. Download my SQL 2000 database to my home server
3. Restore my database to my home server (SQL 2005)
4. Backup my database from my home server
5. Upload my database to my SQL 2005 server
6. Restore my database to SQL 2005
7. Execute a script altering the schema from ‘user’ to ‘dbo’ on all objects
8. Point website / forums to SQL 2005 server & hope it all works!

Eight fricking steps, not too shabby considering it’s considered a major migration. I really wish it would have been easier, however my hoster seems to have some issues restoring SQL 2000 databases to my SQL 2005 server, so it must be ‘cleansed’ prior to a restore. Anyway, hopefully things will go smoothly as I’m currently on step 2. Please let me know if you notice any issues, though I doubt anyone will.

Update: Site is now back up with a smooth migration! Now, if only I could tell the difference from SQL 2000 to SQL 2005…