Jan9Written by:slhilbert
1/9/2009 11:57 AM 
Recently I needed move a database backup of SQL Server 2008 from my development machine to a SQL Server 2005 instance on a client’s web server. I did what I normally would do and backed up the SQL Server 2008 database and tried to restore it to SQL Server 2005. Of course this didn’t work.
I did what I always do when I run into a problem I did a quick Google and found a bunch of posts saying, “Not possible”. I sat down to figure out what to do. I decided that I would use the SQL Server 2008 Express Export feature to see if I could export my 2008 database to a 2005 SQL Server Express database.
To do this;
- Install SQL Server 2005 Express.
- Created a new database in SQL Server 2005.
- Went to my SQL 2008 Instance, right click on the database, Tasks, Export Data
- I went through the Export Wizard and selected my SQL Server 2005 database instance.
- This exported all of my database tables and the information within the tables.
- I then went to my SQL 2008 instance and generated scripts for all stored procedures, views, etc and then ran those scripts against the SQL Server 2005 database.
- I then backed up the SQL Server 2005 database and restored it to the clients SQL Server 2005 Instance
- SUCCESS!