SQL Server 7.0 and SQL Server 2000 Compared

Hardware and Software Requirements

To install SQL Server 7.0, you should have the following hardware:

  • Alpha AXP, Intel or compatible platform

  • Pentium 166 MHz or higher (Pentium Pro, Pentium II and compatible)

  • 32MB RAM (minimum), 64MB RAM and more (recommended)

  • 180MB (full installation), 170MB (typical), 65MB (minimum),
    90MB (management tools only) plus 50MB for OLAP Services
    and 12MB for the English Query

SQL Server 7.0 can work under Windows 95, Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98,
Windows NT Server/Workstation 4.0 with Service Pack 4 and Windows 2000
(all editions).

SQL Server 7.0 also requires Internet Explorer 4.01 with Service Pack 1
or later, or Internet Explorer 5.0 or later.

To install SQL Server 2000, you should have the following hardware:

  • Intel or compatible platform

  • Pentium 166 MHz or higher (Pentium II, Pentium III and compatible)

  • 32MB RAM (minimum for Desktop Engine),
    64MB RAM (minimum for all other editions)
    128 MB RAM or more recommended

  • 270MB (full installation), 250MB (typical), 95MB (minimum),
    44 MB (Desktop Engine) plus Analysis Services: 50 MB minimum
    and 130 MB typical and 80MB for the English Query

SQL Server 2000 will run under Windows 98, Windows NT Server 4.0 with
Service Pack 5 or later, Windows NT Workstation 4.0 with Service Pack 5
or later and Windows 2000 (all editions).

SQL Server 2000 also requires Internet Explorer 5.0 or later, as it is
required for Microsoft Management Console and HTML Help.
Internet Explorer is not required to be the default browser and a
minimal install is sufficient.

SQL Server 7.0 advantages

SQL Server 7.0 can work on the more poor hardware.

There are many books and web resources about SQL Server 7.0.

There are many people who work with SQL Server 7.0.

Many bugs was fixed.

Service Pack 3 for SQL Server 7.0 is now available.
SQL Server 7.0 Service Pack 3

SQL Server 7.0 can work on the Alpha AXP platform.

SQL Server 7.0 has some features, that are not supported in
SQL Server 2000.

These server configuration options are not supported in SQL Server 2000:

default sortorder id
resource timeout
extended memory size
spin counter
language in cache
time slice
language neutral full-text
unicode comparison style
max async IO
unicode locale id

SQL Profiler extended stored procedures, such as xp_trace_addnewqueue
and xp_trace_generate_event, are not supported in SQL Server 2000.

The SQL-SCM (Service Control Manager) API has been removed and is no
longer supported in SQL Server 2000.

So, if you work with SQL Server 7.0 without any problems and not needed
in the new SQL Server 2000 features, it’s not necessary to upgrade on
the new version.

SQL Server 2000 advantages

User-Defined Functions.

User-Defined Functions (UDFs) – one or more Transact-SQL statements
that can be used to encapsulate code for reuse.
User-defined functions cannot make a permanent changes to the data or
modify database tables. UDF can change only local objects for this UDF,
such as local cursors or variables.

Distributed partitioned views.

Distributed partitioned views allows you to partition tables
horizontally across multiple servers.
So, you can scale out one database server to a group of database
servers that cooperate to provide the same performance levels as
a cluster of database servers.

Due to distributed partitioned views, SQL Server 2000 now on the first
place in the tpc-c tests. See this link for more details:
TPC-C tests

New data types.

There are new data types:

  • bigint data type

  • sql_variant data type

  • table data type

bigint data type is an 8-byte integer type.

sql_variant data type is a type that allows the storage of
data values of different data types.

table data type is a type that allows applications to store results
temporarily for later use.

INSTEAD OF and AFTER Triggers.

There are INSTEAD OF and AFTER Triggers in SQL Server 2000.
INSTEAD OF triggers are executed instead of the INSERT, UPDATE or
DELETE triggering action.
AFTER triggers are executed after the triggering action.

Cascading Referential Integrity Constraints.

There are new ON DELETE and ON UPDATE clauses in the REFERENCES
clause of the CREATE TABLE and ALTER TABLE statements.

The ON DELETE clause controls what actions are taken if you attempt
to delete a row to which existing foreign keys point.
The ON UPDATE clause defines the actions that are taken if you attempt
to update a candidate key value to which existing foreign keys point.

The ON DELETE and ON UPDATE clauses have two options:

  • NO ACTION

  • CASCADE

NO ACTION specifies that the deletion/updation fails with an error.

CASCADE specifies that all the rows with foreign keys pointing to
the deleted/updated row are also deleted/updated.

32 CPU and 64GB Memory Support.

SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition on the Windows 2000 DataCenter
can support up to 32 CPU and up to 64GB physical memory (RAM) on a
computer.

XML Support.

SQL Server 2000 can use XML to insert, update, and delete values in
the database, and database engine can return data as Extensible Markup
Language (XML) documents.

Look here for more information about new SQL Server 2000 features:
Relational Database Enhancements.

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