How to: Change the Target Database Version

Article
02/04/2013

When you create a database project, you must specify the version of SQL Server that you are targeting. You can create a database project for either SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2008. If you create a database project for SQL Server 2005, you can change the project to SQL Server 2008 because it can support all SQL Server 2005 features. If you create a database project for SQL Server 2008 and later must change the project to SQL Server 2005, you will experience difficulties if your project contains any syntax in the database object definitions that is specific to SQL Server 2008. In either case, errors might result if the version of SQL Server that is running on the target database server does not match the targeted version of the database project.

To change the target database version

In Solution Explorer, click the database project for which you want to configure properties.
On the View menu, click Property Pages. You can also open the Project menu and click ProjectName Properties.

The properties dialog box for the database project appears.
Click the Project Settings tab if another tab appears instead.
In the Project Version list, click the new target version. For example, if you want to change the version to SQL Server 2005, click SQL Server 2005.

A message box appears, asking you to confirm the change because it will reload the database project.
Click Yes to apply the change.

Important

You might also have to change the target connection on the Build tab to point to an instance of SQL Server 2005. For more information, see An Overview of Database Project Settings.

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How to: Change the Target Database Version

To change the target database version

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