Certainly not to encourage people to stay on ancient versions if they don't have to, I took a crack at replicating TRY_PARSE on older versions.

In this tip, I talk about a slightly more flexible way to simulate TRY_CONVERT() on unsupported versions of SQL Server.

If you are still stuck on an unsupported version of SQL Server, there may still be a way for you to have TRY_CONVERT() functionality.

I've stopped supporting ancient versions of SQL Server, and you should, too. I've cleaned up a lot of old, no longer relevant information.

I share my own experience with page compression in a production environment.

I explain several reasons I was eager to upgrade to SQL Server 2008 as soon as it was released.

Dependencies can be unreliable, and you can fill some of the gaps with a DDL trigger.

Not relevant today, but several major versions ago, there were specifically defined ways to get your feedback into the product.

Big customers have big influence : see how some of the upper limits have changed in SQL Server 2008.