3 stars (Small Upgrades, Some Issues) - There are some important additions, such as clustering and failover support, and a few niceties like user-defined functions and indexed views. Upgrading the data format from 7 to 8 was seamless, but replication was painful. Gone are the Enterprise Manager HTML-based pages at the machine level, replaced by a small maze of things to do to make replication happen. We finally had to reinstall the server to make replication happy. The help file on this topic is a joke. It reads something like "Step 1, configure replication. Step 2, start it up." with absolutely no detail. My bottom line: take your time in upgrading. 5 stars (Modern, Fast, Smart, Stable) - Each time i did something on this new release of SQL Server within some first weeks i was saying two phrases: "Wow! How can i live without this cool thing?" and "It's should be done erlier! It's so simple!". Thousands of new features, improvements. Now i will go home, because i do my work faster than i could think. 5 stars (Modern, Fast, Smart, Stable) - Each time i did something on this new release of SQL Server within some first weeks i was saying two phrases: "Wow! How can i live without this cool thing?" and "It's should be done erlier! It's so simple!". Thousands of new features, improvements. Now i will go home, because i do my work faster than i could think. ... Microsoft :: microsoft :: sql :: server :: 2000 :: standard :: edition :: 5-client :: microsoft :: software :: development :: ides :: coding :: utilities :: microsoftsqlserver2000standardedition(5-clien :: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition (5-client)