I need to restore a backup in a previous version of MS SQL. The db dad was create on a v. 15.00.2000 and I need to restore on v. 13.00.5026
I tried but it gives me the error that it is not possible to restore a database created with a later version.
Any ideas?
This has been asked before, if I can find the previous answers I will post a link here. However, as indicated by others there is no direct way to revert a database nor it's backup to a lower version.
But, there is an indirect way: script out the database (for a backup, first restore it to a database at it's current level) , then re-execute on a new lower-version database. Now that sounds simple and easy but I assure you that it can be a lot trickier and a lot more work than it sounds as there are all kinds of catches and gotcha's that can impede this.
Besides the obvious (new features that are incompatible with older versions), not everything is scripted and re-executable in a SQL Server database. Yes almost everything is but there's always some features that are either left out (like role memberships), or just are not scripted correctly. Then there's the ordering problem: scripted objects have to be executed in the correct order and even with the "dependent objects" setting, the scripter does not get everything right. And there's some obscure things that have to be manually changed (like file names, etc.) that are automatically taken care in a DB copy or restore situation. And you have to test all of this to make sure that it's working correctly.
But in theory you can revert the version of a database this way. I have in fact done this more than once in my career, but as I said above, it was a lot more work than I originally expected.
Not possible. Period.
SQL Server in no version ever supported restoring from a higher version. As, by the way, the error indicates.
