Well yes Windows 2003 does't support .NET 4.5 so there's no getting around that.
>About the switch you mentioned, is this a backward compatibility switch at the SQL Server level? If yes, what would be the advantages of running SQL Server 2012 if we ask it to run as it we would have installed SQL Server 2008?
Well it's just that database. It's a compatibility mode so that the database can only use the features that are supported by 2008 not the 2012 features. If you need to deal with a DB that needs to run in multiple places (ie. your dev machine and a live server that are different versions) than this works. The engine is still running 2012 but only the 2008 features are available.
+++ Rick ---
>>Why don't you just set the database type on SQL 2012 to SQL 2008. Then everything that used to work will continue to work.
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>>I'm not convinced that the behavior you describe is actually failing. I run SQL 2012 locally and 2008 on my server and I can easily use spatial types in my database (as long as the DB is set to 2008 DB). I'm running .NET 4.5 and I'm running my apps in 32 bit mode.
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>If you are using .NET 4.5, it probably means you are using Windows Server 2008 OS for your Web Server. We are still at Windows Server 2003 so we cannot go higher than .NET 4.0. In trying to make things work last night, I found a few items which I was not able to try because of this restriction. Actually, the OS being close to 10 years difference of SQL Server 2012 is starting to make a difference.
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>About the switch you mentioned, is this a backward compatibility switch at the SQL Server level? If yes, what would be the advantages of running SQL Server 2012 if we ask it to run as it we would have installed SQL Server 2008?
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>Also, based on the timeframe I have, there is just no way to switch to a new environment without proper testing first. While it may seems simple to use a switch to resolve the issue, if in fact that would work for me, this would still require a lot of testing and we have decided to delay that transition for now. I would feel more comfortable when the Web servers would be on Windows Server 2008 or higher, in 64-bit environment. Then, we would have less possibilities of facing walls here and there.
