adventureworks 2005 and 2008

Question

does anyone know what the differences are between these two databases? the reason i ask is i am taking a sql class, and they are using 2008, however, since i have sql server 2005 installed i am unable to use adventureworks 2008. thank you for your help.

Answer 1

From the official site for AdventureWorks:

AdventureWorks 2008R2 Details

The following changes have been made in the design of AdventureWorks2008 and AdventureWorks2008R2:

• The way people and businesses are represented has changed. Some tables have been added, renamed, and deleted. These changes enable better integration with the Microsoft ADO.NET Entity Framework.
• New data types and attributes are now demonstrated in the database including:
  • date and time
  • hierarchyid
  • geography
  • filestream
• Integrated full-text support has been incorporated into the database.

Answer 2

The following databases were designed for SQL Server 2005 but will also work just fine on SQL Server 2008 and higher.
AdventureWorks    -- the OLTP database
AdventureWorksDW  -- the Data warehouse
AdventureWorksLT -- a smaller, simplified subset ofj the AdventureWorks data

The following databases were updated for SQL Server 2008 and will NOT work with SQL Server 2005.
AdventureWorks 2008   -- the OLTP database
AdventureWorksDW2008  -- the Data warehouse
AdventureWorksLT2008  -- a smaller, simplified subset ofj the AdventureWorks data

source:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sqlserversamples/thread/1ece1f93-313d-46d0-97e6-c8ce24aa9cc5