| Compatibility level setting of 80 or earlier |
Compatibility level setting of 90 |
Possibility of impact |
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For locking hints in the FROM clause, the WITH keyword is always optional. |
With some exceptions, table hints are supported in the FROM clause only when the hints are specified with the WITH keyword. For more information, see FROM (Transact-SQL). |
High |
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The *= and =* operators for outer join are supported with a warning message. |
These operators are not supported; the OUTER JOIN keyword should be used. |
High |
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WHEN binding the column references in the ORDER BY list to the columns produced by the SELECT list, column ambiguities are ignored and column prefixes are sometimes ignored.
For instance, an ORDER BY expression that is made up of a single two-part column (<table_alias>.<column>) that is used as a reference to a column alias in a SELECT list is accepted, but the table alias is ignored. For example, in the query SELECT DISTINCT c1 = c1*-1 FROM t_table x ORDER BY x.c1, the ORDER BY operation does not occur on the specified source column (x.c1); instead it occurs on the c1 column that is defined in the query. |
Errors are raised on column ambiguities. Column prefixes, if any, specified in ORDER BY are not ignored when binding to a column produced by the SELECT list. |
Medium |
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The UNION of a variable-length column and a fixed length column produces a fixed-length column. |
The UNION of a variable-length column and a fixed length column produces a variable-length column. |
Medium |
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SET XACT_ABORT OFF is allowed inside a trigger. |
SET XACT_ABORT OFF is not allowed inside a trigger. |
Medium |
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The FOR BROWSE clause is allowed (and ignored) in views. |
The FOR BROWSE clause is not allowed in views. |
Medium |
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Views with CHECK OPTION are supported incorrectly if the view or a view it references contains TOP. |
Views with CHECK OPTION are not supported if the view or a view it references contains TOP. |
Medium |
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If a passthrough query against a remote data source [OpenRowset or OpenQuery] produces columns with duplicate names, the duplicate column names are ignored unless the columns are explicitly named in the query. |
If a passthrough query against a remote data source [OpenRowset or OpenQuery] produces a column with duplicate column names, an error is raised. |
Low |
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Character string constants and varbinary constants of size greater than 8000 are treated as text, ntext, or image. |
Character string constants and varbinary constants of size greater than 8000 are treated as type varchar(max) (or nvarchar(max) and varbinary(max), respectively). This can change the data type of the table created using SELECT … INTO if the SELECT list contains such expressions. |
Low |
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Comparisons between numeric types (smallint, tinyint, int, bigint, numeric, decimal, smallmoney, money) are done by converting the comparand with lower precedence in the type hierarchy to the type whose precedence is higher. |
The numeric-type values are compared without conversions. This provides improved performance. However, this can cause some changes in behavior, especially in cases in which the conversion caused overflow exceptions. |
Low |
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Built-in metadata functions that take string arguments truncate their input if the input is longer than 4000 characters. |
Built-in metadata functions raise an error if the truncation would result in the loss of nonspace characters. |
Low |
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The set of disallowed characters in an unquoted identifier remains unchanged. |
The Transact-SQL parser supports the Unicode 3.2 standard, which changes the character classification for some international characters that are now not allowed in nondelimited identifiers. |
Low |
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SET ANSI_WARNINGS ON does not override the setting of SET ARITHABORT OFF for the case of floating point domain errors [that is, negative arguments for the log() function]. If ANSI_WARNINGS is ON but ARITHABORT is OFF, floating point domain errors do not cause the query to be terminated. |
SET ANSI_WARNINGS ON completely overrides ARITHABORT OFF setting. Floating point domain errors in this case will cause the query to be terminated. |
Low |
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Non-integer constants are allowed (and ignored) in the ORDER BY clause. |
Non-integer constants are not allowed in the ORDER BY clause. |
Low |
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Empty SET statement (with no SET option assignments) is allowed. |
Empty SET clause is not allowed. |
Low |
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The IDENTITY attribute is not derived correctly for columns produced by a derived table. |
The IDENTITY attribute is derived correctly for columns produced by derived tables. |
Low |
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The nullability property of arithmetic operators over floating point data type is always nullable. |
The nullability property of arithmetic operators over the floating point data type is changed to nonnullable for the case where the inputs are nonnullable and ANSI_WARNINGS is ON. |
Low |
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In the INSERT .. SELECT statement with UNION, the types produced by the individual result sets are all converted to the destination result type. |
In the INSERT .. SELECT statement with UNION, the dominant type of the various branches is determined, and the results are converted to that type before being converted to the destination table type. |
Low |
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In the SELECT .. FOR XML statement, the hex(27) (the ' character) and hex(22) (the " character) are always entitized, even where not required. |
FOR XML entitizes hex(27)and hex(22) only where required. They are not entitized in the following situations:
- In attribute content, hex(27) (the ' character) is not entitized if attribute values are delimited with ", and hex(22) (the " character) is not entitized if attribute values are delimited with '.
- In element content, hex(27) and hex(22) are never entitized.
|
Low |
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In FOR XML, the timestamp value is mapped to an integer. |
In FOR XML, the timestamp value is mapped to an binary value.
For more information, see FOR XML Support for the timestamp Data Type. |
High (if a timestamp column is used); otherwise, low |
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In FOR XML and OPENXML, high-range Unicode characters (3 bytes) in names are represented using 8 positions.
For example, using 8 positions, FOR XML represents the Unicode code point U+10000 as:
<a_x00010000_ c1="1" />
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In FOR XML and OPENXML, high-range Unicode characters (3 bytes) in names are represented using 6 positions.
For example, using 6 positions, FOR XML represents the Unicode code point U+10000 as:
<a_x010000_ c1="1" />
|
Low |
|
In FOR XML, derived table mappings in AUTO mode are treated transparently.
For example:
|
 Copy Code |
USE AdventureWorks
CREATE TABLE Test(id int);
INSERT INTO Test VALUES(1);
INSERT INTO Test VALUES(2);
SELECT * FROM (SELECT a.id AS a,
b.id AS b FROM Test a
JOIN Test b ON a.id=b.id)
Test FOR XML AUTO; |
When the compatibility level for AdventureWorks is set to 80, the above example produces:
<a a="1"><b b="1"/></a>
<a a="2"><b b="2"/></a>
|
In FOR XML, derived table mappings in AUTO mode are treated opaquely.
When the compatibility level for AdventureWorks is set to 90, the preceding example produces:
<Test a="1" b="1"/>
<Test a="2" b="2"/>
For more information about changes to AUTO mode, see AUTO Mode Enhancements. |
High (if FOR XML AUTO mode is applied on views); otherwise, low |
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String to money conversions support using a backslash character (\) as a currency symbol only in the Japanese and Korean languages. |
The backslash character (\) is accepted in all string to money conversions in all languages. ISNUMERIC would return true when \ is used as a currency symbol.
For databases on versions of SQL Server earlier than SQL Server 2005, this new behavior breaks indexes and computed columns that depend on an ISNUMERIC return value that contains \ and for which the language is neither Japanese nor Korean. |
low |
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The result of an arithmetic operator is always nullable, even if the operands are nonnullable and ANSI_WARNINGS or ARITHABORT is set ON. |
When ANSI_WARNINGS or ARITHABORT are set to ON, the result of a floating point arithmetic operator is nonnullable, if both operands are nonnullable.
This change in nullability could cause failure when bcp is used to bulk export data that uses the binary format from a SQL Server 2000 table with a computed column that uses a floating point arithmetic operator and bcp or BULK INSERT is then used bulk import that data into a SQL Server 2005 table with the same definition.
 Note: |
| When both options are OFF, the Database Engine marks the result as nullable. This is the same as in SQL Server 2000.
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low |
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Domain errors are not controlled by ANSI_WARNINGS. ARITHABORT settings are honored, if ANSI_WARNINGS are set to OFF and there is no change to ARITHABORT. |
Domain errors are also controlled by ANSI_WARNINGS and are severity 16 errors. If either ANSI_WARNINGS or ARITHABORT are ON, an error is thrown instead of returning NULL value. User scripts that depend upon ARITHABORT being set to OFF might be broken by this change. |
medium |
|
In an INSERT SELECT from a UNION of different data types, each UNION branch is directly cast to the type of the target column of the INSERT. Even if the union used by itself could fail because of incompatible type conversions, the INSERT SELECT makes the UNION succeed because the branch to the result type of the UNION is never converted. |
In SQL Server 2005, the result type of UNION is derived independently of INSERT SELECT. Each branch of UNION is cast to the result type of UNION, and then cast to the target column type of INSERT. If there are incompatible types in the UNION, the first cast might cause an error. To run in compatibility level 90, you must fix all incompatible type unions used inside INSERT SELECT. |
medium |
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For built-in functions that take nvarchar as a parameter, if the supplied value is varchar, the value is converted to nvarchar(4000). In SQL Server 2000, if a larger value is passed, it is silently truncated. |
For built-in functions that take nvarchar as a parameter, if the supplied value is varchar, the value is still converted to nvarchar(4000). However, if a larger value is passed, SQL Server 2005 generates an error.
To run in compatibility level 90, you must fix any custom code that relies on the truncation behavior. |
low |
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A union of fixed-length (char, binary, or nchar) string with a variable-length (varchar, varbinary, nvarchar) string returns a fixed-length result. |
The union of a variable-size string and a fixed-size string returns a variable-size string.
To run in compatibility level 90, you must fix all the places (indexes, queries, and computed columns) that depend on the type resulting from a union of a variable-size type and a fixed-size type. |
low |
|
Object names containing the character 0xFFFF are valid identifiers. |
Object names containing the character 0xFFFF are invalid identifiers and cannot be accessed.
To run in compatibility level 90, you must rename objects that contain this character. |
Low |
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In SELECT ISNUMERIC('<string>'), embedded commas within <string> are significant.
For example, the following SELECT ISNUMERIC('121212,12') query returns 0. This indicates that the string 121212,12 is not numeric. |
In SELECT ISNUMERIC('<string>'), embedded commas within <string> are ignored.
For example, the following SELECT ISNUMERIC('121212,12') query returns 1. This indicate that the string 121212,12 is numeric. |
Low |