Question : SQL Server 2005 benefits over SQL 2000

I've got a SQL 2000 standard (CPU license) server up and running -- it's a little old, so it's 2x Xeon 3.2GHz processors with a mess of RAM.

I've been running some data conversion scripts lately. On my laptop with SQL 2005, I can run the script twice in <3 minutes; on the server the same script takes 20+ hours to run (I stopped it after 20 hours, and it wasn't done) and spikes the CPU usage to 100%. If I run the scripts on my laptop with SQL 2000, it freezes my laptop.

Of course, once I run the conversions in SQL 2005, I can't attach the modified database to SQL 2000.

Other than the improved speed for the data conversion (which should only be run once), what benefits can I tell my clients about to get them to upgrade the server to SQL 2005?

Answer : SQL Server 2005 benefits over SQL 2000

The time-issue looks to me something other than de 2000/2005 issue.

Benefits
- older version -> support will stop somewhere
- new version -> no company releases something without saying it will be faster and better, works voor SQL Server as well

Real
- better error handling possible to get a clean message
- non-sql code, as a procedure
- ....
and we will end up to copy de Microsoft commercial chatter you find on their website