Recently we had to move our Mediazone website, which is build with Blogengine, from SQL 2008 Web Edition to a machine with SQL 2005 Express edition. Since it is not possible to do a backup in SQL 2008 and then import the backup file in SQL 2005, we had to find another solution. To accomplish this task, we did a SQL export using the DTS Wizard utility that is supplied with SQL 2008 Web Edition. We exported from our local database to a SQL 2005 database on our local network. After this step, we made a backup and imported this backup in the SQL 2005 machine. After this, everything worked as planned. There were a few permissions that were not right, but these errors could be corrected easily by allowing null values to be inserted in several columns in the Blogengine database.

The steps:

Start dtswizard. you can use run or cmd to start the application

The SQL Import and Export Wizard starts:

Select the source for the the transfer. Select the database on the 2008 server:

Select the destination for the data. In our case it is a SQL 2005 Express database on our local network:

After this step, you can select all the tables you wish to transfer from the SQL 2008 to the SQL 2005 database. In our case we select all tables:

Please note that the SQL user account that connects to the SQL 2005 database needs full permissions (we give this user temporary database owner priviledges):

Also turn Windows Firewall temporary off:

After these steps it is time to do the export from SQL 2005 to SQL 2008:

If everything goes as planned, you will see the following screen:

Now turn on the firewall again and remove the 'owner' priviledges from the user that connects to the database. You now migrated a SQL 2008 database to a SQL 2005 database.