How to find the SQL Server version from within AX 2009

I am usually asked how to find various information around SQL Server from within AX. This can happen from either a fellow consultant or a client.

Usually from a consultant standpoint, it is in the scenario where they are thrown into a situation where they don’t really know anything about the client and it is one more thing for them to ask people. Another scenario would be when a consultant or client need to submit a ticket to a company for support and the company needs to know some information around SQL Server.

Whatever the case may be, people will need to be able to get information about SQL from AX and those people may not be technologically inclined. AX has a way to do this :-)

To find out information about SQL, navigate to Administration -> Inquiries -> Database -> ‘Database information’ (Figure 1).

Figure 1 - Database Information form location

In figure 2 below it, shows the Database Information form that will pop up to the user. There are three tabs on this form: ‘General’, ‘System variables’, and ‘ODBC’. There is a whole lot of information on these tabs but I doubt a lot of it would apply to most people. The primary information people will want to see:

• First tab (Figure 2)
• Logon database
• The database the current AX environment is using
• Logon server
• The server where the database is located
• Database
• The type of database AX is running against (SQL or Oracle)
• Third tab (Figure 3)
• DBMS_VER
• The version of SQL Server that AX is running (please refer to the next paragraph for translating this number to something that means something)

Feel free to add to the various fields you find helpful in the comments below. I don’t want to detail them all…

When assessing what SQL Server version your current AX environment is on, look at the third tab’s DBMS_VER variable described above. You can take this number and compare it to numbers you can find online. For example, if the database is SQL Server and the DBMS_VER is 10.50.1600, try entering ‘SQL Server 10.50.16000’ in a search engine (Bing!) and you should see the server version and Service Pack version.

From my example above, using the list of versions I’ve included below, indicate that my current AX environment is running SQL Server 2008 RTM.

SQL Server 2000 version numbers:
-RTM - 8.0.194
-SP1 - 8.0.384
-SP2 - 8.0.534
-SP3 - 8.0.760.0
-SP3a - 8.0.760
-SP4 - 8.0.2039

SQL Server 2005 version number examples:
-RTM - 9.0.1399
-SP1 - 9.0.2047
-SP2 - 9.0.3042
-SP3 - 9.0.4035

SQL Server 2008 version number examples:
-RTM - 10.0.1600
-SP1 - 10.0.2531

Figure 2 – Tab one of the Database Information form

Figure 3 – Tab three of the Database Information form

Hope this helps!