database compatibility level

A couple of weeks ago we had upgraded our SQL Server 6.5
to ver. 7.0. We've just observed that for all of our
databases, the database compatibility level remains at 65.
My concern here is... can we change this compatibility
level to 70 on the fly? Would this incur an outage of any
sort? Are there any precautions that I should be aware of
before set the database compatibility level to 70?
Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions.You can certainly change on the fly, but there will be some semantic =changes to the SQL that may catch out your application. BOL has a =summary of the differences, but it is things like:
SELECT 'a' + '' + 'b' -- Nothe there is no space between the middle pair =of single quotes -
At 65 will give 'a b' - ie the zerolength string is interpreted as a =single space.
At 7 will give 'ab' - which I would say is right.
Others such as =3D NULL behaving non-standard at 65 but fixed at 7 can =catch you if the app uses it.
BOL has a description of all the differences.
Mike John
"Rob" <rhchin@.hotmail.com> wrote in message =news:01fc01c3425c$c76bc8a0$a301280a@.phx.gbl...
> A couple of weeks ago we had upgraded our SQL Server 6.5 > to ver. 7.0. We've just observed that for all of our > databases, the database compatibility level remains at 65.
> > My concern here is... can we change this compatibility > level to 70 on the fly? Would this incur an outage of any > sort? Are there any precautions that I should be aware of > before set the database compatibility level to 70?
> > Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions.