The ISV Migration Lab invited certain companies that sell SQL Server as part of their solutions to upgrade to SQL Server 7.0 at the SQL Server development site. ISVs participating in the lab upgraded their databases by using the SQL Server Upgrade Wizard, and then tested their applications by using the configurations that their customers use in production. The ISVs tested SQL Server versions 6.5 and 7.0 client libraries (for example, DB-Library, ODBC, OLE DB) with their converted databases in both 6.5 and 7.0 compatibility modes.
More than 96 percent of all applications tested during the ISV Migration Lab project run unchanged with SQL Server 7.0 in 6.5 backward compatibility mode. That is, the client computers using the ISV application run unchanged against a database that has been upgraded to SQL Server 7.0 with the SQL Server Upgrade Wizard.