Determine database version from a bak file

Scenario:
Have you ever imagine you can determine the version of SQL Server from a bak or a MDF file? I have been in situations where I received a bak or MDF and LDF files from a vendor to restore \ create a database for the implementation of a new application, most of the times I receive complete detail of the supported versions of SQL Server by the product but what happens if I don’t get that information?

SQL Server offers a way to get the actual version where the files were created, let’s review the process to using a database restore.

Solution:

RESTORE HEADERONLY

This command does not restores the backup as the name suggest, it just returns metadata (information) about the backup file you are examining.

Syntax:

 RESTORE HEADERONLY FROM DISK = 'physical_backup_device_name'

After you have created a New Query window, you can change the database context to any database, I selected master.  The syntax I will use is as follows:  RESTORE HEADERONLY FROM DISK ='c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL13.X3DataSQL2k16\MSSQL\Backup\x3erpv12.bak'.  You will need to substitute the path and filename accordingly. 

Here is an example of the RESTORE command and its output with two different files:

Here are the quick list lf all the SQL Server versions and their compatibility levels from SQL Server 2008 to the latest version of SQL Server. 

Thanks.