To upgrade using dump and load you can load 12.5 database dumps and transaction logs and
upgrade the databases.
However, there are some issues of which you should be aware:
-
Upgrading requires space for copying
data and logging changes to the system tables during the upgrade
process. If the source database in the dump was nearly full, the
upgrade process might fail due to insufficient space. While this
is expected to be uncommon, you can use alter database to
extend the free space in the event of insufficient-space
errors.
-
After reloading an older dump, run sp_checkreswords from
the new installation on the loaded database to check for reserved
words.