I've now found out why we can't go up yet. In the application there is code which is using the good old non-ansi joins. If I change the compatibility then the app itself breaks quite spectacularly. So short of rewriting the app to use ansi join syntax it's not going to happen for the foreseeable.

It is planned to rewrite at some stage, but when that gets done is not up to me sadly.

But cheers anyway.