Can we downgrade edition from SQL Server 2016 Enterprise to Standard when we have compression feature enabled?

Question

I have a production database running on SQL Server 2016 Enterprise. I ran the below query to check the edition-specific feature and see the compression feature in use. Can we still downgrade the edition?

Query

SELECT feature_name
FROM sys.dm_db_persisted_sku_features;
GO 

Output

feature_name

Compression

Answer 1

From Microsoft Documentation

Feature	Enterprise	Standard with Advanced Services	Web	Express	Express
Columnstore 1, 2	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
In-Memory OLTP 1, 2	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes 3	Yes
Stretch Database	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Persistent Main Memory	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Multi-instance support	50	50	50	50	50
Table and index partitioning 2	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Data compression 2	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Resource Governor	Yes	No	No	No	No
Partitioned Table Parallelism 2	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Multiple Filestream containers 2	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
NUMA Aware Large Page Memory and Buffer Array Allocation	Yes	No 4	No	No	No
Buffer Pool Extension	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
I/O Resource Governance	Yes	No	No	No	No
Read-Ahead	Yes	No	No	No	No
Advanced Scanning	Yes	No	No	No	No
Delayed Durability	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

^{1 - In-Memory OLTP data size and Columnstore segment cache are limited to the amount of memory specified by edition in the Scale Limits section. The max degree of parallelism is limited. The degree of process parallelism (DOP) for an index build is limited to 2 DOP for the Standard Edition and 1 DOP for the Web and Express Editions. This refers to columnstore indexes created over disk-based tables and memory-optimized tables.}

^{2 - Applies to SQL Server 2016 (13.x) SP1 as part of creating a Common Programmability Surface Area (CPSA) across editions. Aggregate Pushdown, String Predicate Pushdown, and SIMD Optimizations are SQL Server Enterprise Edition scalability enhancements. For more detail, see Columnstore indexes - what's new.}

^{3 - This feature isn't included in the LocalDB installation option.}

^{4 - Standard Edition and SQL Server + CAL-based licensing can restrict how many processors SQL Server Standard can use, but SQL Server Standard is NUMA aware.}

As shown in the table above, you can downgrade to Standard Edition since the Data Compression feature is supported in all five editions of SQL Server 2016 (starting with Service Pack 1).