I have been testing SQL Server 2005 SP3 CTP this week. This Beta version of SP3, which is due out for official release before the end of the year, includes all of the previous cumulative updates for SQL Server 2005 since its release in Nov 2005. It's been almost a year since SP2 so this is welcome news. In addition to the previously issued updates, there are some enhancements in SP3 which are outlined in the associated What's New document. These are classified as "new or improved features". Let's take a look...
Apparently, the DBCC commands for CHECKDB, CHECKALLOC, CHECKTABLE and CHECKFILEGROUP would only deliver the first 200 error messages for each object unless you specified the WITH ALL_ERRORMSGS option. I did not know this. Well, now in SP3, all error messages will be displayed regardless. I don't know about you, but as soon as I get over 100 error messages on a single object, I know something serious is wrong.
Notification Services 2005 has been enhanced so that it will at least run under SQL Server 2005 and 2008, although it will not be officially supported as part of the 2008 release. I talked about this in a previous blog too. Not much call for it in these parts.
Replication stored procedure sp_showpendingchanges now has a new parameter @show_rows so that you can see the actual pending changes for a subscriber instead of just a number of changes. Don't get too excited now. I know you have been asking for this for a while now.
On the Reporting Services front, there is now support for Teradata databases for Report Models and Report Builder. This adds to the Oracle support introduced in SP2. Also in Reporting Services, the PDF rendering extension now supports Unicode characters from languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Funny, I thought that was already supported. Reporting Services "Sharepoint integrated mode", which was introduced in SP2, enabled users to publish reports directly to Sharepoint Services. This feature has been enhanced in SP3 to perform better. I can deal with that.
As you can see, these enhancements are probably not the reason for applying SP3 when it is finally released. The integrated testing of all fixes together as a unit including customer feedback is what we are after. The customer base will most likely stick with SQL Server 2005 instead of jumping to 2008, so make no mistake, this service pack will be very popular regardless of these "new features".
Cheers
Brian
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Brian D. Egler, MCITP/MCSE/MCT 2009, is currently an instructor with Global Knowledge, teaching various Microsoft training courses. He is a SQL specialist with a focus on SQL Server, Windows, .Net and XML. Egler has been a technical instructor for over 20 years and has more than 10 years experience with SQL Server, data modeling, database design, application development including IMS, DB2, Sybase. Every year he runs the Boston Marathon for cancer research.
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