Microsoft Ships SQL Server 2005 SP2

Published: February 21, 2007

by Alex Woodie

Microsoft this week unveiled SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 (SP2), the second update of the company's relational database since it was introduced more than a year ago. The new release of the database brings new business intelligence capabilities, expanded support for Windows Vista and Office 2007, and new licensing rules for running SQL Server Enterprise Edition on virtualized servers.

SQL Server 2005 SP2 brings several improvements to Microsoft's business intelligence offerings, including reporting, data mining, data warehousing, and online analytical processing (OLAP). For example, with SP2, Microsoft is making available Data Mining Add-ins for Office 2007 that enable the SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) data mining capability to be used directly within Excel 2007 and Visio 2007.

Similarly, organizations can now use Office SharePoint Server 2007 to distribute reports generated with SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), thanks to a new integration point between SharePoint's Report Center and SSRS. Customers that already have Oracle databases or Hyperion OLAP cubes can now build reports against these sources using SQL Server 2005 SP2.

Ted Kummert, corporate vice president of the data and storage platform division at Microsoft, says the new database will boost users' business intelligence capabilities. "SP2 realizes a step forward in enabling organizations to bring the business intelligence capabilities of SQL Server 2005 directly to end users in the tools they use every day," he said.

Other improvements include a new data compression feature, called varDecimal, that should boost performance and reduce storage requirements in data warehouses and new reports for SQL Server Express Edition and SQL Server Compact Edition.

Lastly, Microsoft is now allowing customers who have bought SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition to run as many instances of the database on virtualized servers, provided that server is fully licensed (meaning there are no processors not being used to run the database). That is a good thing for high-end Enterprise Edition customers, who paid $25,000 per socket for the database, as they can now consolidate database workloads onto fewer, but larger, servers.

Users can download SQL Server 2005 SP2 at www.microsoft.com/sql/sp2.mspx.

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