14 DAY TRIAL // Customers still running SQL Server 2008 can now download a test release of the third major upgrade for their version of Microsoft’s data platform. A Customer Technology Preview of SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 3 (SP3) is now available through the Microsoft Download Center to early adopters looking to get a taste of what the upcoming service pack brings to the table.
Customers will be able to find downloads for the Enterprise, Standard, Evaluation, Developer and Workgroup SKUs of SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 3 CTP, as well as for the SQL Server 2008 SP3 Express Edition.
“Service Pack 3 for SQL Server 2008 includes product improvements based on requests from the SQL Server community and hotfix solutions provided in SQL Server 2008 SP2 Cumulative Updates 1 to 4,” revealed Abhishek Sinha, Program Manager SQL Server Sustained Engineering.
Sinha notes that the Redmond company has labored so that SQL Server 2008 SP3 will introduce a reduced number of changes to customer configurations compared to previous upgrades. The software giant managed to decrease the number of modifications by no less than 65%.
Microsoft published KB article 2546945 designed to provide insight into the evolution ushered in by SQL Server 2008 SP3 CTP , but Sinha also highlighted the following changes:
“• Upgrade: Improved the experience for customers when upgrading SQL Server from previous versions and improving installation performance & robustness.
• SSIS: In SSIS, logs will now show total number of rows sent in Data Flows.
• Manageability: added warning message when creating the maintenance plan if the Shrink Database option is enabled; fixed the permission issue on shared memory which caused SQLAgent.exe failed to run from command line.
• Improved the compatibility of WMI with Next Major Release.
•Full-Text Search: Full-text query was enhanced to support multiple-language stemming.”
SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 3 (SP3) CTP is available for download here.
SQL Server 2008 SP3 Express Edition is available for download here.