14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has made available for download the second service pack for the SQL Server 2005 System, emphasizing the addition of support for Windows Vista and Office 2007. SP2 will build on top of the capabilities delivered by the company's flagship products with BI, interoperability, performance and manageability improvements. On servers that are fully licensed for SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition, Microsoft has expanded the virtualization use rights scraping the limit for virtual instances.
"SP2 delivers customer-driven improvements and new features that align with our data platform vision," said Ted Kummert, corporate vice president of the Data and Storage Platform Division at Microsoft. "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."
SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 delivers a range of interoperability improvements including Oracle and Hyperion's Essbase support. Microsoft customers will be able to access Report Builder on top of Oracle data resources and SQL Server Reporting Service on top of Hyperion's Essbase cubes.
Moreover, SQL Server 2005 SP2 added management reports to the Express Edition along with a suite of manageability enhancements. Microsoft has lowered the disk storage space required for decimal data and increased performance for data warehousing scenarios by introducing data compression.
"Data Mining Add-ins for the 2007 Microsoft Office system enable data mining functionality from SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) to be used directly within Excel 2007 and Visio 2007. SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) compatibility with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides integration with the Report Center in SharePoint, enabling the seamless consumption and management of SSRS reports within SharePoint,"
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 is available for download here.