Dec 18, 2010 10:54 GMT  ·  By

While Microsoft has made available SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 for some time now, it’s still catering to customers running SQL Server 2005. Case in point: the release to manufacturing of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 4 which is currently up for grabs via the Microsoft Download Center.

Downloads of SQL Server 2005 SP4 RTM just went live, with two flavors of the upgrade released to customers.

SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 4 RTM is designed for customers running the following SKUs of the ageing data platform: Enterprise, Enterprise Evaluation, Developer, Standard and Workgroup.

At the same time, the software giant also launched SP4 RTM for its free version of SQL Server 2005, namely Express Edition.

“The RTM version of Service Pack 4 (SP4) for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is now available for download, and includes SQL Server 2005 SP3 cumulative updates 1 to 11, customer requested fixes and the SQL Server 2005 SP4 database engine support for DAC operations,” revealed Abhishek Sinha, program manager SQL Server Sustained Engineering.

As it is the case with all service packs for Microsoft products, the latest upgrade for SQL Server 2005 is offered to customers at no charge.

All SQL Server 2005 service pack upgrades are cumulative, and as such, SP4 is designed to kick up a notch all service levels of SQL Server 2005.

Still, the Redmond company is advising customers to start thinking about upgrading to the latest release of SQL Server.

Sinha enumerated a range of benefits for those that will make the jump to SQL Server 2008 R2. Including:

“•Resource Governor, a feature than you can use to manage SQL Server workload and system resource consumption

•PowerPivot, a managed self-service analysis solution that empowers end users to access, analyze and share data across the enterprise in an IT managed environment using Excel2010 and SharePoint Sever 2010

•Master Data Services (MDS) an ‘any domain’ hub that helps organizations standardize and streamline the business data used enterprise-wide.

•Application and Multi-server Management, better utilization of resources and SMP scale up with support for up to 256 logical processors

•Report Builder 3.0 with support for geospatial visualization,

•Compliance-ready security features like Transparent Data Encryption and SQL Server Auditing

•A savings of 50-60% on data storage with backup and data compression

•Policy-Based Management for server policy compliance and PowerShell support for automating administrative tasks

•Support for a more diverse set of applications with support for unstructured documents and file types and spatial data.”

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 4 RTM is available for download here.

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition Service Pack 4 RTM is available for download here.

The new SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM downloads are available here.