Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Microsoft Releases SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1

Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1), the product’s first major milestone since the launch of SQL Server 2005 only a few months ago. The release follows the remarkable reception, momentum and feedback offered by customers and partners in 92 countries. This has informed and accelerated Microsoft’s multiyear vision of Your Data, Any Place, Any Time. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP1 includes production-ready Database Mirroring functionality and the new SQL Server Management Studio Express, along with additional updates to SQL Server 2005 Express Edition targeted at users such as independent software vendors (ISVs) wanting to take advantage of greater functionality.

SP1 delivers production-ready Database Mirroring functionality for continuous availability. This complements the existing Always On Technologies in SQL Server 2005 such as failover clustering, database snapshots, snapshot isolation and log shipping. Since launch, Database Mirroring has been extensively tested by Microsoft and its thriving customer community to help ensure that it provides the high availability necessary for the largest customer deployments. Today more than 20 SQL Server customers have deployed Database Mirroring into production

SP1 extends business insight to smaller-scale customers and ISVs using the free SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, which includes SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) functionality, Full Text Search and the newly released SQL Server Management Studio Express. This optional set of capabilities is already receiving positive feedback from Microsoft’s ISV partners

SP1 also advances dynamic applications with the new SQL Server Management Studio Express, a simplified graphical management environment for SQL Server Express Edition. This tool builds on Microsoft’s commitment to extending the breadth of the SQL Server family to support all the data storage needs of Microsoft’s customers. It also complements the recently announced SQL Server Everywhere Edition, a lightweight and rich subset of capabilities found in other SQL Server editions, targeted for application embedded storage on clients. SQL Server Everywhere Edition is targeted to be available as a Community Technology Preview (CTP) this summer and released by year end.

For end-to-end business insight, SP1 extends SSRS to support enterprise reporting on SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence with two new components in SP1: a Microsoft .NET Data provider for SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence and a new MDX Query Designer. This new functionality extends the benefits of enterprise reporting with SQL Server by enabling SAP customers to easily create and manage reports on information inside any SAP BW data warehouse

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