Francois Ajenstat wrote in a recent blog posting that Microsoft will release a SP3 for SQL Server 2005. There has been a groundswell of support in the user community for this, and it's a relief to know it's on the way.
This is especially great news for those of us deploying and supporting PerformancePoint on the SQL 2005 platform. Currently, the system requirements for PerformancePoint planning server require build 3186 of SQL Server 2005, which is a "hot-fixed" version of SQL Server 2005. It has seemed a bit strange that the production version of PerformancePoint Planning server requires a hot-fix version that's only available through special request to Product Support Services. It's nice to see that will change soon.
While on the subject of build version numbers, keeping all the build numbers straight can be a real challenge sometimes. One handy SQL statement to pickup the service pack level if you don't recall version numbers well:
SELECT 'SQL Server '
+ CAST(SERVERPROPERTY('productversion') AS VARCHAR) + ' - '
+ CAST(SERVERPROPERTY('productlevel') AS VARCHAR) + ' ('
+ CAST(SERVERPROPERTY('edition') AS VARCHAR) + ')'
Also, aspfaq.com hosts the following pages that have complete references on build numbers:
SQL Server 2005 build number matrix
SQL Server 2000 build number matrix