Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Microsoft Releases Preview of SP1 for SQL Server 2005

Leading up to the release of SQL Server 2005, we provided Community Technology Previews (CTPs) available to the public as downloads. This CTP process allowed us to be more open and transparent with our customers and they responded by giving valuable feedback about our pre-release versions – advising us this model provides greater predictability and faster results within their own businesses.

With this active customer feedback loop, we were able to deliver a higher quality product for our customers. As a result, we are continuing to expand this model and applying it more broadly as part of our development cycle. We call this new, enhanced process our Transparent Customer Collaboration Model.

We have just released, SQL Server 2005 SP1 CTP, which delivers new functionality for database mirroring and SQL Server Management Studio Express, along with regular fit and finish adjustments and enhancements. Applying this new customer collaboration model to service pack releases demonstrates our commitment to customer feedback and validation as an important aspect of a quality-focused development cycle. Also, as part of this new model, we are introducing a separate release tree for any future SQL Server security fixes, so that customers can take advantage of timely, targeted fixes that are streamlined for security specific updates

SQL Server 2005 SP1 Beta Refresh (CTP) is now available at http://www.microsoft.com/sql/ctp_sp1.mspx.