Microsoft releases SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1

On Tuesday, Microsoft released Service Pack 1 for Microsoft SQL Server 2005, which can be used on these SQL Server 2005 editions:

• Enterprise
• Enterprise Evaluation
• Developer
• Standard
• Workgroup

Many new features and improvements are included in the service pack.

In Analysis Services, the performance and stability of queries has been improved and HTTP connectivity now supports HTTP compression.

The Import/Export wizard in SSIS has been improved as well as performance for many transformations. In addition, SSIS Designer usability has been improved, the Expression Builder dialog box now has a public and documented API and there are new properties in the Advanced Editor.

In the manageability arena, there have been improvements to Profiler and Replay, SQL Server Agent, SQL Server Management Objects (SMO), Maintenance plans and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).

New features in Reporting Services include the ability to add static images, new data processing extension that provides a graphical query designer and many bugs have been fixed.

In SQL Server 2005 SP1, database mirroring has been enabled, a new Database Mirroring monitor has been added to SQL Server Management Studio, XSD support has been added for some schemas, and a new user-defined function as been added that lets you see which OpenXML handles are open.

This is just a brief listing of new feature and improvements. The full list can be found in KB 916940. The download is available in the Microsoft Download Center.