Download Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3

Microsoft has released a new service pack for its SQL server 2005. This third service pack contains all previous patches, security updates, and updates released to date for SQL Server 2005 and can be downloaded as usual for the 32bit-, x64– and IA-64editions of Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008. For more information about all the changes, review the following list of changes:

what’s new

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 (SP3) contains all the cumulative updates for SQL Server 2005, and fixes to issues that have been reported through our customer feedback platforms. These include supportability enhancements and issues that have been reported through Windows Error Reporting. Additionally, the following components have new or improved features.

Database Engine:

• By default, when you use the DBCC CHECKDB, DBCC CHECKALLOC, DBCC CHECKTABLE, or DBCC CHECKFILEGROUP commands on a server that is running SQL Server 2005 SP3, all error messages are displayed. If you specify or omit the ALL_ERRORMSGS option, it has no effect. In earlier versions of SQL Server, only the first 200 error messages for each object are displayed if you do not specify ALL_ERRORMSGS.

Notification Services:

• This release of the SQL Server 2005 Notification Services components provides support for running SQL Server 2005 Notification Services against either an instance of the SQL Server 2005 Database Engine or the SQL Server 2008 Database Engine.

Replication:

• The sp_showpendingchanges stored procedure was updated with a new parameter, @show_rows. This parameter helps identify the pending changes of subscribers.

Reporting Services:

• Introduces support for creating report models that are based on Teradata databases. You can generate report models that are based on a Teradata database that is running version 12.00 or version 6.20 by using Model Designer in Business Intelligence Development Studio and Report Manager.
• Introduces changes to the PDF rendering extension, which supports ANSI characters and can translate Unicode characters from Japanese, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and Arabic. When it is possible, the PDF rendering extension now embeds the subset of each font that is needed to display the report in the PDF file.
• In SharePoint integrated mode, reports typically run slower than the same reports run in native mode. The main cause of this latency can be attributed to SharePoint object model calls that are made. In SQL Server 2005 SP3, the number of SharePoint object model calls that SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services (SSRS) makes are optimized. This optimization reduces some of the latency when you compare report performance with native mode.

List of the bugs that are fixed in SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3

SQL Server 2005 SP3 contains the hotfixes that were included in cumulative update packages for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 from cumulative update package 1 to cumulative update package 9. For more information about the bugs that are fixed in SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

• 956911 – FIX: A time-out setting is not available for the Web Service task in a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (SSIS) package
• 958547 – FIX: The values ​​of the datetime column are not same for the rows that are copied when you copy data to a table by using the GETDATE() function in Microsoft SQL Server 2005
• 959000 – FIX: When you validate a publication in a transactional replication, articles that you added after you added a vertical filter to an article are not validated in SQL Server 2005
• 959001 – FIX: The Log Reader Agent skips some transactions when the Log Reader Agent runs to replicate transactions for a transactional replication in SQL Server 2005
• 959003 – FIX: Only the first command in a transaction is replicated to the subscriber when you set the MaxCmdsInTran parameter of Log Reader Agent to 1 in SQL Server 2005
• 959004 – FIX: When a process that is running on an instance of SQL Server 2005 consumes a large amount of memory, dump files are generated in the folder that contains the SQL Server error log
• 959006 – FIX: Database mirroring sessions may stop intermittently in SQL Server 2005
• 959007 – FIX: Error message when you use SQL Server Service Broker in SQL Server 2005: “Failed Virtual Allocate Bytes: FAIL_VIRTUAL_RESERVE 589824”
• 959008 – FIX: Error message when you start database mirroring in SQL Server 2005 on a database that is restored or upgraded from SQL Server 2000: “The Service Broker ID for the remote copy of database “” does not match the ID on the principal server”
• 959009 – FIX: Target endpoints in Service Broker of SQL Server 2005 leak in the valid message exchange pattern where the target sends only the end conversation message
• 959010 – FIX: Error message when an application that uses Service Broker sends messages in SQL Server 2005: “The conversation endpoint is not in a valid state for SEND”
• 959012 – FIX: When you shrink a database that has the SNAPSHOT transaction isolation level enabled in SQL Server 2005, the shrink operation is not completed successfully
• 959013 – FIX: The synchronization process is slow, and the CPU usage is high on the computer that is configured as the Distributor in SQL Server 2005
• 959015 – FIX: A conflict with the foreign key constraint occurs when you update the case of the column values ​​in the primary key table or you pad column values ​​in the primary key table in SQL Server 2005
• 959016 – FIX: Rows that include a NULL column may not be deleted when you delete rows from a table by using “ is NULL” as the condition in the WHERE clause in SQL Server 2005
• 959017 – FIX: You receive an incorrect result when you query a column of the varchar(max) data type that contains only one character from a table in SQL Server 2005
• 959018 – FIX: You cannot find the SQL Server 2005 performance counters for the instance of Windows Internal Database
• 959019 – FIX: You receive an incorrect result when you run a query that uses the LIKE operator in SQL Server 2005
• 959020 – FIX: When you use a CASE function that returns constants of the binary data type, some constants are trimmed incorrectly even after you run the SET ANSI_PADDING ON statement in SQL Server 2005
• 959023 – FIX: A blocking issue occurs when you run the Merge Agent in SQL Server 2005
• 959024 – FIX: When the Merge Agent synchronizes multiple batches of changes, the synchronization may take a long time to finish or the synchronization may expire unexpectedly in SQL Server 2005
• 959025 – FIX: Error message when you call a stored procedure that returns a rowset which have the DBPROP_MAXROWS rowset property or the SSPROP_MAXBLOBLENGTH rowset property specified: “The incoming tabular data stream (TDS) protocol stream is incorrect”
• 959026 – FIX: Error message when you run a DB2 query that uses the WITH UR query hint in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services: “OLE DB error: OLE DB or ODBC error: An unexpected token “WITH” was found following “” “
• 959031 – FIX: Error message when you try to expand the Catalogs node for a linked server that links to a Teradata Database in SQL Server 2005: “Cannot obtain the schema rowset DBSCHEMA_CATALOGS for OLE DB provider SQL Server for linked server (null)”
• 959376 – FIX: Error message when you run the DBCC SHRINKFILE command or the DBCC SHRINKDATABASE command on a server that contains a SQL Server 2008 database: “5205 : DBCC SHRINKFILE: Moving Page : failed”

Resolutions to the following issues are also included in this cumulative update:

• FIX: A new trace event is logged by any command that aborts a transaction in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services
• FIX: An unexpected error is returned when an aggregation is referenced that has an attribute in a many-to-many dimension in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services: “file ‘pffilestore.cpp’, line 3311, function ‘PFFileStore::HandleDataPageFault'”
• FIX: Redundant indexes are created on data cache objects when the cost estimate indicates that indexes are not required in SQL Server 2005
• FIX: The PeriodstoDate() function generates an unhandled exception at Time.All coordinates in SQL Server 2005
• FIX: If you install SQL Server 2005 SP1 or SQL Server 2005 SP2 after you add a network card to the same computer, the installation adds a duplicate IP address in the SQL Server network configuration
• FIX: In SQL Server 2005, the DTS designer application cannot be started on a Windows Vista-based computer or on a Windows Server 2008-based computer
• FIX: You cannot set the breakpoint to the script of an SSIS script task when the current script is shorter than a script in another script task in the same package
• FIX: A Transfer Objects task does not transfer assemblies to the destination database in SQL Server 2005
• The design time experience of the TransferSQLServerObjects task is improved
• FIX: The TransferSQLServerObjects task drops database users during the CopyAllOjbect operation in SQL Server 2005
• FIX: The property setting of a TransferSqlServerObjects task cannot be correctly saved in SQL Server 2005
• The connection handling with SAP Business Intelligence (BI) designer is improved to avoid “connection timed out” error messages
• FIX: Error message when you use the new Essbase provider name: “OLAP error (1260046): Unknown Member PARENT_UNIQUE_NAME used in query”
• FIX: Rendering a report is much longer in the SharePoint integrated mode than in the Native mode, especially when you put more than one report viewer Web part on a SharePoint Web page
• FIX: A query that contains the “current of” statement receives incorrect results from a heap table because of an incorrect query plan in SQL Server 2005
• FIX: When a single partition is rebuilt in SQL Server 2005, statistics are dropped together with the old version of the index
• FIX: When a CHECKPOINT thread is blocked by another SPID, SQL Server 2005 does not update the sys.dm_exec_requests dynamic management view with the blocking information, and the blocking_session_id column remains NULL
• FIX: You receive an incorrect value in the @@ROWCOUNT function if the query is recompiled
• FIX: If the Parameterization Forced option is enabled on a database in SQL Server 2005, the unicode characters inside literal constants in some queries may be interpreted as non-unicode characters
• The sp_altermessage stored procedure can now be used to enable or disable system messages to the Windows event log in SQL Server 2005
• FIX: When a “non-yielding schedule condition” error (error 17883) occurs, the SQL Server service generates a dump file on the first occurrence
• FIX: When multiple instances of the print control are started at the same time from the same Internet Explorer process, Internet Explorer may crash

For more information about SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3-related issues, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

• 931279 – SQL Server timing values ​​may be incorrect when you use utilities or technologies that change CPU frequencies
• 958999 – Best practices for changing the service account for the report server in SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services
• 960320 – Error message when you install SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 on Windows Vista: “Visual Studio 2005 has a know compatibility issue with this version of Windows”
• 959823 – How to customize the quota for the TokenAndPermUserStore cache store in SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3