SQL Server 2005 Books Online (November 2008)
What's New in SQL Server 2005 SP3

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. For more information, see sp_showpendingchanges (Transact-SQL).
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. For more information, see Creating and Using Teradata-Based Report Models.
  • 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. For more information, see Designing for PDF Output.
  • 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.
Additional Information

For a list of the cumulative updates that are included in SQL Server 2005 SP3, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 955706.
See Also

Concepts

New and Updated Books Online Topics (17 November 2008)

Other Resources

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP3 Release Notes

Help and Information

Getting SQL Server 2005 Assistance
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Community Content

Tai Yee - MSFT
Correction to statement on this topic

The initial statement on this page, "Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 (SP3) contains all the cumulative updates for SQL Server 2005" is not entirely correct. That line should read as follows:

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.
Note: If you are upgrading from SQL Server 2005 SP2 Cumulative Update 10 or Cumulative Update 11, you must apply a post-SP3 cumulative update after upgrading to SP3 to get all the fixes. This post-SP3 update is available at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959195/.

This topic will be corrected in the next update of SQL Server 2005 Books Online.

Tai Yee
Microsoft

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Mr. Mox
The SQL Server 2005 builds that were released after SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3
This may be useful too:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/960598

/gustav
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DWalker
How to tell
To answer the question above, the way to tell what service level you are using is to search the Web for "identify SQL Server version" (probably without the quotes). For
SQL 2005, you'll be led to KB article 321185. That article lists the productlevels. The SQL statement that you want is

SELECT  SERVERPROPERTY('productversion'), SERVERPROPERTY ('productlevel'), SERVERPROPERTY ('edition')

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Alberto Morillo
What to know before you install SP3
Hello,

Most people install SP3 without a hitch. Here are some steps you can take to prepare for and prevent some issues:

http://www.sqlcoffee.com/Tips0007.htm

The following are some issues and solutions:

http://www.sqlcoffee.com/Troubleshooting051.htm
http://www.sqlcoffee.com/Troubleshooting050.htm
http://www.sqlcoffee.com/Troubleshooting049.htm
http://www.sqlcoffee.com/Troubleshooting048.htm

Regards,

Alberto Morillo
Microsoft MVP SQL Server
SQLCoffee.com
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