We're still looking for more Service Pack 3 votes, to try and convince Microsoft that SQL Server 2005 needs another service pack. So if you haven't voted, please do so and pass the word.
I saw an interesting blog post from Andy Warren that tried to discuss the issues in a less emotional way than I or some others have done. It's an interesting read and includes an interesting commentary on what to do with SQL Server 2008 coming out.
There's one thing in the post, however, that really caught my eye. Andy mentions that we've never had a reason NOT to expect a service pack. In fact, from my experience of over a decade in the NT world, is that we always expect another service pack and are always eventually disappointed when we don't get one.
I get the business aspects of SP3; it costs money, we're not paying for it, it takes resources and time away from other products, etc. I understand that there should be a valid business case for another service pack.
However I think Microsoft has led us to believe we have a sort of social contract with them in that we'll buy their products with the expectation that there will be patches. We accept a lower initial quality, with the expectation that we will get major bugs fixed, there will be continuous improvements to make the product more stable and secure over its lifetime, and we will get tested updates.
Which means that the cost of producing service packs should be built into the initial price. So in a sense, we've paid for the patches. Or at least some.
Perhaps the cost of producing SP2 and post-SP2 patches has used up that pool of cost. Perhaps the management at Microsoft feels that there isn't a business reason to build another service pack. Or perhaps they did not properly forecast the cost of building additional service packs.
I don't really care at this point. My feeling is that Microsoft has somewhat broken our "contract" by not producing another service pack. SQL Server 6.5 had 5+ service packs; SQL Server 7 had 4, SQL Server 2000 4+, and we've stopped at 2 with SQL Server 2005. To me we should at least get one more for SQL Server 2005 at the very least, if not 2 or 3.
This is a golden opportunity for Microsoft to publish an explicit contract with customers. Let us know what we can expect in terms of support. If you want to get away from the "don't upgrade until SP1 is released" mentality, then you have to build better software and more importantly, prove that you'll regularly patch and fix issues.
Steve Jones
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