It was announced yesterday that Service Pack 3 for SQL Server 2005 is coming! I've been trying to get people to vote and participate in the Connect item and it appears that everyone's efforts got noticed at Microsoft and they are starting to realize that having a servicing model is a good thing. I'm glad to see that and we actually got some good information about how they are working on patches and fixes moving forward. I'm not sure about how much of this information is available for release, but the news about SQL Server 2005 SP3 is good.

I had someone complain recently that I've spent too much time talking about servicing, and perhaps I have. But I think that the servicing model for patches and fixes is important, especially for a piece of software on which we build many of our applications. It's no less important for Oracle, MySQL, Windows, Linux, IIS, Apache, or any core software product. And it's something that I think we as consumers, have been too lax about making our feelings known. We should be pushing for regular, and published, servicing models. It makes our lives easier in planning for testing and applying these patches and it allows us know have more confidence in the product. Our particular issue for each of us might not get fixed in the next patch, but it does show us that things are being fixed and there is work being done to build a more stable platform.