Today, Microsoft released Service Pack 2 for SQL Server 2005. Though mostly a series of fixes for minor issues, there are a couple of new breakthroughs. Most notably is the new vardecimal data type, which is as its name suggests a variable length decimal value (though the initial press release indicated that this is an Enterprise Edition feature only). Also included is improved integration between Reporting Services and the SharePoint Portal system, a number of fixes for SSAS and SSIS, and dozens of minor housekeeping items.