SQL Server 2005 December CTP for SP2 Released

Microsoft released what seems to be the final CTP for SQL Server 2005 ServicePack 2. You can download it from here.

Some of the interesting things brought by SP2 are:

• Support for Windows Vista.
• The new Data Mining add-in for Office 2007 (enables you to use data mining functionality in Analysis Services directly from Excel 2007 and Visio 2007).
• An important upgrade to Reporting Services which now can be completely integrated with SharePoint 2007. There is also support for Oracle in Report Builder as well as for building reports on top of Hyperion Essbase cubes.
• Lots of performance improvements in Analysis Services.
• The new varDecimal type that enables data compression (especially useful in large warehouses that deal with lots of decimal values).
• Some improvements in the management experience

Of course, there are lots of other improvements too in SP 2, but these are the most interesting ones (especially from a BI-oriented perspective).