SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 : CTP is available!
Yes, you read that right; for those of you waiting to try SQL Server 2008 until SP1 is available, we are one step closer. You can download the CTP from the following URL:
http://microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6f26fc45-f0ca-49cf-a6ee-840c7e8bb8af
The CTP will bring your instance to build # 10.00.2520.
Thumbs up on finally adding slipstream capability and the ability to uninstall the service pack without uninstalling the instance.
Thumbs down on creating a CHM help file that is mostly legalese and requires a self-extracting exe wrapper to extract one file.
There is also an Express version available:
http://microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0f8df01e-b05b-401b-87e7-bc516683cfe0
You can read more about the release at the Release Services blog:
No idea Chris, in all of my environments we are set up with default collation. I had one SQL 2000 instance a few years ago that was a non-standard collation (CP439 if I remember right) and it was a royal pain to deal with.
Aaron,
Sounds good being able to slipstream and great to be able to uninstall but I would like to know about changing collation after the install. We can have some unusual collations here so we tend to check the collation when the Gold(RTM) version is installed so that if we have to change collation we just rebuild at that time. I am unsure if SQL2005 onwards can change the collation of an SQL instance that is beyond RTM without having to reapply the SP's, hotfixes etc afterwards. Do you know if you create an SP1 instance wheter you can change the collation without having to re-apply SP1 at the end?
Thanks
Chris