Why don't we have the service packs slip-streamed into the SQL Server product?

I've asked this question, and seen it asked, many times. But I'm not sure why it's such a hard process to implement. Don't the code changes need to be tested against the base tree? Can't we just run a recompile of the entire product and make that available for download?

To be honest, I've never written a shrink-wrapped software product. I have no idea the complexities of doing a product that will be installed anywhere, under any conditions, and the process of making that go smoothly. I think Microsoft does a great job of getting SQL Server out, despite my complaints, and they deserve kudos for making something the size of SQL Server work smoothly.

However from my small-time, limited experience with building software, I'd think re-building the base product with code changes would be the easy part. I'd think the work done to create an install that updates things would be more difficult. When I've released updates to software I've built, we've had to re-build the product, release a scorched-earch-delete-then-copy procedure that stomps all over the old code, removes it, then reinstalls and re-copies over all the files needed.

I know that we still need a patch for existing systems. There will always be lots of systems that we'll need to update in place, but I think that I've constantly installed the product over the years on new systems. And as we've prepared to test new patches, we often install the RTM, apply previous patches, and then apply the current patch we need to test. All that would be much easier if we could get an SP2, or even SP2 + CU3 slipstreamed together.

One member of our community, Ed Vassie, has written a package on Codeplex that helps. Findbuild is ready to automate the deployment of SQL Server along with patches. I haven't tried it, but it's something that I'd have hoped would be eliminated by slipstreaming service packs.

It's entirely possible that I'm missing something very basic here. And if so, please let me know, but I'd think this one change would go a long way towards removing some of the drudgery involved with out daily SQL Server work.

Steve Jones

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