Maintenance plan bug in newer sql server 2005 version

I went to visit another department at the customer I’m doing some SQL Server data warehouse consultancy work at. The other department had problem with editing a maintenance plan. One I helped them create a year earlier. The change were to just keep 2 days of transaction log backup files instead of the 4 weeks we specified at first. The maint-package couldn’t be opened for some reason due to a bug in the version they used.

The version on the troubling server was SQL Server 2005, SP3 (9.00.4035). To be able to edit the package I needed another installation with a working Manangement Studio/SQL Server engine version. I found an older one – with SQL Server 2005 SP2 (9.00.3042) and since they hadn’t done their upgrading to a later version (i.e. SQL Server 2008 R2) yet that was a long shot. But it worked. The older SP2 didn’t have that problem that the newer SP3 had. That makes you think twice about putting a servicepack in, without thoroughly testing it, doesn’t it? This was a minor gui problem, but you know if you have been working a while in this industry that programmers when asked if they have tested their change properly often surprisingly cries out: “That peace of code can’t have anything to do with this peace of code”. Yes, my dear Watson, it can. BTW: I find this site to be a nice source for sql server versions. And: If you want to know which version you have – just open a query window in your SQL Server instance and for example write this peace of code and hit F5 (for executing the script): SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('ServerName') , SERVERPROPERTY('Edition') , SERVERPROPERTY('ProductVersion') , SERVERPROPERTY('ProductLevel')
/Jonas Bergström