SQL Server and Business Intelligence Platform Overview

SQL Server 2014 reached general availability on Apr. 1, 2014. Future SQL Server releases will probably continue to alternate between releases focused on high availability and the core database engine, and releases focused on other features, such as business intelligence (BI), with gaps of two to three years in between.

SQL Server 2012 now requires SP2 for continued support, SQL Server 2008 R2 now requires SP2 for continued support, and customers running SQL Server 2008 should have SP3 applied. SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 left Mainstream support on July 8, 2014. They will continue to receive security and hotfixes until the end of Extended support on July 9, 2019. Hotfixes or other support for SQL Server 2005 will require a custom support contract beginning Apr. 12, 2016, and it will probably become progressively more difficult to maintain and ensure the security of SQL Server 2005 deployments; recent Microsoft application versions are not compatible with it and newly discovered security vulnerabilities might go unpatched, as has happened with older versions of Windows and Exchange. Consequently, organizations running SQL Server 2005 should be planning migrations.