What Do American Idol and SQL Server Have in Common?
With the release of the CTP for SQL Server 2005 SP1 the content for SP1 is very much locked down. Since we never sit idle, we're starting to scope SP2 as well as the next major release. Since SP1 was done before a lot of you had the chance to install the RTM release there wasn't much opportunity to incorporate user feedback on RTM. SP2 will be different. The English RTM version has been available since October/November of last year. The localized versions have been largely available since December/January. This means a lot of people have almost 6 months of RTM usage under their belt.
There has been a lot of great feedback, not all of it positive, posted to various forums (MSDN Forums, SQL Junkies, SQL Server Central, public Usenet newsgroups, blogs, etc). This is great and my team spends considerable time out in these forums listening to and responding to you. In addition, people are starting to get comfortable with the Product Feedback Center (PFC).
I want to promote the feedback center as "THE" place to provide your feedback. The product group takes the data here and uses it to directly impact planning. PFC is valuable because it allows you to comment and vote on suggestions and bugs. How cool is that? You get to tell us in no uncertain terms what's important to you. Think of the PFC as the American Idol voting system for SQL Server - users voted and customizable reports in Management Studio is the most important thing to address in SP2 (for example). When we have the votes, no PM, manager, or VP can argue.
If you don't vote don't complain that we didn't fix that thing that was most important to you - we can't read your mind. We're currently scoping SP2 so get out there and vote. I wish I could tell you you could text msg your vote, but we're still working on that integration
J