SharePoint 2007 Service Pack 2 vs. April Cumulative Update (CU)

Hello,

last week I get many questions to clarify the difference of SP2 and AprilCU. First of all a CU is only a replacement of binary files. After running psconfig the contentdb version and schema version is raised up to the binary file version.

What's included inside a Service Pack 2?
The Service Pack include binary files like a CU but it also provide additional files and Schema extension like new STSADM commands.

What does this mean?

In case you install April CU before installing SP2 you will see the Schema version of April CU 12.0.6504.5000. But in that case you can not execute stsadm commands like "variationsfixuptool" or "preupgradecheck" because these are not available.

How to install SP2 after AprilCU is already installed?

  1. install SP2 (WSS SP2, MOSS SP2, *don't forget the language templates*)
  2. run psconfig
  3. install AprilCU again
  4. run psconfig

Additionally the Product group publish a FAQ with 13 question: Link

Regards

Patrick