Q: What is the difference between SP3 and SP3a ?

Answer:

This is an interesting question asked by many in the recent days.

Well, there are suttle differences but the issues addressed for SP3a were in setup, client components and the Net-Libraries and not in the database engine itself. Since the database engine remains the same, there would not be any benefits installing it if you are already on SP3.The engine was not rebuilt for SP3a and thus the versions are the same as they were for SP3.

The three fixes made in SP3a visit [http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=306908] are related to sql server setup and thus there isnt any need to apply SP3a to a existing SQL Server2000 SP3, as in your case. Its is only recommended if you have instances that have not yet been upgraded to SP3, in that case you should always upgrade those instances directly to SP3a instead of SP3.

How do I find out I have SP3 or SP3a on my server?

Microsoft has removed the download of SP3 from its site and has included the SP3a download only. The version of SQL Server found after we apply SP3 or SP3a is 8.00.0760. But ssnetlib.dll version on the server would be 2000.80.760.0 for SP3 and 2000.80.766.0 for SP3a.