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A service pack (in short SP) is a collection of updates, fixes and/or enhancements to a software program delivered in the form of a single installable package. Many companies, such as Microsoft or Autodesk, typically release a service pack when the number of individual patches to a given program reaches a certain (arbitrary) limit. Installing a service pack is easier and less error-prone than installing a high number of patches individually, even more so when updating multiple computers over a network. Service packs are usually numbered, and thus shortly referred to as SP1, SP2, etc.. It is notable however that they may bring, besides bug fixes, entirely new features, as is the case for instance with the SP2 of Windows XP.
Incremental and cumulative SPs A service pack can be incremental, which means it only contains the updates that were not present in the previous service packs or, more commonly, cumulative, which means it includes the contents of all its predecessors. Normally, for a given program, its service packs are either all incremental or all cumulative. For this reason the two adjectives are often referred to the entire set of a program's service packs, as, for instance, in the sentence Microsoft Windows service packs are cumulative. See also Notes | ||||||||
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