What's in a Product Update Package

I came across another interesting article in the Microsoft KB. KB Article 824994 - describes the contents of a Windows Server 2003 Product Update Package. The article is a little hard to read (the first two sentences are 55 words long each, and the overall sentence length is 29.2!). But it has some interesting information as to the contents of update packages.

The article also explains why an update package may have more then one copy of a given file. Each update will have a copy of the relevant file for each "cardinal point" in the file's lifecycle. The cardinal point, a new term to me, are the main releases of the file (ie RTM and for each Service Pack). So copies of a file will exist for RTM, SP1, SP2 (when it exists) as well as for a given hotfix.

An interesting read!