SQL 2000 tells the license you have. But SQL 2005 no longer tracks licensing. So when running ServerProperty(‘LicenseType’), it always returns ‘DISABLED’. Pretty much like ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I don’t care’. It is by design. So if you still want to use this to keep track of licensing of hundreds or thousands SQL servers in stead of paper licenses, you have to do some tricks in registry. Here is the blog post about this which is not in SQL BOL.

Following are excerpted from that blog post:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftMicrosoft SQL Server90MSSQLLicenseInfoMSSQL9.00

To configure SQL Server for Per Processor, add these Registry Values under that Key adjusting for the number of processors you have a license for:

Mode REG_DWORD 2 _LICENSE_MODEPERPROC
ConcurrentLimit REG_DWORD 4 Number of Processors licensed.

To configure SQL Server for Per Seat licensing, add these Registry values under the Key adjusting for the number of seat license you have.

Mode REG_DWORD 0 _LICENSE_MODEPERSEAT
ConcurrentLimit REG_DWORD 100 Number of client licenses registered for SQL Server.