If you just open SQL Server Management Studio and expand the System Databases node, you’ll see four databases – master, model, msdb and tempdb (just like in SQL 2000). However, SQL Server 2005 has a new system database called the ‘Resource’ database, which contains all the system objects (see select * from sys.objects), which appear in the INFORMATION_SCHEMA of each database but are actually stored in the Resource database. No user data or user metadata is stored in the Resource database.
