Why is DISABLED returned when I run ServerProperty(‘LicenseType’) on a SQL Server 2005/2008 Installation

I was recently querying the database to track licensing information per seat/ per processor. This is the query I ran on my machine:

SELECT  ServerProperty('LicenseType') as LicenseType,
ServerProperty('NumLicenses') as ProcCount

However the query returned the following results.

When I dug into the reasons, I found out that it is by design that the query returns DISABLED. SQL Server 2005/2008 setup does not add licensing information in the registry during setup (unlike SQL Server 2000)

Here’s a very nice write up by Emma describing the issue and a resolution SAM Considerations for Tracking SQL Server modes