SQL Server 2008 - whats new
Whenever the new release of a product comes out the first thing to know about what's new with this release, as the code name Katmai and now 'SQL Server 2008' which will be available for RTM in the year 2008.
So the features within SQL 2008 (most interesting) are the Declarative Management Framework, Resource Governor and also support for geographical data(Virtual Earth based storage), documents and images in the database. There are few key areas of deliverables with this release:
Declarative Management - that includes a new policy-based management framework that shifts from managing by scripts to managing by rules. This also protects valuable information in existing applications and disconnected devices.
The Resource Governor delivers predictable query performance with an optimized platform.
Dynamic Development - advantage for the developers to integrate their business entities to build the applications to enable the integration of data with other data sources on server side. Such as Language Integrated Query (LINQ) feature that enables the developers to issues queries against data in terms of their own programming language than TSQL.
Relational Data - consume and manage any type of data, from XML to documents, and build applications that incorporate location awareness.
Integration with Office Business systems - this features highlights the importance of scalable infrasturcture that can manage reports with analysis of any size with complexity, this will empower the users to blend with other systems such as Office & Sharepoint.
Hot Add CPU (new feature) allows users to address scalability issues on demand within a database, enabling CPU resources to be added to SQL Server 2008 on supported hardware platforms without enforcing any downtime on applications.
Also support (excellent I believe) for change tracking, enabling customers to develop cache-based, synchronization-based, or notification-based applications using a robust implementation with minimal performance overhead.
Sure we will be able to know more from Microsoft soon as and when the future CTP releases are available and along with other blogs on this site here.