Microsoft SQL Server 2008 available

Microsoft has officially released SQL Server 2008. The software is currently available for MSDN members in developer, standard, web, workgroup, and enterprise versions. There is not yet a free, stripped-down version available like the one for SQL Server 2005.

There are new features in SQL Server 2008, originally slated for release in early February, for data warehouses and reporting functions. A component called "change data capture" saves all changes to the database in tables to make them accessible for SQL commands. That is intended to accelerate the population of data warehouses, since only changes need to be updated. The new MERGE command is similar to REPLACE in the free MySQL. If the data set does not exist yet, it is created; if it does exist it is changed. Reporting services (SSRC) now operate independently from Microsoft's Web server IIS.

Automatically generated system views of dependencies between objects should make life easier for programmers. They show the connections between stored procedures, tables, views, functions, triggers, and so forth. IntelliSense, automatic completion of keywords and other language elements, now also works with TSQL. Date and time can now be administered in two separate data types; for geographical data, geometry and geography are available. They are based on Open Geospatial Consortium definitions.

(trk)