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February 28 marked the launch of Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. There was a big kick-off party and lots of fanfare in Los Angeles with thousands of attendees, huge screen presentations, a keynote by Tom Brokaw, and an after-event party featuring Canadian rock band The Barenaked Ladies. For me, however, the hoopla was a bit tempered by Microsoft’s earlier announcement that SQL Server wouldn’t go RTM until Q3 of this year.
Marketing fun aside, there are lots of technical, workaday reasons for a SQL Server DBA or developer to get interested in SQL Server 2008. I’ve had the luxury of spending some time with the Community Technology Previews (CTPs) and here’s what I’m most looking forward to when SQL Server 2008 goes gold:
- SQL improvements - in particular the GROUPING SETS subclause and the MERGE statement. GROUPING SETS is an ANSI standard subclause of the GROUP BY statement that enables additional rollup capabilities. MERGE is a statement that combines the features of the INSERT and UPDATE statement (or the DELETE statement), such that you can specify that if data does exist, update it, and if the data does not exist, then insert it.
- Developer-centric improvements - to LINQ and table-valued parameters. LINQ, or Language Integrated Query, is a means of querying SQL Server using .NET programming languages like C# and VB.NET. Table-valued parameters are a means of passing array-like data in and out of stored procedures.
- Reporting Services improvements - several. For example, IIS is no longer required, and there are powerful new features for ad-hoc reporting, embedded reports, and subscription-based deployment. Plus, the improved caching and snapshot reports will make enterprise reporting even more capable than before.
- New data backup and compression features - in the Enterprise Edition of SQL Server 2008.
- New data types - a lot of new capabilities open up with the new spatial, filestream, hierarchyID and data/time data types.
- Security improvements - now encompassing transparent data encryption and extensible key management. SQL Server continues to lead the pack in security (lowest number of critical security flaws reported) and is poised to continue this lead with the SQL Server 2008 release.
- New resource governor - one of the biggest “cool” features in SQL Server 2008. With the resource governor, DBAs can specify who gets system resources, how much, and at what priority. This is the harbinger of very granular control capabilities that will enable DBAs to make the most of future 64-bit, high-powered servers.
- More capable audit and change tracking - these now enable DBAs and compliance officers to easily track just about everything happens on the server.
- Analysis Services - big gains in performance, with features like block computations and write-back improvements.
- New multi-server management capabilities - Policy-based management and streamlined installation make it easier than ever to manage large numbers of SQL Servers and introduce a whole new paradigm for administrating servers.
Of course, there are many, many more features, upgrades, and improvements in SQL Server 2008. Lots of the features are small. And, of course, there are some major features that didn’t make it onto my list, since my entries are both subjective and arbitrary. But if you work at all with SQL Server development or database administration, I think you’ll find all of these features worth much deeper exploration and eventual inclusion into your skill set.
About the Author:
Kevin Kline is director of technology for SQL Server Solutions at Quest Software. A Microsoft SQL Server MVP, Kline is the current president of PASS and the author of SQL in a Nutshell and Transact-SQL Programming (O’Reilly & Associates). He is a frequent speaker at trade shows and has been active in the IT industry since 1986. For information about Quest Software, go to www.quest.com.
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