Microsoft finalizes SQL Server 2008
Microsoft officials announced at TechEd South Africa on August 6 that SQL Server 2008 has been released to manufacturing.
Microsoft officials said last month to expect the product on August price lists. SQL Server 2008 is available as of today to MSDN and TechNet subscribers and will be available for evaluation download on Aug. 7, company officials said. SQL Server 2008 Express and SQL Server Compact editions are available for free download today, as well.
The final delivery date of Microsoft's latest database release has been postponed more than once over the past few months.
Meanwhile, SQL Server Data Services, Microsoft's "storage in the cloud" service, just hit a new milestone earlier this week at the end of July -- "Sprint 3." The "Sprint 4" release of SSDS is what Microsoft is hoping to show off at the Professional Developers Conference in late October this year, according to a posting on the SSDS blog.
SSDS is similar to Amazon's SimpleDB service, and is designed to allow users to store data in a Microsoft-hosted database.
During a conference call with press and analysts announcing the RTM of the product, Microsoft officials provided a list of what the company considers to be the top 10 reasons that users of previous versions of SQL Server should consider upgrading to SQL Server 2008. The ten:
10. Easier to install and upgrade
9. Support for spatial/location data
8. SQL Server Integration Services enhancements
7. Larger cubes with more data supported via SQL Server Analysis Services
6. Performance and reliability improvements in SQL Server Reporting Services, including intetegration with Office 2007
5. Data Collector, a new subsystem for enabling performance data warehouses
4. Data encryption and advanced auditing enhancements
3. Data compression improvements, providing better query performance, as well as back-up compression enhancements
2. Policy-based management capabilities
1. Resource governor, a new feature designed to ease management of concurrent workloads. (Resource governor does this by paritioning workloads among data warehouse users, Microsoft execs added.)
Microsoft execs also said to expect Hyper-V virtualization support for SQL Server 2008 during within 30 days of RTM.
One SQL-related question over which I am still puzzling is when and whether Microsoft still intends to field a Microsoft-hosted business-intelligence bundle, akin to its Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Office Communications Server Online offerings.
It was more than a year ago that Microsoft brass first outlined the company's plans for a "BI Online" type offering, consisting of Microsoft-hosted SharePoint/SQL Server/PerformancePoint. After today's conference cal, I asked company officials whether a Microsoft-hosted SQL Server offering -- beyond SSDS -- was still on the table. Company officials declined to comment.
Would you be interested in a Microsoft-hosted SQL Server and/or BI bundle? Why/why not?
One more update: Microsoft also has RTM'd the "golden" versions of Microsoft Sync Framework V1 and Sync Services for ADO.Net V2. Version 1.0 of the Sync Framework -- "the synchronization platform for enabling collaboration and offline scenarios for applications, services and devices," which is not the same as Microsoft's other snc platform for collaboration, Live Mesh -- can be downloaded from the Microsoft Downloads site.