Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Changes

Microsoft released their latest version of SQL Server with many new features and upgrades of existing features from SQL Server 2005. Many of the new features are only available on the Enterprise Edition, normally used by larger organizations.

Here is a partial list of some of the changes that were reported on Windows IT Pro website in an article by Michael Otey.

Changes to the Enterprise Edition:

Data compression – data compression can be enabled on SQL Server 2008 with no visible results to the client applications. This reduces file size requirements and bandwidth requirements.

Transparent data encryption – This feature was first available on SQL Server 2005 as a manual process. On SQL Server 2008 this feature is automated and transparent to end-user applications.

Hot Add CPU Support – newly added Hot CPUs are available immediately to SQL Server 2008 without rebooting or stopping the SQL Server services.

Resource Governor – allows the administrator to place a maximum level of system resources to use for a workload. This prevents the system using all of its resources for a poorly designed queries or tasks.

The changes available to all editions include the following:

IntelliSense – this is a long-awaited feature that developers have wanted. This will help complete code and check syntax for your programmer or database developer staff.

New data types – SQL Server 2008 finally has a separate DATE and TIME data type! There is also a new FILESTREAM data type for large objects (LOBs) and a new spatial data type for mapping applications.

Transaction SQL enhancements – there is a DECLARE statement that allows you to set values to a variable, compound-assignment operators that are found in programming languages (i.e. +=, -+, %=) and some new string operators. There is a new MERGE command that can be a combination of INSERT, UPDATE and DLETE statements.

I am currently using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and have found the software easier to use and more powerful than previous editions. If you are using a previous version of SQL Server or using a competitor’s product, it would be a good time to upgrade to Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

Reference: http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/100315/review-sql-server-2008.html

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