What are the major new 'core' features of MS SQL Server 2008?

Question

I'm looking mainly at things like new SQL syntax, new kinds of locking, new capabilities etc. Not so much in the surrounding services like data warehousing and reports...

Answer 1

• New separate types for Date and Time, instead of just Datetime
• New geographic types for lattitude/longitude
• Change Data Capture is pretty neat if you're doing anything where auditing is important
• Configuration Servers, for maintaining multiple databases.

That's what caught my attention at the Heroes Happen Here launch back in April.

Answer 2

HotAdd CPU. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb964703.aspx

Answer 3

Did you check the whitepaper on the website? SQL Server 2008 Overview.

I cannot recall off the top of my head, but it atleast has a nice database to object linking functionality. They have geospatial types too, if you need to use those.

Answer 4

white paper on SQL Server 2008

This should cover most of the new features. I noticed the new date time data types and new security features.

Answer 5

Filestream blob storage is the biggest bonus to me

Answer 6

Page compressiong sounds really nice to me. Haven't used it yet, though.

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/linchi_shea/archive/2008/05/11/sql-server-2008-page-compression-compression-ratios-from-real-world-databases.aspx

Answer 7

Sparse indexing for those with lots of NULL's. Also the DATETIME2 data type that alot of people have waiting for 0001-01-01 through 9999-12-31.