Today Microsoft announced that Microsoft SQL Server 2008 has finally reached the gold status and the CD manufacturing has been started.
This new version come after about three years since the latest major release, SQL Server 2005; this gap allowed MS to honor the promise of a “24 to 36 month release cycle” that has been made after the complains on the excessive gap between SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005.
Some of the reported new capabilities are:
- support for policy-based management;
- large-scale data warehousing;
- auditing;
- advanced reporting.
SQL Server 2008 will be released in 7 different versions in order to cover different needs; between these 7, the new addition is SQL Server 2008 Web, a version tailored for web applications.
Microsoft is offering for free SQL Server 2008 Express and SQL Server Compact versions while the main version is offered for free as for 180Â days trial. The price list has not been officially released, but Microsoft claimed that there will be no increase with the new release and actually the 2005 users with the “Software Assurance” license can upgrade for free.
Links
Microsoft SQL Server 2008: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/default.aspx
