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SQL Server 2008 Released
Yesterday Microsoft released (to manufacturing) SQL Server 2008. There are some pretty amazing things happening with this release – with a major focus on management essentially across the board. But "management" in this case isn’t just about tweaking and tuning – it’s about many of the things we’ve talked about here on SSWUG in the shows, here in the newsletter and in articles.
Security, performance controls, traditional management areas (profiles and more transparency and utilities to apply best practices and consistent policies) are all part of this release. The marketing speak for this release is "Trusted, Productive, Intelligent" which is how the high-level overview information is being presented, but you get an idea of how broad the release is when you start digging down into these areas.
Far more than we can go into on a broad basis here, there are some key things that have long caught my eye about this release (there are more, but this is a start):
– Policy based management: apply policies and check for and manage to compliance against these policies. Sort of like applying your security policies from the OS to SQL Server – but this of course relates to overall SQL Server functionality, configuration and management.
– Transparent encryption and data protection tools: I have to admit, I need to play with and see this, but the demonstrations I’ve seen and worked with to-date are pretty slick. The ability to deploy encryption without necessarily changing your application will be a really strong feature.
– Filestream objects: the door is open at last – now we have to learn about storing other objects in SQL Server natively. I think this will necessarily continue to evolve for performance and such as different people use this ability to store, retrieve and query different things and we find out how to really apply this to solutions.
– Built-In Backup Compression (Yeah!): Need I say more?
We’ll be putting together some series-based information – and looking through these and the many other things included – and of course we’ll keep you posted too about tips and tricks.
Hats off to the SQL Server team – they promised, and delivered, on time. They said all along it would not slip, and in fact it came in pretty much as they said it would. Nice job folks!
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