Introduction

New features and improved tools in SQL Server 2008, Microsoft’s database management system and business intelligence (BI) platform, will help organizations manage large, complex database installations. The release also delivers important new capabilities for software developers while remaining compatible with past versions. An overhauled reporting system leads updates in SQL Server’s BI features and joins numerous performance improvements that will help customers tackle larger data warehouses and analytic databases, with further improvements on the horizon for the next two versions. However, the BI improvements and removal of some components will complicate migrations in some organizations.

Management, Development Improvements for Database Management

SQL Server 2008, which shipped in Aug. 2008, emerges amid a long-term market trend toward larger, more complex deployments of database management systems, which are used nearly ubiquitously to store, track, and manage all manner of corporate data. Among other uses, database management systems provide the central data repository for the following: