SQL Server 2008 Preview Available

A community technical preview (CTP) of SQL Server 2008 (previously code-named Katmai), the next major revision of Microsoft’s database management and business intelligence (BI) platform, could help prospective SQL Server 2008 customers evaluate important new features planned for the release. However, the CTP, released in June 2007, contains only a subset of features planned for the final release of SQL Server 2008 and will be of interest mainly to IT workers and developers creating business intelligence applications.

Subset of Planned Features

SQL Server is Microsoft’s database management system and BI platform. It was last overhauled in Nov. 2005 with the release of SQL Server 2005, and its next major update, SQL Server 2008, is due in the second half of 2008.

Important new features in SQL Server 2008 include the following:

• New tools to help administrators spot performance bottlenecks, better control how SQL Server prioritizes workloads (such as application queries or stored procedures),