SQL Server 2008 goes RTM

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 07 August 2008 08:45

Business IT - Technology

SQL Server 2008 has been released to manufacturing, according to Microsoft officials. MSDN and TechNet subscribers can download the software, and an evaluation version is available to others along with the free Express and Compact editions - but there's no indication of when the software will be available as a physical product.

According to company officials, more than 75 large-scale applications are already in production on community technology previews of SQL Server 2008.

One of the selling points is that the new version delivers improved performance without the need for application changes. "We saw a 35 percent improvement in throughput on the system that we upgraded to SQL Server 2008, with no code changes on our end," said Gary Oberg, vice president of IT and development at Applied Discovery (part of LexisNexis).

Like many Microsoft products, SQL Server 2008 is marketed in several different versions. Enterprise, Standard, Workgroup, Web and Developer are reasonably self-explanatory. Express provides the core functions and can be used to build small applications. Developers may redistribute it with their software. Compact is intended to be embedded in applications running on XP. Vista, Pocket PC and smartphones.

"Microsoft developed this release of SQL Server with the customer in mind," said Ted Kummert, corporate vice president of Microsoft's data and storage platform division at Microsoft.

So what do the benchmarks say? Please read on.