What is new in SQL 2008

Four key areas:
Enterprise Data Platform
- Data Encryption (TDE and Backup Encryption, EKM, HSM)
- Resource management (Resource Governor)
- System Analysis
- Server Management (Performance Dashboard tool)
Synamic Development
- LINQ (Launguage Integrated Query)
- Business Data Entities eSQL(entity) LOB (Line of business)
beyond Relational database
- Large UDT (2005 UDT can not be larger than 8000 bytes) 2008 no size restriction
- Dates and Times
- File Stream new data type VarBinary In the past, we use BLOB. Now SQL functions like triggers, Full text search, and backup restore can be applied to binary data
- Spatial Data to allow Latitude, Longitude, and GPS-based data entries to be natively stored.
- Table Value Parameters: previous versions of SQL servers there was not native way to pass a table to a stored procedure. The workaround was to pass a large varchar or XML type and parse through it. 2008 support table parameters.
e.g. CREATE TYPE PartType AS Table(PartID varchar(50), Descr varchar(100), crateDate datetime);
CREATE PROCEDURE AddPart(@PartList PartType READONLY)
AS
SELECT * FROM @PartList

DECLARE @PartTable PartType;
INSERT INTO @PartTalbe values('Parts1', N'for wheel', '2007-09-30');
EXEC AddPart @PartTable


pervasive Insight
- Data Integration Features such as the MERGE statement, Parallelism, SSIS multiple processor improvements, and look up performance improvements.
- Analysis Service Improvements including BI Stack performance, Scale out analysis, Block computations and Perspectives.
- Microsoft Office 2007 Integration such as Exporting Reporting Service reports as Word docs, SSRS format and font improvements, and the Office Tool Bar.


Data type changes:
DATETIME
DATETIME2
DATE TIME
DATETIMEOFFSET