I don’t know you, but personally I get really excite about new version coming out of Microsoft, I cannot wait to update my computer when that happens. Of course I have a computer just for that purpose. And as you guessed, more than once I have to re-format the hard disk or purchase more memory. Not very long ago, that computer died a very painful and expensive way, now I only have a few pieces here and there. Microsoft is releasing Orcas by the end of the year, hopefully, and next year MS SQL 2008. Something tells me that I got some time to get a computer before that happens. I kind of miss Orcas though.

What is new in Microsoft SQL 2008?

The most exciting new feature is Store and Consume Any Type of Data, when working in GIS when data can be any format and needs to be display in the map, a good database will make it easier. Now will be better support to store unstructured data.

Deliver Location Intelligence Finally a way to store geographical information! SQL 2008 will provide new spatial data types. Again, this is great news for developers that use GIS every single day.

Optimized and Predictable System Performance Not to sound naïve, but this is a given, in every single release of SQL, Microsoft has claimed they improved the speed of their new database. I have to agree than between SQL 7 to SQL 2000, there was a great improvement, however on SQL 2005, hardware is the major factor when running it against MySQL. With SQL 2008 I am expecting again a big hard disk eater and a long installation.

Protect your Information In other words, security, security, security. Microsoft claimed the same thing with SQL 2005. Right now every single time you install SQL 2005 is annoying that you have to enable Remote Connections using Surface Configuration. Many people was expecting remote connections enable by default and they believe they install it wrong when they cannot connect to the database. Also the security login for users in SQL 2005 is just a pain to work with. If you tried to set up somebody to access a few databases in your SQL 2005 server, you know what I am talking about it. Hopefully, Microsoft has improved that part.

Spend Less Time on Ongoing Operations So does this means is easier to backup and restore? Before to make sure your database was backed up; was better by creating a DTS package to accomplish this task. Hopefully, this is improved on SQL 2008.

Missing features:

I have been looking around all information for SQL 2008. The web portal to access the database, and I believe I cannot find it because I was expecting to be in this release. Did I miss it? Do you know where can I find that information? Don’t tell me the Microsoft missed to include again the web portal? What about ISP needing these? Do they have to go again to purchase a web portal for their database again?

What about clustering like Oracle? Was an exciting moment the day, Microsoft release SQL 2005 with clustering, however, we were looking for something more into the lines of Oracle with the ease of MS SQL.

I don’t want to go in a tangent without actually installing the product and playing around with it. This post was more the starting of a big saga, as people that knows me, knows how much I like to play with databases. I just hope I’ll purchase enough memory to run Orcas and SQL 2008 together.

In my modest opinion we are in a great place in technology, Microsoft just release Vista the beginning of this year, Orcas is coming and SQL 2008. Can we just call Vista MS Windows 2007? They stop naming operating systems by their release date, and stated naming the other products by their release date.

Against popular opinion, I believe the Microsoft is still a company with young and enthusiastic people that want to improve the world, little by little. You can observe these people blogging when they release an alpha, very enthusiastic about what they accomplish. Still as the company to follow, competition and jealousy makes Microsoft one of the most targeted companies in the USA. I’ll say, that even sometimes they frustrated the most patience user, I still looking forward to see what they are bringing out on the next release.

Cheers

Al 

Information provided by Microsoft’s white papers and marketing information. Nothing has been tested yet, but I’m very excite to get my hands on the software and the most important, get some hardware that will support it.