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SQL Server 2008

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The TestDrive demos for SQL Server 2008 will be launching December 31st. However, you can instantly launch an online installation of SQL Server 2008 to explore the latest features. Or watch the demonstration videos by clicking a link below.
	Database Mirroring
	Database Mirroring is a technology for increasing database availability. Database Mirroring transfers transaction log records from one server to another, allowing quick fail over to the standby server. In the event of a failover, client applications can automatically redirect their connection to the standby server. Fast failover with minimal data loss has traditionally involved higher hardware cost and greater software complexity. However, Database Mirroring can fail over quickly with no loss of committed data. In addition, Database Mirroring does not require proprietary hardware, and it is easy to set up and manage.
	Declarative Management Network
	One of the most difficult tasks that administrators face in managing complex database environments is ensuring that all elements of the system conform to their company's established security and usage policies. Administrators need to constantly monitor the security surface area of the entire database serve, along with permissions and settings for every database, table, user, role, and schema. Declarative Management Framework (DMF) is a policy-based system for managing one or more instances of SQL Server 2008. To use the DMF, SQL Server policy administrators use SQL Server Management Studio to create policies that manage entities on the server, such as the instance of SQL Server, databases, and other SQL Server Objects. Declarative Management Framework consists of three components: policy management, policy administrators who create policies, and explicit administration. Administrators select one or more managed targets and explicitly check that the targets comply with a specific policy, or explicitly force the targets to comply with a policy. Throughout this demo, we'll see three examples of how DMF can help administrators effectively establish and monitor policies for their database environment.
	Extended Events (Xevents)
	SQL Server Extended Events is a general event-handling system for server systems. The Extended Events infrastructure is a lightweight mechanism that supports capturing, filtering and acting upon events generated by the server process. This ability to act upon events allows users to quickly diagnose run time problems by adding contextual data, such as TSQL call stacks or query plan handles, to any event. Events can be captured into several different output types, including Event Tracing for Windows (ETW). When Extended Events are output to ETW, correlation with operating system and database applications are possible, allowing for a more holistic system tracing.

The TestDrive demos for SQL Server 2008 will be launching December 31st. However, you can instantly launch an online installation of SQL Server 2008 to explore the latest features. Or watch the demonstration videos by clicking a link below.
	Reporting Services Enhancements: Report Designer, Visualizations, and Tablix
	SQL Server 2008 provides a number of reporting enhancements that enable you to quickly and easily generate the reports that your organization needs, in the format that you want, and in a layout that makes sense of the data they contain. Report Builder has been enhanced extensively in SQL Server 2008 to enable users to easily build ad hoc reports with any structure. The intuitive design interface makes it easy for non-developers to create business documents, such as purchase orders, invoices, and contracts, based on report data. Report Designer has also been updated for SQL Server 2008, and is now a stand-alone application that can be run separate from the Business Intelligence Development Studio, enabling information workers to more easily craft complex, professional reports.
	Dimension Designer and Best Practice Alerts
	Through a tight interoperability with Microsoft Visual Studio, developers can easily build and maintain robust, secure, scalable BI applications. SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio offers a single tool that covers multiple types of BI solutions and provides a single, consistent environment for developing ETL, analysis and reporting solutions. Intuitive BI wizards that are delivered as part of the Business Intelligence Development Studio make it easy for even novice developers to build advanced Business Intelligence models and projects. However, enabling developers to build solutions more quickly is only effective if those solutions are optimally designed. To help ensure the best possible performance and correct functionality, SQL Server 2008 includes new enhancements to the development environment that promote best practices and help developers create effective analysis solutions.
	Change Data Capture
	To help track data changes and ensure data warehouse consistency, SQL Server 2008 introduces Change Data Capture (CDC) functionality to log updates in change tables, which makes it easy to identify rows that have been modified and to determine the details of the modification and its cause.

The TestDrive demos for SQL Server 2008 will be launching December 31st. However, you can instantly launch an online installation of SQL Server 2008 to explore the latest features. Or watch the demonstration videos by clicking a link below.
	T-SQL Enhancements — Date/Time – Table Valued Parameters – MERGE SQL Statement
	SQL Server 2008 introduces new date and time data types: DATE – a date only type; TIME – a time only type; DATETIMEOFFSET – a timezone-aware datetime type; DATETIME2 – a datetime type w/ larger fractional seconds and year range than the existing DATETIME type. The new data types enable applications to have separate data and time types while providing large data ranges or user defined precision for time values.
	Building Occasionally Connected Systems
	With mobile devices and workers on-the-go, occasionally connected has become a way of life. SQL Server 2008 delivers a unified synchronization platform that enables consistent synchronization across applications, data stores, and data types. In a joint effort with Visual Studio, SQL Server 2008 enables the rapid creation of occasionally connected applications by way of new synchronization services in ADO.NET and offline designers in Visual Studio. SQL Server 2008 provides support for change tracking, enabling customers to develop caching-based, synchronization-based, and notification-based applications using a robust implementation with minimal performance overhead.
	HierarchyId
	SQL Server 2008 enables database applications to model tree structures in a more efficient way than currently possible. HierarchyId is a new system type that can store values that represent nodes in a hierarchy tree. This new type features a flexible programming model. It is implemented as a CLR UDT that exposes several efficient and useful built-in methods for creating and operating on hierarchy nodes.
	Table Value Parameters + MERGE statement
	In many customer scenarios, it is necessary to pass a set of table structured values (rows) to a stored procedure/function on the server. These values may be used for populating/updating a table directly or for more complex manipulation of data for business logic purposes. Table valued parameters provide an easier way to define a table type and allow applications to create, populate and pass table structured parameters to stored procedures and functions. With the introduction of the MERGE SQL statement, developers can more effectively handle common data warehousing scenarios like checking whether a row exists and then executing an insert or update.
	XML Enhancements
	SQL Server 2008 allows for a seamless transition between managing relational and nonrelational data. This enables users to easily access documents as data, encode complex hierarchies within XML, and query across both relational and text data.