Test Drives

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. Take the test drive

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 server, along with permissions and settings for every database, table, user, role, and schema. Policy-Based Management, formerly Declarative Management Framework (DMF), is a policy-based system for managing one or more instances of SQL Server 2008.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. Watch the video | Take the test drive

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.
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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.
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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.
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