Wow! Let me say that again: Wow! What a day it was yesterday. Here are some general comments about the launch. If you just want to know what the 3 surprise features were that I showed yesterday (actually I could only demo two) scroll to the end... There...

A few weeks ago we annouced an adjustment to the release date for SQL2K8. Many blog postings made a big deal about this. There were several consipiracy theories floating around. I'm not really sure why. If you spent more than a minute and thought about...

Over the past year or so the question "is Katmai really a dot release" has come up numerous times. Some people have also refered to it as the equivalent of a Windows Server R2 release (sort of like a super Service Pack). The justification for this characterization...

Tomorrow is the big day. I have the demos about 95% locked and loaded. Unfortunately one of the cool features isn't going to make the demo. It's just not ready - BUMMER! But two others look like they'll make it. One is a nice thing and will likely get...

A question came up at the launch event: will T-SQL Intellisense and the T-SQL Debugger support SQL2K5 and/or SQL2K. The situation involves connecting to these server versions from Management Studio 2008. The answer is no, in order to enjoy IntelliSense...

It's hard to believe the SQL Server 2008 launch is in just a few days. I'm doing the demos for the Manageability session. This has been somewhat of a stressful exercise. Despite everyone thinking this is a point release I'm really struggling with getting...

We are three days away from launch. I've been working on the launch demos and they're shaping up nicely. The manageability session will cover Policy-based Management, Performance Data Collection, T-SQL IntelliSense, PowerShell, and a few of the enhancements...

Samples for the latest SQL2K8 CTP have been published here . To find out more about the sample check out the read me located here .

Today we launch Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008, and SQL Server 2008. This is the largest server launch in Microsoft history (or so I'm told). Last night at dinner we (several MS SQL folks) were talking about the differences in the development...

Whew! The SQL Server 2008 February CTP is here! You can download it here .