With the imminent release of SQL Server 2008 it is important to understand what possibilities it can offer when we talk about using it as a data store for SharePoint 2007.  While nothing will actually change in the SharePoint platform, having a different data store with advanced capabilities provides some options you can't get anywhere else.  SQL Server 2008 will offer the following advantages to customers that are using SharePoint.

• Encryption, assuming this will be supported at RTM, and there is little reason to believe that it won't be.  SQL 2008 will provide encryption on the disk for items that are stored in the database.  This is a big boost for those companies that wish to prevent the DBA from being able to potentially expose information stored in MOSS.
• Backups can now be compressed.  Compression will apply to backups and logs for SQL Server and if applied at the server level can impact backups taken from Central admin also.  Estimates are > 25-35%.
• Enhancements to database mirroring including automatic page repair, improved performance, and enhanced supportability.  This will help those disaster recovery situations become a little easier.
• Resource Governor provides a consistent and predictable response to end users.  This is accomplished by allowing organizations to define resource limits and priorities for different workloads, which enable concurrent workloads to provide consistent performance to their end users.
• Policy Based Administration is a policy-based system for managing one or more instances of SQL Server 2008.

There are probably others I am omitting, but I see these as the highlights.  For more information please click here.