Introducing SQL Server 2008 New Features

• Exploring new and enhanced components
• Upgrading from SQL Server 2005
• SQL Server Management Studio
• Coding with Intellisense

Easing Development with Transact-SQL

Working with new data types and statements

• Date
• Time
• DateTimeOffset
• DateTime2
• SparseColumn
• HierarchyID
• Grouping data by sets
• Combining insert and update with merge

Manipulating Geo-Spatial data

• Storing and retrieving geographic information
• Querying data with Spatial Index

Extending beyond relational data

• Configuring the Internal Full Text Search (IFTS)
• Enabling the storage and access of binary files with Filestream

Improving Data Management

Scrutinising internal information with Dynamic Management Views (DMVs)

• Analysing DMVs for memory usage
• Verifying dependencies among objects

Allocating processor time and memory

• Specifying resource limits
• Prioritising workloads with Resource Governor

Policy-Based Management Framework

Establishing policy-based management

• Defining guidelines for SQL Server instances
• Reducing TCO by simplifying administrative tasks

Enforcing policy compliance

• Creating policies, conditions and facets
• Detecting compliance issues in Management Studio

Proactively Monitoring Data

Recording modifications

• Configuring Change Tracking
• Logging primary keys for rows that have changed

Auditing with Change Data Capture (CDC)

• Enabling CDC for history logging
• Tracking Data Manipulation Language (DML) statements

Data Protection and High Availability

Securing your data through encryption

• Transparent Data Encryption (TDE)
• Storing keys externally
• Restoring encrypted data

Employing replication enhancements

• Managing efficiently with Replication Monitor
• Joining to an exisiting Peer-to-Peer transactional replication

Enhancing database mirroring

• Recovering damaged or corrupted data with automatic page repair
• Improving performance with log stream compression

Simplifying clustering setup

• Addressing hardware compatibility changes
• Streamlining cluster configuration

Boosting SQL Server Performance

Optimising query execution

• Attaching query hints with the plan guide
• Taking advantage of the query plan freeze

Collecting performance data

• Analysing data capture from queries
• Reporting on performance bottlenecks

Monitoring with the extended events engine

• Handling events uniformly across SQL Server
• Dynamically inspecting active processes

Integrating BI Enhancements

SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS)

• Creating multidimensional data with Cube Designer
• Improving business insight with Data Mining

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)

• Presenting intelligent data reports with Tablix
• Eliminating the need for IIS
• Rendering reports to Microsoft Word

SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)

• Building an ADO.NET source or destination
• Integrating SSIS with merge
• Incorporating C# into the script task
• Handling advanced data types in the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard