On the heels of SQL Server 2008 being released to manufacturing last week, SQL Server 2008 Express was made available for download today. As with SQL Server 2005 Express, SQL Server 2008 Express will be released in stages. SQL Server 2008 with Advanced Services and the new SQL Server 2008 Express with Tools edition will be made available in coming weeks.
SQL Server 2008 Express with Tools includes the core database engine and SQL Server Management Studio Basic. This is the ideal edition for people that want the essential tools for developing relational database applications. Advanced features such as Integrated Full Text Search, Reporting Services and BIDS will be available in SQL Server 2008 Express Advanced.
Resource Links
Prerequisites
Overview
- SQL Server 2008 Express (for Advanced users)
- SQL Server database engine - Create, store, update and retrieve your data
- Available: Now
- SQL Server 2008 Express with Tools (Recommended - New)
- SQL Server database engine - Create, store, update and retrieve your data
- SQL Server Management Studio Basic - Visual database management tool for creating, editing and managing databases
- Available: End of August 2008
- SQL Server 2008 Express with Advanced Services (for Advanced users)
- SQL Server database engine - Create, store, update and retrieve your data
- SQL Server Management Studio Basic - Visual database management tool for creating, editing and managing databases
- Full-text Search - Powerful, high-speed engine for searching text-intensive data
- Reporting Services - Integrated report creation and design environment to create reports
- Available: End of August 2008
| Feature | SQL Server 2008 Express | SQL Server 2008 Express with Tools | SQL Server 2008
Express with
Advanced Services |
| Tools & Management | | | |
| PowerShell Integration | 
(Separate installation)* |
|
|
| Policy Based Management | (Manual only)** | (Manual only)* | (Manual only)** |
| Import/Export Wizard | | | |
| Management Studio Basic |
| |
|
| SQL Engine | | | |
| Integrated Full Text Search |
|
| |
| Merge & Upsert | | | |
| New Data type support | | | |
| Filestream support | | | |
| New Date & Time data types | | | |
| Geodetic data types | | | |
| Advanced Spatial Libraries | | | |
| Support for Spatial Standards | | | |
| Replication | | | |
| Change Tracking | | | |
| Synchronization Services | (Separate installation)*** | | |
| Reporting Services | | | |
| Increase RS Memory Limit | | | |
| RS Word/Rich Text Export | | | |
| IIS Agnostic Report Deployment | | | |
| Enhanced Gauges & Charting | | | |
| Business Intelligence Developer's Studio | | | |
| Size & Architectures | | | |
| Approximate download sizes | 55MB | 110MB | 570MB |
32-bit installer
(x86 platforms only) | | | |
64-bit installer
(x64 platforms only) | |
|
|
| Prerequisites | | | |
| .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 |
|
| |
| Windows Installer 4.5 |
|
|
|
| Windows PowerShell 1.0 | |
| |
Notes:
* The SqlPS command line tool can be enabled in SQL Server 2008 Express by installing Windows PowerShell 1.0 before installing SQL Server 2008 Express.
** Policies can be created in SQL Server 2008 Express and run manually. There is no support for automated policy based management.
*** Synchronization Services support in SQL Server 2008 Express requires that you install the component separately from the SQL Server 2008 Feature Pack.
SQL Server 2008 has been released to manufacturing today!
The official News Release is re-posted here:
REDMOND, Wash. — Aug. 6, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the release to manufacturing of Microsoft SQL Server 2008, the new version of the company’s acclaimed data management and business intelligence platform. This version of SQL Server provides powerful new capabilities such as support for policy-based management, auditing, large-scale data warehousing, geospatial data, and advanced reporting and analysis services. SQL Server 2008 provides the trusted, productive and intelligent platform necessary for business-critical applications.
“Microsoft developed this release of SQL Server with the customer in mind,” said Ted Kummert, corporate vice president of the Data and Storage Platform Division at Microsoft. “SQL Server 2008 is the only major database that includes comprehensive, tightly integrated functionality for data management as well as advanced business intelligence out of the box. By offering a complete solution, we save customers time and money and allow them to focus on deriving the most value from their data assets.”
With more than 450,000 customer and partner downloads of SQL Server 2008’s Community Technology Previews (CTPs), more than 75 large-scale applications already in production and more than 1,350 applications being developed by nearly 1,000 independent software vendors (ISVs) on SQL Server 2008, it’s clear that customers and partners are excited about the capabilities now available in SQL Server 2008.
Tim Whitehorn, founder and chief executive officer of event management software provider ServiceU Corp., said, “We selected SQL Server 2008 because we can entrust it with our critical business applications. SQL Server 2008 is highly secure and reliable, and offers the best value on the market today. In addition, it accelerates the time frame for deploying new features and enhancements, and that to us makes SQL Server a winner.”
A number of enterprise customers from various industries are testing SQL Server 2008 including Clear Channel Communications Inc., Hilton Hotels Corp., Simon & Schuster Inc., Siemens AG and Xerox Corp., among many others.
SQL Server is an industry leader in both scalability and performance. It is the first and only database management system to be proven capable of delivering scalable results on TPC-E, the Transaction Processing Performance Council’s (TPC) newest and most challenging online transaction processing (OLTP) benchmark, with 13 published benchmarks to date.1 Also demonstrating the performance of SQL Server 2008, Unisys Corp. and Microsoft set a new extract, transform and load (ETL) performance record by loading 1 terabyte of data in less than 30 minutes using SQL Server 2008 Integration Services. In addition, SQL Server 2008 has proven its scalability in large-scale data warehousing, as demonstrated by its recent 10-terabyte TPC-H benchmark.2
“We saw a 35 percent improvement in throughput on the system that we upgraded to SQL Server 2008, with no code changes on our end,” said Gary Oberg, vice president of IT and development at Applied Discovery (a member of the LexisNexis group). “This translates straight to the bottom line for us, as the more documents we can upload, the more we can process.”
Microsoft is setting additional benchmark records with ISV solutions, including a world record on four-socket industry-standard blade servers in a three-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark, and demonstrated the largest benchmark ever on the Siemens Teamcenter digital product life-cycle management solution, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics AX and the Camstar Manufacturing Execution System solution.
SQL Server is a key component of the Microsoft Application Platform, a suite of products and technologies designed to help customers build, run and manage dynamic business applications. SQL Server 2008 is available in the following editions:
SQL Server 2008 Enterprise. SQL Server 2008 Enterprise is a comprehensive data management and business intelligence platform that provides enterprise-class scalability, data warehousing, security, advanced analytics and reporting support for running business-critical applications. With this edition, it is possible to consolidate servers and perform large-scale online transactional processing.
SQL Server 2008 Standard. SQL Server 2008 Standard is a complete data management and business intelligence platform that provides best-in-class ease of use and manageability for running departmental applications.
SQL Server 2008 Workgroup. SQL Server 2008 Workgroup is a reliable data management and reporting platform that delivers secure, remote synchronization and management capabilities for running branch applications. This edition includes core database features and is easy to upgrade to the Standard or Enterprise edition.
SQL Server 2008 Web. SQL Server 2008 Web is designed for highly available, Internet-facing Web-serving environments running on Windows Server. SQL Server 2008 Web provides the tools necessary to support low-cost, large-scale, highly available Web applications or hosting solutions for customers.
SQL Server 2008 Developer. SQL Server 2008 Developer allows developers to build and test any type of application with SQL Server. This edition features all of the functionality of SQL Server Enterprise but is licensed only for development, test and demo use. Applications and databases developed on this edition can easily be upgraded to SQL Server 2008 Enterprise.
SQL Server 2008 Express. SQL Server 2008 Express is a free edition of SQL Server that features core database functionality including all of the new SQL Server 2008 data types, in a small footprint. This edition is ideal for learning and building desktop and small server applications, and for redistribution by ISVs.
SQL Server Compact 3.5. SQL Server Compact is a free embedded database designed for developers and is ideal for building stand-alone and occasionally connected applications for mobile devices, desktops and Web clients. SQL Server Compact runs on all Microsoft Windows platforms, including the Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems, and on Pocket PC and smartphone devices.
Pricing and Availability
SQL Server 2008 is now available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers and will be available for evaluation download on Aug. 7, 2008. SQL Server 2008 Express and SQL Server Compact editions are available for free download today at http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver.
As previously announced, pricing for SQL Server will not increase with SQL Server 2008. More information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/sqlserver.
1TPC benchmarks are produced by the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). Full results are available at http://www.tpc.org. Results referenced are current as of July 29, 2008.
2HP Integrity Superdome, 63651 QphH@10TB, 38.54 $/QphH@10TB, available Aug. 30, 2008.
Big, big news for SQL Server customers. Microsoft announced intentions to acquire DATAllegro Inc., which is a provider of breakthrough data warehouse appliances. This acquisition will make it easier and more cost-effective than ever before for customers of all sizes to manage and gather insight from the largest data warehouses.
Unlike most data warehouse appliance vendors targeting the 1–25 TB range, DATAllegro specializes in large-volume, high-performance data warehouses. DATAllegro’s data warehouse appliance installations boast some of the largest data volume capacities in the industry.
Microsoft is significantly raising the bar in terms of the scale that customers will be able to support with SQL Server 2008 into the tens of terabytes. This DATAllegro acquisition will accelerate the SQL Server data warehousing roadmap to high-scale deployments reaching hundreds of terabytes.
DATAllegro’s patent-pending technology is designed to support complex workloads including high concurrency and mixed queries. DATAllegro is one of the industry's few data warehouse appliances that are built on nonproprietary hardware platforms including Dell, Bull servers and EMC storage. This flexible architecture makes it well suited to integrate with SQL Server.
This acquisition is a continuation of Microsoft's technology investments in SQL Server 2008 that introduces exciting new features like Resource Governor, data compression, and partitioned table parallelism. These investments combined with today's news re-enforce SQL Server as a leader in data warehousing. Going forward, Microsoft is committed to existing DATAllegro customers and will continue to support them.
Microsoft's premier developer event, the Professional Developer Conference, is just over 3 months away. PDC 2008 will feature more than 160 sessions covering a wide range of topics for professional developers and architects. Each session is delivered by Microsoft engineers, so attendees can expect to receive a high-quality in-depth technical understanding of Microsoft’s future platform along with practical guidance for helping plan the evolution of products and technologies. Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie, is set to kick off the event with the keynote. With all the excitement around Visual Studio 2008 and Windows Server 2008, and with SQL Server 2008 set to RTM in Q3, this PDC should prove to be a very exciting event. Don't miss it!