Get it now from https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer! Download size is only about 877.34 MB, so don't hesitate :-).
With SQL Server 2008 June CTP release, customers can immediately utilize new capabilities that support their mission-critical platform and enable pervasive insight across the enterprise. SQL Server 2008 lays the groundwork for innovative policy-based management that enables administrators to reduce their time spent on maintenance tasks. SQL Server 2008 provides enhancements in the SQL Server BI platform by enabling customers to provide up-to-date information with Change Data Capture and MERGE features, and develop highly scalable analysis services cubes with new development environments.
For more information on Katmai, visit http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/futureversion/default.mspx. A few highlights include:
- Mission-Critical Platform
- Improved data encryption, auditing, key management
- Data page recovery enhancements, transparent failover
- Declarative Management Framework (DMF) for policy compliance enforcement
- Data compression support out-of-the-box
- Resource utilization management using Resource Governor
- Predicatable query performance by improved query plan caching
- Streamlined installation
- Hot Add CPU
- Dynamic development
- LINQ to entities and ADO.NET Object Services
- Unified data synchronization platform with offline designers, data change tracking, etc
- Beyond relational data
- Support for additional kinds of non-relational data
- FileStream data storage support with transactional integrity
- Integrated Full-Text Search
- Sparse columns, large user-defined types
- Location-aware applications with spatial data and location data
- Pervasive business insight
- Higher data and backup compression
- Partitioned table parallelism
- Change Data Capture tracks changes to data
- Various query optimizations for data warehouse scenarios
- Enhanced SSIS scalability with persistent lookups and pipeline improvements
- MERGE SQL statement
- Analysis scalability enhancements with writeback and block computations
- Scalable reporting with better scale-out, internet reporting scenarios, an improved Report Builder, Office integration, forms authentication, integration in existing apps, enhanced management
Enjoy!
