With so many exciting new features in Visual Studio 2008 to explore, I haven’t had much time to look at the preview releases of SQL Server 2008 (aka Katmai). The last I heard, there wouldn’t be that many new goodies for developers, mainly features for DBAs and BI analysts with a few performance optimisations thrown in.

The last upgrade, SQL Server 2000 to 2005, was a huge leap forward for developers and added significant advances like CLR integration, SQL Server Management Objects (SMO), Integration Services (SSIS) and a native XML data type; as well as T-SQL enhancements like Common Table Expressions (CTEs), structured error handling with try/catch, pivot, apply, top(n) and row_number.

I was surprised to see how much new stuff is packed into the latest SQL Server 2008 CTP release, even, finally, IntelliSense for Management Studio, which was much anticipated but conspicuously absent from SQL 2005:

SQL Server 2008 IntelliSense

Also notice the new collapsible code regions, just like you get in Visual Studio. Editing T-SQL has never been such fun! Although, you have to feel a bit sorry for RedGate, whose SQL Prompt plug-in has been filling the auto-completion gap for the last few years.