Well, I’ve been waiting for this release since the February CTP drop was "feature complete". SQL Server 2008 went RTM today and is available to subscription owners on MSDN. This is the latest release in the SQL Server family and encompasses a number of different flavours, from the traditional Developer/Standard/Enterprise to Workgroup and Web (hosting) editions.
New to SQL 2K8 is a rebuild of the Analysis Services (Business Intelligence), Reporting Services and a number of changes to the Database Engine including a few changes to SQL Server Management Studio. A side-by-side feature comparision for each flavour can be found here.
Warning: it seems that some features introduce a dependency on Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 which has not yet been released (other than in Beta form). Anticipate that VS 2008 SP 1 will go RTM on August 11th or thereabouts. Watch this space.
More on SQL Server 2008 will come to this blog shortly. Enjoy /R