The latest and greatest CTP of SQL Server 2008 (code-named Katmai) is now available for download and testing. This is commonly referred to as CTP6 and is the first update since CTP5 in November 2007. You can download the CTP6 bits over here.
To find out what is new and changed in SQL Server 2008 I suggest you take a look at the February 2008 version of Books Online (BOL). I’m really keen to try out the new DATETIME2, DATETIMEOFFSET, DATE, TIME, GEOGRAPHY, GEOMETRY and VARBINARY(MAX) FILESTREAM data types. Not to mention the ability to pass tables as parameters to stored procedures and the addition of Virtual Earth support directly in the database. This isn’t to be confused with the new spatial data types and spatial index support though.
Remember that CTPs should preferably be installed on test machines or virtual machines. If however you want to use it with Visual Studio there are updates necessary for both Visual Studio 2005 Support for SQL Server 2008 CTP and Visual Studio 2008 Support for SQL Server 2008 CTP.
[tags]SQL Server 2008,Katmai,CTP[/tags]