SQL Server 2008 Launch Day

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Today we launch Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008, and SQL Server 2008. This is the largest server launch in Microsoft history (or so I'm told). Last night at dinner we (several MS SQL folks) were talking about the differences in the development process between Yukon (SQL2K5) and Katmai (SQL2K8). After we shipped SQL2K5 we completely revamped our development process. In the beginning the new process was very painful and frustrating; but that's usually the case with these things. Over time it got much easier. Why is this relevant to the launch event? Even though we're not announcing RTM of SQL2K8 the state of the product is close. There's still work to do but it's very different work than what we faced at the same milestone during SQL2K5 development.

Yesterday Praveen (aka Manageability Man) and I (aka Demo Boy) ran through the slide deck and the demos for the manageability session. Two things became apparent: First, an hour is simply not enough time to do justice to what's in this release. Second, the manageability features we're releasing with Katmai are going to change the way DBAs manage their environment. Maybe I should say it's the beginning of a wave of change in the manageability space. The way we design features in future release will be dramatically different than before.

Here's the rough outline for the Manageability session:

  • Overview
  • Policy-Based Management & Configuration Servers
  • Surprise #1
  • Performance Data Collection
  • PowerShell
  • Object Explorer Details enhancements (announce Surprise #2; sorry no demo)
  • Multi-Server Query
  • IntelliSense 
  • Surprise #3
  • Wrap-up

Tomorrow (time permitting) I'll blog about the surprises.