After delivering an unbelievable product in SQL Server 2005, the SQL team is preparing to up the ante even further.  They have released the June CTP of SQL Server 2008!  This means it’s close guys!

For those of you who haven’t been watching "Katmai" progress here are just a few of the great features on the way!

• Encrypt and enter database, data files or log files with out the need for changes to your application.
• More comprehensive data auditing (ex. What data was retrieved?).
• Policies for Database Operations (ex. query optimizations, naming conventions, backup and restore operations and index management) that can be enforced and monitored.
• Seamless Database Mirroring and simplified Recovery.
• Highly Scalable.
• New data types to store unstructured data (ex. documents and images).
• Resource Governor to prioritize and define limits for different workloads.
• ADO.Net improvements such as the new Entity Data Model to retrieve entities natively within .Net using LinQ).
• Change Data Capture functionality for real-time data warehouse update support.
• New Spatial Data Types for building location-aware applications.
• Support for occasionally connected applications.
• More improvements to SQL Server Reporting Services and SQL Server Analysis Services.
• Office Sharepoint Server integration!