Microsoft SQL Server 2008 was released to manufacturing on August 6, 2008. Microsoft released a press statement providing details about the new release. Although you can't buy your copy yet on a disk, MSDN and TechNet subscribers can downoad an evaluation copy right now from the SQL Server web site.

Prices have been published and are not being increased since the last version of SQL Server (2005). The prices are listed below with the different versions available.

I have listed the notable features below and there are quite a few. There are major improvements as well as minor fixes listed. There is a nice article about what's new in SQL Server 2008 on TechNet. The improvements and new features are within three main categories, trusted, productive, and intelligent.

Notable New Features

• New Date and Time data types
  • DATE
  • TIME
  • DATETIMEOFFSET
  • DATETIME2
• Grouping sets
  • An extension to the GROUP BY clause that lets you specify what to compute as an aggregate.
• MERGE SQL Statement
  • Transaction SQL statement that can be used to synchronize two tables based on their differences.
• Integrated Full Text Search
  • Full Text Searches allow you to compare values in a field based on words or phrases. This is similar to the LIKE comparisons, only comparing words or phrases instead of characters.
• Data Compression
  • Allows for more efficient storage and less storage. It also improves performance on I/O functions, such as data warehousing.
• Transparent Data Encryption
  • This feature will encrypt the database files automatically allowing for better security. This reduces the risk of data being discovered, even if the database files are obtained by an unauthorized user.

Technologies

• Analysis Services
• Data Mining
• High Availability—Always On
• Integration Services
• Manageability
• Performance and Scalability
• Programmability
• Reporting Services
• Security
• Spatial Data

Available Editions

• SQL Server 2008 Enterprise ($24,999)
• SQL Server 2008 Standard ($5,999)
• SQL Server 2008 Workgroup ($3,899)
• SQL Server 2008 Web ($15/proc/month)
• SQL Server 2008 Developer ($50)
• SQL Server 2008 Express (N/A)
• SQL Server Compact 3.5 (N/A)

For more detailed information, you can check out the white papers, or if you are looking to try it out, you can download an evaluation copy.

Additional Resources

• SQL Server 2008 Website
• SQL Server 2008 TechCenter
• SQL Server 2008 Developer Center

Yesterday marked a Big Update to Webmaster Tools for Microsoft's Live Search Webmaster Tools. They announced on their blog that they have added additional tools to the suite as well as taking it out of beta. Live Search Webmaster Tools was originally released as a beta back in November of 2007. Since then they have continued to make improvements and additions to the webmaster center.

One of the notable addition I found was the new Crawl Issues Tool. This tool will help you find indexing problems with your site. It can identify file not found (404) errors, blocked pages, long dynamic URLs, and unsupported content-types (Windows Live Help). Filtering by 2 subdomains or folders is now available for errors with 1000 or more occurrences. Because the basic output is limited to 20 results, there is also the ability to export the results as a CSV file. The exported file will contain the first 1000 records of the specified error.

The other notable addition is a Backlinks Tool that helps you discover where your inbound links are coming from. This information is very valuable for tracking where you could advertise or promote products. The links can help you understand your demographics better and market more effectively and efficiently. This tool includes the ability to filter your incoming links to a certain section of your website as well as to view all incoming links or just incoming links from other websites (excluding any incoming links from other pages on your site). Not only does this feature help you learn who is linking to your site for demographic purposes, but it also provides information about how well your site may rank. Backlinks play a part in how well your site ranks in a search, so you will want to know who is linking to you (websites with high credibility that link to you will increase your rank in a search, while websites with low credibility that link to you will lower your rank in a search). Downloading the first 1000 results as a CSV is available with this tool as well.

Overall, I think these are great improvements and additions. I think that they were expected to be released at some point in order to compete and to provide important information. I hope that the Live Search Webmaster Tools will continue to add useful and helpful features that I can use to rank better in the SEO game.

Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 8 Beta. This release is meant mostly for developers and designers, so that they can test the new browser. "Internet Explorer 8 will take the web experience beyond the page. Internet Explorer 8 introduces a new way to seamlessly experience the best of the web whether you are a web developer writing to standards or a user discovering a new online service" (Microsoft.com). Here are some new features and improvements worth noting.

• WebSlices - WebSlices are similar to live bookmarks in FireFox. They provide a way to get updated content without visiting the website a bunch of times a day. Unlike the RSS text version of FireFox's live bookmarks, IE8's WebSlices allow for parts of a web page to be updated (It looks like a website, not like an RSS feed). There are WebSlices available from eBay and StumbleUpon already.
• Activities - Activities enable you to access other services from within a webpage, such as submitting to Digg, looking up information, or mapping an address. The Activities icon? is loaded in a context menu similar to a right click menu in windows.
• Layout Engine - IE8 has a new layout engine with many improvements for how a page is loaded and rendered. As always, this upgrade can cause problems with websites that were developed for IE7. Microsoft took this into account, however, and allows for a webpage to tell IE8 to render the page as IE7.
• CSS 2.1 Compliant - IE8 will eventually be fully CSS 2.1 compliant. They are continuing to work with developers and designers to work out bugs in the Beta, but will have it fixed in the final release.
• Improvements - IE8 has had an overhaul and now has improvements in HTML rendering, namespace support, and platform performance. These improvements will help IE8 run better as a whole.
• Developer Tools - IE8 now has developer tools built into the application. They provide most of the functionality of the web developer FireFox extension.
• Improved Security - IE8 has also been given more security features to protect you as you browse. There are 3 main exploits that are protected against in IE8: they are social engineering, web server, and browser-based exploits.

You can download you copy of IE8 here. Please comment below and let us know what you think of the IE8 Beta.