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The Buzz on SQL Server 2008 CTP6

Posted by James Vastbinder on Mar 12, 2008

Sections: Development,; Operations & Infrastructure
Topics: SQL Server ,; .NET
Tags: Visual Studio ,; Database ,; SQL Server 2008

The latest Community Technology Preview of SQL Server 2008 was released last month. This early release of SQL Server 2008 has been declared as feature complete by Microsoft. While there are still bugs to be found and fixed InfoQ focused on the buzz from the developer community.

Feedback has trended fairly positive with the exception of a leap-year snafu on February 29, 2008.

Andras Belokosztolszki, Architect at redgate, ran into a bug where SQL Server 2008 CTP 6 did not work on February 29th. After spending several hours searching for a solution he discovered changing the date to March 1 fixed his issue and SQL Server could start. At this time it is unclear if this is a leap-year issue or an issue related to February 29, 2008.

Rob Farley is excited about the PowerShell provider for SQL Server:

you can now open up PowerShell, and change directory to the PowerShell drive "SQL:". Then change directories through the instances, databases, tables, and so on. At any point, try something like "dir | gm" (gm is Get-Member, dir is an alias for Get-ChildItem), to find out what properties and methods are available on the objects in that folder.

Denis Gobo found 13 new Dynamic Management Views in CTP6 vs. the 33 new Dynamic Management Views he discovered in CTP5:

dm_audit_actions
dm_audit_class_type_map
dm_db_persisted_sku_features
dm_exec_procedure_stats
dm_exec_trigger_stats
dm_fts_fdhosts
dm_fts_index_keywords
dm_fts_index_keywords_by_document
dm_fts_outstanding_batches
dm_fts_parser
dm_os_dispatchers
dm_os_memory_node_access_stats
dm_server_audit_status

SSQA.net is more concerned about what has been removed in CTP6:

First one to get a shot is Notification Services, as you may be aware since SQL Server 2005 version support cycle the Notification Services component is not included within SQL Server 2008 version and such features will be blended in to Reporting Services engine.
Next one to get-boot is SQLDMO which has been replaced with SMO since SQL Server 2005 version. Among all of the Microsoft support/forums/articles pages they are recommending you to modify applications that currently use this feature as soon as possible. The extra concession has been given to support of SQLDMO for SQL Server Express, in this case you must need Backward Compatibility Components. It is better to get used to the SMO rather than handing out the unsupported components within your Application development work.
Third one, a big surprise or rather discouragement to DBA section due to the remove of Surface Area Configuration tool which was a new face from SQL Server 2005 and advantageous than Server network utility as compared to SQL 2000/70 versions.

From an application development perspective Bob Beauchemin wrote of his experience using the CTP of Visual Studio 2008 support for SQL Server 2008 CTP6. In reading the overview document in the download Bob noticed support for LINQ-to-SQL Designer for SQL Server 2008 is not supported, however he was able to get it working:

I've used SQL Server 2008 WITH NO new data types (e.g. DATE, TIME, etc) and it does seems to work. EF beta3 designer too. Maybe they are referring to lack of support for the new data types.

And finally, Microsoft is running a contest for developers and DBAs who find bugs in CTP6 and report them on Connect. There are many categories, 18 in all, and they are giving away a Xbox Elite for each category winner.