Microsoft has globally released SQL Server 2005 in early November, and there's definitely a lot of hype regarding the launch. But does it live up to expectations?

SQL Server 2000 is being superseded after 5 years in the making. For Microsoft's standards this is a very long development cycle, but it certainly has been time and effort well spent. SQL Server 2005 is the most feature rich release ever. It contains many important enhancements, extensive fundamental changes and new additions to enhance the Business Intelligence (BI) offering. Many companies have been slow to adopt Microsoft's BI Framework in SQL Server 2000, however this will not be the case with the latest release as it broadens the integration, collection, and presentation of information that extends beyond just analytical processing.

There are four different versions of SQL 2005:

While the primary focus has been to beef up the top end, small to medium sized companies stand much to gain as well. The Express version offers greatly improved features and functionality, and includes the Reporting Services reporting engine. With a database size of 4GB, there is a significant benefit to the previous MSDE restriction of 5 concurrent users. And yes, it's still a freebie.

The number of new features in SQL Server 2005 is overwhelming. Below are our top 10 new features.

1. It has been designed to make full use of the .NET platform capabilities, including native support for XML and Web Services.

2. Virtually every aspect of the Business Intelligence Platform, including Analysis Services, Reporting Services and DTS, have been either revamped or significantly enhanced.

3. Data Transformation Services (DTS) has been replaced by SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). SSIS has been completely redesigned from the ground up, and is completely different from (DTS). It improves scalability, transportability and performance, and is more than simply a data-transfer tool as it also contains a complete workflow engine. There is a new extensible object model, and the new BI Development Studio provides a modern IDE for working with SSIS objects. This is also the same IDE used by SSAS.

4. SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) has also received many improvements and new features. In Analysis Services 2005, OLAP cubes use the new Unified Dimensional Model (UDM), which combines the strength of OLAP and relational storage, enabling you to create a custom balance between the performance and data storage your Analysis Services cubes use. Other
additions include proactive caching for cube deployment, MDX enhancements, and a new XML for Analysis (XML/A) query language. Microsoft also added several new data-mining models that provide more options for data trending and prediction.

5. The BI reporting engine Reporting Services provides an enterprise-oriented infrastructure that allows anyone to design and deploy reports across the organization.

6. The new Report Builder component provides end users with the ability to design reports that are completely integrated with Reporting Services. This new tool is implemented as a .NET Windows Form application, and provides managers with the ability to easily and flexibly create ad hoc reports, which are then published to allow users to view Business Intelligence information on demand, in the format that need it.

7. A new technology called Service Broker is included, which Microsoft describes as "a new technology for building database-intensive distributed applications that are secure, reliable, and scalable." As it's built into the database engine, Service Broker lets you store message queues in a database. It also provides T-SQL statements that let you set up communications channels and then use those channels to send and receive messages. This provides reliable messaging between SQL Server instances.

8. SQL Server Notification Services provides a platform for developing applications that send notifications, potentially to thousands or even millions of recipients. Notification Services provides a programming framework based on XML and T-SQL, and a high-performance engine to perform the actual notifications.

9. A number of new features and enhancements to replication, including:

	A new Replication Monitor interface with the ability to inject tracer data into a complex replication topology to measure its latency.
	A wide variety of schema changes that are automatically replicated.
	Snapshot interruption is resumed from the point where it left off when connectivity is restored.
	Oracle data can now be published to SQL Server subscribers without custom programming.

10. SQL Server Management Studio provides a spiffy new IDE to replace the aging Enterprise Manager and Query Analyzer for all of your SQL Server administrative needs.

If you would like some further information regarding the latest features of SQL Server 2005, please contact us.