Me, My Database and I

SQL Server 2008 Features

I've been seriously ramping up on the SQL Server 2008 feature set over the past few weeks, and I'm noticing that there are a ton of new features in the database engine that not a lot of people are talking about.  Everyone hears about the biggies - Resource Governor, new Date data types, Spatial data - but there are a few hidden gems that are quite nice.  I really like the enhancements to management studio that allow you to set up a configuration server to use as your master repository for your registered server tree.  That is going to save us a load of time.  The ability to execute a single query against a group of servers and have the results returned in a single grid is also quite nice.

Of all of the new features, I'd list these as my top five (in no particular order):

1. MERGE
2. Resource Governor
3. Intellisense
4. Management Data Warehouse
5. Date data types

I'm not saying that these are the best features in the engine, but these are the features that will impact my job the most.

Chuck