Improvement (not new) Features Between SQL Server 2005 and 2008

Here are the givens:

• you are going to want to scream about this question
• this is an Oracle shop and will continue to be
• all current environments are MSSQL 2000 Standard Edition
• the answer(s) will help make a business case for upgrading
• choice will be 64-bit and Enterprise Edition (leave that to me!)
• end-of-life means nothing -- they have me (scary, isn't it?)
• there is no development against SQL Server
• there is (extensive) development with MS Access (recently 2007) that is only under duress moved to SQL Server
• Windows Server 2003 operating system with no ounce of consideration of 2008
• no data warehousing
• no business intelligence
• overwhelming percentage of accessing/supported applications are third party commercial off-the-shelf
• scale of database size and usage negates the fact that you can 16-node cluster MSSQL 2008 instead of 8-node with MSSQL 2005

Here is the question, disregarding new features in MSSQL 2008 (which I believe to have a handle on), what significant improvements have been made in MSSQL 2008 to features that exist in MSSQL 2005 and not in MSSQL 2000?

From serverfault $pageUsers[$entry.posts[0].author].name

• Significant is a highly subjective word, but off the top of my head, one of my favorite improvements is the separation of Date and Time into separate datatypes instead of one datetime datatype. Also, the range for dates now goes back to 1/1/0001 instead of 1/1/1753.

  I'm sure there are performance improvements, etc, but from my experience, 2005 was so solid that upgrading to 2008 is more about the new features than the improvements. In our shop, we are upgrading only when we can take advantage of the new features (e.g. filestream).

  From NYSystemsAnalyst

• From experience, there are several improvements:

  1. Better use of multicore computers with less tweaking of configuration or files
  2. Better performace for databases > 100 GB

  Where I work, we upgraded from SQL Server 2005 Std. 32-bit to SQL Server 2008 Enterprise 64-bit just to cope with the larger databases (above 3 TB)

  GregD : Downvoted for having a signature on each of your answers...despite being told they were frowned upon.
  From Daniel Leiderman

• Page Compression. OK, so is a new feature, not an improvement of a SQL 2005 feature. You can spin it as is an improvement over row compression which exists in SQL 2005 SP2. Besides, it affects, transparently, almost every feature in SQL 2005, no changes required. Its such a benefic feature that it justifies SQL 2008 over 2005 from every possible angle.

  Remus Rusanu : Right, TDE falls into the same bucket. I did not mention it as it has a more narrow audience.
  From Remus Rusanu

• The SQL Server Management Studio now has IntelliType when building queries! About freaking time!

  (technically an improvement on the SSMS, not a new feature).

  From Farseeker

• I think the question that you're asking isn't really the question. I work for state government and have worked in the private sector. Government usually has longer cycles for projects, but the core problems are the same. If you work in an Oracle shop, pushing a Microsoft, IBM or MySQL solution isn't going to be productive or good for your career. Unless you have solid backing from reliable management types, you're going to be perceived as "one of them" and will have a hard time getting things done.

  In your situation, I'd push to treat off the shelf apps with MS SQL requirements like appliances, with small-scale databases associated with the app. You may have more success getting what you need in that case, as the Oracle guys think that MS SQL is a toy anyway.

  duffbeer703 : You're in a tough position (duh)... it sucks when politics becomes more important than the engineering considerations. I think you need to find a way to get support at a high level in your org to either to do Microsoft SQL right in an "enterprise way", or treat it as a "non-enterprise" service and set it up guerilla-style.

  duffbeer703 : Another approach is to age out the Microsoft SQL stuff further and look for "appliance" versions of the apps that you use now.
  From duffbeer703