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Best New Features of SQL 2008


I am getting ready to upgrade an existing SQL 2005 application and have found the following SQL 2008 features worth more exploration:

  1. INSERT (Transact-SQL Row Constructors) – Allows the ability to add one or more new rows to a table or a view. Seems novel but not sure how useful in practice.
  2. MERGE Statement. This new Transact-SQL statement performs INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE operations on a target table based on the results of a join with a source table. Oracle has had this statement for years. I am glad Microsoft has finally added it to TSQL.
  3. Full-Text Search: Full-text search is now a fully integrated feature of a database. Wow that took forever. I still remember the 8 hour Microsoft support call back in 2002, that included my rant session to support about the need for 1. Logging, 2. Database integration.
  4. SP_DEPENDS: Identifies down to the columns of each table your stored procedure uses.

Things I am still waiting for:

  1. Row Level Security
  2. Something equivalent to the Oracle %ROWTYPE attribute in variable declarations as a datatype specifier.

This entry was posted on February 3, 2009, 7:44 pm and is filed under SQL Server. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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