There is a public CTP coming out this morning. It was supposed to be published on Connect at 8:30 AM ET, but maybe they meant a different time zone? Anyway, an interesting "by the way" here is that the official name is SQL Server 2008. Not that this should really surprise anyone, except that it makes it more difficult to try and predict when the product will actually be released. I had the notion that it would be released this year, which is still possible; if they had named it SQL Server 2007, they would have felt more pressure to release in Q4. But even with the 2008 moniker, it is still possible that it will release in Q4 2007 (though also possible to release in Q4 2008).
Katmai news
June 4th, 20073
By: Aaron Bertrand
I am a passionate technologist with industry experience dating back to Classic ASP and SQL Server 6.5. I am a long-time Microsoft MVP, write at Simple Talk, SQLPerformance, and MSSQLTips, and have had the honor of speaking at more conferences than I can remember. In non-tech life, I am a husband, a father of two, a huge hockey and football fan, and my pronouns are he/him.
There is a link to it (<a rel="nofollow" target="_new" href="http://http://web.archive.org/web/*/https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/content/content.aspx?ContentID=5395">http://web.archive.org/web/*/https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/content/content.aspx?ContentID=5395) on the connect site but it is broken ;-( (at least for me)
http://web.archive.org/web/*/https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer
My guess is Q3 or Q4 of next year…
Aaron, there is also a webcast today (Monday, June 04, 2007 12:00 PM Pacific Time (US & Canada) at http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032341071&EventCategory=2&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US
Here is what is covered
This session provides an overview of the next release of Microsoft SQL Server that is currently under development. We cover the core value proposition, major themes and scenarios, and some specific improvements. We also discuss the new development processes Microsoft is using to build this release, the release timeline, and the disclosure calendar.