Katmai, the code name for Microsoft"s imminent SQL Server 2008 release, comes from an Alaskan territory know for volcanoes, which may not be the best symbol for a database. So far, however, Katmai hasn"t blown up on me. And the lower-profile Katmai seems like a good follow-on to Yukon, the code name for the gigantic SQL Server 2005 release.
Building on the sweeping, enterprise-oriented improvements in SQL Server 2005, Katmai sports very nice new features for large deployments. Among the more touted attributes in the database engine are data and backup compression, sparse columns, and compressed and filtered indexes, all of which are geared to saving storage space, as well as Change Data Capture, which captures changes to production data in tables that can be used to update a data warehouse.