On Monday, 04 June 2007, Microsoft released the first community technology preview (CTP) of SQL Server 2008, the official name for what was initially codenamed "Katmai."

The announcement was made at the Microsoft TechEd Conference 2007 in Orlando.

SQL Server 2008 will ship in 2008 and comes with many next-gen features as ADO.NET Entity Framework (EF) and Language Integrated Query (LINQ).

Reporting Service will also be "super-charged" by charting provided by Dundas Data Visualization Inc.