After the long wait (well, not as long as 2000-2005 wait) Microsoft finally released SQL Server 2008 to manufacturing.
SQL Server 2008 is built upon the solid and well-celebrated SQL Server 2005 foundation and adds many new features specially tailored for the newest trends in the industry. My favorite is the spatial data type support. SQL Server is now much more suitable for GIS applications. For example you can now natively write queries to find the cheapest gas station in 5 miles! Ain't it amazing?
I'm currently considering to migrate some of our about to release projects to SQL Server 2008.
Long ago, I skimmed the new features of SQL Server 2005 and I'm planning to write a summary of cool new features in SQL Server 2008 soon.
You can download SQL Server 2008 RTM Trial here.
By the way, SQL Server Express is now available in native x64 version (previously, it had to be run under WoW64 subsystem).
At the end, I want to thank SQL Server team at Microsoft that did a great job providing a high quality (SQL Server 2008 is really stable and well-tested) release.