Whats New in SQL Server 2005

1. .NET Common Language Runtime integration: This means you can write stored procedures, functions, triggers, user-defined types, and even new aggregates in any .NET language.
2. Native HTTP SOAP Access: This means that the database server can serve up data via Web Services with no additional middleware at all, not even an instance of IIS.
3. New xml data type: You can store XML data natively in its own column type now.
4. XQuery support: SQL Server supports XQuery for querying against XML data, including extensions that allow XML DDL operations.
   Improved Error Handling: T-SQL now supports TRY-CATCH blocks for modern error handling.
5. DDL Triggers: You can set up triggers that fire when CREATE, ALTER, or DROP statements are executed.
6. Query Notifications: With query notifications, an external application can request the database engine to notify it when the data in a cached result set changes. This can dramatically lessen the load from requerying.
7. Failover clustering now extends to 8 nodes on 32-bit systems, and 4 nodes on 64-bit systems.
8. Database mirroring introduces a new reliability model for hot standby on a database-by-database basis.
9. Users now have acess to a database during a restore operation, within certain limits. This helps get you up and running faster after problems.
10. Multiple Active Result Sets (MARS): SQL Server 2005 introduces the ability for multiple statements to return result sets at the same time on a single connection.