One attendee of the demonstration, that multi-server management "is a good idea since I've always tried to set up the same management tools and processes on each server, so that I can efficiently keep an eye on things."

Jones also wrote, "I assume some backwards compatibility, but there is a lot of work for third party vendors to do here. At least that's my guess."

Microsoft said it has more than 40 internal apps running SQL Server 2008, including a 37 Terabyte data warehouse, and two for its Live Search service that are 1.4TB and 1.8TB, respectively.

Microsoft also announced the public availability of the first Community Technology Preview for , its cloud version of SQL Server.