According to eWeek at http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Microsoft-to-Deliver-SQL-Server-2008-in-August/ Microsoft announced that SQL Server 2008 will be released next month. I have been playing with the release candidate 0 for the last couple of weeks, specifically looking at the spatial data types. I have enjoyed it and can see many applications for this technology. I am looking forward to the full release.