Microsoft has confirmed that the next versions of its SQL Server database and Visual Studio development tool will both ship in 2008, having announced last week that Windows Server ‘Longhorn’ would be delayed to 2008.

A community technology preview (CTP) of SQL Server 2008 (codenamed ‘Katmai’) is now available for download, with a final commercial release expected mid 2008.

The product will integrate data visualisation and charting tools acquired from Dundas Data Visualisation within SQL Server Reporting Services.

It will also be the first version of SQL Server to include native support for spatial data as a first class data type with indexing. Katmai spatial will support two models: a “Flat Earth” planar data type and a “Round Earth” geodetic data type, with spatial indexes for both.

Visual Studio 2008 (codenamed Orcas) will ship at the end of 2007, said Microsoft, and focuses on web application development and supporting Vista and Office.

A second beta release featuring Visual Studio Shell, which enables developers to build and distribute customer tools built on Visual Studio IDE, is due this summer.

In addition, the Server Core Installation Option of Windows Server 2008 will include the latest version of Microsoft’s Web server, Internet Services 7.0 (IIS7), improvements to which help to boost Server Core performance by 10-20x because of its small code base, said Microsoft.

The first public beta of .NET Framework 3.5 and a CTP of BizTalk Services are intended to support Microsoft’s vision of service orientated architecture (SOA), which includes hosted applications and software as a service (SaaS).

The company also said that it will deliver release 2 (R2) of its BizTalk Server 2006 business process management product in the third quarter of this year. It will include RFID and EDI support, and improved integration with the .NET Framework 3.0, Office 2007 and Vista.