The progress map of SQL Server 2008 is diagrammatically listed here.
I am listing the new improvements here as list.
- Data Collection and Performance Warehouse for Relational Engine
- Service Broker Enhancements
- Registered Servers Enhancements
- Synchronous net-changes change tracking for SQL Server
- T-SQL IntelliSense
- Declarative Management Framework (DMF) Enhancements
- Geo-spatial Support
- Analysis Services Query and Writeback Performance
- Robust Report Server Platform
- Integration Services – Lookup Enhancements
- Analysis Services MDX Query Optimizer – Block Computation
- Analysis Services Aggregation Design
- Analysis Services Cube Design
- Reporting Services Scale Engine
- Transparent Data Encryption
- Resource Governor – Limit Specification
- Backup Compression
- Plan Freezing
- Fully Parallel Plans Scale on Partitioned Tables
Reference : Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com) , Microsoft SQL Server 2008 CPT5