what is difference between sql server 2008 and sql server 2012

It might help you to know about new version of SQL Server like SQL 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2016. Please you can go and see the detail about it.

1. Difference Between SQL Server 2008 and 2012
2. What's new in SQL Server 2012? http://goo.gl/yZI7eR
3. What's new in SQL Server 2016? http://goo.gl/yZI7eR

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Release Candidate 0 (RC 0) introduces many new technologies and features. Three new or significantly updated tutorials are available to help you get started quickly with.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/4/F/24F54108-573F-4E99-8C19-DD3D063CA44A/SQL_Server_Denali_Programmability_Datasheet.pdf

The point of using a Server Audit Specification with database events in SQL Server 2012 is this. In SQL Server 2008, audit is an Enterprise-only feature. Only available in Enterprise, Evaluation, and Developer Edition. In SQL Server 2012, one of the new features (to quote BOL) is: "Support for server auditing is expanded to include all editions of SQL Server. Database audits are limited to Enterprise, Datacenter, Developer, and Evaluation editions." (Note: there's no DataCenter edition any more after the recent licensing change).So there IS a SQL Express 2012 RC0 available. Let's download it and try it out. http://msftdbprodsamples.codeplex.com/releases/view/55330

There is no GUI for Server Audit and Server Audit Specification, even when you load up an Express edition into a Enterprise SSMS Object Explorer. But who needs a GUI...we can use DDL and use sys.fn_get_audit_file to read the audit log.

USE master

GO

CREATE SERVER AUDIT TestAudit2 TO file (filepath = 'c:\tempfile')

WHERE database_name ='MyWorks' AND schema_name ='HumanResources'

  AND object_name ='EmployeePayHistory' AND database_principal_name ='dbo';

CREATE SERVER AUDIT SPECIFICATION TestServerSpec2

FOR SERVER AUDIT TestAudit2

T-SQL Enhancements

SQL Server 2012 brings many new features to the T-SQL language. Some were added merely to ease the transition to SQL Server from other languages and platforms. Others were added to provide very powerful, new ways to solve cumbersome problems

TRY_CONVERT()

I’ve been bitten many times by bad data in a column using the wrong data type. ISNUMERIC(), for example, is not always reliable; values that return true are not convertible to all numeric types. Today I might try to perform something like this exp:

SELECT CONVERT(INT, column) … WHERE ISNUMERIC(column) = 1;

However, this will fail for values like ‘e’ which are considered numeric but cannot be converted to an integer. TRY_CONVERT() allows you to ignore invalid conversions and return NULL for those values instead of returning an error for the entire query.

OFFSET / FETCH

Many web applications use paging to show 10 or 50 rows per page and allow the user to scroll through each page of results rather than download the entire set. MySQL has had the non-standard LIMIT clause for some time now, and SQL Server users have longed for similarly simple syntax. ORDER BY … OFFSET / FETCH syntax, which is standards-compliant, has been added to the SQL Server 2012. While it doesn’t provide significant performance improvements over the tedious CTE solutions we use today, it certainly makes the code easier to write, as I demonstrated in a blog post last November.

 FORMAT()

Using CLR under the covers, we will now finally have relative parity with the .format() function we are used to using in .NET languages like C#. This means no more memorizing cryptic style codes like 101 and 103 for converting datetime values to localized presentation formats, or using all kinds of messy string manipulation to present numeric values with dollar signs and thousands separators. In August I wrote a lengthy blog post about FORMAT() with many examples.

Some important points of sql server 2012 as given below.

1.The SQL Server 2012 uses 48 bit precision for spatial
2.In SQL server 2012 has unlimited concurrent connections
3.By default it supports 15,000 partitions
4.Available new string functions CONCATE and FORMAT
5.Available new conversion  functions are PARSE ,TRY_CONVERT,TRY_PARSE

It might help you the below links.

www.code-sample.com/2013/08/difference-between-sql-server-2008-and.html

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh231699(v=sql.110).aspx