We've contacted Microsoft on this matter, but in the mean time the Virtual Earth guys share what's shareable (below). Interestingly, they note it was announced today; it was announced yesterday, according to our sources and the press release. There are Community Preview and early alpha builds being tested outside of Microsoft right now, but if you aren't testing there is limited information that has been made public. Here are a few bullets that are OK to share at this point - Spatial will be supported in the next release of SQL Server (code named Katmai) as system data types Katmai is scheduled to ship in 2008 and will most likely be called SQL Server 2008 Katmai spatial will support two models: a “Flat Earth†planar data type and a “Round Earth†geodetic data type The Flat Earth data type (GEOMETRY) will support the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Simple Features for SQL Specification with support for approximately 70 spatial methods/functions There will be spatial indexes for both planar and geodetic data types.