Over the last few months Microsoft has been having many different launch events worldwide for their 2008 products: Visual Studio 2008, Windows 2008, and SQL Server 2008. I had the opportunity to attend one of these launch events. Being a SQL Server DBA I attended the Data track of their rollout. In this track they discuss all the new features that are being incorporated into SQL Server 2008. What this presentation missed was discussion related to the different editions available with SQL Server 2008, and which features where available by edition. To me it seems like a lot of the cool new features all seem to be implemented in the Enterprise edition. But there are still a number of exciting new features in the other editions as well. Here are some links you can use to compare the features by edition.
Compare the Enterprise and Standard Edition:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/d/f/2df66c0c-fff2-4f2e-b739-bf4581cee533/SQLServer%202008CompareEnterpriseStandard.pdf
Comparing Compact and Express edition:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/8/8/e8859616-e95d-41fe-9f81-ff88388d772b/SQLServer%202008CompareComapctExpress.pdf