In some recent presentations that I have attended (Gert Drapers in Munich, and Joe Yong in Texas), there was a blurb about 64-bit support in SQL Server 2005.  Since I recently had a client that was experiencing memory pressure, I was interested in learning more about 64-bit to see what benefits abound.

One immediate beneift mentioned by both of these speakers was that you could run the 32-bit edition in a WOW (Windows on Windows) session.  Big Deal?  Well, the big deal is that since the OS is 64-bit, it requires ZERO memory in the WOW session.  This means that the entire 4GB of addressable space in the 32-bit environs is available to the user mode - none needed for the kernel.  This may not solve all of the problems in the world, but it might be a good “bridge” to 64-bit processing.