New SQL Server 2008 R2 CTP set for November

By SearchSQLServer.com Staff 03 Nov 2009 | SearchSQLServer.com

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SQL Server 2008 R2 remains on track for general availability early next year, along with two new editions of Microsoft's next-generation database management system.

During Tuesday's keynote at PASS Community Summit 2009, Ted Kummert, Microsoft senior vice president of the Business Platform Division, said that the community technical preview (CTP) for SQL Server 2008 R2 will be available for download in November. In an interview via twitter, he described the upcoming release as "basically feature-complete."

More SQL Server news bites from PASS - Microsoft's StreamInsight technology will ship with SQL Server 2008 R2. - The CTP for SQL Azure Database is currently free and feature-complete. Microsoft will begin billing for Azure in January. - Microsoft has partnered with IBM to create new configurations for SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse version 2.0, along with updated configurations for Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Bull.

"Microsoft's vision is to deliver an information platform enabling all businesses to gain strategic value from information," Kummert said during his keynote. "Companies are looking to compete and grow by reducing costs and identifying the highest value opportunities for their business. We're moving forward rapidly to address these challenges with new capabilities in manageability, business intelligence, data warehousing and the first relational database cloud offering in SQL Azure."

The R2 release will bring with it several enhancements geared toward business intelligence, including PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint and the new Master Data Services feature.

The company will also release two new editions of its next-generation database platform – SQL Server 2008 R2 Datacenter and SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse. The former is designed to increase scalability for data centers running Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition.

The Data Warehouse edition of R2, formerly codenamed Madison, is a scale-out data warehousing solution that is derived from Microsoft's acquisition of DATAllegro last year. Herain Oberoi, group product manager with the SQL Server business group at Microsoft, said that the goal is to allow customers to create data warehouses in a higher terabyte range while maintaining a low total cost of ownership (TCO).

While data warehouses for SQL Server 2008 currently scale out to 10 TB, the new offering is designed to increase that number into the hundreds of TB range.

General availability for the CTP is set for November 11. SQL Server 2008 R2 is expected to be released to manufacturing at some point during the first half of 2010.

Tags: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2,  SQL Server Migration Strategies and Planning,  VIEW ALL TAGS

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