At this week's PASS Summit conference, Microsoft has unveiled a CTP for the next version of SQL Server, a new data warehouse appliance and more.
It's been a busy week for Microsoft's SQL Server Team.
Microsoft released the first community technology preview (CTP) for
the next-generation version of SQL Server,
codenamed Denali, Nov. 9. But that is just one of
several announcements to come out of the PASS Summit 2010
conference in Seattle this week. In addition to unveiling Denali,
Microsoft also announced the release of SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel
Data Warehouse and the new Critical Advantage Program, which offers an
end-to-end suite of pretested hardware and software configurations,
services and support.
"SQL Server code-named Denali will help empower organizations to
be more agile in today's competitive market," the SQL Server Team
touted on its blog.
"Customers will be able to efficiently deliver mission-critical
solutions through a highly scalable and available platform.
Industry-leading tools will help developers quickly build innovative
applications while data integration and management tools help deliver
credible data reliably to the right users and new user experiences
expand the reach of BI to enable meaningful insights."
Under the hood of Denali, SQL Server users can expect to find a
number of new features, including new column-store database technology
meant to enhance query performance and a new high-availability feature
called SQL Server AlwaysOn, according to Microsoft. Other enhancements
include a Web-based, data visualization and presentation tool codenamed
Crescent, and a number of enhancements around business intelligence.
As for
SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse,
the product is pretuned and preconfigured to enable distributed query
processing in the name of better performance. Microsoft said it is
currently making the appliance offering available to customers with
choice in hardware in partnership with Hewlett-Packard, and will
make it available through other partnerships in the future.
"Enterprises today are facing challenges of increasing volumes of
data from which they need to gain business insight rapidly," said
Ted Kummert, senior vice president of Microsoft's Business
Platform Division, in a statement. "SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel
Data Warehouse provides high-scale enterprise capabilities delivered as
an appliance with choice and deployment simplicity."
Paul Miller, vice president of Solutions and Strategic Alliances for
Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking at HP, said the HP
Enterprise Data Warehouse Appliance is optimized for SQL Server 2008 R2
Parallel Data Warehouse and improves data access with massive
scalability and faster query times.
"Customers need a single view and access point to information across
the enterprise without performance impact," Miller said in a statement.
The CTP for
Denali can be downloaded here.
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