QuickTip - Are you ready for SQL Server 2008 R2?

Are you ready for SQL Server 2008 R2? The next generation of data management and business intelligence data platform released so far from Microsoft. It introduces a number of new features and enhancements including new editions, enhanced business intelligence, enterprise-level scalability for mission-critical operations, and a better integration with Microsoft Office 2010.

SQL Server 2008 R2 includes two new editions, Datacenter and Parallel Data Warehouse. The new editions are designed to meet the needs of large-scale data centers and data warehouses. SQL Server 2008 R2 Datacenter is a high-performing data platform that achieves the highest levels of scalability for large application workloads, virtualization/consolidation, and management for organizations database infrastructure. The Parallel Data Warehouse is designed to deliver performance at low cost through Massively Parallel Processing architecture to scale data warehouse to tens and hundreds of terabytes of data. It supports industry standard data warehousing hub and spoke architecture and parallel database copy.

Also new is the introduction of Master Data Services (MDS), which provides the consolidation of data from various sources. For instance, you might have two data sources with different product lists. Master Data Services allows you to create an accurate list of products from those two systems. The data can then be transferred into a reporting database. However the main functionality of the Master Data Services is to synchronize data across multiple sources so that each has the same version of the data.

Microsoft's StreamInsight is another new technology for handling continuously streaming data. This technology is designed to help organizations support streaming data from various sources. The ability to monitor, analyze and act on the data in motion provides significant opportunity to make more informed business decisions in near real-time.

SQL Server 2008 R2 expanded reporting and analytics through self-service business intelligence. It includes SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel 2010 and SharePoint 2010. PowerPivot for Excel gives analysts a way to integrate large volumes of data outside of a corporate data warehouse, whether they are creating reports to support decision making or prototyping solutions that will eventually be part of a larger BI implementation. To provide multiple users with centralized access to reports developed with PowerPivot for Excel, information technology staff can implement PowerPivot for SharePoint. This server-side PowerPivot product provides the necessary infrastructure to manage, secure, refresh, and monitor these PowerPivot reports efficiently.

In summary, SQL Server 2008 R2 built on SQL Server 2008 and introduces new premium editions to deliver higher mission-critical scale, more efficient IT to help enable organizations to cost effectively scale their mission-critical environment. And with PowerPivot you can expand reporting and analytics through self-service business intelligence to give end-users advanced data analysis with a familiar user interface and take advantage of all the standard features in SharePoint.