Recently I attended a Microsoft SQL academy presentation given by Bob Duffy where SQL Server 2008 R2 was previewed with screenshots as there is no technology preview available yet.

SQL 2008 R2 release is planned for general release sometime in the first half of 2010 and here are some interesting features that I took away from Bob’s talk;

1. Inclusion of an in-memory BI engine to speed up design and running of data analysis queries. This is a response to the acquisition by Oracle of TimesTen and the availability of BI Accelerator with SAP and of TM1 with IBM
2. Use of an Excel based client (Excel 14) for a rapid prototyping approach by the user towards data analysis with less emphasis on dimensional modelling. It is important to remember that this should not be regarded as a quick way to developing an OLTP cube
3. Improved data presentation capability including a dashboard capability and access to Dundas components and Virtual Earth
4. Integration with Sharepoint to ensure the centralised control of models, analyses and data used in the BI analysis
5. Capability of SQL Server 2008 R2 to manage 100+ TB range of data warehouses with massively parallel processing power capability. This follows from Microsoft’s acquisition of DATAllegro in July 2008
6. Availability of reference architectures with detailed hardware platform and configuration details to assist in deciding on the appropriate hardware platform for a data warehouse solution
7. Ability to incorporate a hub and spoke architecture to integrate existing data marts with the new SQL Server 2008 R2 based warehousing solutions
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