Next SQL Server in May 2010

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SQL Server 2008 R2 will go on sale May 1, 2010, in volume licensing, and media will be available in May. The version delivers important analytics and reporting enhancements as well as scalability and management improvements for the database engine. Beyond R2, Microsoft plans a new appliance platform for large data warehouses and a SQL Server version that delivers advanced database modeling tools.

The most important improvements in SQL Server 2008 R2 include the following:

• PowerPivot. PowerPivot is a set of tools that enables Excel 2010 users to analyze large data sets from disparate sources, create reports and charts, and publish the results to other users via SQL Server 2008 R2 Analysis Services and SharePoint Server 2010. Microsoft hopes that the technology will provide a faster, simpler front end to Analysis Services, particularly for users who already use the PivotTable and PivotChart analytics features in Excel.
• Master Data Services. SQL Server 2008 R2 will introduce a new master data management component (formerly code-named Bulldog) based on technology acquired with Stratature in June 2007. Master data management technology helps synchronize widely used data sets such as customer lists, product catalogs, and financial reporting hierarchies across multiple systems, making the data more consistent across applications and business units. By standardizing data sets, master data management can make financial reporting and analysis results more consistent across an organization.
• StreamInsight is a complex event processing system, similar to technology from vendors such as Aleri/Coral8, IBM, Progress Software, and Tibco. Complex event processing systems are used for analysis and monitoring tasks that require quick response times, such as behavioral targeting of Web ads and algorithmic securities trading.
• Database engine improvements. The SQL Server 2008 R2 database engine will exploit up to 256 processor cores on Windows Server 2008 R2, up from 64 on SQL Server 2008, enabling it to take advantage of the latest servers for data warehousing or other processor-intensive data management tasks. SQL Server 2008 R2 will also have improved tools for packaging, deploying, and monitoring server-side code, schema, and security settings, which could particularly benefit organizations that deploy multiple instances of the same database code for scale, redundancy, or to support multiple hosting customers.

Some features of SQL Server 2008 will also be eliminated in the R2 release. In particular, SQL Server 2008 R2 will ship without Data Transformation Services (DTS), a bulk data transfer and cleansing tool that was replaced by Integration Services in SQL Server 2005 and deprecated (marked for future removal) in SQL Server 2008. However, SQL Server 2008 R2 will support Integration Services-DTS coexistence: organizations will be able to install DTS from an earlier version of SQL Server on the same server as Integration Services, and Integration Services processes will be able to incorporate existing DTS packages when DTS has been installed.

After SQL Server 2008 R2, Microsoft plans a new platform to tackle large-scale data warehouses, and a major update to the core SQL Server product.

• Parallel Data Warehouse (formerly code-named Project Madison) is a data warehouse appliance platform. Although it will be called SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse, it is actually based on SQL Server 2008 and technology acquired with Datallegro in July 2008. Data warehouses are special-purpose databases designed and organized to store large volumes of historical data to aid decision making in organizations. The Parallel Data Warehouse platform is intended to support SQL Server data warehouses with sizes into the hundreds of terabytes that scale out over large numbers of servers, similar to offerings from other vendors such as Teradata. The platform will be sold on preintegrated server and storage configurations from partners to include Bull, Dell, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM. (Several of these vendors already offer Fast Track Data Warehouse configurations on the current version of SQL Server, for data warehouses of up to 32TB.) Offerings based on the platform will probably appear in 2010.
• SQL Server 2011 (not officially named), the next major version after SQL Server 2008 R2, will probably be the first to incorporate the technologies acquired with Zoomix in July 2008, which enable efficient matching of reference data (such as personal and company names) to aid data consistency checking and duplicate removal. This release will probably include more core database engine improvements and deliver SQL Server Modeling tools (formerly code-named Oslo) to help developers design database applications and schemas. Microsoft hopes to ship this version within 36 months of SQL Server 2008's Aug. 2008 release, most likely in 2011.

Resources

The Nov. 2009 SQL Server 2008 R2 technical preview is at www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/R2Downloads.aspx.

SQL Server announcements often appear on Microsoft's Data Platform Insider blog at blogs.technet.com/dataplatforminsider/default.aspx.