Microsoft Database Products Revealed At PASS Conference
Microsoft unveiled the next version of SQL Server and a Warehouse appliance at the PASS Summit conference
It has 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. But that is just one of several announcements to come out of the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) Summit 2010 conference in Seattle this week.
Warehousing Appliance Released With HP
In addition to unveiling Denali, Microsoft also announced the release of SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse and the new Critical Advantage Programme, which offers an end-to-end suite of pre-tested hardware and software configurations, services and support.
“SQL Server, codenamed Denali will help empower organisations to be more agile in today’s competitive market,” the SQL Server Team touted in 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 visualisation and presentation tool codenamed Crescent, and a number of enhancements around business intelligence.
The new Parallel Data Warehouse edition 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 in partnership with Hewlett-Packard and will make it available through other hardware 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 optimised 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 Community Technology Preview 1 (CTP) for Denali can be downloaded here.
