Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Launched: What is it about?
World's largest software company Microsoft has recently launched its new offering, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 on April 21.
The company used the occasion to divulge little details about its yet-to-be launched SQL Azure cloud services and the Parallel Data Warehouse edition of SQL Server.
Microsoft had announced the plans to upgrade the SQL Server in October, 2008 and its technical preview was launched late last year. SQL Server R2 has some very interesting features, like the in-memory analysis capabilities and master data management.
It also possesses the ability to process complex event aimed at ISVs and developers. It has the PowerPivot add-ins, which will help the users to analyse up to millions of rows of data with the aid of "slicer" controls. Besides this, the new features also allows the users to publish these analyses, so that others can see it through SharePoint.
"It's self-service because companies can empower end users to do more analyses on their own in the familiar Microsoft Office environment. It's managed because IT professionals can easily make data available for reports and analysis while governing who has access to data and monitoring who is using which analyses," said Tom Casey, Microsoft's general manager of business intelligence.
However, the PowerPivot add-ins has one major drawback, they only work with Excel 2010 and SharePoint 2010. These features are currently available in community technical preview releases but Microsoft would formally launch these features only next month.
Critics maintained that PowerPivot for Excel is not a very revolutionary feature, saying it is nothing more than an in-memory upgrade of the pivot-table capabilities, which is already present in the spreadsheet tool. "There's no doubt PowerPivot is useful and will be successful, but it's not a revolution in BI," said Anthony Deighton, senior vice president of products at QlikTech, a Microsoft rival.
