At the PASS Summit 2009 last week, Ted Kummert announced the soon-to-be-delivered November SQL Server 2008 R2 Community Technology Preview. We’re happy to announce that it is available today for MSDN and TechNet subscribers and it will be available to the general public on November 11th.  Go to http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/R2.aspx to get more information and to download!

The November CTP is “feature complete” so we encourage you to try out the new features in this CTP release which include: Report Builder 3.0

  • Support for Windows Server 2008 R2, including Hyper-V with Live Migration
  • Enhanced data compression with support for Unicode UCS-2
  • PowerPivot for Microsoft® Excel and Microsoft SharePoint Server *
  • Report Builder 3.0 with Report Part Gallery and new visualizations (sparklines, databars)
  • Master Data Services (MDS)

Enhancements to the capabilities delivered in the August CTP:

Application and Multi-Server Management

  • A Control Point Explorer in SQL Server Management Studio for central multi-instance and application utilization management.
  • Built-in wizards to help you quickly set up and enroll instances and Data-Tier Application components into central management.
  • Dashboard viewpoints for quick insight into application and instance utilization.
  • StreamInsight core technology engine for Complex Event Processing.

Your feedback is important!  Once you’ve had an opportunity to check out the release, click here to provide feedback.

*The PowerPivot downloads for Excel and SharePoint will be available soon.  Keep checking back here for an update.