Microsoft’s technology preview of Project “Madison,” Microsoft’s new massively scalable data warehousing solution, is now available to select customers and the feedback we’ve received from participating customers to date has been excellent. Ten customers...

The SQL Server 2008 R2 August Community Technology Preview (CTP) rollout continues today with the availability of the Microsoft SQL Server StreamInsight August CTP. We’re excited to announce that SQL Server StreamInsight is officially shipping as a component...

SQL Server 2008 R2 August CTP The wait is over – the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 August Community Technology Preview (CTP) is available for public download and testing today. Building on the momentum of SQL Server 2008, “R2” improves IT efficiency by...

Today we are excited to announce the availability of the first community technology preview (CTP) of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 for MSDN and TechNet subscribers, with the CTP generally available on Wednesday, August 12th. Building on the momentum of...

Those of you following the market news last week probably noticed that Oracle announced a 40 percent price increase on management options for 11g. We’ve seen a lot of Oracle ads highlighting its #1 status. Turns out, Oracle is #1 in high cost, too. For...

The next wave of information on the Windows Azure platform was revealed today at the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in New Orleans. Since many of you are following the roll-out of this highly anticipated cloud platform, we wanted to provide you with...

You are hearing it here first: Microsoft is updating the branding for SQL Services and SQL Data Services. Effective immediately, SQL Services will be called Microsoft SQL Azure, and SQL Data Services will be Microsoft SQL Azure Database. This name change...

Forrester Research has named Microsoft a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Database Management Systems, Q2 2009. (June 2009). Forrester writes that Microsoft is “The most aggressive DBMS vendor with a strong road map.” In this Wave, Forrester...

SQL Server support for Guest Failover Clustering in a virtualization environment is now available. Guest Failover Clustering is when you create a SQL Server failover cluster inside a virtual machine where the nodes are running as a virtual machine. ...

As we've talked about, in the second half of 2009 Microsoft will offer a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of SQL Server 2008 R2. Register here . Space is limited so make sure you sign up soon!

A new 12-page whitepaper has been published from Microsoft that explains some of the common myths and misunderstandings about competitive cluster databases that could affect your organization. It examines some of the main reasons why customers will want...

Hi Kirk Haselden here. I’m the product unit manager for Master Data Services. I’m responsible for the master data management strategy, team and product delivery at Microsoft. I manage the day to day aspects of the team, drive execution...

We are on track to release the first Technology Preview for Project “Madison” in H2 2009. A select group of customers will deploy a prototype MPP data warehouse on Madison. Download the first Project "Madison" data sheet . And, view the on demand webinar...

At TechEd 2009 in Los Angeles, Microsoft today announced new innovations from the SQL Server team. The next release, SQL Server 2008 R2 (formerly SQL Server ‘Kilimanjaro’), will include a new feature: Master Data Services (MDS). In addition to SQL Server...

TechEd 2009 is less than a week away and we are excited about another event packed with opportunities to learn, network, and share ideas. Pre-show activities are already underway, with Webcasts live and on demand on TechNet and MSDN. Make sure you catch...

Today BizTalk Server 2009 is available to MSDN customers. On May 1st it will be available to everyone in — Chinese simplified, Chinese traditional, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish — on May 1. We made substantial investments...

We'd like to announce the Common Criteria (CC) certification of SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition (32 & 64 bit). SQL Server 2008 completed an IT security evaluation at the Basic Assurance Level (EAL1+) and was certified by BSI (Bundesamt fur Sicherheit...

SQL Server 2008 has launched the new Migration Solution Center . This site provides customers with prescriptive guidance and a clear process for executing successful migrations or upsizing your existing databases to SQL Server. On this site, the freely...

Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2008 will be available today for customers. The Service pack is available via download here and is primarily a roll-up of cumulative updates 1 to 3, quick fix engineering updates and minor fixes made in response to requests...

Technorati Tags: ACM , David DeWitt , Gamma Parallel Database Congratulations to David DeWitt, Bob Gerber , and their colleagues at University of Wisconsin, including Jeff Naughton, our partner at UW in the Gray Systems Lab, for receiving the prestigious...

At the Professional Developer Conference 2008 Microsoft kicked off a major wave of innovation with the announcement of the Azure Services Platform. A key piece of that technology wave is SQL Data Services (SDS). Over the last 4 months, SDS early adopters...

Today we are excited to announce the availability of our Community Technology Preview (CTP) for Service Pack 1 of SQL Server 2008 . This scheduled servicing release addresses feedback received from many of you who have deployed SQL Server 2008 since our...

Today, February 23, 2009 Microsoft announced SQL Server® Fast Track Data Warehouse , a new set of Reference Architectures for SQL Server 2008 that enables customers to accelerate their Data Warehouse deployments and reduce cost.  In addition, customers...

  Unisys Corporation and their latest enterprise server, the ES7000 Model 7600R, set a new record for price/performance in the Transaction Processing Council’s (TPC) TPC-H benchmark test running on Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. In the...

Cumulative Update #2 for SQL Server 2005 SP3 and Cumulative Update #12 for SQL Server 2005 SP2 are now available for download. Cumulative Update #2 for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 Public KB Article Cumulative Update #12 for SQL Server 2005 Service...