Server and Tools Business News Bytes blog : SQL Server

PowerPivot downloads for Excel and SharePoint now available

grantkd — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:49:00 GMT

Last week, we announced the availability of the SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP on the Data Platform Insider blog. Today we are excited to share that the SQL Server 2008 R2 PowerPivot downloads for Microsoft Excel 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 are now available! To download PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint, please go here:

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/R2Downloads.aspx

PowerPivot for Excel delivers unmatched computational power directly within the application they know and love—Excel. Leveraging familiar Excel features, users can transform enormous quantities of data from virtually any source with incredible speed into meaningful information. Combined with PowerPivot for SharePoint, users can also securely share their findings seamlessly in the browser through Excel Services. For more information, please visit the Data Platform Insider Blog here.

For additional resources, visit www.powerpivot.com and please let us know what you think: connect with the SQL Server 2008 R2 Development Team and provide feedback on the November CTP.

SQL Server August CTPs Roll Out Continues – Download SQL Azure Database, SQL Server StreamInsight

grantkd — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 21:47:00 GMT

We are excited to announce today that Microsoft has released the next wave of August community technology previews (CTPs), including SQL Azure Database, SQL Server Driver for PHP 1.1 and SQL Server StreamInsight August CTP for TechNet and MSDN subscribers. The CTPs will be available on August 19^th for public trial.

SQL Server StreamInsight – Enterprise-class scalability

With increasing volume and speed of data, customers are looking for ways to better utilize and act on information in real-time. SQL Server StreamInsight’s ability to derive insights from data streams and act in near real time provides significant business benefits. The key ingredients in SQL Server StreamInsight include low latency, high throughput integration with proven Microsoft development tools such as LINQ, Visual Studio, and the .NET Framework, which provide flexibility for customers and partner to customize the platform to meet their industry and business specific needs. For more information please visit the Data Platform Insider blog at http://blogs.technet.com/dataplatforminsider/default.aspx .

SQL Azure Database –Data anytime, anywhere

Organizations are seeing an explosion of data and data-driven Web 2.0 applications, as well as the need to extend existing applications to the cloud. With SQL Azure, a cloud-based relational database service, Web 2.0, ASP.NET and PHP developers use familiar tools and data models to develop on a pay-as-you-grow, secure, scalable and highly available database service with business continuity and minimal infrastructure cost. Additionally, the SQL Server Driver for PHP provides new capabilities for building PHP application including support for SQL Azure. For more information please visit the SQL Azure Team blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/ssds/.

Download SQL Server 2008 R2 August CTP Today

grantkd — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:00:00 GMT

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 SQL Server 2008, “R2” improves IT efficiency by reducing the time and cost of developing and managing applications; empowers end users to make better decisions through Self Service Business Intelligence and enables organizations to scale with confidence by providing high level s of reliability, security and scalability for business critical applications.

This public preview provides the opportunity to experience early, pre-release feature capabilities including:

· Application and Multi-server Management

· SMP scale up with support for up to 256 logical processors

· Report Builder 3.0 with support for geospatial visualization

We encourage everyone to download the bits and start exploring the new features and provide feedback. Sign up and get started.

SQL Server 2008 R2 August CTP is only the first in a string of CTPs launching this month. In the coming weeks we’ll also launch CTPs for low latency complex event processing now called StreamInsight, the first CTP for SQL Azure Database, a limited preview of Project “Gemini” Excel and SharePoint add-ins and a private technology preview of Project Madison, Microsoft’s massively scalable data warehousing solution, with a select group of customers. Stay tuned to this page, where we’ll be announcing new CTPs as they become available. We’re very excited about the progress toward the big launch of SQL Server 2008 R2 next year and are looking forward to your feedback to help us get there!

Other Resources:

o Download:

· SQL Server 2008 R2 CTP2

o Learn More:

· SQL Server 2008 R2 Multi Server Management

· Project Madison

· Project “Gemini”

o Let us know what you think:

· SQL Server Connect site

· Contact the Server developer team

Sign-up to be in the R2 Customer Evidence program, e-mail: SQLR2EV@microsoft.com

SQL Server 2008 SP1 Available Today

mdingle — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:02:00 GMT

Today, Microsoft made available the SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 via free download to current SQL Server 2008 customers. Microsoft recommends that customers currently running SQL Server 2008 should download SP1 via the SQL Server 2008 Web site to take advantage of these improvements.

With SQL Server SP1, Microsoft has made investments to ease deployment and help make the management of service packs more efficient. SP1 is primarily a roll-up of previous cumulative updates and there are no new features, however key improvements include increased supportability and stability as well as Slipstream, Service Pack Uninstall and Report Builder 2.0 click-once deployment.

o Slipstream allows administrators to install SQL Server 2008 and Service Pack 1 in a single instance. This decreases the total time for an installation, including a fewer number of reboots thereby increasing productivity and deployment availability.

o Service Pack Uninstall allows administrators to uninstall the service pack separately from the database release. This feature also improves DBA productivity, reduces the cost of deployment and improves overall supportability

o Report Builder 2.0 Click Once improves the existing SQL Server end-user report authoring application by easing deployment to business users

With over 3 million downloads of SQL Server 2008 since the RTM in August, our customers continue to view SQL Server 2008 as a smart IT investment.

To download the SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1, please click here.

For more information on SQL Server 2008, please click here.

SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse makes data warehousing deployments faster, easier, and more affordable.

grantkd — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Microsoft today announced the availability of SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse. Partners and customers using SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse benefit from the power of SQL Server 2008 combined with a variety of hardware configurations from partners Bull, Dell, and HP, making it fast, easy, and affordable to create an enterprise-class data warehouse.

Additionally, Microsoft’s systems integration partners are offering industry-specific solution templates for data warehousing projects as part of the SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse solution. SIs find that Microsoft’s Business Intelligence technologies are extremely attractive to their customers due to their market leading capabilities, overall value and price/performance. With increasing adoption of SQL Server 2008 in companies across all industries, SIs are offering their customers guidance on the best ways to maximize their SQL Server 2008 investment by extending its scalability and accelerating data warehousing initiatives.

Organizations that depend on information generated for use in business intelligence applications are faced with the prospect of scaling their data warehouses into the hundreds of terabytes or more. Though this has traditionally been very expensive, Microsoft’s vision is to make massive scalability accessible and affordable to organizations of any size. SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse helps SQL Server 2008 customers rapidly develop and deploy data warehouses that scale up to 32 terabytes, making this the ideal solution for enterprises looking for increased flexibility and performance, much higher scalability, and technical guidance applied through best practices for data warehousing.

For more information about SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse see http://www.microsoft.com/fasttrack, and for more information about SQL Server 2008 see http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/default.aspx.

Microsoft Announces Premier Mission-Critical Support

grantkd — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:20:00 GMT

Today, Microsoft Services announced the global availability of Premier Mission Critical, a new add-on for Premier Support customers that delivers the highest level of responsiveness, service availability and support for Windows Server and SQL Server components of mission-critical solutions.

Through Premier Mission Critical, Microsoft partners with customers to expedite relief, recover application availability and provide reassurance backed by a designated support team familiar with each customer’s environment and with response time guarantees backed by financial credits. Key features include:

· Guaranteed response times within 30 minutes for high-severity system-down situations with SLAs backed by financial credits;

· Round-the-clock support through a dedicated phone line to a select team of experienced Microsoft support engineers familiar with the solution configuration and deployment environment;

· Prioritized access to product development teams to include end-to-end incident management and ensure the fastest possible root cause identification. Support works with product teams to provide critical, on-demand patch production in severe situations.

Please view the press release for additional information.

SQL Server 2008 Feature Pack Released

grantkd — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:41:00 GMT

A collection of 26 free stand-alone tools, components and frameworks has been released. This collection is designed to enhance using and developing for SQL Server 2008 as well as other versions of SQL Server. Some of the more notable new enhancements for SQL Server 2008 include:

· Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Report Builder 2.0, which provides an intuitive report authoring environment for business and power users with a Microsoft Office look and feel. Report Builder 2.0 support the full capabilities of Report Definition Language (RDL) including flexible data layout, data visualizations, and richly formatted text features of SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services. The download provides a stand-alone installer for Report Builder 2.0.

· Microsoft Connector 1.0 for SAP BI, a set of managed components for transferring data to or from an SAP NetWeaver BI version 7.0 system. The component is designed to be used with the Enterprise and Developer editions of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services. To install the component, run the platform-specific installer for x86, x64, or Itanium computers respectively. For more information see the Readme and the installation topic in the Help file.

Click here to download SQL Server 2008 Feature Pack