Does anyone know what Microsoft's new release date is for SQL Server 2010? I could swear that I read a few months ago that it'd be in May of 2010, but that didn't happen.

Hi, Cecil,

As William said, 2008R2 was just released to manufacturing in the last month. It's available on MSDN.

The "R2" makes some think it's a glorified service pack (and many areas were left untouched), but there are several new pieces of important functionality (SSRS got some more love, there is integration with PowerPivot, and there is greater scalability for larger data wareouses).

The following link has three major sections that cover the three major areas of new features: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/r2.aspx



Also...later this year, they're releasing 2008R2 Parallel Data Warehouse: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/parallel-data-warehouse.aspx

This is the result of MIcrosoft buying DATAllegro technology in 2008. This is more of an appliance (combo hardware and software) that will scale databases out to petabytes (scary thought).