Community Technology Preview of Microsoft SQL 2008 R2 is available for download

The latest Community Technology Preview (CTP) for SQL Server 2008 R2 available to the general public today. The new capabilities in the latest CTP include support for Windows Server 2008 R2 – including Hyper-V with Live Migration – as well as enhanced data compression with support for Unicode UCS-2. Also included are new visualization features and a Report Part Gallery to Report Builder 3.0.



SQL Server 2008 R2 includes enhancements designed to help administrators centrally monitor and manage multiple database applications, instances or servers. In addition, it has enabled high-scale complex event-stream processing through SQL Server StreamInsight, and expanded business intelligence capabilities with SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel.



At the PASS Summit last week in Seattle, Microsoft announced two new premium editions – SQL Server 2008 R2 Datacenter and SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse – these will be available once SQL Server 2008 R2 is released. SQL Server 2008 R2 is on track for general availability in the first half of 2010.



The Community Technology Preview of Microsoft SQL 2008 R2 is available for download here: