An opportunity to speak with Sabrena McBride, Senior Product Manager for SQL Server, provided a lot of insight into what's new in R2. Some of the highlights: Among other things, SQL Server 2008 R2 is ...

SQL Server 2008 R2, which ships this month, allows end users to tap into the powerful business intelligence features of SQL Server via tight integration with popular Microsoft applications like Excel.

Historically, if you wanted to report against all of the business operations of your company, it was a very expensive ordeal. At ClearVoice, we needed to be able to collect data across many platforms, ...

While SQL Server 2008 was little more than a service-pack level upgrade, the 2012 version of Microsoft’s database has a boatload of new features and delivers solid performance improvements.

“The next frontier is all about uniting the power of the cloud with the power of data to gain insights that simply weren't possible even just a few years ago,” Kummert said. “Microsoft is committed to ...