Microsoft scheduled a conference call this morning, and I jumped on since I was laid up in bed with a pinched nerve in my neck. What else did I have to do?

Actually I had work to do, but I was in pain much of the night and this morning, so I listened in on the call on the, iPhone, using the semi-multitasking capability to tweet while it was on speaker.

I had suspected this was the announcement, and it was true. They announced the RTM of SQL Server 2008 R2, which made sense since the launch was supposed to happen with the PASS Europe Summit this week. I had suspected delays after hearing the date announced as May 21 at UK Tech Days, but apparently that wasn’t the case.

I saw a blog on ZDNet that mentioned they actually finished last week, but held off until this week to make the announcement.

You can read the press release (boring) or check out the SQL site at Microsoft (more interesting) for more information. One neat announcement that I liked was the growth in the size of Express databases to 10GB. Since most dbs are apparently under 2GB, this is great news for many companies that can use this version for small, departmental apps.