Today we have a guest editorial from Brad McGehee, director of education for Red Gate software.

Ever since the Community Technology Preview (CTP) of SQL Server 2008 R2 became widely available for download on August 12, I haven’t seen much discussion of this new version in the SQL Server media, websites, or blogs. Yes, there has been some coverage, but not to the level I would have expected for such a major announcement about SQL Server.

SQL Server 2008 R2 includes many new enhancements, a few of which include:

·         Enhanced set up.

·         Enhanced multi-server management.

·         The introduction of “application management”.

·         Support of up to 512 CPU cores.

·         Unicode compression of data stored in nchar(n) and nvarchar(n) columns.

·         Significant enhancements in Analysis Services.

·         Significant enhancements in Reporting Services.

So why do you think SQL Server 2008 R2 has not been talked about much? Is it because the CTP is still so new that most people haven’t had the opportunity to look at it? Maybe it is because many of you haven’t even moved to SQL Server 2008 yet, and taking the time to check out the new enhanced version of SQL Server 2008 is the last thing you have time for? Or perhaps the new features and enhancements in SQL Server 2008 R2 are either underwhelming, or perhaps they don’t meet your particular needs?

Tell us what you think. If you have downloaded, installed, and played around with the CTP of SQL Server 2008 R2, please give us your first impressions.