Microsoft announced the RTM of SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse, which will be available as an appliance in December from Hewlett Packard. They did a live demo on stage, running an 800 billion row query, using 40 nodes, that came back in 19 seconds. They also announced and demonstrated Project Atlanta, which lets you proactively monitor your on-premises servers and store the results in Windows Azure. This will help you resolve and prevent many common issues.

Next, they showed off the CTP of SQL Azure Reporting, which lets you use SQL Azure data sources to render RS reports in SQL Azure. Microsoft also announced the Windows Azure Marketplace (aka Dallas). Windows Azure Marketplace uses the oData protocol, on top of the REST protocol.

Finally, Ted Kummert announced the availability of CTP1 of Denali (the next major version of SQL Server), which will be handed out to SQLPASS attendees after the keynote address tomorrow.  There will be huge improvements in SSIS in Denali. Project Crescent, a new web-based reporting tool was announced and demonstrated by Amir Netz. Amir is a great presenter with a lot of energy!