David J. DeWitt, technical fellow at Microsoft Corp. and director of the Jim Gray Systems Lab at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, discusses the next generation of business intelligence and the latest innovations from the Jim Gray Systems Lab at the PASS Community Summit 2009, Nov. 5, 2009.

(Left to right) Ron Van Zanten, directing officer of BI at PREMIER Bankcard, discusses his purchase of SQL Server 2008 with Tom Casey, general manager, SQL Server Business Intelligence at Microsoft Corp., at the PASS 2009 Community Summit, Nov. 4, 2009.

Tom Casey, general manager, SQL Server Business Intelligence at Microsoft Corp., discusses Microsoft’s BI vision at the PASS 2009 Community Summit, Nov. 4, 2009.

(Left to right) Amir Netz, distinguished engineer and architect of Microsoft Business Intelligence at Microsoft Corp., demonstrates PowerPivot functions onstage with Tom Casey, general manager, SQL Server Business Intelligence at Microsoft Corp., at the PASS 2009 Community Summit, Nov. 4, 2009.

Wayne Snyder, PASS president, discusses high attendance of nearly 3,000 at this year’s PASS Summit. Seattle, Nov. 3, 2009.

Bob Muglia, president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft Corp., discusses industry-leading benchmark results with SQL Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 R2, at PASS Summit 2009. Seattle, Nov. 3, 2009.

Bob Muglia, president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft Corp., demonstrates SQL Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 R2 using an IBM server rack onstage at PASS Summit 2009. Seattle, Nov. 3, 2009.

Ted Kummert, senior vice president, Business Platform Division at Microsoft Corp., provides an overview of Microsoft news and a glimpse at the road ahead at PASS Summit 2009. Seattle, Nov. 3, 2009.

Report Builder 3.0 enables end users to rapidly build their own reports through "Grab and Go" reporting. Users can re-use report parts built by other business users to assemble their new reports in seconds.

The SQL Server 2008 R2 August community technology preview includes application and multi-server management capabilities, which help database administrators proactively manage database environments at scale through centralized visibility into resource utilization and help streamline consolidation and upgrades across the application life cycle.

With SQL Server Master Data Services, IT organizations can centrally manage critical data assets companywide and across diverse systems, enable more people to securely manage master data directly, and ensure the integrity of information over time.

SQL Server StreamInsight analyzes stream of event data and helps respond to activity patterns in these event streams. The Event Flow Debugger is a stand-alone tool in the Microsoft StreamInsight platform that provides event-flow debugging and analysis.

In SQL Server 2008, Microsoft offers increased spatial capabilities allowing customers and partners to consume, use and extend location-based data through spatial-enabled applications and build location-aware applications.

Resource Governor allows organizations to define resource limits and priorities for different workloads, which enables concurrent workloads to provide consistent performance to end users.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 offers security feature enhancements that help provide effective management of security feature configuration, strong authentication and access control, powerful encryption and key management capabilities, and enhanced auditing.

SQL Server 2008 allows users to easily build ad-hoc and author reports with any structure through Report Designer.

The Declarative Management Framework is a policy-based system for managing one or more instances of SQL Server 2008.

The Azure Services Platform provides a wide range of Internet services that can be consumed from both on-premises environments and the Internet.

Microsoft’s data platform vision gives organizations access to their data, anywhere, anytime.