The T-SQL Cookbook: What's Cool in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 and New in SQL Server Code-Named "Denali"

SQL Server 2008 R2 mostly a BI release. No many T-SQL changes, but did address the following:
Date, Time, DateTime2, Grouping Sets, Merge, table valued parameters, geometry & geography

SQL Server code named - "Denali":
Simplified paging:
Select *
From Table
Order by offset
Fetch next 10 rows only

Supports UTF-16 and _SC collations (Supplemental Characters)

Sequence Generators - see the picture for the syntax.


Improved Error handling by adding "Throw"
Better Dynamic SQL - support for defining what is returned in result sets.

Additional Scalar Functions:
Try_Convert()
Format()
Parse()
Try_Parse()
IIF()
Choose()
Concat()
First()
Last()
EOMonth()
DateFromParts()
DateTime2FromParts()
DateTimeFromParts()

Metadata discovery tools - will need to research where applicable to our needs.

This was great session, but most of these improvements will not be available until the version of SQL Server after R2 which could be two to three years from now! Good stuff though!

Location:TechEd 2011