As we've come to expect from new SQL Server releases, SQL Server 2012 has so many new features that it's impossible even to mention them all. Nearly everyone is well served, from the BI-hungry users of Reporting Services to the IT folks who oversee query performance and uptime. SQL Server 2012 brings improvements across the board, with only a few disappointing exceptions.

'Yet again, incompetence is saved by technology and shrill media reportage'

Network security provider, SonicWall, has announced two new solutions – the SuperMassive E10000 series and Continuous Data Protection (CDP) 6.0.

The first fully production-ready nonrelational, or NoSQL, database, called CouchDB, has been released, the corporate sponsor of the project, Couchio, announced on Wednesday.

With Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, Microsoft begins to fully realize its vision of SQL Server as an information platform and not "just" a database. Hence the main theme for this release - at least according to Microsoft - is self-service BI. The PowerPivot plug-ins for Excel 2010 and SharePoint 2010 are easily going to make the biggest splash of all the new features, not least because they're the most complete. But then, SQL Server 2008 R2 isn't strictly necessary for PowerPivot for Excel, which works with plenty of other data sources.

Australians will get a taste of Microsoft’s own cloud platform, Azure, in April.

The new version of the Groovy programming language aims to make life easier for programmers who work with Java and SQL, the language's developers note.

Routinely accused of bloating Windows and Office, Microsoft Corp. has acted more like a skinny teenage boy with enterprise apps like SQL Server: desperate to bulk up.