A conceptual overview of the data-warehousing capabilities of the latest incarnation of Microsoft SQL Server. Includes topics like UDM, SSIS, Analysis Services, new important features like specialized datatapes, data compression...

A brief discussion of the future directions in SQL Server warehousing technologies (project "Madison") will be presented in order to give a better understanding of the road ahead. Finally, the presentation will discuss some common best practices in building scalable, large volume data warehouses.