Although SQL 2008 R2 is primarily a BI focused release there's still new features to get excited about for traditional DBA's and Developers. In this session we will cover three new enhancements to the core Database Engine.

Application and Multi-Server Management introduces new capabilities for managing, monitoring and exploiting your SQL Server Infrastructure through the new SQL Server Control Point and enhancements to SSMS and Policy Based Management and Data-tier application packages.

SQL Connection Plans allow you to logically refer to a specific instance of SQL Server in connection strings making migration of database applications across your SQL Server infrastructure much easier by having one central point to change connection strings regardless of whether they are referenced by client applications, Integration Services and Reporting services

Unicode compression enhances the native data compression capabilities introduced in SQL 2008 for Unicode data using SCSU (Simple Compression Scheme for Unicode Data), a standard compression scheme for Unicode data.