Installing Denali CTP3

With the Denali CTP 3 out there isn’t a moment to waste – there’s new features to try out !! I ran the download over the weekend – it came in at about 2.3GB. There seems to be a download manager as part of the process. When you run the .EXE, it will extract all the files into the usual format we know from previous SQL installations. The installation program is the familiar one that we have had since SQL Server 2005.

The familiar installation screen

The process is similar as well, you choose the “Evaluation” Edition and off you go. All is normal until you come to the “Feature Selection” screen, where SQL Enthusiasts will suddenly become quite excited. Here there are some goodies that we haven’t seen before.

Lots of new stuff to play with !

There are also 2 new services that will be installed with Denali, for the Distributed Replay feature. Apparently this feature allows you to perform analysis and testing of your SQL apps before upgrading – sounds good and I’ll blog about it once I’ve played with it.

If you’ve never seen Denali before , the first surprise that might wake you a bit is the Analysis Services Configuration Screen. There’s a new option called “Tabular Mode” , and it is for when you want to deploy BISM models to the Analysis Server. You can only choose one, so choose wisely ….

Choose wisely ...

Funny thing, I didn’t even have to reboot to start using it ( see Linux geeks ? ). The first thing that you’ll notice is that Management Studio is a bit … blue.

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Of course , you now get a version of Visual Studio 2010 with Denali. Its the new BIDS. Right , off to play with the new stuff. The first thing I want to tackle is “Column Based Storage”…..

Denali CTP 3 is out

Good news this morning ! CTP 3 is out for us to play with. From a Reporting Services perspective it looks like the big feature is the new Self Service Alerts. I’ll blog about that once I’ve played with it. Of course there’s also something called Crescent. I’ve been playing with that in CTP 2 ( but wasn’t allowed to blog about it ). I’m eager to see whats new here. But thats is for Reporting Services.

In terms of the SQL engine this is a huge release and from my side the main feature I want to play with is the new Colum Based Storage option. I’ll share my experiences with that as well. In the meantime you can start your downloads at this link.

https://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/pd/SQLDCTP3CTA/enus/