This chapter highlights the new enhancements to availability and programmability features in SQL Server 2008 R2.

The new features for availability in the database engine are specific to improvements in database mirroring. They include the creation of hot standby for the databases to provide rapid failover support with no data loss on committed transactions. By default, the stream of transaction log records compression occurs in all mirroring sessions, and the ratio is around 12.5 percent. The availability enhancements also include an automated process to resolve certain types of errors on data pages to avoid any failure on the principal database.

SQL Server 2008 R2 programmability enhancements and improvements include compressed storage of tables and indexes, new collations, sparse columns, and spatial data storage methods. The data partitioning feature helps to manage and access subsets of data quickly, while maintaining the integrity of the entire data collection. In addition...