Wow, take a vacation for a week and all kinds of great things get announced for SQL Server!
For those that missed it, with SQL Server 2012 SP1 Cumulative Update 4 included changes that allow for Power View to now access Multidimensional cubes! Previously Power View was only able to use the newer Tabular Data Models, but now you can use your existing Multidimensional cubes built in SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS). This change also makes it so that you can write the same DAX queries in your Power View reports against those same Multidimensional cubes without requiring you to use MDX (MultiDimensional eXpressions). The only downside is that it only works with the Power View integrated into SharePoint 2010/2013. Eventually the Power View that is built into Excel 2013 should be able to do this as well, but at this time that update is not yet available (keep your eye on my blog I will make sure to mention it as soon as it is available).
The other big news came out of TechEdNA 2013 in New Orleans today, the next release of SQL Server is going to be named SQL Server 2014! I heard rumours that the SQL Server team was moving away from the R2 name that they used to use for the in-between release (Windows Server teams are still using R2 as they announced Windows Server 2012 R2 as well). The biggest new feature of SQL Server 2014 will be the previously announced "Hekaton" project or In-Memory OLTP as they are calling it now. Should help to provide some amazing performance for databases. Along with that there are many more updates to futher add more cloud/Azure functionality and make it easier to transition to that from traditional on-prem servers. For more details, see this post from the Microsoft SQL Server team and keep you eyes here as I will keep you updated on what I hear as well!
More exciting times ahead with SQL Server, glad I got those SQL Server 2012 certifications out of the way, so that I can be ready for the 2014 versions next year!
