Muglia will also tell attendees that the release to manufacture date for Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals has been set for Nov. 30.

This role-based software lets the database administrator and architect include the database design as part of a project and get integrated to make it quicker to develop those line of business applications.

Performance updates for SQL Server 2005 SP2,which will be available in the first quarter of 2007, will include data compression, increased business intelligence functionality in SQL Server Reporting Services and SQL Server Analysis Services; security updates relating to Common Criteria; manageability enhancements; and support for Windows Vista and optimization for the 2007 Office System environment.

The October CTP (community technology preview) for SQL Server 2005 SP2 is also available for download.

Muglia will also offer a look at Windows Server "Longhorn," the next version of Microsoft's server operating system, and the new features it brings to support enhanced control, protection and flexibility, Lees said.

Longhorn server is the next frontier for Microsoft now that the code for Windows Vista and Office 2007 have been released to manufacturing, and is expected to be released before the middle of 2007.

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Several customers, including MySpace, have already begun to test Windows Server "Longhorn" and associated technologies, such as IIS 7 and Windows PowerShell.

"The benefit of adopting Windows PowerShell is that ad-hoc tasks that used to take upwards of 10 minutes can now run in 5 seconds or less, all the while providing better reporting, greatly increased accuracy and much less manual labor," said Allen Huff, the vice president of engineering at MySpace, which has also begun to test production loads on the upcoming server.

"We've already seen a significant reduction in CPU usage and an increase in requests per second from the new IIS7 pipeline," Huff says.

A customer preview of Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows XP Professional x64 Editions, will also be made available in mid-November, while the final release is targeted for the first quarter of 2007.

"This is an important milestone as we continue to provide support and updates to customers. It packages together critical, non-critical and customer-requested updates into one package, and provides a range of enhancements designed to heighten security, reliability and performance in Windows Server 2003," Microsoft's Lees told eWEEK.

SP2 would also help simplify the deployment of Windows Vista, Office 2007 and "Longhorn" server, he said, noting that there would be numerous demonstrations of all the products at TechEd IT Forum here.

Microsoft also used the show here to announce that a number of European customers have begun evaluating Windows Vista, Office Systems 2007 and/or Exchange Server 2007, including Publishing, British Telecom, BMW, France Telecom Group, and Royal Bank of Scotland.

This article was originally published on eWEEK.com.