SQL Server 2008 BI enahncements - what you want is what you get!

So far the SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services new features were included until October CTP, top features that Microsoft would like to include within RTM version:

• New Aggregation designer - to browse and modify aggregation designs that are now shown grouped by measure group.
• Simplified and enhanced Aggregation Design and Usage-Based Optimization Wizards, this will help to modify the storage settings for the aggregrations and append new aggregations to an existing aggregation.
• Backup and Restore functionality with new storage structures, this will to enhance the performance during the backup/restore processes.
• Robust repository for archived databases with no limit on the size of database file or number of files it can have.
• Improvied Performance as it referred on the CTP BOL it only refers to the backup & restore functionality, for the actual figures unless you test this feature it is hard to say lot of improvement from previous versions.
• IIS requirement for Reporting Services is not required which will lessen the burden of pre-requisite within the BI platform.
• Change Data Capture as in Relational engine that will help warehousing scenarios and reduce your load time by a factor of 9x.
• Reporting Services scalability, that will load upto million row reports (that is dependant on hardware resources too), with a flavour of table and tablix.
• Integration Services thread schedule performance, for the data flow processes this is an important factore and also during synchronous transforms.
• Like third party tools Authoring Reports using Excel/Word style, may be a pinch to current market tools.

Many more to come, but for sure you can download the latest CTP which is February CTP is availabel to test these new features.