Microsoft's Yukon To Offer Data Mirroring, Message Queuing

Yukon, Microsoft's next-generation database, will offer SQL-accessible message queuing, among other previously disclosed perks, sources said.

Full data mirroring is also on the wish list for Yukon. Microsoft declined to comment, but company documents reference a new Service Broker feature for Yukon that will offer asynchronous queuing and guaranteed message delivery to database applications.

Message queuing, deep in the guts of the server software, is technology that ensures that database records are passed back and forth safely and speedily so transactions can be processed.

Last Wednesday, CRN broke the news that Yukon will integrate Microsoft's own reporting services, code-named Rosetta. (See story.)

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>>%A0Yukon will offer data mirroring and message queuing capabilities.
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"The added reporting and analysis will help us [build solutions] faster," one Microsoft partner said, adding that there will be fewer companies and fewer moving parts to deal with.

Typically, SQL Server implementations use reporting tools from companies such as Crystal Decisions or Cognos.

"Depending on how Microsoft prices client-access to this capability, this will take away a lot of the incentive people now have to buy reporting solutions that can cost $50,000 per CPU," said Frank Cullen, principal at Blackstone & Cullen, a solution provider in Atlanta.

While Microsoft said the technology will be an extensible foundation on which other ISVs can build, the news sent shares of those companies sliding last week.

Solution providers agreed with Microsoft's contention that the market can support many entries but said third parties will have to keep moving to higher ground and focus on vertical markets in order to stay ahead of the software giant.

"This is server-based reporting that incorporates both SQL and analytics and will allow people to deploy complex reports to people who just have browsers," Cullen said.

Yukon is an ambitious project that underpins Microsoft's vision for unifying data. Currently, there are multiple data models for the company's myriad products.

Key future offerings, including Kodiak, the next major version of Exchange Server, were supposed to depend on the Yukon data model. But even as the technology struggles toward beta testing, Oracle already offers a messaging suite based on its solid database. And by next quarter, IBM's Lotus Software group plans to ship its NextGen mail solution, which is based on IBM's DB2.

In other Yukon news, Microsoft said last week the database will incorporate the company's IntelliSense auto-completion technology and Visual SourceSafe source code.