Yukon Private Beta Hits The Street

The company Tuesday dropped the so-called "private beta" of the next-generation SQL Server to some 500 customers and partners, sources close to the company confirmed. Another 1,500 copies are slated for release by the end of July.

At TechEd in early June, SQL Server executives had said the private beta might "make" that month and the status remained day-to-day late into June.

The next major milestone will be the first public beta, slated to take place in the first half of 2004, with the final product due in the second half, sources said.

Yukon was to have debuted in final form late this year, but developers were diverted to bolster security of the current SQL Server 2000 release earlier this year, Microsoft SQL Server Vice President Gordon Mangione told CRN earlier this year.

Promised perks of the much-anticipated database include reporting services, SQL-accessible message queuing and full support for Microsoft's Common Language Runtime engine (see story).

And because of Yukon delays, some of those features have been accelerated into the current release of SQL Server. At TechEd, for example, Microsoft surprised the world by promising that reporting services, code-named Rosetta, would be made available for SQL Server 2000 by the end of the year (see story).

With Yukon now due late next year, the next major anticipated database news is expected to come at OracleWorld in September, when Oracle launches its next database, now called Oracle 10i by some. Oracle has not commented on naming or features, but Chief Marketing Officer Mark Jarvis told CRN last week to expect the launch in September. There is some skepticism about whether the product will actually ship at that time, however.

Even as the Big Three database vendors-IBM, Microsoft, Oracle-continue to duke it out, upstart open-source players like MySQL are making a name for themselves. Seattle-based MySQL offers its database both commercially and General Public License favored by the open-source crowd. It is a favorite among shops moving even critical applications over to Linux and the open-source model, observers said.

For more on the database wars, click here.