Microsoft Preps Next-Gen Database Beta Release

The company is working to provide 1,500 customers and partners with the Yukon beta code by February or March, development team members told one analyst. Based on feedback from that code drop, the company will determine release candidate and general availability dates, said Mark Shainman, analyst at Meta Group.

Publicly, Microsoft has said it hopes to ship a Yukon beta in the first half of 2003, with final commercial product due by the end of the year. A Microsoft spokeswoman would not comment on specific dates.

Alpha code of the database, which will be a linchpin technology for Microsoft products and services going forward, is currently in the hands of a few select customers, sources said.

Solution providers are eager to get their hands on usable beta code.

"From my perspective, Yukon takes all the reliability, scalability and transaction capabilities of SQL Server 2000 and adds a lot more developer productivity," said Paul Hernacki, strategic solutions manager at Extreme Logic, an Atlanta-based solution provider.

"Every solution will need to call on a database, which will in turn need to extract data from multiple sources," Hernacki said. "Yukon will not only make it easier for us to tie into other data sources, but because of its integration with Visual Studio .Net, will make it easier for us to deploy new services leveraging XML [and SOAP for customers."

Because Yukon will be designed to support Microsoft's Common Language Runtime (CLR) environment, developers with Cobol or C programming expertise will be better able to develop functions running in the CLR that can take advantage of back-end SQL Server databases, Hernacki added.

Meta Group's Shainman said Yukon is at the center of Microsoft's future data store strategy, including Exchange Server.

"It's key to their plan to sell the integrated Microsoft stack ... where developer tools are closely integrated with the database," Shainman said. "They want to sell the stack from soup to nuts."

Microsoft executives have said publicly that they expect to have a 64-bit version of the current SQL Server 2000 database available in April, around the same time as the revised ship date for Windows.Net Server 2003.

Gordon Mangione, vice president of Microsoft SQL Server, recently reviewed plans for Yukon and Liberty, the company's 64-bit version of SQL Server 2000, during a conference for database professionals and reiterated the publicly disclosed rollout schedule.

Of course, dates for software releases remain moving targets, industry observers said.

As an example, Microsoft worked to get Release Candidate 2 for Windows.Net Server 2003 into downloadable form by Nov. 15, in time for a big Comdex introductory splash, but failed to make that date. Instead, RC2 was posted to Microsoft sites Dec. 5. Given the current IT spending environment, most solution providers were sanguine about the delays.

In related news, database rival IBM shipped its updated DB2 Release 8.1 in late November.

Microsoft's federated data message, in which SQL Server can reach out and integrate data from many sources, echoes IBM's federated data game plan, said analysts and solution providers.