Yesterday, the SQL Server team and the Visual Studio team made some significant announcements.
The facts:
The product name for SQL Server codename ‘Yukon’ is Microsoft SQL Server 2005
- The SQL Server team is working hard to release Beta 2 in the coming months
- There will be a Beta 3 release in the second half of 2004. Some early adopter customers will go live on this beta and will provide us with additional feedback before the product is shipped.
- SQL Server 2005 is planned for release during the first half of 2005
The official product name for Visual Studio codename ‘Whidbey’ is Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. It is also planned for release in the first half of 2005.
The interpretation:
These decisions are already stirring some dust (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1546526,00.asp) and I expect more articles and blog entries to appear.
If you asked people in the SQL team previously when Yukon was going to ship, you always got the answer ‘When it’s ready’. The information released today confirms the focus of the SQL team on quality and adds some detail on the schedule which will certainly be welcomed by our customers and partners.
Yes, you might be thinking five years is a long time between SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005. But it’s not like customers and partners have been waiting 5 years to get more functionality than was originally released with SQL Server 2000. I’ll name a couple technologies that have been made available to download since SQL Server 2000 was released:
Very clearly, the developers at the SQL team have been really busy delivering the functionality needed by our customers today.
Obviously SQL Server 2005 is the next big step. Big leaps are often scary but I definitely have a warm and fuzzy feeling about this one; especially because of the fact that more customers and ISV’s are involved earlier and deeper than ever before.
A great example is for instance the number of applications from ISV’s that are tested on the daily builds of SQL Server Yukon. If a build breaks an application, the test teams are alerted and can investigate whether it’s by design or because of a bug.
Many customers, MVP’s and partners are also experimenting themselves with the beta 1 bits they got through the beta program or from the PDC. The feedback these people are giving is taken very seriously. Even if you don’t have access to these bits, you can always send an email with your ideas to sqlwish@microsoft.com. Another channel the people in the product teams are monitoring closely is the newsgroups. These are the most important ones:
– Our most active SQL Server newsgroups,
• Microsoft.public.sqlserver.programming
• Microsoft.public.sqlserver.server
• Microsoft.public.sqlserver.dts
• Microsoft.public.sqlserver.olap
• Microsoft.public.sqlserver.setup
• Microsoft.public.sqlserver.replication
• Microsoft.public.sqlserver.msde
– 34 world wide user groups,
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/usergroups/find.asp
– Also look here:
• http://www.microsoft.com/sql/community/default.mspx
Assuring high quality in all areas including security, the abilities, productivity for developers and DBA’s, business intelligence… is not an easy task. But when you build a database that people run their businesses on, these are critical to success.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
