Microsoft Intros Beta of SQL Server 2008

Microsoft (News - Alert) on Wednesday announced the Beta release of SQL Server 2008. The release was made available initially on Microsoft Developer Network and Technet, with planned download availability on Microsoft’s Web site starting Thursday.

 

The new server is an upgraded version of Microsoft SQL Server 2005. According to Microsoft, feedback from customers motivated the company to release a major upgrade within a period of three years.

 

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 is available in seven editions. Each of them is meant for a different type of customer. Perhaps the most important version is the Web edition, SQL Server 2008 Web, aimed at the company’s hosting partners. SQL Server 2008 Web provides many tools necessary to support low-cost, large-scale, highly available Web applications or hosting environments.

 

An InfoWorld report Wednesday quoted Dan Jones, an SQL Server group program manager at Microsoft, as saying the compelling reasons for companies to upgrade include new performance analysis tools and a resource governor that eases management of concurrent uploads, both included in the new version.

 

Many large enterprise customers are already testing SQL Server 2008, including Xerox, Siemens, Clear Channel (News - Alert) Communications, and Fidelity Investments.

SQL Server is intended to perform more functions than a standard database. Development of the software is part of Microsoft’s data management and business intelligence strategy. The company has made a variety of related acquisitions recently, including those of data-quality vendor Zoomix and data warehouse-appliance vendor DATAllegro.

 

SQL Server’s chief rival is Oracle (News - Alert) 11g. Microsoft is now in the process of reducing the feature gap between SQL Server and Oracle’s 11g database. Also, by offering the software for a lower price unit, Microsoft hopes to attract customers away from Oracle.

 

Oracle recently announced that its 11g database set a new record, “non-clustered TPC-H One Terabyte (TB) benchmark result running on a Sun SPARC Enterprise Server.” This benchmark represents the fastest TPC-H One TB performance result for a non-clustered configuration, outperforming the best Microsoft result in this category at a lower price/performance cost, Oracle said in a July 30 announcement.