• Sidebar: What Microsoft Has Disclosed About Yukon

Recent announcements have helped clarify the roadmap for SQL Server. Yukon, the code name for the next version of SQL Server, won’t ship until the second half of 2004, which could impact the schedules of other products that depend on it, and which means that some customers on Software Assurance could see their agreements expire before an update to SQL Server 2000 is available. In addition, Reporting Services, an add-on for SQL Server that generates database reports, should ship by the end of 2003 and will run on SQL Server 2000.

Microsoft also substantially dropped the price of the SQL Server 2000 Developer Edition in an effort to get more developers building solutions around SQL Server.

Yukon Slips

Yukon will introduce new capabilities, such as native XML and Web service support, improved replication, and higher availability and scalability. It also makes Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework the development environment for SQL Server applications. (For more information on Yukon, see the sidebar "What Microsoft Has Disclosed About Yukon".)

Microsoft was hoping to have the first beta of Yukon available by the June 2003 TechEd conference, but the company now says that the beta won’t be available until sometime in the second half of 2003, most likely in time for the Oct. 2003 Professional Developers' Conference.

Based on comments made by Paul Flessner (senior vice president of enterprise servers) at TechEd, Yukon will not ship until the second half of 2004. Flessner said that no particular feature had caused the delay, but rather that the SQL Server team felt Yukon would need much greater testing to ensure its quality met the needs of mission-critical applications.

Microsoft schedule slips occur frequently, but the impact of the new Yukon schedule will be more profound than other slips for the following reasons:

Product dependencies. Many other Microsoft products have dependencies on Yukon or certain component technologies in Yukon. In particular, some Yukon technology is key to the Windows Future Storage (WinFS) file system enhancements that will go into the next release of Windows, code-named Longhorn. Also, at the Mar. 2003 Microsoft Management Summit, the company stated that Microsoft Operations Manager 2004 would be dependent on Yukon. The Yukon schedule slips could delay one or both of these products.

Looking out further, it’s possible the Yukon slip will impact release dates for future versions of many other products and technologies that will depend on it, such as BizTalk Server, Commerce Server, Content Management Server, Exchange, SharePoint, Systems Center Suite, and numerous Microsoft Business Solutions products.

Software Assurance (SA). SQL Server 2000 shipped in Aug. 2000, and customers who bought the product before July 31, 2002 had to purchase SA upgrade rights by that date if they wanted to upgrade to the next version. Many bought two years of upgrade rights at that time, and their rights could expire before they have an opportunity to upgrade. Even though Microsoft recently announced additional SA benefits, upgrade rights still constitute the core benefit, and Yukon’s delay will undoubtedly sour some customers' opinions on the value of SA agreements.

Reporting Services to Precede Yukon

Flessner also stated that Reporting Services, a new managed-reporting add-on for SQL Server 2000, will go into beta in fall 2003 and ship by the end of the year. However, no pricing or licensing details were released.

Reporting Services will give software vendors and corporate developers the ability to design and generate human-readable reports from databases and data warehouses, and distribute these reports to large numbers of users who need them on a recurring basis, such as business and technical decision-makers.

(For more information on SQL Server Reporting Services, see "Reporting Services Planned for SQL Server" on page 15 of the Mar. 2003 Update.)

Price Cut on SQL Server Developer Edition

In an effort to encourage more developers to design and build applications that run on or use SQL Server, Microsoft cut the price of SQL Server 2000 Developer Edition (SS-DE) from US$499 to just US$49.

SS-DE is a full version of SQL Server 2000, but has tight licensing restrictions that limit its use to designing, developing, and testing software products to run on or use SQL Server. Each copy may be installed on only one server, and only five users are allowed to connect to it simultaneously.

Although SS-DE is also available as part of the more expensive MSDN Universal and Enterprise subscriptions, Microsoft hopes the new low price will entice more developers to build solutions around SQL Server. It also means that other third-party development tools vendors can afford to bundle it with their products; Borland Software has already agreed to include SS-DE in some of its products.

Resources

For more information on Yukon, see www.microsoft.com/sql/evaluation/yukon.asp.

For more information on the changes to Software Assurance, see "Software Assurance Improved".

For more information on Visual Studio developer tools for Yukon, see msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/productinfo/roadmap.aspx.

For more information on SQL Server Reporting Services, see www.microsoft.com/sql/evaluation/bi/reportingservices.asp.

For more information on SQL Server 2000 Developer Edition, see www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/development.asp.