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Updated: July 9, 2020 (September 17, 2007)

  Analyst Report Archived

Application Platform

My Atlas / Analyst Reports

5,232 wordsTime to read: 27 min
Rob Helm by
Rob Helm
Rob Helm by
Rob Helm

As managing vice president, Rob Helm covers Microsoft collaboration and content management. His 25-plus years of experience analyzing Microsoft’s technology... more

The first preview of SQL Server 2008 was released in mid-2007, along with a beta of Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5. The new release of the .NET Framework adds new programming language features that will make it easier to write applications that access data from sources such as SQL Server.

Silverlight 1.0, which aims to compete with Adobe’s Flash as a platform for Web-based video, shipped, while an alpha release of version 1.1, which adds support for the .NET Framework, was also made available to developers.

SQL Server

The SQL Server product consists of a database management system (DBMS) and a platform for business intelligence. The BI platform includes components for extracting data from operational systems for analysis (Integration Services), online analytic processing and data mining (Analysis Services), and design and distribution of reports (Reporting Services). Competitors to SQL Server include Oracle and IBM DB2 database management systems and BI platforms. A limited edition, SQL Server Express (formerly the Microsoft SQL Data Engine or MSDE), is available for free.

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Updated: July 15, 2020 (November 2, 2015)

  Analyst Report Archived

Application Platform

My Atlas / Analyst Reports

6,960 wordsTime to read: 35 min
Rob Helm by
Rob Helm
Rob Helm by
Rob Helm

As managing vice president, Rob Helm covers Microsoft collaboration and content management. His 25-plus years of experience analyzing Microsoft’s technology... more

Several server products, tools, and Windows components help developers build applications on the Microsoft platform. They include the SQL Server database product, the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE), the .NET Framework run-time platform, and the BizTalk Server application integration platform. SQL Server received a major update in Apr. 2014, and the most recent release of major versions of Visual Studio and the .NET Framework arrived in July 2015.

Microsoft also offers Azure, a cloud platform for application hosting and data storage, which includes Platform as a Service (PaaS) components and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) components and serves as the hosting platform for Visual Studio Online, a set of cloud-based developer tools and services. Azure is covered comprehensively in the Azure Roadmap. (See the sidebar “Azure“.)

SQL Server

The SQL Server software consists of a database management system and a business intelligence (BI) platform. Key components included in the product are the following:

Atlas Members have full access

Get access to this and thousands of other unbiased analyses, roadmaps, decision kits, infographics, reference guides, and more, all included with membership. Comprehensive access to the most in-depth and unbiased expertise for Microsoft enterprise decision-making is waiting.

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