Executive Summary: SQL Server 2008, the latest version of the Microsoft database platform, is due for release in second quarter 2008. Microsoft Corporate Vice President of the Data and Platform Storage Division, Ted Kummert, talks with Karen Forster, editorial strategy director of SQL Server Magazine, about key features of SQL Server 2008. |
Forster: A recent survey of SQL Server Magazine
readers showed that 81 percent are still on SQL
Server 2000 and only 40 percent are using SQL
Server 2005. The big question about SQL Server
2008 has been why Microsoft is releasing a new
version now, three years after SQL Server 2005?
Kummert: Two to three years is going to be our
release rhythm. I see it as creating alternatives for
customers. They then can have another release to
choose to deploy on. I actually think customers
like having that opportunity. It’s absolutely true
that decisions line up with major projects, and major
projects don’t always line up with our release
cycle. But we offer a choice you can make about
your infrastructure and how you’re moving it forward.
You can deploy on 2005. Then when 2008
releases, you can upgrade to 2008 and take advantage
of the new capabilities.
Forster: Many SQL Server 2000 users are considering
just skipping 2005. What’s your response to
those customers?
Kummert: We have customers who will make that
choice. We have customers who will make the choice
to go to 2005 and then upgrade to 2008. We obviously
have customers deploying totally new projects
around 2008. Customers are going to make these
decisions largely around the value proposition of
2008, which is resonating very well with customers.
Forster: Let’s talk about that value proposition.
You’ve discussed this release’s four pillars of functionality:
mission-critical platform, dynamic development,
beyond relational data, and pervasive
insight. I’d like to focus on specific features that
instantiate those pillars.
Kummert: We’re making significant investment in
increasing scalability. That’s scaling storage with
features like compression. That’s scaling performance
with a whole bunch of things in the engine.
That’s scaling end user concurrency with innovative
features such as Resource Governor for allocating
resources on the box across users. There’s a lot in
terms of security. A feature like Transparent Data
Encryption is a pretty powerful thing for a customer
with an existing application. Transparent means you
don’t have to change your app. You can get the value
out of encrypting that data associated with that application.
When it comes to security and compliance,
I always like to talk about the Declarative Management
Framework (DMF). A policy-based administration
model for SQL Server is very powerful, from
both a compliance and a security perspective. One
challenge is not only knowing what all of your policies
should be, but actually knowing that they’re in
place across all of the servers in your environment.
We also like to talk about features like All Actions
Audited—tell me all the user activity within my box
so I have a log of what’s happening.
Forster: Speaking of policy-based administration,
what about the functionality that has been available
in the Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) tools up
to now?
Kummert: Those policies that used to be available
in the BPA tool will just be DMF policies. That’s an
example of how we’re taking some of those things
like surface area configuration and best practices
and bringing them together.
Forster: What other features are important?
Kummert: One investment we’re excited about is
our new special data types and indices. The indices
give you the performance, and the types give
you the ability to enrich your application with
location-based information—be that geometry or
geography. A whole class of applications can be
enriched by location-based information, certainly
in terms of supporting and handling unstructured
data within your applications. There’s the
FILESTREAM data type. And we’ve done things
with full-text search in terms of bringing the indices
down into the engine, which has increased the
performance of mixed-mode queries.
Forster: What about the new DATE/TIME data
types?
Kummert: That feature was driven directly by
customers. There’s a tremendous amount of value
when the community sees a particular feature
that they’ve always wanted. While a new data type
doesn’t always make the headlines, it’s a very powerful
thing for customers. We got the same kind
of reaction to IntelliSense. It’s one of those daily
impact things that maybe doesn’t always get star
billing, but people love it.
Forster: One feature that has received some attention
is the Performance Data Warehouse (PDW).
Kummert: This feature came from our experience
at Microsoft. We looked at all the information we
collect when we‘re analyzing a performance problem
and thought, “Let’s make that available as a
part of this feature. We have a lot of experience in
helping customers tune their applications and performance.
Let’s just make what we’ve learned from
all that a core feature.” PDW is about instrumenting
SQL Server in such a way that it’s easier for you
to understand the critical information to tune your
application.
Forster: What features will be most interesting to
the DBA?
Kummert: I think Resource Governor is exciting. Its
first design point viewpoint is around data warehouse
applications, but it’s useful for any workload where
you’re managing concurrency within the workload.
It’s a powerful toolset to allocate resources among
end users, which translates to reliability and predictability
and servicing your end users. I think DBAs
will find that exciting. I do think the policy-driven
administration model is a thing they’re going to find
incredibly exciting. To simplify common administration
tasks across the environment, you want to have
a policy in place across all your server environments.
It’s going to make it very easy to do that across a
set of multiple services and to know that things are
in compliance or out of compliance. Same thing is
true for All Actions Audited, in terms of finding out
what happened in the environment and even having
automatic mitigation.
Launch and Availability
Forster: On February 27, Microsoft launched SQL
Server 2008 along with Windows Server 2008 and
Visual Studio 2008. But SQL Server 2008 is not yet
finished or available. When will it be available?
Kummert: The release candidate is still tracking very
well for the Q2 timeframe, with release to manufacturing
expected in Q3. Now we’re turning the corner
to the customer-driven part of the release. We hope
customers will tell us when we’re ready.
Forster: Why is Microsoft launching these products
simultaneously?
Kummert: That’s actually the way customers think
about and want to think about these technologies.
You want to think about your entire application
platform, your data platform, your development
platform, your development toolset. You think
about the value of those at the same time, and
the underlying Windows Server platform, as well.
Many innovations are being delivered in Server
2008. Improvements in clustering, delivering on
the core abilities of security and manageability—
all those things from Server 2008 will directly benefit
SQL Server customers.
Forster: What goal do you want to achieve by addressing
a wider launch audience than is typical for
SQL Server launches?
Kummert: We’re taking this opportunity to get
the word out about this great product much more
broadly into this market—not just to the traditional
SQL Server person, but also to the IT generalists
and the developers who will come to this launch
and will think, “SQL Server is the underlying data
platform for my SharePoint, for my CRM app. I
can bring these things together and add more value.
Maybe there’s a new scenario in which I can use
this capability.”