Coming From Microsoft: SQL Server Everywhere

Microsoft is adding yet another member to its SQL Server franchise.

Well, more accurately, it is transitioning its current SQL Server Mobile edition to a new SQL Server Everywhere Edition. The current SQL Server 2005 Express edition continues on.

SQL Server Everywhere is "SQL Server Mobile plus more," said a spokeswoman.

Where the current mobile SQL Server requires Windows CE 5.0, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Windows Mobile 2003 Software for Pocket PC, its successor will run as well on 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows, including the upcoming Vista, now due widely early next year.

The new software promises a "compact but rich subset" of SQL Server capabilities for use on the desktop or devices, according to Paul Flessner, senior vice president of data and storage platforms at Microsoft. Flessner disclosed the news in an executive letter on the company's Web site.

A preview of the offering is due this summer, and final shipment is slated by year's end.

Lightweight, embeddable databases are hardly new.

Sybase blazed the trail in this area with its SQL Anywhere product, and IBM embeds the Cloudscape Java database in many of its offerings and has an Express edition for embedding. Oracle also offers a lightweight Express edition.

At a Thursday event in San Francisco, Microsoft said to think of this as a progression. SQL Server Express once known as MSDE is the lightest server-side database option from the company. Microsoft already offers Workgroup, Standard, Enterprise and other editions of the current SQL Server 2005.

Flessner is expected to talk up the Everywhere Edition and Microsoft's "Your Data, Any Place, Any Time" vision later Thursday in San Francisco.

In terms of near-term deliverables, the database mirroring feature that was held back from the general SQL Server 2005 launch last fall will make it into SP1, due out at the end of the month. Flessner pledged that Microsoft will continue to work on other "Always On" high-availability perks for the database.

Management Studio for SQL Server 2005 Express also will make it into SP1, a company spokeswoman said.

This story was updated Thursday afternoon with more information on the SQL Server Everywhere Edition.