Microsoft Airs Details of Yukon Database

Before a gathering of the SQL Server faithful this week, Microsoft debuted a new, mobile version of its database software and sketched a roadmap for the next major release of the database code-named Yukon.

Keynote speaker Paul Flessner, Microsoft senior VP of .Net enterprise servers, told attendees of the Professional Association for SQL Server user group meeting in San Francisco that improving SQL Server's scalability, programming environment, and data-analysis features are priorities for Yukon, which isn't expected for several years. Microsoft shipped SQL Server 2000 in August. But Flessner wouldn't provide specifics about what benchmarks Microsoft is shooting for. "The goal is that no customer has to look me in the eye and say, 'I love your product, but I can't deploy it because it doesn't give me enough headroom,' " he said in a post-speech interview.

Although Microsoft only recently began shipping SQL Server 2000, Flessner says engineering work on Yukon is "well under way," although he declined to disclose a target date for its availability. Beyond boosting scalability, Microsoft is improving the database's programmability by integrating it with the vendor's .Net framework, adding file system support, and improving its ability to process Extensible Markup Language data. Yukon will also offer more data warehouse and data analysis features and provide self-tuning and auto-configuration capabilities.

On the mobile front, SQL Server 2000 Windows CE Edition is now available to corporate developers for building database applications that run on mobile devices running Windows CE. The 1-Mbyte database stores information on portable systems and uploads the data to an enterprise SQL Server database.

Conference attendees were treated to a demo of a product delivery system that Nabisco Inc., in Parsippany, N.J., is developing for its 1,000 delivery-truck drivers in the U.S. who are using the new mobile database. SQL Server 2000 Windows CE Edition is licensed as part of the SQL Server 2000 Developer Edition, which is priced at $499, with unlimited deployment options.