Microsoft delivered what it called the final community technology preview of SQL Server 2005 at PDC this week and will ship the database as planned in November, said Ilya Bukshteyn, Microsoft's director SQL Server marketing.

On the other hand, the promised data mirroring capability will not ship with the final product in November in complete form so it can be further tested, he said. The goal is to have mirroring available in the first half of 2006.

Mirroring boosts database availability by "copying" one database onto another, typically remote, server. It builds on log shipping in the current release and provides high-speed failover.

Additionally citing customer feedback, the company has tweaked its database management strategy for the low end Express" version of SQL Server.

"We wanted a light-weight management tool for Express—Express Manager but the feedback was customers wanted more consistency the Management Studio going into the other SQL Server SKUs," he said. As a result, the company is building a scaled-down version of Management Studio for the Express database, Bukshteyn said.

As with mirroring, a pre-release version will ship in November with general availability slated for next year.

Visual Studio 2006 is likewise seeing some feature slip into next year. The Visual Studio Team Foundation Server will slip into the first quarter of next year.