Event Summary
"REDMOND, Wash. - Dec. 13, 1999 - Microsoft Corp. today announced that the next
major release of Microsoft SQL Server, currently code-named "Shiloh," would
officially be named SQL Server 2000. Microsoft also revealed the features within
SQL Server 2000 that will take advantage of the Microsoft Windows 2000 operating
system, as well as the ways SQL Server 7.0 customers today can reap benefits
from Windows 2000. SQL Server 2000 is due to ship in the first half of 2000.
Already in beta testing with nearly 750 companies, SQL Server 2000 makes optimal
use of new features and capabilities of Windows 2000 to offer dramatic improvements
in the areas of scalability, reliability and manageability." SQL Server 2000
is an integral part of Windows DNA 2000. According to Tod Nielsen, vice president
of marketing for the Developer Group at Microsoft, "SQL Server 2000, with its
deep integration with Windows 2000 and the rest of the Windows DNA 2000 platform,
will offer the fastest time to market and be the most flexible and manageable
database for building the Business Internet."
Market
Impact
Microsoft's
Windows DNA (Distributed Internet Applications Architecture) uses COM+ for application
services. (COM+ is a proprietary Microsoft standard that is the latest generation
of the Component Object Model, a competitor to the Object Management Group's
CORBA architecture.) This architecture is the application development model
for Windows 2000. Microsoft has designed Windows 2000 and the products written
for it to utilize distributed application components, which they feel will reduce
development cycles since components can be reused between applications. According
to Microsoft, COM+ "allows the operating system to serve as a foundation for
applications that span multiple servers and support a large number of clients
and is an efficient way to write distributed applications, which split processing
among client and server computers." In addition, DNA handles transaction and
message queuing services via Microsoft Transaction Services (MTS), and Microsoft
Message Queuing Services (MSMQ).
Unfortunately,
Microsoft continues to go against standards developed by open standards groups
like the OMG, but given their market presence, there is not a large degree of
risk in going Microsoft's way. The standards groups have developed "bridges"
between the open standards and Microsoft's proprietary efforts, so integration
with non-Microsoft platforms is at least possible.
User
Recommendations
The distributed aspects of the COM technology are known as DCOM (Distributed
Component Object Model). There has been speculation that Microsoft may replace
DCOM for Internet intercommunications and replace it with the Simple Object
Access Protocol (SOAP), an XML-based mechanism that bridges different object
models over the Internet and provides an open mechanism for Web services to
communicate with one another. We recommend that customers wait for the "soap
opera" to resolve itself before committing to these Microsoft technologies.
In addition, DNA is most appropriate for Microsoft-centric customers who also
use Windows NT 4.0, and Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) for their
web communications. We also recommend that customers wait for at least one Windows
2000 Service Pack to be released before committing to using the technologies
in a production environment