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Featured Article
Avoid the Issues of the SQL Server Sprawl
by Matthew Zito, Chief Scientist
Whenever a new database version or platform is released, it incites a fair bit of froth from the vendor, in the press, among IT folk, and from the competition. Microsoft's relatively recent SQL Server 2005 release is no exception. Microsoft has a lot riding on the first major release of its flagship database platform in 5 years, and it is investing the marketing resources to match. I just watched an online ad showing a large helicopter dropping an enormous battery labeled "SQL Server 2005" into the top of a skyscraper. The implication is presumably that SQL Server 2005 can more effectively power your business, and not that it's a heavy, expensive, single-use product that will eventually require community and government programs to dispose of it.
The mentality of SQL Server 2005 as "heavy", at least, is not completely inaccurate. There's a whole host of new features, some of which are covered by our very own Eric Gross in this issue of the newsletter. Along with new features comes new benefits, but also new challenges and problems for organizations. We've been speaking to a number of customers, partners, and analysts in anticipation of our SQL Server 2005 support, and they all agree - SQL Server 2005 is bigger, heavier, and harder to manage than the 2000 equivalent.
This doesn't mean that SQL Server 2005 now takes the crown for the most complicated database platform - it's still easier to manage than Oracle. But it reflects the reality of database platforms today, that as time goes on, the lure of feature creep becomes more and more irresistable. Even MySQL, poster child of the simple all-purpose database, has added replication, multiple storage engines for different environments and workloads, and a shared-clustering model. Oracle's database engine grew so complicated that they had to have a release, Oracle 10g, where many of the new features were designed to make Oracle's older features easier to use.
SQL Server hasn't become complicated enough yet to warrant a simplicity release, but Microsoft faces a world that has changed a great deal since SQL 2000. Around 2000-2001, Microsoft basically won the Windows market when Oracle decided to focus its x86 affections on Linux. Since then, though, MySQL has made a leap from curiosity to disruptive technology, rushing up from below to carve away at the small/medium business market that is SQL Server's bread-and-butter. MySQL's parent company also has made a concerted push on Windows, even more directly attacking SQL Server. A number of new embedded/in-memory Java database engines, such as Apache Derby (nee IBM Cloudscape) and Oracle TimesTen have created new alternatives to the traditional database for transient information.
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