Microsoft next week plans to give a bevy of close partners, customers and ISVs an in-depth look at Yukon, its next-generation database, the company confirmed Friday. Attendees of the sneak preview will get a detailed tour but will not leave with beta code in hand, company sources said.
A spokeswoman reiterated Microsoft's plan to ship beta one of the technology in the first half of 2003. At least one product team member got more specific last month when he told Marc Shainman, an analyst at Meta Group, that the vendor's goal was to get beta software out to 1,500 partners and customers in February or March.
Yukon is the long-anticipated follow-on to SQL Server 2000 that will add support for Microsoft's Common Language Runtime (CLR) environment. That support will enable partners with experience in C or Cobol or other supported languages to tap into back-end SQL Server databases and functions even if they're not fluent in SQL.
A Microsoft source told CRN that Yukon beta plans remain "somewhat in flux." That is understandable given the recent SQL Slammer worm that hit the Internet in late January, taking advantage of a buffer-overflow flaw in the current database. SQL Slammer, also known as Sapphire, brought many Web sites to their knees in late January and earlier this month.
News source: WinBeta
