MS SQL Server Steps Up

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Delivering on the promise to vastly improve its database software, Microsoft
unveiled sweeping enhancements to SQL Server 2005, including support for
AMD’s Opteron processors.

The company Monday pledged support for AMD Opteron
chips with Direct Connect Architecture in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Beta 2,
calling the offering a complement to 64-bit Intel
Itanium support in SQL Server 2000.

Microsoft is establishing 32- and 64-bit computing on its
software in response to customers and partners at a
time when demand for high-performance computing is growing. On the
competitive front, Windows systems are intended as an alternative to
Unix-based products made from the likes of Sun Microsystems.

In related news, AMD Monday said its
Opteron chip will power the 4P Sun Fire V40z server as well as the 1P Sun
Java workstation W1100z and 2P Sun Java workstation W2100z, from Sun
Microsystems.

Microsoft also made several upgrades on its SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 at the
behest of customers and partners, with a prevailing theme of integration to
make the user experience more efficient.

In one significant tool, SQL Server Management Studio pulls together
Enterprise Manager, Query Analyzer and Analysis Manager, as well as adds new support
for SQL Server Reporting Services, Notification Services, XML and SQL Server
2005 Mobile Edition.

According to a statement, SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 also features enhancements
to Snapshot Isolation, Database Mirroring, Database
Snapshots, partitioning and Service Broker to help developers build well-designed applications.

Also for developers, Beta 2 will include significant upgrades to the
business intelligence “workbench,” which has been named the Business
Intelligence Development Studio. These perks include a single development
environment for Data Transformation Services (DTS), Reporting Services, Data
Mining and Analysis Services.

Going beyond the tight integration with Visual Studio and better business
intelligence tools, SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 can handle T-SQL exception better
and features enhanced XML support, tighter integration with the .NET
Framework Common Language Runtime (CLR) and advanced messaging capabilities
in Service Broker.

Microsoft also bolstered SQL Server 2005’s Analysis Services with additional
MDX expressions and new MDX script capabilities. And among the new data mining algorithms
are a new Neural Network algorithm and a Text Mining feature for complicated
analytical problems containing nonlinear relationships and unstructured
data.

Meanwhile, DTS enhancements will provide extract, transform and load (ETL)
capabilities out of the box and can parse Web services and XML sources,
along with data cleansing, data mining and text mining.

As promised,
SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 also now has database encryption and SQL Server
Express, the evolution of Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine
(MSDE) for SQL Server 2005.