SQL Server delay forces users to adjust plans

Computerworld - Microsoft Corp. last week pushed back the release date of its Yukon upgrade to SQL Server for the third time, forcing some users of the database to modify deployment plans and leaving others unhappy about the extended wait for needed functionality.
Microsoft's latest plan had been to ship Yukon by year's end. But company officials decided to add a third beta-test release, which will delay shipments by as much as six months. The decision to wait until the first half of 2005 also affects the next version of Microsoft's Visual Studio .Net development tools, code-named Whidbey.
"I'm stunned," said Keith Gilbert, an enterprise data architect at Tacoma, Wash.-based Labor Ready Inc. Gilbert said the temp-labor services firm had hoped to start using Yukon this year to take advantage of the integrated Visual Studio tools, plus new features for large databases. But Gilbert said the first beta release of Yukon still needed a lot of work. For instance, he said, several workbench management tool features weren't activated yet.
Customers Respond
Larry Godec, CIO at First American Title Insurance Co. in Santa Ana, Calif., said he fired off a note to Microsoft as soon as he learned about the new delay. First American uses SQL Server 2000 to run a homegrown title and escrow transaction system for 10,000 users in 1,200 offices. The database server has to be shut down for more than 14 hours every time the company reindexes the system. But Yukon is supposed to allow maintenance while the database is online, Godec said.
"My note to Microsoft was, 'If it's going to be delayed to 2005, you need to figure out how you get that functionality into SQL 2000 for us,' " he said.
Don Watters, data group manager at film processor PhotoWorks Inc. in Seattle, said, "I've been touting [Yukon's] abilities to so many people here and in other organizations that I'd like to actually be able to show them that it's going to become a reality someday."
Watters said he fears that the SQL Server team's continued focus on Yukon means it won't devote much attention to fixing bugs in SQL Server 2000. But he hopes Microsoft will take advantage of the delay to correct such things as security flaws before shipping the upgrade.
Yukon, which Microsoft said will be called SQL Server 2005, will add 64-bit support and enhancements in areas such as scalability and security. The software was originally due out last year but was delayed until the middle and then the end of this year.