Computerworld - Some users were bitterly disappointed earlier this year when Microsoft Corp. announced that SQL Server would be delayed for the third time -- until the first half of 2005. But Paul Flessner, senior vice president of Microsoft's server platform division, this week told Computerworld that the important second beta is due within weeks and that the product remains on track for next year.
He also disclosed that users can expect more "regular" releases of SQL Server in the future under a system patterned after the one unveiled in May for Windows Server. A second release of Windows Server 2003, code named R2, is due next year.
A year ago, you seemed certain that SQL Server would ship in 2004. What happened? Was the delay related to the integration of the Visual Studio .Net development tools? That's the tightest dependency. That's the big integration point. So yeah, it is around that. ... It's been complicated to keep the two products close together, and we have to keep 'em in sync. ... It's mostly, I think, the depth of integration. When you see the beta and you get to be writing these stored procedures in Visual Studio and then you get to see the interaction, I think you'll understand why it's taken longer.
And it's too deep to go say, "Oh, it's the CLR [Common Language Runtime] guys who weren't stable," or, "The shell guys weren't stable." They have to give us drops and we have to test it to get them back drops. It's just this back and forth and back and forth. And it's taken longer than we thought.
Some users told us they were disappointed because they're anxious to use the new features. I want it right, and that's my commitment. We've always had good, high-quality releases of SQL Server, and we're going to have another super-high-quality [release]. From the time we release Beta 2 here in a few weeks until the end of the first half of next year, we've got a long time to really clean the things, stabilize and get all the polish on it. And we're going to hit it hard.
Some were upset the first beta wasn't feature complete. Well, we added some things. There was a lot of feedback: "We love reporting services, but where's your end-user tool?" And we went and bought a company, ActiveViews. It was a very small company in Utah. We're pleased with the code and functionality. But we're going to have to make some changes, because we've got
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