Computerworld - Some users were disappointed earlier this year when Microsoft announced that SQL Server would be delayed for a third time -- until the first half of 2005. But Paul Flessner, senior vice president of Microsoft's server platform division, last week told Computerworld the important second beta is due within weeks and the product remains on track for 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? It's been complicated to keep the two products close together, and we have to keep them 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.
Some users were 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.
Don't you face pressure, when competitors release products more often? I'd commit that you're going to see more regular releases from us.
With SQL Server? Absolutely. I know that we can do a more regular release cycle. This one [SQL Server 2005] was just particularly tricky because of the depth. Even this release, if I had it to do over again, I might have done it slightly differently. Instead of releasing Reporting Services and Notification Services outside [the major product release cycle], I might have bundled them in and just done an R2-type thing. Those are both good value adds. We could have done a release with that, and maybe we should have. So there is some thought going forward about how to do that.
Is it being driven by the need to improve the Software Assurance maintenance plan? Yeah. Customers need value on a regular basis, and I think it's a good way to do it.
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Paul Flessner, senior vice president of Microsoft's server platform division
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