Yukon to Katmai

The Windows Observer -Volume 4, Number 19 — May 16, 2007

Microsoft Talks Up SQL Server ‘Katmai’

Published: May 17, 2007

by Alex Woodie

Microsoft started beating the drum for the version of SQL Server, codenamed “Katmai,” last week at its business intelligence conference. In addition to new business intelligence capabilities, Katmai, which is scheduled to ship in 2008, will feature better security, more extensibility, new high availability features, a rule-based management framework, and an array of new tricks for .NET developers.

The new rule-based management framework Microsoft is developing for Katmai is expected to reduce the dependency on scripts for daily maintenance activities, such as query optimizations, naming conventions, backup and restore operations, and index management. By automatically monitoring and enforcing policies in Katmai, Microsoft says users will be able to push policies out to thousands of servers, providing a more heterogeneous SQL Server environment.

Better security will be a focal point for Katmai. With this release, Microsoft intends to make it easier for users to encrypt entire databases, or just specific data or log files, without making changes to the underlying applications. Better auditing will also allow administrators to more easily enforce compliance.

Microsoft is also talking about a feature called “database mirroring” in Katmai. With database mirroring, users will be given another option, on top of application server clustering, for boosting the availability of their critical business applications. Microsoft says it is also improving the recoverability of applications from storage failures by making it easy to move processor and memory resources without affecting applications.

It will also be easier to tune SQL Server for the best performance as a result of new performance data collection features in Katmai, Microsoft says. This will be made possible through a new centralized repository for performance data where administrators can view performance figures and compare them to past reports.

Similarly, Katmai will also sport a “resource governor” that, according to Microsoft, will help administrators provide a “consistent and predictable response” to users. The resource governor will achieve this by defining resource limits and priorities for different workloads.

Katmai will also feature new tricks for developers, including the new Entity Data Model, which is part of the ADO.NET framework, and support for the previously announced Language Integrated Query (LINQ) technology.

With the new Entity Data Model, developers will be able to access data by defining business entities like customers, orders, and products, as opposed to using the table and column format that is standard with relational databases. Developers can then query and retrieve these entities natively within any .NET language using LINQ, which is a set of language extensions that Microsoft announced in September 2005 as a way to simplify the development process and prevent programmers from having to know and use SQL and XQuery by allowing them to query data in C# and Visual Basic. Meanwhile, as developers work with a logical view of objects in the database, administrators will still be able to manage the database using the physical table and column view.

Microsoft also plans to improve support for non relational data–such as XML, a hierarchical format that Microsoft first supported in its database with SQL Server 2005. With Katmai, Microsoft intends to enable SQL Server to store and consume any type of unstructured content, which would suggest support for XML documents, PDF files, or JPG images, as well as new “spatial” data-types for building geographic and “location aware” systems.

This widening of file-type support sounds a lot like the type of capability that Microsoft was touting with Windows File System (WinFS), the revolutionary file system that was to debut with Windows “Longhorn.” WinFS, of course, was removed from Longhorn after running into development problems. After surviving for a time as a separate development effort, it has entirely disappeared from view.

Katmai will also bring new features designed to help users build new business intelligence applications. On the plumbing side, Microsoft says it is boosting SQL Server’s capacity to manage large numbers of users and large amounts of data, and will improve the database’s query performance on large tables, optimize queries for data warehousing scenarios, and increase I/O performance. New changed data capture (CDC) functionality will assist businesses with the real-time loading of data warehouses, while more scalable volume management and integration services will help administrators keep it all properly sorted.

Katmai will also shine when it comes to building and running today’s cutting-edge business applications, according to Microsoft. Better hooks into Microsoft Office will continue to push Microsoft’s desktop suite as a key way to consume business intelligence, while an array of more advanced capabilities, such as SQL Server Reporting Services for building reports, and SQL Server Analysis Services for building dashboard applications with key performance indicators (KPIs) and the like.

Microsoft has historically trailed the business intelligence technology leaders, including Business Objects, Cognos, Oracle (which recently bought Hyperion), MicroStrategy, and others. But SQL Server Katmai may have the potential to turn Microsoft’s business intelligence fortunes around.

“Microsoft is charting a course to transform the BI marketplace as we know it,” said Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft’s Business Division, said during the Microsoft BI Conference held in Redmond, Washington, last week. “By fundamentally changing the economic model for BI and delivering unprecedented ease of use, we’re enabling the broadest deployment of BI possible so employees can better contribute to a company’s overall business performance.”

Microsoft further boosted its business intelligence strategy last week with the acquisition of OfficeWriter, an application that enables users to access Excel spreadsheets and Word documents through a Web browser. OfficeWriter was developed by a company called SoftArtisans, out of Watertown, Massachusetts, but Microsoft only obtained the product, not the company. Microsoft plans to offer OfficeWriter alongside SQL Server Reporting Services.

The first community technology preview (CTP) for Katmai is reportedly due out in the next month or so. For more information, see www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/futureversion/default.mspx.

Filed under: information retrieval, microsoft, research, technology, tool

Learnability, Stickability, Valour

Work has been pretty interesting for the past two days. Primarily cos I had a chance to some things which were pretty new to me! The biggest perhaps being, learning to use SQL Server Reporting Services for SQL Server 2005. I learnt it within two days and deployed some pretty complex reports. In fact, there is one report which I had done in Crystal Reports that had TERRIBLE performance (its a heck of a complex report!!!), I mean searching through it and printing it were just extremely time consuming and just utterly frustrating to the users. In fact, it was this very problem that drove me to SSRS in a bid to handle the situation. The long and the short of it is that the report that was so complex and that had initially taken me more than 3 days to do on a familiar reporting engine took only a few hours to do and deploy which. And not only is it rapid-fast in comparison but also the users really loved the new interface and it’s ease of accessibility via a simple browser. I did notice however that the report does not render properly on firefox, but comes out well on IE, there is some ActiveX component that was needed on the browser to enable printing, and there is something about date formatting (i needed to have filtering on the report by dates), the issue is that the date format in the BI Development Studio is natively American (m/d/y), this gave me a bit of trouble cos i did not realize it, but apparently once you deploy it IE takes the set date formatting on the PC’s regional settings…. I think I should do a tutorial on the Tech section. Now, that I have leveraged SRSS in reporting I am going to try it out to do some other interesting reports I have to do. I love challenge so this is not just about work any more, its about leveraging the power of a new technology learnt to the solution of some interesting and challenging information manipulation problems (Mmmmuhahahahaha)!!!

I am also currently learning some other stuff on my own and I have a promising opportunity to make some cash, in fact, two different opportunities… and I really need the money for my school fees and to pay off some land I bought recently, yes land! In African culture and especially where I come from land is pretty important! And I am thankful to be able to obtain a parcel. (Damn, at this rate,… !)

I just finished watching the Lord of the Ring trilogy, yet again. What can I say, it’s an awesome story, an epic of courage, determination… And last night I watched ’300′ about the Spartans, I love epics, I think I will re-watch it. It was really awesome, except for the fact that some scenes did not sit well with me, especially at the beginning. There is something about me, when I watch movies, I don’t just get entertained, I sort of put myself in it and somehow experience it, that’s one reason why I am so picky about the movies I watch. 300 was cool not just cos of the awesome war scenes but because of some values I saw in it, courage, determination, teamwork, solidarity, loyalty, freedom, valor… love, the total belief in something much bigger than the self, something you would give your life for and that you live for, the loss of which is a more painful thought than death!  (maybe I just read too much into things), and I asked myself, how much more having faith in what is real, true and not only lasts this lifetime but beyond! Sparta, in all it’s glory fell, eventually, but there is a principle that will never fall, how much more that which will never fall!!! (OK, sorry if I sounded speechy, just consider it my two cents!!!)

There’s a time a good mentor of mine (an more of a father-figure to me) asked me what my life metaphor is… the answer I gave was this, ‘it’s a war’. Some see it as a race, others as an adventure, others as maybe just fun and passing by!

Filed under: adventure, research, technology, tool, work

New Visitor Log Thingamajig

Hi. How fo y’all like the new visitor logging thingamajig i put on the side bar. It keeps track of how many visitors visit the blog from different countries. And when the list of countries grows it will start to scroll automatically. Cooool!

Check it out!

One Warrior!

Filed under: cool, sidebar, thingamajig, tool