As we've previously written about on this blog, we will be releasing Service Pack 3 for SQL Server 2005 in CY2008 following the release to manufacturing of SQL Server 2008. We've gotten some questions about the differences between Service Packs, Cumulative Updates and Hotfixes. The following blog entry from the SQL Server Release Services team does a good job explaining the new Incremental Servicing Model. Hope this helps.

I'm happy to report that Dr. David DeWitt, one of the top minds in the database field, has joined Microsoft as a Technical Fellow. David is tasked with starting up a new advanced development lab in partnership with the University of Wisconsin- Madison – the Jim Gray Systems Lab. The naming of the lab is a tribute to honor the late Jim Gray, the Turning Award winning Microsoft computer scientist whose contributions to the database and transaction processing field are so widely regarded.

David recently retired as active Professor in the Computer Sciences Department and was the founder of the database group at the UW-Madison. He was a legend at the University for the past 32 years, known not just as an educator, but a practical researcher who focused on building working systems. David did some of the first work on parallel databases which was a huge contribution to the field. And of course, he has educated a many students – students that over the years have made big contributions themselves to the field.

The work of the Jim Gray Systems Lab is just now beginning. Basically, the Lab will focus on advanced development on Microsoft codebases to come up with innovations and directions for the future of data management. David’s passion for exploring theories of how database management systems can be more capable and cost-effective is unrivaled. Through the partnership with the University, David will continue to have an impact on education. That partnership will establish a collaborative environment with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Computer Science Department that enables graduate students to participate directly in the lab working with David and his team.

It’s an exciting time to be in the database industry, and having David on-board and a collaboration with the University through the Lab is going to have a big impact to SQL Server.

We are looking forward to sharing new developments from the Jim Gray Systems Lab in the future. For more on David’s legacy, please check out the interview he recently completed with PressPass: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2008/apr08/04-23DeWitt.mspx

This Cumulative Update 7 contains hotfixes for SQL Server 2005 issues that have been fixed since the release of Service Pack 2.

• Learn more: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949095/en-us
• SQL Server Release Services blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlreleaseservices/

Over the last year we have successfully established the Incremental Servicing Model (ISM), which has to date delivered 7 cumulative updates (CU) to our customers, in regular 8 week intervals. We’ve heard feedback from customers of the need for a third service pack for SQL Server 2005. I’m happy to inform you that we will in fact deliver an SP3 following the release to manufacturing of SQL Server 2008. Our goal is to get SP3 released in the market in CY2008.

The Incremental Servicing Model has been very effective ensuring that customers receive the latest updates for SQL Server on a regular predictable schedule. We are hearing positive comments from customers, who like the ease and predictability the ISM provides. Customers rely on the predictable time frame to pre-select the day that the fix will go into production, which eliminates any downtime for its servers.

In the spirit of transparency, we wanted to let customers know about SP3 in advance of the availability to make sure customers have as much time as possible for proactive testing and deployment planning. Let us know what you think.

One of the most exciting new features in SQL Server 2008 is the ability to store files and BLOBs directly in the file system, while maintaining transactional consistency with a SQL Server 2008 database. SQL Server 2008’s new FILESTREAM attribute for VARBINARY data type solves the age old dilemma facing developers and IT Pros: Is it better to store files directly in a database or store them in the file system with path and filenames stored back in tables to maintain the relationship with the database.

Both approaches have pros and cons: Storing files directly in a database secures information using database permissions and enables this data to participate in transactions and backups. This approach, however, does not provide the best performance and storing large files can add significant size to a database. On the other hand, storing files in the file system while using tables and columns to link them to a database is less taxing on a database and provides more flexibility and performance since NTFS is very efficient at managing files. This approach, however, leaves files vulnerable to corruption or deletion, plus files cannot participate in transactions and backups which can leave a database unstable. Another issue in storing files outside the database is that the logic for linking these files to the database must be maintained (and duplicated) in any application that uses this data. This introduces maintenance issues that can become burdensome and complex as the number of applications connecting to the database increases and as the number of people or teams involved in managing this data increases.

SQL Server 2008 solves this dilemma elegantly. VARBINARY's new FILESTREAM attribute provides the best of both worlds. By simply specifying FILESTREAM for VARBINARY data types, SQL Server 2008 shackles data (i.e. files or BLOBs) for that column to the table, while leveraging Windows NTFS to actually store and retrieve the data outside the database. This shackled data resides in the file system yet is managed entirely by SQL Server 2008. This data is protected by the database permissions and participates fully in transactions and backups as expected. Outside the database, users see this data as regular files in the file system that cannot be modified or deleted without admin rights since they are owned by SQL Server.

Here are a few interesting links discussing FILESTREAM:

Paper: Managing Unstructured Data with SQL Server 2008 (Whitepaper)

FileStream Data Type: SQL Server 2008

SQL Server 2008 - FILESTREAM, WPF and HTTP 

Oracle recently released their latest Critical Patch Update which fixes vulnerabilities “in hundreds of Oracle products”. From a database perspective: it fixes 17 database vulnerabilities, two of them that can be exploited remotely without authentication. There are vulnerabilities in many of their modules, from the core RDBMS to the options like Spatial and Auditing.

Seeing the large number of vulnerabilities in Oracle's DBMS always brings up lots of discussions and comparisons with SQL Server. Did you know that SQL Server has not had any critical vulnerabilities since September 2004? Jeff Jones does a great job digging into this and looking at the facts. It's pretty amazing to see these comparisons and although software is rarely vulnerability free the comparison here is quite interesting.

Of course, I'm glad to see Oracle publishing these fixes and working with the security industry to address critical vulnerabilities. In the meantime, Oracle DBA's can download the latest patch directly from Oracle here.

Oracle unbreakable? I don't think so.

I just got back from a 2 week trip to India, taking part in their local launch events. We reached over 1500 people at over 3 launch events,  in Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi. V. Somasegar - the Senior VP from the Visual Studio team was the keynote speaker. This was the first launch to have been done in cinema halls (yes, you read that right!) in alignment with the “heroes” theme. This departure from the ordinary and taking IT Professionals & dev hero stories to Bollywood was appreciated by one and all. The  audience was entertained by a matinee show of the latest blockbuster hits right after the conclusion of the technical sessions in the 3 cities, while the CIOs at Mumbai were entertained by a new hit rock band - Sonu Nigam. I love the diversity in how the different local events were conducted. I have included a few photos from the launch events below.

The Microsoft Sync Framework continues to evolve as the latest CTP2 bits were released last week. This latest build reflects the final API changes that will be used for RTM. The team has done an excellent job with respect to the framework's original design and implementation as is demonstrated by the fine tuning nature of this latest release. Improvements to performance, API and core pattern simplification round out the updates in this build. The Sync Framework continues to generate excitement with developers and organizations of all sizes worldwide, so if you haven't had time to learn more, this may be a perfect opportunity for you!

• Download the latest CTP2 bits from here.
• Learn more about the Microsoft Sync Framework here.

Exciting news for developers looking to build SQL Server based applications that target mobile devices -- the new Microsoft® Windows Mobile Line of Business Solution Accelerator 2008 has been released and is now available for download from here! This new accelerator consists of a working Supply Chain application, over 5,000 lines of well documented source code plus 100 pages of detailed documentation. Use this accelerator with Visual Studio 2008, the .NET Compact Framework and of course, SQL Server Compact 3.5 to help accelerate development of applications that target mobile devices. Highlights include:

• Adapt your App - Create a single binary that runs unchanged on Windows Mobile Standard or Pro, Portrait or Landscape, Rectangle or Square. No more wasting time building separate executables to accommodate different screen sizes or input methods.
• Sync Services for ADO.NET - Synchronize your data between SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server Compact 3.5 using the new Sync Framework. Keep all your occasionally-connected mobile workers on the same page. Note: To learn more about building Occasionally Connected applications here.
• Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Store and Forward - Reliably push messages to servers or other devices via Exchange Server 2007. Programmatically notify peer devices that they have new orders waiting for them and need to sync.
• MapPoint - Guide delivery drivers to their customers via either the shortest or quickest route. Integrated mapping means you’ll never get lost again.
• LINQ - Use the new Language Integrated Query to filter results from Generic Object Collections. Query both your objects and XML using a familiar, SQL-like syntax to boost developer productivity.
• Custom Controls - Capture signatures and dazzle your end-users with 3D and Alpha-blended controls that alter their behavior depending on the platform they’re running on.
• Managed Stored Procedures and Triggers - The pluggable data layer allows you to say goodbye to compiling Dynamic SQL inside your code and fires events to react to INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE operations.
• Notifications and Online Help - Formerly only supported on Pro, say hello to Popup Notifications and Online Help on Standard. Popup Notifications, also known as “toast,” display an HTML message and then disappear after a pre-determined amount of time. Using Online Help on every screen reduces your application training costs.
• Language Switching and Localization - Change Language/Regional Settings inside your app and watch text and Online Help speak a different language. Don’t wait until your application is finished to realize that it needs to be world-ready.
• Time to Market - Stop reinventing the wheel and use this Accelerator as the foundation for your next Windows Mobile development effort. If you don’t want to use the whole thing, pick and choose the components that are the best fit for your project.

The first Windows Mobile Line of Business Solution Accelerator has been downloaded tens of thousands of times and has served as the foundation for some of the largest and most important Windows Mobile projects in the world. Visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsmobile to learn more.

Technologies such as SQL Server are only as successful as the applications that are built upon them.  Microsoft’s Metro Early Adoption Program provides a programmatic, consistent and predictable way for longstanding Microsoft ISV partners to engage on next-generation technologies, by providing pre-release developer training, support, and rationalization of that technologies’ role in the overall platform.  In the case of SQL Server 2008, nearly 1000 unique applications that exploit the new features of the product have already been documented as being in development, and we’ve really enjoyed hearing about how some of the new SQL Server 2008 capabilities have helped to shorten development cycles and add customer value.   Here are a few examples. 

Posera, a Canadian ISV in the hospitality industry, says that “by leveraging the standard features of SQL Server 2008, we were able to simplify our solution offering, saving precious development and maintenance time.  Features like replication, encryption and LINQ…also reduced our development efforts.” 

Delta Phi, an Italian BI ISV, says that “Analysis Services is one of the fastest, easiest to use and most versatile MOLAP engines on the market and Reporting Services is the powerful tool of choice to draw and deploy reports.”

Catalyticsoft.com, an Australian database automation ISV, says that “The speed of LINQ to develop in, and indeed access SQL Server 2008, was truly amazing, and substantially reduced our overall code base.”

Many more of these partner stories will be available at the Heroes Happen Here site in the coming days.  If you’re an ISV interested in early adoption of SQL Server 2008, please contact your local Microsoft office.

It's getting louder

If you've been following Microsoft's efforts around data programmability, you'll have inevitably heard a thing or two about "entities". Specifically, the Entity Data Model (EDM) and the ADO.NET Entity Framework (EF). These technologies lay the groundwork for major advancements in how developers build data-centric applications and for empowering DBA's to manage databases more freely. One could argue, the EDM and EF are triggering a paradigm shift in database development.

What's the problem?

Traditionally, database developers have had to bridge two worlds: application development and database management. These are relatively easy worlds to manage when building small or single user applications, however, things quickly become complicated as data grows and as more applications need access to the same information. In such complex environments, changes to the underlying databases may need to be synchronized across multiple applications that access this information and across several teams that are responsible for maintaining those applications. DBA's and developers have to proceed in lock-step to properly reflect changes/improvements to both applications and databases.

Entities to the rescue

The Entity Data Model and ADO.NET Entity Framework were designed to address this application/database divide and, along the way, improve how database applications are designed and developed. Entities are essentially a conceptual representation of information (e.g. Customer entity) that is mapped to underlying databases objects (e.g. CustomersMaster, CustomerDetail, CustomerOrders, CustomerHistory tables). This allows developers to efficiently program using easy-to-understand entities that map directly to real-world business concepts (e.g. Customer) without concern for how the entity information is actually stored in a database (e.g. the multiple tables and relationships that store the customer data). Additionally, the EDM and EF enables DBA's to continually optimize the data storage without disrupting applications that access this information since applications built using entities are shielded from underlying database changes. Any updates to the database schema can be easily reflected in the entity mapping that binds applications to the databases.

"Data Abstraction", I get it but ...

At this point, people usually understand that entities efficiently abstract data access, but sometimes people don't fully grasp the benefits. Studies suggest database applications consists of 20-40% data-access code. If that's true, applying the low end projection on an application with 100,000 lines of code would result in 20,000 lines of data access code. That's a lot of code to keep synchronized with a database. Extend this projection over several big applications that access the same databases, and multiply this over several departments in an organization, and the magnitude of the development and communication challenges becomes clear. Traditionally, database applications would access databases directly, so as the DBA's maintain and evolve the database (e.g. table splitting, column changes, etc.), application code would need to be carefully updated and edited to support the changes. Search and replace is not enough to update the data-access code and mistakes can easily happen -- some portions of code get updated, others don't which could leave applications unstable and could ultimately result in data corruption. The devil is in updating countless access points of the same database object in the application code.

Using the EDM and EF shields applications from having to reference database objects directly in code by centralizing the application/database mapping in one place. If all applications use the same Entities, then updates to the underlying mapping of the entity to the database can be easily maintained and reflected across all applications. The EDM and EF allows databases to evolve independently from applications, without triggering an avalanche of application code changes. The EDM and EF acts as a powerful buffer between the two worlds - protecting investments and logic in application code while allowing DBAs to evolve databases to meet the needs of an organization. Microsoft is very excited about the EDM and EF and believes that these free technologies will be instrumental in helping people build better applications, more efficiently.

Good resources

• Download ADO.NET Entity Framework - Beta 3
• ADO.NET Entity Framework (home page)
• ADO.NET Entity Framework on Channel 9
• Visual Studio Magazine: Cover: Model Domain Objects with the Entity Framework 
• Bob Beauchemin's Blog (SQL Skills)
• LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework: Part 1
• LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework: Part 2
• LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework: Part 3
• LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework: Part 4
• LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework: Part 5

Today Microsoft announced that MIX attendees will preview Microsoft SQL Server Data Services (SSDS), a Web-facing utility-based services designed for businesses and developers that need scalable, highly available, secure and easily programmable on-demand data storage with robust database query capabilities.

• SSDS offers virtually limitless, on-demand scalability.
• Customers use the service with minimal up-front infrastructure and operational cost. Businesses can minimize their initial investment in hardware and software and the on-going cost for storage administration, scale maintenance.
• SSDS supports simple web-programming interfaces like SOAP and REST for quick provisioning of web applications. Primary wire format is XML for data interchange. These easy to use, standards-based interfaces enable developers to focus on innovating with data quickly.

Find out more at http://www.microsoft.com/sql/dataservices

The rest of the keynote focused on the 2 remaining pillars of launch - BI & Web. In the BI demo - we focused on the integration of our BI tools with Office. We showed the new Report Designer - with the office interface that allows you to modify reports in an office environment, new spatial capabilities that allows you to view geospatial information that is stored in SQL Server directly on the web via Virtual Earth integration, SQL Server 2008 data mining add ins for Office - that shows the shopping basket analysis. A lot of stuff to show in 8 mins.

The keynote had 3 customer videos from Louisiana State University, Singapore Land & Transportation Authority and San Diego Zoo. The key tone through all the customer videos showed how the technology helps customers.

My take through all the videos was the tie in to how technology helps IT Professionals to help their customers. Overall it went well. I would love to hear from all of you.

The momentum for SQL Server 2008 continues. Here are some of the latest case studies published:

• Russia’s Baltika Breweries Links its ERP Databases using SQL Server 2008 Replication
  Baltika Breweries, the largest producer of beer in Russia, has about 12,000 employees and 11 breweries. Its popular brands have been the market leader in Russia for more than a decade and are exported to 46 countries. The company coordinates enterprise resource planning (ERP) across its operations using an ERP solution created by Microsoft® Certified Partner Monolit-Info. To enhance management of several geographically dispersed ERP databases holding more than 2 terabytes of information, the company deployed them as a 6-node multi-server configuration. Baltika is upgrading to Microsoft SQL Server® 2008, from the earlier version, to take advantage of new features introduced in SQL Server 2008. Baltika’s lab testing demonstrated that SQL Server 2008 provides the efficient replication required for its operations, as well as reliability.

• Big Hammer - Software as a Service Provider Lets Shoppers Furnish Homes in an Online 3D World
  Edgenet, and its Big Hammer Data Division, helps retailers and manufacturers serve customers by hosting a Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN) and Marketing data pools of basic product attributes, providing a common classification for products. As the company prepared to launch its Edgenet Vision™ product that enables users to create a 3-dimensional (3D) representation of their homes and populate rooms with 3D images of appliances and furniture from the Big Hammer data pools, it needed an enterprise-grade platform. Big Hammer deployed Edgenet Vision hosted on Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) database software running on Windows Server® 2008, using a Software as a Service distribution model. The application developers used Microsoft Visual Studio® 2008. The solution runs on Unisys ES7000 enterprise server computers.
  
• bwin - Global Online Gaming Company Deploying SQL Server 2008 to support 100 Terabytes
  Sports enthusiasts around the world place up to 1 million bets per day using the online sports betting services of Gibraltar-based bwin International. Performance is paramount at bwin which hosts more than 100 terabytes of information on some 100 instances of Microsoft® SQL Server®. The company was very happy with its deployment of SQL Server 2005, but it enjoyed 3-digit annual growth in 2005 and 2006 and is eager to take advantage of new technological advancements to help it keep pace with growth. The bwin Data Management Systems group has started upgrading its database infrastructure to SQL Server 2008 to take advantage of Backup Compression, management tools, and other new features. During peak gaming periods SQL Server processes 30,000 database transactions per second, while supporting the reliability required by the bwin database group’s motto: “Failure is not an option.”
  
• McLaren Electronics Fuels Analysis of Formula One Racing Data with SQL Server
  McLaren Electronic Systems, part of a family of companies that includes the McLaren Racing organization, is a leader in developing specialized motor racing products including the engine control unit (ECU) that manages the complex engine, transmission, and other key elements of Formula One race cars. After the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), motor sport’s world governing body, awarded McLaren Electronics and Microsoft the contract to provide the ECU solution that will be used in all Formula One race cars, McLaren Electronics sought a more efficient way to manage the terabytes of ECU data that a team generates in a year. After performing a proof of concept study, McLaren Electronics found that Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 provided the solution it needed for storing data while providing Formula One type retrieval speeds.
  
• RSS Aggregator NewsGator Manages 2.5 Billion Articles with SQL Server 2008
  NewsGator makes life easier for individuals and companies by aggregating Really Simple Syndication (RSS) data feeds from across the Web to provide users with customized content delivery, enabling everyone to essentially create their own electronic newspaper. The company, which also provides Software as a Service to more than 50 media outlets including CNN and USA Today, stores some 2.5 billion RSS articles totalling about 4 terabytes on clustered databases running Microsoft® SQL Server® database Software. NewsGator is upgrading its database infrastructure to SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) running on the Windows Server® 2008 for 64-Bit Systems operating system to take advantage of a number of new features, including enhanced Database Mirroring for high availability, Backup Compression to reduce storage needs, and Resource Governor for allocating processing resources.
  
• Siemens PLM Software Validated to Easily Support 5,000 Users with SQL Server 2008
  Siemens PLM Software scales to 5,000 concurrent users and gains 50 percent compression for database files running on SQL Server® 2008 and Windows Server® 2008 and Intel®-based hardware.

With the launch of SQL Server 2008 today (remember, RTM is still planned for a few months later in Q3 2008) we have just posted a number of record breaking results across industry (TPC-E, TPC-H) and ISV benchmarks. These are really amazing results and the team worked extremely hard to get these published by launch. We posted best performance results for TPC-E and our first ever TPC-H 10TB result. We delivered a record breaking ETL benchmark loading 1TB of data in less than 30min. And finally record breaking ISV benchmarks showing incredible results with SQL Server 2008.

See more at http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/benchmarks.aspx