Microsoft Senses the Finish Line for "Whidbey" and "Yukon"

by Alex Woodie

Microsoft this week unveiled to testers new pre-release copies of "Whidbey" and "Yukon," codenames for the oft-delayed duo of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. These products, which are currently slated for general availability sometime between July and December 2005, are just about good to go. They're so close, in fact, that Microsoft also announced a program to let companies go live on the Visual Studio 2005 beta and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition right now.

Windows developers have waited a long, long time for Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005, the first major revision of Microsoft's development environment and relational database management system since 2000. These products, which will be used in tandem to create the next generation of database-driven applications for the Windows platform, have also been developed side by side, and they're just about ready to go, according to Microsoft.

We're so close to general availability (GA)--or release to manufacturing (RTM) in Microsoft's parlance--on these products now, you can almost smell the finish line. This week, the Redmond, Washington, software giant unveiled what could be the final pre-release test copies of the products, including Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 and the SQL Server 2005 April Community Technology Preview (CTP). Microsoft also announced a Beta 2 release for the .NET Framework 2.0, which will be used with Visual Studio 2005.

"Delivering Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 and the SQL Server 2005 April CTP to customers is a milestone because it indicates that we have entered the final stages of the development cycle for both products," said Eric Rudder, senior vice president of servers and tools at Microsoft.

Microsoft understands the long wait has been tough on developers, some of whom can't stand to wait a minute longer to start building real live applications with these tools. For these eager beavers, Microsoft is introducing the new "Go Live" license, which is officially an addendum to their end user license agreement (EULA). The Go Live license will allow companies to immediately start building and deploying applications using Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2, .NET Framework 2.0 Beta 2, and the SQL Server 2005 Express Edition April CTP.

There are some restrictions with the Go Live licensing scheme, and some beta APIs will disappear, Microsoft says. But if nothing else, the mere existence of Go Live indicates that Microsoft doesn't expect the products to change a whole lot between now and RTM. For more information on the Go Live license, see lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/golive/default.aspx.

To further speed up the testing of SQL Server 2005, Microsoft announced it will keep the CTP process for the remainder of the product's development cycle, which means no beta versions and no release candidate (RC) versions. "Moving to an all-CTP model for SQL Server 2005 is really a testament to where we are in the development cycle," said Paul Flessner, senior vice president of applications servers at Microsoft.

Compared to Microsoft's beta release cycle, which typically includes fewer releases but more in-depth testing from Microsoft, the CTP release cycle includes more releases, with--as Microsoft puts it--"variable quality from preview to preview." According to Flessner, the quality is on the upswing. "The quality of each CTP we have offered has improved, and each one from this point forward will only get better," he says. With that said, you can expect at least a fifth CTP release of SQL Server 2005 before RTM, and probably more.

The development of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 have been closely tied since Microsoft started working on the products many years ago. First slated for a 2003 release date, the products have suffered delay after delay. Microsoft last delayed the release of Visual Studio 2005 a month ago, when it also announced the product's pricing (see "Visual Studio 2005 Delayed Again"). At this point, Microsoft is committed to finally shipping Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 together sometime during the second half of 2005; whether that means a third quarter or a fourth quarter date is hard to say.