Yukon, Whidbey Get Formal Launch Date

by Alex Woodie

Microsoft put to rest rumors of another delay to the duo of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 this week when it announced it would formally launch the products, along with BizTalk Server 2006, in early November, with the first servers with SQL Server 2005 shipping in December. Microsoft also posted a new pre-release version of SQL Server 2005, made business intelligence capabilities available on more versions of the product, and introduced the first benchmark figures for the new database.

Visual Studio 2005, code-named "Whidbey," and SQL Server 2005, code-named "Yukon," are the foundations on which Windows developers will write applications for the foreseeable future. Microsoft is making some significant changes in Visual Studio 2005, such as support for team development, and an ushering in of the age of managed code that is supposed to make writing Windows programs much faster and easier.

Of course, products that are developed together are delayed together, and this has been the case with Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. Delivery of the two products, which at one time was slated for 2003, has been pushed back by about six months twice over the past year and a half.

Earlier this spring, Microsoft attempted to placate developers, who are eager to get their hands on the new tools, by taking the unusual steps of releasing pricing and licensing information for SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 well before the products' launch dates. Microsoft released pricing for SQL Server 2005 in early March (see "New SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition to Target SMBs") and did the same for Visual Studio later that month (see "Visual Studio 2005 Delayed Again").

In April, Microsoft indicated the software was almost ready for prime time when it announced the Beta 2 release of Visual Studio 2005 and another Community Technology Preview (CTP) for SQL Server 2005, and also unveiled a new "GoLive" licensing scheme that lets organizations use pre-release versions for real-world applications (see "Microsoft Senses the Finish Line for 'Whidbey' and 'Yukon'").

Despite the indications from Redmond that the software was almost fully cooked, rumors began circulating last week that Microsoft planned to announce yet another delay for the products at its TechEd 2005 conference, which is being held this week in Orlando, Florida. As part of the keynote address at TechEd yesterday, Paul Flessner, Microsoft's senior vice president of server applications, squelched any rumors that Yukon and Whidbey would be better off with "2006" monikers when he announced the week, rather than the day, of the formal launch.

With the week of November 7 now circled on Redmond's calendar, additional delays to the products seem unlikely. Deliveries of servers loaded with the new SQL Server 2005 database are expected in the first week of December.

Microsoft also unveiled the June CTP of SQL Server 2005, the first pre-release version of SQL Server 2005 that is available to the public. With this CTP, the company is making business intelligence capabilities, through the SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services component, available to all versions of the database, including Express and Workgroup Editions; previously it came with only Standard and Enterprise Editions. Microsoft is also making SQL Server 2005 Report Builder available with Workgroup, Standard, and Enterprise Editions. The June CTP of SQL Server 2005 can be downloaded at www.microsoft.com/sql/downloads.

During his keynote, Flessner also discussed a recent TPC-C benchmark for SQL Server 2005 running on a 64-way Hewlett-Packard Integrity Superdome server running 1.6 GHz Intel Itanium processors. The system, which was using a pre-release version of SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition and Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition, was able to crank through 1.08 million transactions per minute (tpmC) with a price-performance rating of $5.38.

As Microsoft pointed out, this set-up churned out 7 percent higher performance than a similarly equipped Integrity Superdome server running Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition on HP-UX, and a price-performance rating that was 35 percent higher. The system running SQL Server 2005 also had a performance rating that was 38 percent higher than a comparably equipped Superdome running SQL Server 2000.

What Microsoft doesn't say is that this new system, which won't be available until December 7, has a performance rating that is about 8.5 percent lower than a 64-way Integrity rx5670 Cluster server running 1.5 GHz Itanium processors, Oracle 10g Enterprise Edition, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS3. This system has a slightly more expensive price-performance figure and has been on the market for more than a year.

Microsoft also submitted the first TPC-H benchmarks for SQL Server 2005 running on hardware from HP, NEC, and Bull. Microsoft says the TPC-H figures show SQL Server 2005 had up to 162 percent higher performance than SQL Server 2000 and 38 percent higher performance than Oracle's best result on 16-processor Itanium servers. To see the complete TPC-H benchmarks, click here.

This article has been corrected since it was first published. The HP server benchmark figures mentioned in the second to last paragraph is an Integrity rx5670 Cluster, not an Integrity Superdome. IT Jungle regrets the error. [Correction made 6/08/05.]