14 DAY TRIAL // When Francois Ajenstat, director of marketing for SQL Server, announced that SQL Server 2008, codenamed Katmai, would be released to manufacturing no sooner than the third quarter of 2008, the move was equivalent with a delay for existing SQL 2005 customers and for those who had followed the development of the current version of the product. Ajenstat essentially announced that on the official launch of SQL Server 2008, on February 27, 2008 in Los Angeles, with the Heroes Happen Here event, Microsoft will have available another Community Technology Preview of Katmai and nothing more.
Ajenstat "explains that a feature complete community technology preview (CTP) will ship during the Heroes Happen Here launch wave during the first quarter calendar year 2008, a release candidate (RC) in the second quarter, with final Release to manufacturing (RTM) of SQL Server 2008 expected in third quarter. Ajenstat confirms the goal of shipping SQL Server 2008 within 24-36 months after SQL Server 2005. 'We are on track to reach this goal.' New features in SQL Server 2008 include scalability improvements, resource governor, Filestream, spatial data support, data compression, policy-based management and more," explained Bruce Kyle, Microsoft Architect Evangelist.
On the heels of the announcement from Ajenstat, Dan Jones, Lead Program Manager, SQL Server, revealed that the reason for the delay of SQL Server 2008 was the shiny new toys integrated into the product following the release of SQL server 2005. Of course that Jones does not explicitly note the new capabilities, features and functionality added to Katmai as responsible for the RTM of SQL Server 2008, all the way in the third quarter of 2008. But all you have to do is read behind the lines...
"There was one major theme that we wanted to adhere to: make it easier to manage SQL Server. (...) We did some detailed customer analysis to come up with three big bets. Those turned out to be Policy-based Management, Data Collector, and Intellisense. There were also a number of smaller areas we knew we wanted to invest in. Finally, we knew there were several things with the tools that we wanted to fix. (...) There are a number of different software development methodologies and processes. One thing that is common among almost all of them is to start with the riskiest areas first. This meant we had to start on the three big bets," Jones stated.
Instead of beginning the development of SQL Server 208 with a strong focus on what was "fundamentally broken" in the previous release, Microsoft chose to focus on the "cool shiny new toys." The truth of the matter is that the work being done in the manageability arena was directed at Oracle, and it was not something that the Redmond company could have afforded to do without in SQL Server 2008.
"This left us with a single choice: start with a shiny new toys. It is really just now, roughly 15 months after starting work on SQL2K8 that we're addressing issues with existing functionality. This strategy was somewhat of a gamble and we won't know for sure if it paid off until several months after the release," Jones added.