Today, Microsoft announced plans for a summer Consumer Technology Preview (CTP) release of its new SQL Server Everywhere Edition. The new offering will specifically promote building client applications that operate in “occasionally connected” environments. The new edition, which shares a common programming model with all other SQL Server editions, will provide a “lightweight, compact, but rich subset of the capabilities found in other SQL Server editions. Beyond having rich local data management capabilities, SQL Server Everywhere Edition will also include support for seamlessly synchronizing with other SQL Server editions,” according to Paul Flessner, Microsoft Senior Vice President for the Data and Storage Platform Division. The company plans a final release of SQL Server Everywhere Edition before the end of the calendar year.
The announcement of the new SQL Server edition comes as part of a general public announcement in which Flessner detailed Microsoft’s plans for significant investment in its data-management products. Central to Microsoft’s data-management vision, dubbed “Your Data, Any Place, Any Time,” are what Flessner calls SQL Server AlwaysOn Technologies. These technologies--such as SQL Server 2005’s database mirroring, failover clustering, database snapshots, and enhanced online operations--let customers achieve and maintain high application availability. Flessner’s announcement stresses that such technologies will continue to be enhanced in upcoming SQL Server releases, which Microsoft has committed to providing every 24 to 36 months. You can read Flessner’s complete update at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/letter.mspx