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Microsoft to extend
SQL Server Mobile to all versions of
Windows
Microsoft Corp. today said it will
extend the mobile version of its flagship SQL Server database
to run on all versions of Windows. SQL Server 2005 Mobile
Edition, which currently works on small handheld devices that
run the Windows CE and Windows Tablet systems, will in the
future be able to run on all versions of Windows, including
32- and 64-bit operating systems such as Vista. The database
will also be renamed SQL Server Everywhere Edition. It can be
embedded into local applications -- for longer-lasting data
storage than caching solutions typically provide -- and
exchange data with server versions of SQL Server.
A
community technical preview of SQL Server Everywhere should be
ready this summer as a 2MB download, with a final release by
year's end, Paul Flessner, senior vice president of data and
storage at Microsoft, said in a presentation to SQL Server
users in San Francisco. Available for a free license to users,
SQL Server Everywhere will help CIOs get a handle on what
Flessner called an "explosion" of data, including multimedia
and XML data, outside of the data center, enabled by smarter
hardware and cheaper memory and storage. "A lot of companies
are consolidating more into their data center, but it's very
naive to think all data will live there, especially when
handheld devices in five years will be as powerful as your
PC," he said.
Flessner predicted that “personal data
warehouses” of a petabyte – or 1 million gigabytes – will
become the norm. And, he said, central databases won’t be up
to the task, for flexibility and safety reasons. “The bigger
the database, the harder it can fall,” Flessner said. Russell
Wong, senior director of IT services for Paradigm Management
Services LLC, said Flessner’s vision jibes with his own. The
Concord, Calif. medical care provider has nurses to check on
patients at home. Patient information must be entered into
Paradigm’s SQL Server 2000 database by the nurse back at the
office, not while out in the field visiting
patients.
Microsoft’s new technology could help
Paradigm provide such real-time data input and access to
properly-equipped nurses, Wong said. Microsoft also said it is
gathering the high-availability features in SQL Server, such
as mirroring and fail-over clustering, under the new umbrella
name, AlwaysOn Technologies. Flessner declined to state what
new features it plans to add along those lines. Flessner also
said that 2 million copies of SQL Server 2005 Express have
been downloaded so far.
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