Microsoft's oft-delayed SQL Server 2005 family of products will finally ship mid-year, the company said this week, but it will bring with it a new product lineup and higher prices. For starters, Microsoft is adding a Workgroup Edition of SQL Server. But that product won't wait for SQL Server 2005. Instead, Microsoft is launching SQL Server 2000 Workgroup Edition this spring, ahead of the SQL Server 2005 launch.

"The industry has changed since we introduced SQL Server 2000," says Microsoft senior vice president Paul Flessner. "With the new SQL Server 2005 product line, we've increased the breadth of our data management solutions to offer more choices to customers. We're now better equipped to offer solutions that meet the technological and budgetary requirements of our customers. Our goal is to make enterprise-class data management and analysis affordable to a wide range of customers while driving complexity out of database systems, all at a lower total cost of ownership."

The SQL Server 2005 product family will be comprised of four editions, including Express Edition, Workgroup Edition, Standard Edition, and Enterprise Edition. The Express Edition will be free and aimed at developers. The new Workgroup Edition is "database only," lacking the reporting services, business intelligence, and other features in the higher-end versions; it targets small and medium-sized businesses. Standard Edition is described as a "complete data and analysis platform" that is aimed at medium-sized businesses. And the Enterprise Edition provides a foundation for mission-critical business applications of any size.

SQL Server 2005 pricing might be controversial, as Microsoft is raising prices on the Standard and Enterprise Editions. SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition jumps to $24,999 per processor, up from $19,999 with the SQL Server 2000 version. Standard Edition, meanwhile, is limited to four processor servers but now supports 64-bit processors. This product is seeing a 20 percent price hike as the per-processor price jumps to $5999.

To counter issues with the price hike, the new Workgroup Edition will be sold for $3899 per processor, though that product caps out at two processors and 3 GB of RAM (there is no RAM limit on Standard Edition). Microsoft also notes that SQL Server 2005 offers an amazing array of new functionality when compared to its predecessor, further justifying the price increase. And, it should be noted, SQL Server pricing still generally undercuts that of similar products from Oracle or IBM.

To support the new SQL Server 2005 products, PC giant Dell says that it will bundle SQL Server 2000 and 2005 Workgroup Standard Editions with its PowerEdge servers, machines that are aimed and small and medium-sized businesses. Dell also announced a new price/performance benchmark for TPC-C using SQL Server 2000 Workgroup Edition on its servers. The new record of $1.40/tpmC is a 10 cent improvement from the previous record, which utilized SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition.

Finally, in related news, Microsoft representatives revealed this week that the company is considering whether it should make the source code to SQL Server 2005 available to its customers. This being Microsoft, the code would not be open sourced of course, but would rather be released under the terms of the company's more restrictive Shared Source program. But it's interesting to see Microsoft try and make its products more transparent in the face of open source threats such as MySQL and PostgreSQL.

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Reader Comments

SQL Server prices may undercut offerings from Oracle and IBM, but in every benchmark I've seen, SQL Server gets destroyed by IBM and Oracle's products. Even MySQL beats SQL Server in performance.

See link for proof: http://www.eweek.com/slideshow/0,3018,sid=0&s=1590&a=23120,00.asp

Anonymous User- February 24, 2005

The whole benchmarking thing, while a valuable metric, is frequently overrated. The average organization is not redlining their database servers, so granular performance measures usually aren't relevant. What is relevant to them is how much does it cost to get the thing running in my datacenter, and how much will it cost to maintain. SQL Server costs less to acquire, and the management tools make it easy for a person without years of experience to do a credible job on maintenance. Oracle makes a fantastic product, but it is costly compared to sql server and the management tools are brutal.

Anonymous User- February 24, 2005

Article Rating 5 out of 5

The thing about benchmarks is that each vendor you mention can show benchmarks indicating that their dbms blows away the competition. Microsoft often stresses cost per transaction, where it generally wins. The other guys stress sheer throughput on bigger machines, which is not always a decisive consideration.

Anonymous User- February 24, 2005

Proof?

The reason SQL Server did so poorly is that the tests were done using JDBC drivers. And the ones for SQL Server in 2002 were beta drivers that were crap.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1646917,00.asp

The reason SQL Server dominates the TPC-C price/performance is that it is a damned fine database and that the TPC-C runs are not done with crappy beta JDBC drivers. The native SQL drivers are smokin' fast!

Anonymous User- February 24, 2005

I'll quote from the eWeek article:

"However, the driver, in both Beta 1 and Beta 2 forms (we tested both), has serious performance and stability problems.

Using the driver, we were unable to get more than about 200-page-per-second throughput, and the problem was clearly the driver—the database was only at about 15 percent to 20 percent CPU utilization at this load."

Anonymous User- February 24, 2005

Yep, SQL Server rocks. I can't wait to my hands on the 2005 version.

Anonymous User- February 24, 2005

Article Rating 5 out of 5

Have you ever backed up, and restored an Oracle or MS SQL to ANTOHER server?

MS wins; HANDS DOWN. MUCH easier...

Anonymous User- February 24, 2005

Talking about MySQL. Is it even a serious alternative for an ADVANCED database server?

Does MySQL really compare to SQL Server in advanced features?

Anonymous User- February 25, 2005

SQL Server actually outperformed Oracle by 50% in the referenced benchmark. 900 pps versus 600 pps @ 900 users. eWeek attempted to hide this fact by showing SQL Server on the separate graph.

Anonymous User- February 25, 2005

This is old y is it at the top of the list?

Anonymous User- March 01, 2005

As a developer, I find it a real shame that Reporting Services isn't available at all levels. I would love to use Reporting Services - it's a great tool, but unless we happen to be doing bespoke development for a client that we know has an appropriate SQL version, I have to use something else instead. It makes it impossible to use Reporting Services for an application that might run on any version of SQL.

Anonymous User- March 02, 2005

Article Rating 4 out of 5

Any comparaison between low-end database to SQL Server must be done opn equal basis. Low-end databases tend to be quick on small queries. Do the equivalent job with few joins and it is another story. Relational database are intended to deliver more performance on real queries, queries that does join. Low-end database used as isam files goes faster, but if you want them to a job that combine data that comes from many table in a ISAM way of doing things (i mean record by record) the will fall behind databases who possesses capable optimizer. Without joins you increase the traffic by orders of magnitude between the client and the server, you stress the server more in parsing an amout of queries that is in some way proportional to the data processed. Joining on higher databases is not just a matter of guessing the available indexes. Sometimes even without available indexes SQL Server does a quick job using advanced joining techniques. And more it decides sometimes to avoid indexes and use these advanced joining techniques because volume makes it faster.

Saying that low-end databases are faster, is only true with low-end jobs and not for long. Make them doing something a bit more complex in SQL, and it is another story.

Anonymous User- March 04, 2005

Article Rating 4 out of 5