SQL Server Magazine

Like a modern-day Nostradamus, IT managers and SQL Server administrators need to keep an eye on the future to make sure that their current technology and infrastructure investments stay relevant in the months and years to come. The next year promises to be eventful for the SQL Server industry, so we thought that a bit of soothsaying and prognostication—teamed with sage advice from some experts—would help you navigate a sensible route through the latest technology developments and noteworthy product releases.

Because the upcoming release of SQL Server 2008 will bring new developments from Microsoft that will cause ripples throughout the market, we also wanted to let you know which third-party products have the tools you need to stay on top of next year’s challenges. To help you plot a safe course over the next year, we spoke with industry experts in three SQL Server areas: development, administration, and business intelligence (BI).

In the development space, new technologies and Microsoft’s product releases promise to make evolutionary changes in how databases are developed. The arrival of Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) will change the way database administrators and developers work together, and the updated ADO.NET framework with Visual Studio 2008 will drive innovation by streamlining application development. Accompanying Microsoft’s developer innovations, we’re seeing a lot of rapid application development (RAD) tools coming to market, which could give overworked developers good alternatives to traditional development methods.

When it comes to database administration, how will the rapidly decreasing cost (and quickly increasing power) of computer hardware and disk storage affect your SQL Server environment? One prediction here is easy: You’ll definitely want to jump on the virtualization bandwagon. Once confined to use as a tool for test environments or server consolidation, virtualization is emerging as a significant tool for every IT infrastructure. We’ll discuss how virtualization is influencing SQL Server implementations everywhere.

On the BI front, it’s abundantly clear that large enterprises are increasingly turning to database-driven BI solutions to help them make better decisions about their businesses. The BI segment has been white-hot lately, with corporate acquisitions (Microsoft buying Dundas Data Visualization) and significant new product releases (such as Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server) driving even more interest and competition into the area. If you’re tasked with deploying a BI solution in your organization, what tools and trends should you look for?

As you head into the new year, you need to be prepared for the trends and tools that will determine how you do your job and make your company successful. Let’s see what the future holds.

Development
Demand will continue to be high in the coming year for developers who write business applications with SQL Server back ends. In fact, the need for quick and efficient coding is so great that we’re seeing the emergence of a new breed of development tools. These tools include products that make it easy for developers and DBAs to quickly prototype, test, and deploy applications built on top of SQL Server.

Products such as DataKraft’s DataKraft Studio and Biro M&T’s NConstruct let you create basic database- driven applications quickly without coding. For heterogeneous environments, you’ll see cross-platform development tools such as Embarcadero Technologies’ Rapid SQL. SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 promise to introduce a number of features that should benefit database developers, beginning with better support for the ADO.NET entity framework and LINQ—not to forget Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals.

“The new ADO.NET Entity Framework enables more efficient software creation by giving developers the ability to work with logical data entities, or objects, that are mapped to the underlying tables and columns in the database,” says David Gugick, director of product management for SQL Server solutions at Quest Software. “By abstracting the underlying complexity of a normalized database, developers can work with meaningful objects that represent the business, rather than trying to understand the raw tables and column definitions a DBA may be more comfortable with. This keeps developers business focused.”

Gugick also points to the introduction of LINQ with SQL Server 2008 as another boon for developers. “LINQ allows developers to query SQL Server using managed code in their language of choice—such as C# or Visual Basic—rather than relying on embedded SQL statements. The end result is that developers will be creating SQL Server applications more quickly than they ever could.”

Harried DBA developers are also increasingly facing issues related to time (or lack thereof), a trend that Gugick sees as a driving force behind their decision to look at third-party tools to ease their workload. “If you asked most database professionals what they want out of their third-party toolsets, I’m certain you would hear a clear desire to have those tools help them get a handle on their environment, reduce their workload, and increase their productivity,” says Gugick. “In other words, saving them time.”

To help you meet your future development demands, we’ve put together a list of some of the key products and tools in the XML, ASP.NET, and database utility categories.

Administration
New releases from Microsoft again set the stage for competition to heat up in 2008. First, the release of Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2007, with its support for SQL Server, will stir up third-party backup and continuous data protection (CDP) solutions to differentiate themselves and add value. Everyone needs good backup and recovery solutions, and this will be the year to find the best fit for your situation as vendors vie for your business.

Virtualization is already having a major impact on the IT industry, and recent trends indicate that virtualization will have a more significant effect on how databases are secured, backed up, and managed in the future. “We’re still at the beginning in terms of virtualizing database applications,” says VMware senior director of product marketing Bogomil Balkansky. “About 60 percent of our customers are telling us that they run databases in virtual machines, and it is only a matter of time before more customers are doing the same.” Balkansky explains that virtualization is still in its infancy, and that remaining concerns about running databases in virtual machines (VMs)—such as I/O performance and management complexity—will continue to be addressed over time. Balkansky points to several areas in which virtualization is already indirectly affecting database environments, ranging from server consolidation in the data center to an increase in the availability of other network resources, such as storage and backup. VMware is the established leader in virtualization, but you can expect a flurry of new virtualization products and novel solutions.

Microsoft is also jumping into the virtualization space in a big way with the upcoming release of Windows Server virtualization (WSv), the hypervisor solution designed as part of Windows Server 2008. WSv requires virtualization support in the processor, a feature that both the Intel VT and AMD-V processors provide. Large database applications also require beefy hardware. So you’ll see Intel’s and AMD’s quadcore servers playing a leading role in all sorts of SQL Server solutions.

With these trends in mind, you’ll need to know what products are available and what products are on the horizon to meet your demands. We’ve created a list of some of the key players in backup and recovery, virtualization, and hardware.

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