SQL Server Magazine: So, XML isn't a database replacement but rather another data-access technology that works with the database?
Mangione: Absolutely. And I'd go further and say that a lot of people have XML documents that they'd like to store in the database. And we're going to make it easier for them to take advantage of all the technology that's in SQL Server to store those documents, back them up, retrieve them, query them, and index them so that people can better manage their disparate systems.
SQL Server Magazine: The SQL Server team is quickly rolling out enhancements to the database system's XML functionality through Web releases. The first Web release came out in January, and Web Release 2 is in beta now. What's the planned schedule for the Web release program, and what XML enhancements will Microsoft be adding through this program?
Mangione: XML development is moving very fast across the industry. We have a team completely dedicated to building sets of XML services on top of SQL Server; this team is able to release features much faster than we could ever rev the core underlying database engine. The team has a series of releases coming out in beta. A whole set of those services should be available around the time Visual Studio.NET comes out.
SQL Server Magazine: How many customers have downloaded the Web releases, and what kind of feedback are you getting from them?
Mangione: The download rate for the Web releases is phenomenal—in the hundreds of thousands. We're getting a lot of feedback from customers about how they're using the functionality in the Web releases to develop applications. In addition, we're very involved in the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C's) standards process. As new XML initiatives come out of the W3C, such as those around XML schemas and XPATH queries, you'll see us implement those initiatives as part of our SQL Server XML effort.
SQL Server Magazine: We've heard some people say that they really don't need to learn XML because XML is going to be more of a plumbing feature implemented under the database covers than something you have to explicitly know about and control. Could you comment on that?
Mangione: If you're building solutions using tools and runtimes that natively understand XML, you certainly won't have to dive into the details of understanding how to put tags here or collections there. It's up to us at Microsoft to build great tools to hide a lot of the complexity from users. When you start building heterogeneous systems and you want to interoperate and especially build connectivity solutions to other systems, the XML contract by which you sign with that other system will force you to dive down to another level and really understand the data that's being passed between systems. But we also have products such as BizTalk Server that aim to make it very simple to exchange XML documents with other systems and integrate them into the SQL Server environment.
SQL Server Magazine: In terms of scalability, SQL Server 2000's support for distributed partitioned views was a major milestone in the history of the product and in Microsoft's ability to dominate the Transaction Processing Performance Council's (TPC's) TPC-C benchmark. But some administrative concerns surround the new functionality, which doesn't seem to be catching on with many customers. How are you planning to address these administrative concerns in the next release of the product?
Mangione: We can improve SQL Server's scalability in a number of ways. Certain systems naturally lend themselves to a scale-out design, which distributes data across multiple servers. As you mentioned, we've shown fantastic scalability through scale-out technology in the TPC-C benchmark. Some customers are tapping in to the scalability that distributed partitioned views offer; others are just partitioning their system within their applications. Customers are also telling us that they want to see great scale-up solutions, where they can have scalability within a single box. Working with Unisys and SAP, we've been able to publish 20,000 concurrent users connected on a single system in the SAP benchmark. This result is phenomenal considering that when we released the product, we supported 7500 concurrent users on a standard 8-way machine. In future releases, you'll see us further address the ease of use and scalability of both scale-up and scale-out designs.
SQL Server Magazine: At Microsoft's TechEd 2001 conference, previews of Yukon created quite a buzz. Can you share the overall design objectives of this upcoming release of SQL Server, some features we might expect to see, and when the release will hit the streets?
Mangione: First, we're going to continue to focus on ease of use and eliminating a lot of the mundane aspects of running the system. Making SQL Server easier to manage and building even more scalable, reliable systems are two of our key mandates for Yukon. We're also focused on making business intelligence easier to implement and use across the environment. I like the phrase "business intelligence for the masses." Make it simple: simple to build OLAP cubes, simple to build up your data sources. In addition, the release will bring easier-to-use transformation services. But what's really going to define the release is the integration of .NET and its Common Language Runtime, or CLR, into the database and the implementation of XML deeper into the database. You'll probably see the next release of SQL Server in early 2003.
Prev. page
1
[2]
3
next page 
