SQL Server Magazine: You mentioned the upcoming .NET CLR, which will let developers create applications on SQL Server in different languages. But even today, many developers use inefficient, row-by-row procedural code to interact with the database. If these developers can write SQL Server stored procedures in the same way, we'll likely see even more applications that have performance and scalability problems. T-SQL has a set-based efficiency and is very elegant for a database management system. Is Microsoft going to add set-based constructs to any of the new .NET languages? Or are you going to improve T-SQL to let it interact with the CLR? What's the relationship between T-SQL and .NET?
Mangione: Clearly, tens of thousands of applications are written in T-SQL today, and compatibility with those applications and ensuring that those applications work on future releases is paramount to our success with .NET. Absolutely, you'll see T-SQL continuing to run in and be optimized for SQL Server. Your point about set-based programming and how to extend that into languages such as C# and Visual Basic (VB) running in the CLR is a real focus of what we want to do with Yukon. When we integrate the CLR into SQL Server, we need to develop a connected data model that's fast, efficient, and very high-performance. Customers are also telling us they want a symmetric model for developing applications on the middle tier and within the database. They want a common way to debug the programs and to do source control and data-access calls; they want a common programming technique on the back end. So, we're looking at how to leverage our investments in the CLR on the middle tier to develop better applications within the database itself.
SQL Server Magazine: ADO.NET, the data-access technology for the .NET Framework, brings valuable enhancements to ADO but also raises some performance and scalability concerns. One of ADO.NET's core components is the DataSet object, which is basically an in-memory data store with its own set of programs, keys, and referential integrity. These features are valuable in a lot of ways, but programmers who don't have a lot of database experience could use these features to produce applications that don't perform or scale well. Educating customers to retrieve subsets of the data—only the data they need—instead of trying to do row-by-row processing is very important. What's Microsoft doing to protect against some of the scalability issues associated with ADO.NET?
Mangione: Certainly, inexperienced programmers can write inefficient database applications with ADO.NET. The onus is really on us, Microsoft, to get great coding samples out, to produce great MSDN [Microsoft Developer Network] articles, and to offer great training tools to show people how to build highly scalable applications with this technology. It's also important that the ADO technology we develop inside Microsoft sits with the SQL Server team so that we can optimize the development of those applications. In addition, we're looking at customer feedback to see how we can improve subsequent releases of ADO.NET.
SQL Server Magazine: What should database administrators and developers do today to get ready for these .NET changes?
Mangione: With the launch of Visual Studio.NET and even with beta 2, which is available today, customers can start learning a lot about what it means to develop applications in C# or VB. They can start working with ADO.NET and the simplification we've brought to data access. ADO.NET is a great way to start moving a lot of your mid-tier applications to the new programming constructs. And that knowledge will naturally lend itself to the next release of SQL Server, which will natively feature the same sorts of facilities.
SQL Server Magazine: Some people in the database world see SQL Server's hallmark ease of use as a dumbing-down of the database system and don't consider SQL Server professionals, in general, as highly skilled technologists, worthy of premium salaries. How does training and best practices—or the lack of them—in the SQL Server community affect Microsoft and the view of it in the database marketplace? And what's Microsoft doing to improve the skills and reputation of SQL Server professionals?
Mangione: Our goal with ease of use is to let our DBAs concentrate more on working with the software developers—to really become the guardians of the data and the people who analyze and tune applications and database access to get great performance out of the system. When we talk about ease of use, we're really talking about automating a lot of the mundane aspects of managing the system, making sure that you can perform all the operations online without having to take the database offline, making sure that the systems adapt to changes in query patterns, and freeing our DBAs to offer much more value to their companies. We'll continue to invest in utilities such as the Index Tuning Wizard to give DBAs the profiling tools they need to deeply analyze their systems. We've seen tremendous payback by working with our research group here at Microsoft and incorporating the work that they've done and the tools they've used directly into SQL Server to benefit our customers. Another great way that DBAs can differentiate themselves and make themselves even more valuable is by learning more than just the relational system. Learn how to use Data Transformation Services (DTS), how to build business intelligence solutions, and how to build analytic solutions that the business leaders inside your company will really appreciate. The best thing we can do at Microsoft to boost the reputation of SQL Server professionals is to provide training tools for more advanced capabilities on SQL Server and to continue to focus on making SQL Server a great enterprise application that people deploy their mission-critical applications on.
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