Microsoft relies on an integrated technology stack—from OS to database to user interface. How does that integration help Microsoft's BI offerings better serve your customers' needs?
Our belief in the Windows platform is long-standing and probably well understood by now. It's important to note that while we have an integrated offering from top to bottom, it is also an open environment. This openness is critical for BI, where much of the opportunity for our customers is in gaining additional insight and value from the operational systems they already have. All of our BI platform components can read data from a huge variety of databases and applications, and they provide Web services for embedding and integrating with other applications—even on other platforms. We get strength from the integration and consistency of the elements we provide, but lose nothing in terms of openness. Our customers benefit from the flexibility of our interoperability. By using our integrated solution, customers also witness a reduction in training time, management staff, and total cost of ownership. It's a win-win situation.
SQL Server 2005 will be the first release in which database tools converge with Visual Studio development tools. Can you tell us what it took to align these two releases and what benefits customers will realize from the change?
Databases and applications used to be two separate worlds, but more and more, people are recognizing the similarities between application development and database development. For instance, what interesting business application doesn't store and access data in a database? With Visual Studio 2005 (codenamed Whidbey) and SQL Server 2005, we've taken the next step in melding the database- and application-development experiences. We based our BI Development Studio on Visual Studio, and all the Visual Studio features that support team and enterprise development, including source-code control and deployment, also work for the data warehouse and BI developer. We built a single environment where people can develop all of the components of a data warehousing or BI application, including relational design, ETL, cubes, reports, data mining, and even code if desired. There is no other end-to-end, professional-grade environment for BI.
The introduction of the UDM is said to blur the line between relational and multidimensional database architectures. This approach is new for the Microsoft BI platform. What are the most interesting features the UDM offers? And based on your experience, what features do you think will surface as the most valuable for customers and ISVs?
Ultimately, OLAP is cool because it brings together navigation and query. Pivoting and drilling down are really just queries. But the OLAP world has never been attribute-rich; OLAP engines have never had good ways to express attributes, and adding something as simple as a phone number to a dimension would have caused size and performance issues in earlier SQL Server releases. With the UDM, we bridge the hierarchical drill-down world and the attribute-reporting world to present a dimensional view of data without losing the rich attributes present in the data.
The UDM is also the place where we express business logic, since MDX calculated members and cells are expressions of business logic. The UDM adds time intelligence, account intelligence, and key performance indicators (KPIs). You might think KPIs are only calculations, but they are much more. A SQL Server 2005 KPI includes the calculation, an expression for the goal, an expression for the trend, and a means of visualizing the results. KPIs are first-class elements of the UDM.
What tools will Microsoft add to the Visual Studio 2005 IDE to help developers create and manage SQL Server (and other database platforms') users, groups, and permissions to better insulate private data from those who shouldn't have access?
The Visual Studio and SQL Server development teams work together on integration and new methods of managing data. Our team supplies components to Visual Studio, and they supply components to SQL Server. In SQL Server 2005, we've added Data Insulation features to the core SQL Server engine. The end result is that developers using Visual Studio can easily create the database elements they need for their application. For enterprise-management activities, we anticipate that people will use SQL Server Management Studio.
In one of your past conference keynote addresses, you mentioned that Microsoft is adding a new set of controls to Visual Studio 2005 to permit reporting without Reporting Services. Could you describe what those controls will do, when we'll see the controls appear in Visual Studio 2005, and where you expect them to be documented?
The reporting controls will ship with Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005, and they will enable programmers to embed reporting in their applications. We support both WinForms and WebForms. Programmers will either provide Report Definition Language (RDL) and a data set to the reporting control or point to an existing Reporting Services server. We think every application of any sophistication can use at least a little reporting against data contained in the application. These controls just make it easier.
What benefit does 64-bit bring to SQL Server BI, and do you think 64-bit can really help the Microsoft BI platform scale to the levels that UNIX-based BI platforms scale to today?
In a word: memory. The 64-bit architecture lets customers break out of the 3GB memory limit that they have with 32-bit SQL Server, which allows for far larger dimensions in OLAP. It also enables the new ETL engine in SQL Server Integration Services to hold more data and process rows that much faster. And yes, we absolutely think we will reach into the upper ranges of scale with 64-bit.
Who are some BI vendors you're working closely with to develop 64-bit BI computing?
What's important to recognize is not which vendors support 64-bit, but that SQL Server 2005 supports both 32-bit and 64-bit on Intel and AMD platforms. Our customers and partners can start with 32-bit and easily move to 64-bit later or take existing 32-bit applications to 64-bit with near-total transparency. This support means our customers and partners don't have to worry about the differences because they are quite small and well documented.
Did you leave out any BI features that you planned to add to SQL Server 2005 because of deadlines or other issues?
We are confident that SQL Server 2005 will offer a comprehensive BI solution to address our customers' business problems. We've worked closely with our customers for several years to determine their pain points and create BI tools that provide relief. We started delivering those tools with SQL Server 7.0 and OLAP and continued with SQL Server 2000, DTS, and Reporting Services. With SQL Server 2005, customers will have the complete package to integrate, analyze, and report data. Even after all that, we still have a million ideas! We're already dreaming of what we can do beyond Yukon, so you can bet we'll be charged up for the next round—right after we ship SQL Server 2005. It's too early to discuss specifics, but as always, we'll work with our customers to determine new features and technologies.
Your team puts a lot of long hours into your work on SQL Server BI. What drives you and your BI developers to invest so much personally in the product?
Even when I started with the BI team 8 years ago, we said the same thing we say now: Companies improve when more of their employees use BI. "BI for the Masses" is very motivating. Unlike some of our competitors, our team is not working to provide a response to competitive offerings. The team works hard for the purpose of improving our product to best meet our customers' needs. It might sound corny, but it truly is as much a journey as it is a destination. The personal investment across the board is impressive and humbling, and I'm awed by the effort our team contributes every single day. I hope it shows in our product.
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