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Anonymous User 4/16/2005 12:14:41 AM

I posted the following comments on the forums, but thought it would be relevant to post them here also.

I just browsed through the article on features in the next version of SQL Server - Yukon and did not see any mention of object-oriented database features being present. I could swear that I have read several articles where one of the SQL Product VPs at Microsoft was interviewed about the new features of SQL Yukon and one of the dominant features mentioned was adding object-oriented capabilities to SQL Server in addition to relational capabilities making SQL Server more of a hybrid object-relational dbms. I really thought Microsoft was actively working on these capabilities for Yukon but do not see them listed anywhere in this month's SQL Server magazine which is focused on Yukon features. Are these present and just didn't make the list for this article or did Microsoft not implement any OO capabilities in Yukon?

My main reason for bringing this up is because in the OO systems I have developed, my main frustration (and also the frustration of others if you read the newsgroups on this topic) is mapping relational data to objects. You can buy tools that make a decent attempt to do this OR you can write your own mapping code or code generator - which is tedious but doable. Microsoft tried to bridge this somewhat in .NET with DataSets and Typed DataSets, but the DataSet is still really just an abstraction of relational data (tables, columns, rows, datarelations between datatables, etc.).

The next version of .NET is supposed to have an object-relational library called ObjectSpaces, but it is still vaporware for the most part (I think there is a technical preview floating around out there somewhere). However, I was hoping that SQL Server Yukon would have more OO database features to bypass the whole relational to object-oriented impedance so objects could bet stored directly in SQL Server in more of a native OO fashion (inheritance, etc.) instead of having to map properties to columns, etc. In my opinion, having SQL Server as an object-relational hybrid is what would really put SQL Server as the front-runner in DBMSs as far as OO app development goes (which is the total focus of .NET).

Brian Andrews 10/21/2003 6:29:36 PM