Computerworld

Microsoft scales out SQL Server 2008

'Democratising' BI is a goal, vice president says
  • Eric Lai (Unknown Publication)
  • 12 October, 2008 22:00

Microsoft will take its SQL Server 2008 database into the large data warehousing market by 2010 as it integrates technology from DATAllegro, which it acquired earlier this year.

Microsoft plans to release a version of SQL Server 2008, code-named Kilimanjaro, that will use technology from DATAllegro to build massively parallel systems that can scale out into the "hundreds of terabytes", says Ted Kummert, corporate vice president for data and storage at Microsoft.

Hardware vendors such as Dell, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Unisys and Bull, which were previously working with DATAllegro, will build data warehousing appliances, code-named Madison, based on the combined SQL Server/DATAllegro technology.

Those appliances will be available by the first half of 2010, though a community technology preview version of Madison should be available within 12 months, Kummert says.

At its recent business intelligence conference in Seattle, Microsoft also said it wants to "democratise" business intelligence and make it available to more employees inside a company by bolstering its self-service analysis features in a project code-named Gemini.

Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft's business division, said that tools such as Microsoft Office, particularly Excel, along with SharePoint and PerformancePoint, provide a complete stack that complements SQL Server and is superior to other vendors' "cobbled-together, disparate solutions".

"Other companies talk about features that are like Excel; we talk about Excel," he said in a keynote speech at the conference.

These "people-ready" BI features will also be available in the next release.

Elop also said that companies using Microsoft's stack will find it much cheaper and easier to implement. "Some vendors have made the decision during these hard economic times to start cranking up prices," he said. "Well, there's something wrong with that."

Officially released in August, SQL Server 2008 has been deployed by 80 companies, said Tom Casey, Microsoft general manager for SQL Server business intelligence, during a presentation. The free version has been downloaded 500,000 times, he said.

SQL Server, along with Oracle's database, has long been dogged by accusations that its technology is unsuitable for users interested in "scaling out" their systems using lower-cost PC servers hooked up in massively parallel networks.

But during the keynote, Microsoft demonstrated a 150TB database with a trillion rows of data using 24 separate instances of SQL Server 2008.

Alluding to Oracle's recently announced high-end "data warehouse in a rack", the Database Machine, Kummert said, "Rarely do I ever hear customers say they want a one-size-fits-all solution that is new and different to manage."

By working with multiple vendors, Microsoft will be able to provide a "matched set of hardware and software ... that gives you the power of choice," Kummert said.

One of the traditional leaders in large data warehousing, Teradata, claimed that Microsoft's moves are no threat.

Randy Lea, vice president of product and services at Teradata, said in an email: "It's not the amount of data that's important. It is the ability to manage large volumes of data, concurrent queries, hundreds and thousands of users, multiple applications, and support of both batch and real-time loading. And the hard part is to do all of this on a single enterprise data warehouse.

"Teradata stands as the proven, recognised leader in enterprise data warehousing and we don't anticipate that Microsoft's announcement will enable them to be a competitor in this enterprise space," Lea said.