Microsoft Ships Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Beta; First Broadly Available Beta of Best-Selling Windows NT Database
REDMOND, Wash., Jan. 13, 1998 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has begun shipping Microsoft® SQL Server
™7.0 Beta 2, the first broadly available beta release of the next version of the industry’s most popular database for the Microsoft Windows NT® Server operating system. This significant new release enables independent software vendors and customers to build and deploy fully scalable branch automation, mobile, e-commerce and datamart database solutions more quickly, simply and cost-effectively. The beta was made available to 1,500 Microsoft customers and ISVs.
Microsoft SQL Server is the leading database software for Windows NT Server, according to the independent market research firm International Data Corp. (IDC), with 44 percent of license shipments compared to 28 percent for second-place challenger Oracle. IDC’s latest database research shows Microsoft SQL Server license sales growing at more than 100 percent annually and projects that the market for Windows NT-based databases will “explode” with more than 50 percent total growth between 1997 and 2001, compared to a largely flat market for UNIX database software.
Microsoft expects Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 to expand its leadership based on new features that support greater scalability, superior data warehousing and easier management and use.
“Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 is a defining release for Microsoft’s database business,” said Jim Allchin, senior vice president of the personal and business systems group at Microsoft. “Customer requirements have driven significant innovations in ease of use, programmability and flexibility. These product innovations enable SQL Server 7.0 to be the leader in several of the database industry’s fastest-growing application categories including e-commerce, mobile computing, branch automation and data marts.”
Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 offers benefits such as the following:
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Greater scalability , providing a single database that scales from a laptop computer running Windows® 95 or Windows 98 to a terabyte symmetric multiprocessor cluster running Windows NT Server Enterprise Edition. New to release 7.0 is a personal version with a low memory footprint that is well-suited to mobile computing. Other new features include row-level locking, intraquery parallelism, multisite update replication, distributed query and very large database (VLDB) enhancements.
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Superior data warehousing , addressing the complexity of data warehousing with support for data extraction and transformation (a new feature called Data Transformation Services), improved handling of complex queries and very large databases, integrated online analytical processing and extensive support for third-party integration.
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Easier management and use , lowering total cost of ownership through features like multiserver, single console management; event-based job execution and alerting; integrated security; and administrative scripting. These powerful management facilities, along with new auto-configuration features, make Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 the ideal choice for embedded and branch automation applications.
“We are very excited about Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, and the enterprise-class features and performance it brings to our products and customers,” said Stan Swete, vice president, PeopleTools Product Strategy of PeopleSoft Corp. “PeopleSoft has already seen rapid market
acceptance for Windows NT Server and SQL Server, and with our enterprise application software optimized for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, we expect that to increase significantly.”
“As a leader in the health-care industry, Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corporation depends on the ability to manage its information assets,” said Brian Paige, assistant vice president, systems development at Columbia HCA. “Microsoft SQL Server plays a critical role in our data warehousing strategy. As a beta tester and early adopter of Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, we are very pleased with the product’s ability to address our most demanding requirements including terabyte database storage, manageability and complex query processing.”
Availability
Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 beta 2 is scheduled to be available on Jan. 22, 1998. The final release of Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 is scheduled to be available later this year.
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