50,000 Receive Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Beta 3 in Broadest-Ever Release

REDMOND, Wash., June 29, 1998 — > Microsoft Corp. today announced the
on-schedule release of Microsoft® SQL Server
™version 7.0 beta 3, which now includes integrated OLAP services. This is the newest beta of the world’s most popular database for the Microsoft Windows NT® Server operating system.

Microsoft is sending the software to more than 50,000 sites, making it the most broadly distributed beta for enterprise-class relational database management software. The unprecedented breadth of the Microsoft SQL Server beta is Microsoft’s latest step to ensure the software’s full, industrial-strength reliability. Microsoft today also released new benchmark results confirming that Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 delivers the industry’s best performance with enterprise solutions from leading providers The Baan Co., PeopleSoft Inc. and SAP AG running on Windows NT Server.

“We’re very pleased to mark this major milestone for the world’s next-generation database with the on-schedule release of Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 beta 3,”
said Rich Tong, vice president, applications and tools group at Microsoft.
“This beta delivers the complete SQL Server 7.0 feature set, accompanied by strong performance and stability that will give the tens of thousands of beta customers a superb ‘out of the box’ experience.”

Comprehensive Testing Ensures Reliability of SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 beta 3 is the latest phase in a rigorous and comprehensive testing cycle to ensure that Microsoft’s next-generation database delivers a rock-solid platform to customers. Marking the largest-ever beta program for enterprise-class relational database management software, beta 3 will be distributed to subscribers of MSDN
™
developer program Universal subscription services, the Microsoft Beta Evaluation program and all customers who register for the beta via Microsoft’s Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/backoffice/sql/default.htm , which goes live on July 2. Other Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 testing initiatives include the SQL Server Migration Lab and the 1K Database Challenge.

The Washington-based Migration Lab facility provides application migration and optimization expertise to ISVs building products on SQL Server 7.0. More than 95 percent of all tested applications ran successfully without change on Microsoft SQL Server 7.0. The Migration Lab will enable ISVs to ship highly optimized applications when SQL Server 7.0 is generally available.

Microsoft’s 1K Database Challenge has also shown how easily and successfully customers can migrate their existing Microsoft SQL Server databases to SQL Server 7.0. Customers in 27 countries submitted 1,223 databases in sizes up to 200 GB. Of the 907 databases currently converted to Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, more than 90 percent were migrated completely transparently, without any manual intervention.

“The migration from SQL Server 6.5 to SQL Server 7.0 was virtually automatic, the upgrade utility transparently migrated even our largest and most complex production databases,”
said Robert McBride, director of technology engineering, Harper Collins Publishing. “We are delighted by the reliability and performance of SQL Server 7.0 in our large-scale data warehousing project and expect this next beta release to be even better.”

SQL Server 7.0 Delivers Top Performance on Benchmarks From Baan, PeopleSoft, SAP

In recent benchmarks, Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 beta 3 delivered record-setting performance with enterprise solutions from leading ERP vendors, including SAP, Baan and PeopleSoft. It also set new performance and price/performance records on the industry standard TPC-C benchmark.

With SAP, Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 delivered a result of 2,288 sales and distribution (SD) users for the SAP R/3 System, the highest performance ever on the Windows NT Server platform and a 126 percent improvement over the highest Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 result of
10 months ago. In its first performance test with the Baan IV, SQL Server 7.0 again delivered the highest performance on Windows NT Server, with a result of 3,232 Baan reference users (BRUs). Finally, SQL Server 7.0 processed 41,328 checks per hour running PeopleSoft’s Payroll version 7.0 and set a new record for the highest performance on Windows NT Server.

On the industry-standard TPC-C benchmark, Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Enterprise Edition set a new single-node performance record at 18,127 tpmC on Windows NT Server 4.0 Enterprise Edition. This performance is 50 percent higher than the previous four-processor Windows NT Server record held by SQL Server 6.5 Enterprise Edition.* On the same benchmark, SQL Server 7.0 Enterprise Edition set a new price/performance record of $26.10/tpmC, increasing Microsoft’s position in price/performance records to the top 21. All new performance results highlighted in this release were achieved with a Compaq ProLiant 7000 6/400-1M server with four Pentium II Xeon processors.

“We are very excited by the early performance results of Baan IV and Microsoft SQL Server 7.0. We are confident that the combination will meet the scalability requirements of our most demanding customers,”
said Laurens van der Tang, executive vice president, research and development, Baan.
“The excellent performance we are seeing is the result of months of collaboration by Baan and Microsoft throughout the SQL Server 7.0 beta cycle, a relationship that will surely benefit our mutual customers.”

Created by a world-class development team, Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 is the leading Windows NT Server-based database, bringing business advantage and improved decision-making to all levels of the organization through the power of data warehousing, industry solutions and interoperability with Microsoft Office. Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 enables independent software vendors and customers to build and deploy scalable database solutions for e-commerce, line of business, mobile computing and data warehousing. Microsoft SQL Server is a member of the Microsoft BackOffice® family, a set of servers that make it easy to build, manage and deploy powerful business solutions.

Availability

Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 beta 3 is now shipping and will be available to order via the Microsoft Web site at http://www.microsoft.com//backoffice/sql/ beginning July 2. Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 is scheduled for release later this year.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software for personal computers. The company offers a wide range of products and services for business and personal use, each designed with the mission of making it easier and more enjoyable for people to take advantage of the full power of personal computing every day.

*The latest TPC-C results mentioned in this release (18,127 tpmC @ $26.10/tpmC) is compared with the following result: 12,105 tpmC @ $32.76/tpmC, NEC Express 5800 Server using Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 Enterprise Edition.

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