Microsoft to Divulge SQL Server 'Katmai' Details Tomorrow

This afternoon, Microsoft issued a heads-up to reporters that its chief of the data and storage platform division, Ted Kummert, will be providing new details on the next version of SQL Server, currently code-named "Katmai," tomorrow during a company business conference.

Besides finally pinning a year (2008) onto the product name, perhaps the most important detail we may learn tomorrow is the role the new SQL Server will play in the next generation server environment, which still has its old code-name, "Longhorn."

Already, more and more Microsoft products have dependencies on SQL Server functionality; and the company listed a few more of them today, including tighter integration with SharePoint Server and PerformancePoint Server, the company's planning and analysis toolset. And as Access developers already know, that basic relational database management tool can now be used as a front-end to SQL Server, whereas it was once stuck with the old Jet database engine.

But on the server level, these dependencies rely upon SQL Server to be present in the server; and as its own commercial product suite for database managers, that might not always be a given from an administrator's perspective. In the current SQLS 2005 incarnation, this is the reason for something called "SQL Server Express" - the basic database engine that all the other tools need.

But will all the planning and redevelopment of SQL Server "Katmai," including its new support for XML databases, extend to "Express" as well? And will the product line have to be stratified even more?

The first beta test editions for Katmai are expected to be released to developers this upcoming June.