Earlier this week, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) revealed SQL Server 2000’s new scalability features and detailed its location on the company’s technology road map.
SQL Server 2000 beta 2 is scheduled to be available worldwide in April.
Microsoft’s vision for the product is one in which SQL Server provides customers with virtually unlimited scalability on the Windows 2000 platform — a key element of friction-free operations according to the company.
The ideal current location for enterprises on the road map is to be using a combination of Windows 2000 and SQL Server 7.0, which allows them to use “state-of-the-art hardware and networking technologies” while building large-scale enterprise applications.
The next landmark on the road map will be reached later this year when Microsoft releases SQL Server 2000. The product will have a new feature that enables scale-out partitioning. Distributed partitioned views provide e-commerce customers with unlimited scalability by dividing workload across multiple independent SQL-Server-based servers. SQL Server 2000 will also provide customers with the opportunity to begin evaluating scale-out partitioning for themselves.
Microsoft also announced various database benchmarks that it believes demonstrate the power of the Microsoft platform in both scale-out and scale-up scenarios. In one test, the TPC-C processed 227,079 order transactions per minute, a result achieved with Windows 2000 and SQL Server 2000 running on 12 Compaq ProLiant servers in a scale-out configuration.
Other tests that Microsoft ran established: a new SAP R/3 SD standard application benchmark on both Compaq and Unisys servers, a new record for all platforms with PeopleSoft HRMS and PeopleSoft Financial, and new benchmarks for running TPC-H and CRM systems on Windows.
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