Microsoft planning add-on to SQL Server
Microsoft wants SQL Server to scale new heights, and it is hoping an add-on code-named Kilimanjaro will help.
Microsoft VP Ted Kummert, earlier this year as he made good on a pledge to dye his hair orange if the engineering team got SQL Server 2008 out by the company's revised deadline. He's holding the team's mock-up of what his hair might look like.
Due out in the first half of 2010, Kilimanjaro improves SQL Server 2008 with a series of business intelligence enhancements to the database. Microsoft, stressed though, that Kilimanjaro is not the next version of SQL Server, which is due out two to three years after SQL Server 2008. SQL Server 2009 was released earlier this year.
"You should think about this as new capabilities, not a refresh or upgrade," said Microsoft Vice President Ted Kummert, who heads the SQL Server team. Microsoft has not said how Kilimanjaro will be sold. The goal of Kilimanjaro is to make it so more workers in a company can create business intelligence features like charts and so forth.
Microsoft, which is making the Kilimanjaro upgrade at a business intelligence conference in Redmond, Wash., also plans to show its efforts at integrating its Datallegro acquisition with Windows Server and SQL Server.
The Datallegro acquisition will allow SQL Server to go from databases that are in the tens of terabytes to ones in the hundreds of terabytes or even a petabyte of data, Kummert said. The first integrated product, known as "Project Madison," is due in the first half of 2010.
Although Microsoft is showing the demo at the BI conference, Kummert said the data warehouse itself, which consists of a 100 terabyte database with over a trillion rows of data, is running at Datallegro's offices in Aliso Viejo, Calif.
"Moving that much storage is a bit problematic," he said.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
