This is the life . . .
November 24, 2005
I decided to catch a slightly earlier bus to work today so that I could catch up on a few podcasts. The first one that I had scheduled to listen to was the SQL Down Under podcast. This one is something special because it has Dr. Jim Gray who has had a hand in products such as DB2, Oracle RDB and of course several generations of SQL Server.
The hard questions about why SQL Server 2005 was so late were asked, but also questions about the future. I find the possibilities created by the CLR in SQL and LINQ coming down the line truely facinating. Is SQL going to become a data-aware application server? What happens as boxes scale up – is the midrange getting close to being able to clobber a mainframe without a cluster?
Greg also made a really great point about the reason for getting involved so early in product release cycle. Basically it boils down to being able to avoid having to keep on top of the evolving technology without having a massive learning curve every time a product ships.
Anyway – great show Greg!
November 28, 2005 at 12:00 am
Mitch,
Since you’re excited about LINQ, where do you see it taking us in the future? I find the concept of it quite cool, however I keep thinking it is going to be a flash in the pan type technology.
Al.
November 28, 2005 at 12:00 am
What we are seeing is a new round of language innovation, not just from Microsoft but from the developer community at large.
LINQ is one of those innovations and it shows how we can effectively bridge the developer and database world which have a somewhat artificial divide between them in the midrange space.
If we look at the mainframe it effectively bonds COBOL to DB2 and you get some massive scale up benefits. I see a breed of midrange system emerging that blends managed code with LINQ and SQL Server to provide a massive midrange system which will tackle the mainframes dominance in this space.
Dr. Jim Gray alluded that the reason he came to Microsoft was that he wanted to provide scale out. I think that the next version of SQL Server will provide shared nothing scale out, and people will essentially look at SQL Server as an app host.