�Yukon� � Next Generation Information Management System

Introduction

�Yukon� is a proposed new 32 - bit version of Microsoft SQL Server aka, MS SQL 2000, which is not yet released from Microsoft, which may expect to be release in the year 2004. It contains a lot of additional tools which improves a rich scale of performance, reliability and ease of use for the information management system. Many tools in the old version of SQL Server such as Database Engine, Analysis Services, DTS, Database administration tools, XML support and ADO.NET, have been enhanced in a greater extend.

Key Features of �Yukon� SQL Server Database

The enhancement of �Yukon� SQL Server Database contains the following application areas:

• Developer Productivity through CLR integration.
• Business Intelligence
• Enterprise Data Management
• Security

Here, I am going to briefly discuss about these areas:

Developer Productivity through CLR Integration

As far as a database developer is concerned, the productivity is the major factor during the development of database applications especially lack of developer experience in the integrated tool for database development and debugging.

Yukon new feature supports in the following areas:

o It allows .NET framework hosting

This interesting feature helps the software designers and developers to utilize the full functionality of .NET runtime, and the .NET Base class libraries. Now, Yukon SQL Server runs on CLR environment, which will be more secure than the traditional SQL Server stored procedure. This allows mixing the DML in Yukon and the computation intensive tasks in .NET, which solves a lot of the business problems.

Consider, for example, if you have written stored procedure which contains the string manipulation tasks, you can use the same task using .NET language and thus way you can utilize the full functionality of .NET framework and take full advantage of the faster processing of stored procedure, which enhancing the data storing and querying capabilities.

Developers can select any of the programming language such as C#, VB.NET, C++ etc. for .NET integration with Yukon, allows more CPU-intensive functions and stored procedures.

o It supports native XML language

The new XML Query feature allows the developer to build complex queries that allows retrieving data the user wants. This is based on the new XML technology, which implements the mechanism in Yukon called XQUERY Designer. This XQUERY Designer mechanism is based on the w3c standard. The XML data type helps for easy retrieval of data, which is stored as a Binary Large Object (BLOB).

Document Management capability supports the developers to a great extend to query, update and indexing the XML data. It is accessible over HTTP and SOAP technologies and can be programmed just like a web service.

Note: Two newly created objects in Yukon; called User defined types and aggregates, which give the developers more querying capabilities.

o Integrated Web Service is a part of Yukon development

XML and Web services will play a key role in Yukon and it enhances the product's Web services capabilities. The upcoming Indigo communications framework and Yukon allows easier to make transactional and secure Web services. It helps developers to develop the Web services in the database tier, making a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) listener and providing a new type of data access capability for Web services-centric applications.

o It has a well defined distributed application framework

A well Yukon distributed application framework supports in the following areas, which is going to describe below:

� SQL Service Broker

� Notification Services

� Reporting Services

Business Intelligence

As far as a database developer is concerned, the productivity is the major factor during the development of database applications.

Yukon new feature supports in the following areas:

o SQL Service Broker

SQL Service Broker is a new application framework, which provides an asynchronous processing environment using the loosely couple programming pattern and also it enhances to handle greater loads from the server.

It supports for queues and service processes. The prime function of the technology implements a message routing system, which allows sending and receiving messages. If the receiving component is busy while sending a new message, SQL Service Broker puts these messages in a queue. Also, it would handle the roll back and commit procedures based on the execution results.

o Notification Services

The new version of pre-beta release of Yukon has a high scale event based notification system, which allows sending various notifications to its users via email, .net alerts, file, HTTP, custom distributors or text message or SMS or page. Notification Services in Yukon SQL Server allows the SQL Server to implement the File System, or custom event providers.

The inbound messages arrived on protocol pipe, which will be authenticated and dispatched to appropriate queue. The following figure 1 shows the SQL Service Broker in Yukon.

Fig.1 SQL Service Broker

Note: The earlier version of SQL Server 2000 has already had functionality, which was through the Notification Services 2.0.

o Reporting Services

The following features of Reporting Services are allows developers for developing, managing and distributing reports. This server based technology for reporting allows the following features:

• Provides managed reports
• Can consume �any� data source
• Is programmable via URL or SOAP
• Can integrate with portals

So, the business intelligence helps an organization for information management system in the areas of integrated platform, improved decision-making, security and availability and enterprise analytical capabilities.

Enterprise Data Management

SQL Server �Yukon� helps to increase scalability, performance, security and even reduced application downtime. It has so many significant enhancements to enterprise data management such as availability, scalability, security, manageability, and interoperability etc. It enhances the additional backup and restore functionalities, replication enhancements, database mirroring, failover clustering, table partitioning, snapshot isolations using the various SQL management tools such as SQL profiler and other related tools.

Security

New Microsoft SQL Server Yukon�s enhanced security architecture helps to understand Database Administrators and Developers a well defined set of rules using server�s security framework, which includes in various areas such as password policy, user schema separation, permissions, SQL � CLR security etc.

The various levels of security principals includes windows, SQL Server and Database levels, which secures Microsoft SQL server Yukon database elements such as login, cmdpoint, certificates and event notifications.

�Yukon� - Top 10 Features

The top ten features of Yukon are categorized into three areas. They are

1. Database Administration
2. Development
3. Business Intelligence

The table listed below explains these features.

For more information about this, visit the Microsoft web site, http://www.microsoft.com/sql/yukon/productinfo/top30features.asp.

Summary

In this article, I briefly discussed about the functionalities and features of Microsoft�s next generation information management solution called SQL Server �Yukon�, which should be a comprehensive database platform for rapidly building, deploying and managing scalable, integrated solutions.