Organizations today are facing several unique data challenges: the proliferation of data and systems across their enterprise; the need to provide employees, customers, and partners with consistent access to that data; the desire to better equip information workers with meaningful information to drive informed decisions; and the mandate to control costs without sacrificing application availability, security, or reliability.

Yukon is the next release of SQL Server designed to help enterprises address these challenges. SQL Server 2005 known as Yukon which is yet to be released is Microsoft’s next-generation data management and analysis software that will deliver increased scalability, availability, and security to enterprise data and analytical applications while making them easier to create, deploy, and manage. It contains a lot of additional tools that 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. Yukon will change the world of database development and it will bring the database developer the great level of flexibility and ease of development that is never exposed in the past. Because you must be aware of the functionality of any Database Management System, the objective of this article is to highlight the new possibility that Yukon is ready to provide. Following are the new features for the database developers.

1) Integration of .NET Framework into SQL Server database engine.

With the new release of Yukon, .Net Framework is completely integrated with the database engine. I think it needs some explanation. Imagine that you can use your favorite .NET language (like VB.NET or C#) to write database objects (triggers, stored procedures, functions and more) without using T-SQL statements. It was over dreamed a few years ago but I think that Microsoft wanted to surprise us many times (.NET then Yukon, who knows what next).

Now you can use your .NET Class Library (more than 5500 classes) to write your Yukon's objects, it's great that the Common Language Runtime has been integrated in Yukon. The .NET integration with Yukon provide the developers with many benefits which decreases the time of development and the final results will be better than ever.

First benefit or integrating .NET is, a more powerful programming model which means that using .NET languages to write your SQL Server objects is more powerful than with the traditional T-SQL statements, although that T-SQL is the primary and will still the primary language of SQL Server. More saver and robust environment for databases has been considered in Yukon, now that your SQL objects will run in the CLR environment that means it will be more secure than the traditional stored procedure that runs on the server. Also Microsoft has added 2 more objects in Yukon; User defined types and aggregates, which give the developers more querying capabilities. Still the primary procedural language will be T-SQL. Now a simple question may arise in choosing between T-SQL or any of the .NET languages like VB.NET, C# or even Managed C++. For a simple data retrieval operations and manipulations you can use T-SQL and for the computation oriented task, you can use the power of .NET programming languages. For example, for a lengthy string processing, its better to use .NET languages and its rich set of base class library that is well written and tested.

The really good thing that makes developer happy is that Microsoft will integrate database development tools into the Visual Studio .NET's future versions. So you will use only one Visual Studio to develop and debug your database objects, scripts and also writing your client-side code or middle tier. that is, you will use Visual Studio.NET to develop the entire application.

Finally there are many enhancements even in Transact SQL. In the earlier versions of SQL Server, there has been no support for proper error handling. Now with the integration of .NET runtime with database engine, developer can perform error detection and handling with well-managed try…catch code. Secondly, now it is possible to use the object oriented approach in database development. New version of SQL Server allows user defined types (UDT) to be created and stored into database permanently. 

DDL Triggers will be a new feature in Yukon. Developer will be able to capture the event like creation or modification of any database objects or even some events at the database level like logon and logoff or even starting up and shutting down the database.

Few more relational operators like PIVOT, UNPIVOT and APPLY have been added which are unique features.

2) Notification Services

Yukon Notification Services is a platform for developing and deploying applications that generate and send notifications to users. Notifications are personalized, timely messages that can be sent to a wide variety of devices.

Notifications reflect the preferences of the subscriber. The subscriber enters a subscription to express an interest in information. For example, "notify me when the stock price of TCS reaches 1500. A notification can be generated and sent to the user as soon as a triggering event occurs, or can be generated and sent on a predetermined schedule that the user specifies. The user's subscription specifies when the notification should be generated and sent.

Notifications can be sent to a wide variety of devices. For example, a notification can be sent to a user's mobile phone, personal digital assistant (PDA), Microsoft Windows Messenger, or e-mail account. Because these devices often accompany the user, notifications are ideal for sending high-priority information.

3)  Reporting Services

With the release of SQL Server 2005, Microsoft extends a major new component of its integrated business intelligence (BI) platform. SQL Server Reporting Services expands the Microsoft business intelligence vision by making it easy to get the right information to the right people, in any business environment.

Reporting Services is a complete, server-based platform for creating, managing, and delivering traditional and interactive reports. It includes everything you need "out of the box" to create, distribute, and manage reports. At the same time, the modular design and the extensive application programming interfaces (APIs) of Routing Services enable software developers, data providers, and enterprises to integrate reporting with legacy systems or third party applications. Reports can be exported into variety of format like PDF, HTML, Text Format etc.

4)  SQL Service Broker

SQL Service Broker is a new application framework, which is part of Yukon. This application framework provides an asynchronous processing environment for the various internal and external processes on the server. This framework enhances the scalability of SQL server to handle greater loads.                

The prime function of the Service broker is to act as a message routing system. It allows the distributed application components to reliably send and receive messages and to queue these messages until the receiving component is done with its processing.            

 The ability of the server to process in a transaction environment would enable the reliable execution of the various messages sent and received by the service broker. Also, it would handle the roll back and commit procedures based on the execution results

5) Support for XML and Web Services

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is an important standard for disseminating data between different applications over local networks and the Internet. SQL Server 2005 will natively support storage and query of XML documents.

With SQL Server 2005 developers will be able to develop Web services in the database tier, making SQL Server a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) listener and providing a new type of data access capability for Web services-centric applications.

There are many more features for the developers. This is just an attempt to provide features that are in demand.

On the same time, there are many more features being added for the better database administration, Business Intelligence, Data Mining, OLAP and security features.

Finally I would like to conclude that Yukon provides the tools that developers need to build new classes of database applications. By removing the barriers to code execution and storage location, and by integrating standards such as XML, Yukon opens up a world of possibilities to the database developer. This article is only an introduction to what you will be able to do with SQL Server 2005.