Microsoft’s Vista isn’t compatible with SQL Server
Looks Like problems at Redmond. New Vista Incompatible feature for Microsoft SQL Server.
Quotes from CNN Money:
But now Microsoft has a problem. Vista, its long-awaited update to the Windows operating system, can’t run the current version of SQL Server. The company is working on a SQL upgrade that is compatible with Vista - called SQL Server 2005 Express Service Pack 2 - but it’s in beta and can be licensed only for testing purposes. Microsoft hasn’t set a release date for the new SQL program.
So companies looking to install Vista, which went on sale to corporate customers Nov. 30, are going to have to get their database management software someplace else.
Microsoft has effectively just handed its chief rivals an early holiday present. (Before any more of you fire off an outraged e-mail informing me that Vista doesn’t run SQL Server, go back and read the above paragraphs again: I’m talking about SQL Server 2005 Express, which is the desktop counterpart of SQL Server - not the server version.)
More tech news and gossip from Owen Thomas
This, of course, is exactly the opposite of what Microsoft should be doing if it hopes to outsell Oracle and IBM in the database business. Microsoft should have released a Vista-compatible version of SQL Server as early as a year ago. That way, corporate customers would have had plenty of time to test it in time for Vista’s release.
Instead, IBM has beaten Microsoft to the punch. Last week IBM released a desktop version of its competing database management software, called DB2 9 Express-C, that’s compatible with Vista.
Microsoft’s oversight with SQL is one reason, among many, why analysts don’t expect Vista to appear in the workplace until 2008. And it’s become yet another sticking point with corporate IT departments already frustrated by their dependence on Microsoft. In the long run, the lack of SQL support could delay widespread adoption of Vista even further.
Microsoft’s long had a strategy to be everywhere computers are - from home desktops to office servers. And it’s had some success: One reason why programmers of database-driven applications use SQL Server is because it comes with a component called Microsoft Desktop Engine, or MSDE. (While you may not have heard of MSDE, it’s an exceedingly common software component - so common, in fact, that it played a starring role in the spread of the infamous Slammer worm four years ago.)
Oracle’s shopping spree pays off Granted, not everyone uses MSDE inside other applications; many database developers simply use it to test their SQL Server setup. For these programmers, Microsoft’s delay won’t make much of a difference.
But for many companies with MSDE-based applications - mostly small enterprises without a large IT staff to manage system upgrades - headaches loom. First they must upgrade to the currently available version of SQL Server 2005 Express, which doesn’t run on Vista, and test it on their Windows XP desktops. Once Microsoft rolls out a Vista-compatible version of that software, they’ll need to upgrade and test all over again.
