News Analysis

64-bit database with a BI flavor

The latest version of SQL Server is a powerful 64-bit BI engine with advanced scalability features such as partitioning and snapshot isolation

SQL Server is one of the big three databases along with Oracle and DB2. Microsoft released the latest version, SQL Server 2008, to manufacturing in June 2008. Although the installed base of this database still tilts towards the 32-bit edition with 60% on it, fresh deployments are of the 64-bit version.

So what is new in SQL Server 2008? There is a Web Edition that integrates with Windows Server 2008’s Web Edition for hosting companies. A cloud computing version is in the works with a Community Technology Preview out. “All products from Microsoft are making a transition to Cloud Computing. They will exist both as on premise software and in the cloud,” said Pallavi Kathuria, Director, Server Business Group, Microsoft India.

The BI features in SQL Server 2008 are proving to be a compelling reason for customers to upgrade. Marico is using SQL Server 2008 for empowering the sales and marketing users of its FMCG business. Girish Rao, Head of IT Solutions, Marico Limited, said, “SQL Server 2008’s features in terms of analytics and BI prompted us to move from SQL 2003 to 2008 skipping 2005.” The prospect of doing away with the need for another tool for data visualization and analytics sealed the deal.

“In SQL Server 2003 and to a lesser extent 2005, the OLAP services were very primitive in terms of visualization. In SQL Server 2008, the visualization is integrated into the product and the reporting services are richer with features like graphical drill down. Earlier we had to use a lot of visualization and controls on top of the database.”

Formerly, the sales and marketing staff at Marico had to rely on static reports and if they wanted to do any analysis, they had to import the data into Excel.

The implementation will be going live in a phased manner culminating with a full roll-out coinciding with the start of fiscal 2009-10.

As far as the hardware requirements go, Marico was anyway planning a refresh as its hardware was 4-5 years old. Rao commented, “The investment was not as much as it would have been to upgrade to SQL Server 2005 and OLAP Services plus data conversion.”

For L&T ECC, the software’s powerful and transparent data encryption feature, improved auditing capabilities, Resource Governor that allows the allocation of dedicated resources for high priority tasks and Performance Data Collection facility that lets administrators optimize database configuration were what sealed the deal.

For MIDC, it was the ability to build and deploy Web-based applications with advanced scalability features such as partitioning, snapshot isolation and 64-bit support.

The Controller General of Accounts’ data warehouse implementation uses the new and upgraded features of BI in SQL Server 2008.

TVS & Sons’ move to SQL Server 2008 was occasioned by the fact that it would enhance data security by enabling encryption of the entire database, data files and log files, without the need for changes to the application. Probably the biggest benefit lay in the ability for TVS and the franchisees to create custom reports. A Microsoft Office Excel 2007 front end enables data to be picked up from SQL Server and rendered in a pivot report, by which users can simply drag and drop fields and drill down into different aspects.