Microsoft creates a BackOffice bonanza By Bob Trott InfoWorld Electric Posted at 3:36 PM PT, Feb 26, 1999 Microsoft is looking to push its enterprise software over the top by coupling Windows 2000 with its line of BackOffice servers, and adding to the mix new technologies that tackle issues such as knowledge management. At a BackOffice design review, scheduled for April 19 to April 22 in Bellevue, Wash., Microsoft will lay out the future direction of its server offerings, with an emphasis on three products in particular - SQL Server; a new knowledge management product, code-named Tahoe; and Exchange Server. The next version of SQL Server, code-named Shiloh, will include decision-support and analysis tools that go beyond what is offered in SQL Server 7.0, which became widely available in January. "Shiloh is an opportunity to exploit the [SQL Server 7.0] platform for added scalability, availability, ease of use, and business intelligence," said Barry Goffe, lead product manager for SQL Server. One feature added to SQL Server will be materialized views, which lets SQL Server precompute commonly used data points so they are ready almost instantaneously when queried for that information. "If someone sends a big, ugly query to your database, materialized views will create a view that stores the result of that query in a table," Goffe said. Ironically, Microsoft has cried foul when database archrival Oracle used similar technology to win TCP-D benchmark contests and claimed that its Oracle8i database is faster than SQL Server 7.0. Tahoe, an upgrade to Microsoft's Site Server 3.0, is expected to feature document management, workflow, search capabilities, Extensible Markup Language support, document version control, integration with the MSN portal, and template-based publishing functions. "Tahoe is a future BackOffice technology that will provide document services, including enterprise searching and Web-accessible views," stated Microsoft documentation for the design review. The next version of Exchange, code-named Platinum, will include the capability to support virtual sessions, which lets a single server support more than one company. "Currently, you need a dedicated server for each company," said Dwight Davis, an analyst at Summit Strategies, in Kirkland, Wash. "But in the hosted applications world, you need to support a bunch of small companies." Sources say Microsoft is looking to release the next version of BackOffice soon after the release of Windows 2000. Windows 2000 is not expected to ship until early 2000. The BackOffice server products will be enhanced to take advantage of Windows 2000 technologies, such as IntelliMirror and Active Directory, said Pat Fox, BackOffice group product manager. Microsoft Corp., in Redmond, Wash., can be reached at www.microsoft.com. Bob Trott is InfoWorld's Seattle bureau chief. From MAILER-DAEMON@cs.depaul.edu Sun Feb 28 14:03:27 1999