News

Microsoft Taking Nominations for 64-bit SQL Testers

• By Scott Bekker
• 07/18/2002

The beta version of Microsoft's flagship database is set for a formal release at the end of the summer, with the RTM version coming out at the end of this year with Windows .NET Server.

The beta version of the database runs on Windows Advanced Server Limited Edition version 1.2. That version of the operating system runs on the Itanium 2 processor and is sold through OEMs as part of complete systems. The Limited Edition of the operating system is based on Windows .NET Enterprise Server code.

Microsoft disclosed a few features of the 64-bit version of SQL Server 2000 on its beta nomination Web page. The 64-bit version of the database will support the 64 GB of physical memory that represents the current maximum on available hardware. The beta code will support up to 16 database instances on a single computer.

The beta code will consist of a 64-bit database, a 64-bit server agent and a 64-bit analysis server for OLAP and data mining.

"For low-end implementations (4-processor servers or less), users will see a reasonable performance improvement on a 64-bit implementation over a 32-bit implementation. Higher performance gains are expected for higher-scale implementations (8- to 32-processor servers)," Microsoft says.

Microsoft is especially looking for beta customers who run e-commerce applications with large numbers of users, large data warehouses and massive OLTP workloads.

For more information, see: www.microsoft.com/sql/evaluation/64bit/default.asp.