To testers who've been awaiting Microsoft's first beta release of its next version of its SQL Server database: The wait is over.

Microsoft on Tuesday released the first "private beta" of "Yukon" to 500 customers and partners. Microsoft will release the beta to another 1,500 testers by the end of the month. The company is making the bits available via its BetaPlace Web site.

Said one tester: "The Beta 1 release is being done in two phases over the next few weeks. In the first phase, the "priority" members of the beta group will get access. Within a few weeks, everyone (approved for the Beta) will have it."

Another tester said all of the approved Beta 1 testers should have code in hand by August 1.

"Yukon," the next version of SQL Server, won't see the light of day until the latter half of 2004, Microsoft brass admitted at its TechEd developer conference in Dallas earlier this summer.

Read "What's On Tap For 'Yukon'?"

And More Yukon Details Here

The Yukon "storage kernel"—comprising schema, query and join facilities—is slated to be a key part of the Longhorn version of Windows.

For IT professionals and database administrators, Microsoft is working on adding new continuous availability features to Yukon, Stan Sorensen, director of SQL Server product management, told Microsoft Watch earlier this year. This move isn't so much about clustering as it is about minimizing scheduled downtime, he said. Watch for Yukon's new online index rebuild feature that is designed to greatly reduce the need for DBAs to take their database offline, Sorensen said.

Also expect more announcements later in the year around new fault-tolerance, disaster-recovery and management tools for Yukon, Sorensen said. He declined to provide further details.

For developers, Microsoft is working on making Visual Studio the integrated development environment for Yukon, Sorensen said. Yukon developers will inherit Visual Studio capabilities, such as AutoComplete, Intellisense and the like. In addition, database applications developed in this environment will run as managed code.

For information workers, Yukon will be all about new business-intelligence features, Sorensen said. Microsoft announced at TechEd that it is making available early the SQL Server reporting capabilities that it had slated to commercialize in time for Yukon. The so-called SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services went to 60 customers for beta testing earlier this year. The final Reporting Services tool will ship before the end of this calendar year.

Microsoft's working to rev the data transformation, data mining and analytics capabilities in Yukon, too, Sorensen noted. Details will follow, probably in the Professional Developer Conference timeframe (October), he said.