SQL Connectivity: Give Microsoft Your Two Cents' Worth
Even though SQL Server just underwent a major upgrade with 2008 R2, Microsoft is seeking customer input about new features you'd like to see added to the database technology.
The company this week posted the SQL Connectivity Customer Survey (Fall 2010), which will be up until Oct. 25.
The survey asks respondents to rate the importance of possible enhancements such as improved network performance (via tabular data stream compression), easier setup and configuration (through a richer GUI), "reducing the number of new connections that need to be opened" (through connection pooling improvements) and several others.
It was exactly one year ago that the SQL Connectivity team started "interacting on a regular basis with the developers and users in the form of surveys," said program manager Raghu Ram in the survey introduction.
"During the last 12 months, we completed surveys that focused on the broad SQL Connectivity components, including ODBC, ADO.NET, JDBC and PHP," Ram said. "These surveys provide us with an ability to validate some of the requests we have got from developers, users and partners." He said the roadmap for SQL Server has evolved based on this survey feedback.
Indeed, last summer saw the release of SQL Server Driver for PHP 2.0, which for the first time supports PHP Data Objects code.
So here's your chance to possibly influence the next upgrade. In addition to the possible enhancements listed above, the survey asks respondents to rate the importance of better support for multi-core CPUs and multiple network interface cards, better diagnostics and troubleshooting, transparent failover and new authentication types.
What's at the top of your list for SQL Server improvements? Comment here or drop me a line.
Posted by David Ramel on 10/20/2010