IBM and Microsoft Corp. have previewed new tools they said will make developers more productive when creating applications for upgrades to their respective DBMSes.
Microsoft, at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles late last month, gave developers a sneak peak at “Yukon,” a version of its SQL Server database due in the second half of next year. Officials at the Redmond, Wash., company trumpeted Yukons enhanced XML support—including support for XML Query and native XML data types—and its integration with Microsofts Visual Studio .Net development tools.
“Weve made XML a first-class citizen” in Yukon, said Gordon Mangione, corporate vice president, SQL Server team. “You can create types that are XML. You can do transformations as XML. … You can take a stored procedure in Yukon and expose it as a Web service. You go into the system as an administrator and make its end point a Web service.”
Yukons database engine will host Microsofts CLR (Common Language Runtime). This will make it easier for developers to work in a variety of languages when creating stored procedures or user-defined types.
Also at PDC, IBM rolled out new developer tools to simplify and automate creation of .Net applications that run on the companys DB2 and on other DBMSes.
The unnamed tools are the first manifestation of Stinger, IBMs code name for the next version of DB2, which will likely come out next year. Stinger features will focus on reliability, manageability, integration and scalability, said officials at IBM, of Armonk, N.Y.
Stinger tools include add-ins for Visual Studio .Net that automatically add a DB2 plug-in to a developers Visual Studio .Net interface; this links directly to a DB2 development environment that is similar to VS .Nets, officials said. This will make it easier for developers familiar with VS to work with DB2 and to exploit the native .Net Data Provider.
IBM also showed similar add-ins that work with the Rational XDE Developer environment, which IBM acquired this year.
The Stinger tools will let developers of DB2 applications and DB2 databases using the Visual Basic .Net and C# programming languages also use CLR. As a result, applications that run on the server or on the client can be transported across different systems, IBM officials said, adding that enhancements in DB2s native stored procedures make it easier to develop programs on Windows and deploy them on other operating systems.