Beta 2 Is Out!!!!

At least for some of us.

Microsoft quietly announced the release of SQL Server 2005 (Yukon) Beta 2 today in a presspass article on their site. All MSDN customers also were notified that the MSDN download would be available later today. Good luck getting bandwidth from MSDN downloads tonight and tomorrow! I'm sure lots of ISVs as well as us regular geeks are hitting it hard.

One interesting announcement is that the AMD Operton 64 bit processors have had their Direct Connect Architecture implemented in Beta 2. Does that mean that the shift is underway from Intel? Perhaps somewhat. I'm sure that Microsoft is looking at all ways they can increase revenue these days and supporting more AMD architectures is one way. Lots of lower cost installations, notably Linux, run well on AMD processors. One less reason to switch. 🙂

As of 1:12pm MST in the US, the download is available, and streaming to my machine at a screaming 200kbps :). Hopefully most of the enhancements that were disabled in Beta 1 will be available in this version. I was tired of getting the

message every time I hit a button.

Overall this is both a disappointing and exciting beta. Exciting because Beta 1 was disappointing and it's been over 4 years since I last looked at a semi-polished SQL Server Beta. Disappointing because it's late, originally targeted for earlier this year, and because it's a semi-private Beta. MSDN users only instead of the expected public Beta. Still, it's a step in the right direction with a supposedly public Beta later this year and then a RTM version in Q1 2005. An aggressive schedule in my humble opinion, but we shall see.