I decided to catch a slightly earlier bus to work today so that I could catch up on a few podcasts. The first one that I had scheduled to listen to was the SQL Down Under podcast. This one is something special because it has Dr. Jim Gray who has had a hand in products such as DB2, Oracle RDB and of course several generations of SQL Server.

The hard questions about why SQL Server 2005 was so late were asked, but also questions about the future. I find the possibilities created by the CLR in SQL and LINQ coming down the line truely facinating. Is SQL going to become a data-aware application server? What happens as boxes scale up – is the midrange getting close to being able to clobber a mainframe without a cluster?

Greg also made a really great point about the reason for getting involved so early in product release cycle. Basically it boils down to being able to avoid having to keep on top of the evolving technology without having a massive learning curve every time a product ships.

Anyway – great show Greg!