SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition, which currently works on small handheld devices that run the Windows CE and Windows Tablet systems, will in the future be able to run on all versions of Windows, including 32- and 64-bit operating systems such as Vista. The database will also be renamed SQL Server Everywhere Edition.

A community technical preview of SQL Server Everywhere should be ready this summer, with a final release by year's end, said Paul Flessner, senior vice president of data and storage at Microsoft.

Available for a free license to users, SQL Server Everywhere will help CIOs get a handle on what Flessner called an "explosion" of data, including multimedia and XML data, outside of the data center, enabled by smarter hardware and cheaper memory and storage.

"A lot of companies are consolidating more into their data center, but it's very naive to think all data will live there, especially when handheld devices in five years will be as powerful as your PC," he said.

Microsoft also said it is gathering the high-availability features in SQL Server, such as mirroring and fail-over clustering, under the new umbrella name, AlwaysOn Technologies. Flessner declined to state what new features it plans to add along those lines.