That approach wasn't possible until recently for users such as Nasdaq. Two of the most heavily promoted new features in SQL Server 2005 are the deeply integrated Visual Studio development tool set and the .Net Common Language Runtime (CLR) execution environment. Microsoft executives have cited the work required to integrate those technologies as the main reason for the more than two-year delay of the database upgrade, which the company finally released last month.

Ken Richmond, Nasdaq's vice president of software engineering, expects that his staff will be able to write all of the stored-procedures code for the upcoming projects in CLR-supported languages such as C# or C++ instead of Transact-SQL, Microsoft's extension of SQL. "It's one of the things that I find very, very attractive" in SQL Server 2005, Richmond said.

He isn't alone. More than half of 35 IT managers who responded to a random survey conducted by Computerworld also said they expect the integration of Visual Studio and the CLR with SQL Server to be helpful. Some even predicted that it will change their philosophy about database programming and lead them to put more logic directly into their database servers.

"It standardizes programming languages and gets us away from the sometimes archaic SQL language," said Christopher Siegle, a Pittsburgh-based systems analyst and project lead at

Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP, a law firm with offices in the U.S. and the U.K. The integration will also help strengthen communication between database administrators and developers, he added.