SQL SERVER LEARNS ENGLISH

Building applications for Microsoft Corp.'s SQL Server that allow users to query the database in plain English should get a lot easier when the company upgrades a built-in feature called English Query this summer.

English Query enables developers to build in capabilities for making natural language queries against the database by translating English words into SQL.

However, the English Query development environment that ships with SQL Server versions 6.5 and 7.0 is difficult to use, in fact, the degree of tedious hand coding required inhibited its use in corporate IT, developers said.

That's changed with the upgrade, due in SQL Server 2000, according to Microsoft and beta testers.

"The thing that's going to make a big difference in the next release is we've made it so easy to use; we should see a big upswing" in adoption, said Adam Blum, English Query team leader at Microsoft, in Redmond, Wash.

"It used to be a fair amount of work; now a lot of it is automatic," he added.

Among the enhancements is a project wizard in English Query's data modeling tool that generates the entities and relationships necessary to build a conceptual database model against which English Query operates, Blum said.

The modeling tool also adds new graphical capabilities and a suggestion wizard and incorporates Visual Studio functionality, all of which make it easier and faster to use, he said.

The improvements in the updated English Query cut development time roughly in half, said Randy Peerson, vice president of engineering at Net Acumen Inc., a San Mateo, Calif., data analysis application service provider that will offer English Query capabilities to its customers later this year.

"Before, I had to go in and build it up on my own," Peerson said. "It's much easier for me to roll changes into the semantic model."

The upgrade also has the capability to draw on data in OLAP Services, the OLAP (online analytical processing) engine bundled with SQL Server, and from Oracle Corp databases.

Microsoft is unique among database vendors in delivering a plain-English querying capability with its database, said Teri Palanca, an analyst at Giga Information Group Inc, of Cambridge, Mass.

"That's not something we see from the other vendors, to have it packaged into the server," Palanca said. "They're the only ones that have the natural language capability; everyone else is using SQL."