Following quickly in the footsteps of MySpace, both Facebook and Google have announced new-fangled tools that allow social-networking types to shuttle their online data from site to site.

Project Watch: Microsoft 2008 OK, so choosing and installing the hardware - that was easy. I wish I could say the same for the software.

On the face of it all I had to do was install the beta version of Windows Server 2008, the production version of Visual Studio 2008 and the beta SQL Server 2008. Sorry, by beta of course I mean community technology preview. It appears that Microsoft has learned that renaming can be used to shed bad associations.

Microsoft has recruited database guru David DeWitt to head up a new database research lab. Based at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where DeWitt was until recently professor of computing sciences, the new lab will focus on advanced data-management techniques.

The relational database - a mainstay of enterprise computing for 25 years - has been under siege. New approaches to data storage are threatening the RDBMS and precipitating what database guru Mike Stonebraker and others described recently as a "group grope" to find a new database engine.

Comment A couple of years back, Oracle chief Larry Ellison and then Sun CEO Scott McNealy held an event in Redwood City to renew their vows. Oracle signed on to ship Java for ten more years, and Sun started bundling Oracle's database on its servers at no charge. That last bit was meant to give Sun an edge over hardware rivals, although we can't claim to have heard of it ever making a difference in the market and aren't even sure the deal is still going.

PHP is one of the most commonly used scripting languages on the web - about 35 per cent of websites use PHP. Databases, meanwhile, are undergoing something of a renaissance thanks to web development.

Less than two months into Sun Microsystems' MySQL acquisition, Sun has succeeded in upsetting the grassroots types with plans to close off features to the community.

MySQL User Conference Under its new owner, Sun Microsystems, MySQL will remain true to its Linux roots and won’t be pulled towards Solaris or become overshadowed by the Solaris-distributed Postgres.

MySQL User Conference MySQL is targeting improved security and privacy with a version of its database codenamed Citadel due in 2009 that’ll also see MySQL speed up product release cycles.

MySQL User Conference MySQL owners past and present opened the annual user's conference to re-assure them Sun Microsystems has no hidden agenda for the open source database.

If you believe TechCrunch - and that's a big IF - Google is on the verge of unveiling a web-based database service along the lines of Amazon's SimpleDB.

Ever since Sun anteed up a billion in cold cash for MySQL a couple months back, we wondered when the next shoe would drop. Recently, EnterpriseDB announced that IBM was one of several venture backers to fund its third $10m round of financing.

At first glance, this appears to be IBM's response to Sun. But it isn't.

OSBC IBM is putting some of its financial muscle behind the business trying to rival Sun Microsystems' MySQL, pushing PostgreSQL.

Project Watch: Microsoft 2008 Here's a question for you: what hardware does it take to run an entirely new, pre-release Windows operating system and 1TB-worth of SQL Server 2008 community technology preview?

The announcement of Microsoft's SQL Server Data Services was almost buried near the end of chief software architect Ray Ozzie's Mix 08 keynote last week.

It was a curious move for an offering that, as Microsoft's database service for the internet, marks the company's foray into database-based utility computing and promises an architecture that extends Microsoft's popular SQL Server database.

Zend Technologies is turning to the application server, database and hosting worlds as future areas for improved performance of PHP running on Windows.

Sun Microsystems will fine tune MySQL for some big-name customers unwilling to get their hands dirty supporting the open source database themselves.

Last summer, Microsoft said that February 27, 2008 would be the single biggest day of releases in its 30-year history, promising major updates to its server operating system, developer tools and database.

Review Windows Server 2008, due for its official launch today, is a major upgrade for Microsoft's server platform, the first for around five years. Requiring a graphical user interface (GUI) on a server operating system always seemed odd, even back in 1993 when Microsoft released Windows NT 3.1.

Project Watch: Microsoft 2008 The next task in rolling out our 1TB SQL Server 2008 application using Visual Studio 2008 and Windows Server 2008 is to import signed spatial data into the spatial data type. This is the code:

Database management systems (DBMS) are 20 years out of date and should be completely rewritten to reflect modern use of computers.

Project Watch: Microsoft 2008 When I asked: "How do we convert more than 12,000 location items - by hand?" we had almost completed the process as part of our move to Microsoft's up-coming SQL Server 2008. The question was, in fact, rhetorical. Nevertheless, we received a lot of advice and suggestions from Reg Dev readers. This, for example, from AlanGriffiths:

It's a head-scratcher of a deal. Two big names in the same market with overlapping offerings. Surely the only justification for spending so much money is to buy customers to leapfrog the industry number one.

No, I'm not talking of Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo!. I'm referring to Oracle's $8.5bn offer for Java middleware rival BEA Systems.

SugarCon 2008 Sometimes it takes a faker to say it like it is. Taking time out from satirizing alpha-male Larry Ellison and dissing the sainted Ray Ozzie's timelessly clunky Lotus Notes, Fake Steve Jobs - AKA Forbes senior editor Daniel Lyons - got serious for a moment Wednesday as he opened SugarCRM's developer conference.

The latest release of open source database PostgreSQL hit Monday, packing a claimed record number of new and improved features. That means 280 patches.

The two database gurus whose blog produced a storm of protest over their criticism of Google's MapReduce technology last month have hit back with a robust defense.

EnterpriseDB, the open source database company, aims to capitalize on the uncertainty around MySQL's purchase by Sun Microsystems, and is wooing developers with improved capabilities and services.

Project Watch: Microsoft 2008 Register Developer regular Mark Whitehorn is rolling out a significant new IT project. This has, at its heart, a database of around 1TB and is ultimately expected to support several thousand users.

The project is using nothing less than upgrades to a trio of big-ticket products from Microsoft - Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008, and SQL Server 2008 - that are due next month. With Reg Dev, Mark will chart his experiences and record his frustrations during deployment of these major updates.

Over to Mark who, this week, sets the scene...

A database pioneer and honored computer science professor have come under heavy fire for issuing a strong critique of Google's MapReduce technology for processing large unstructured databases.

Analysis Almost five years ago, Sun's then CEO Scott McNealy told me his company had little intention of entering the great database fray. "You know, we haven't decided that is a war we want to go fight," he said. "Why not let them all beat each others' brains in?".