New Version of Joomla With SQL Server Support

In the beginning of this week, Joomla, one of the leading open source content management systems, announced the release of a new, updated version, namely Joomla 2.5. This version features a number of new features, including multi-database support, and advanced update notification tools.

The main improvement to Joomla is the multi-database support. The newest version now supports Microsoft SQL Server. The previous Joomla versions had such support only for MySQL databases.

As Ryan Ozimek, president of Joomla, commented, “Multi-database support is a huge step forward for Joomla, which is already powering more than 1.6 million websites worldwide. It ensures companies and organizations, both large and small, will save even more money and time by adopting Joomla. No longer will Joomla developers be tied down to a particular database or have to spend more money and time integrating other software to get Joomla to communicate with their database. This enhances Joomla’s scalability immensely.”

Apart from SQL Server support, Version 2.5 also comes with an automatic notification when a Joomla, or extension update is available. Once logged into the control panel, website administrators will now have instant access to new notification buttons, which will enable them to learn of and install the latest updates. Apart from updates to the Joomla CMS, there will also be a button for third party extension notification updates.

This newest version also features an improved natural language search engine to the Joomla core. This now includes auto-completion and stemming (meaning that when a user searches for “running” they also get results for “run”). The improved search engine is now also faster and more versatile than it was.

The improvements are mainly the result of comments and suggestions received at ideas.joomla.org, where questions regarding what functionality should be a part of the newest version of Joomla 2.5 were posed. A better notifications system and a more elegant search engine were at the top of the list.

Joomla is a very popular open-source CMS tool across the globe. As such, it is at the top of the list of the most commonly deployed plug-in tools installed by web-hosting customers. Joomla is also widely distributed by web-hosting providers.