SQL Azure Team Blog

SQL Azure Blog is moving to the Official Windows Azure Platform Team Blog

2011-06-24T08:00:00Z

In an effort to make it easier for you to stay on top of the latest product releases, resources, tools and news around the Windows Azure platform, today, we’re excited to announce that the SQL Azure blog is moving into what will now be called the ‘Windows Azure Platform Team Blog’. From now on, you can find all SQL Azure blog posts at www.WindowsAzureBlog.com.

This one-stop-shop blog is where you’ll be able to find the latest information about the Windows Azure platform and all its components, including SQL Azure. This blog will continue to cover the wide range of topics we have always addressed, from product announcements, to technical “how-to” posts, and conversations with our customers. If you’re primarily interested in just the posts about SQL Azure, you can subscribe to a dedicated RSS feed for that. Alternatively, you have the option of getting all the Windows Azure platform posts in one integrated RSS feed.

To continue to provide a single view of the Windows Azure platform, expect to see a similar evolution across Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube over the coming weeks. We’ll be sure to notify you when those properties are integrated. In the meantime, we hope these changes will make your life a little easier by making the Windows Azure Platform blog your single destination for all the latest news and information about SQL Azure and the rest of Windows Azure Platform.

-- Steve

MSDN Wiki Article: Q&A on Open Data Protocol (Odata)

2011-06-22T08:00:00Z

MSDN has created a Q&A article on Odata (Open Data Protocol). OData applies web technologies such as HTTP, Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) and JSON to provide access to information from a variety of applications, services, and stores. As web development continues to move forward, learning about new languages, like OData, will become more invaluable. Making an OData feed from a SQL Azure or SQL Server database is incredibly easy, usually requiring just a few lines of code.

Let me know your thoughts after reading the article.

Click here to open the article: Open Data Protocol Q&A.

-Steve

Considerations When Building Database Schema with Federations in SQL Azure

2011-06-20T17:45:00Z

Cihan Biyikoglu has written an interesting article on database schema when working with Federations.

“With federations, you take parts of your schema and scale it out. With each federation in the root database, a subset of objects are scaled-out. You may create multiple federations because distribution characteristics and scalability requirements may vary across sets of tables. For example, with an ecommerce app, you may both have a large customer-orders set of tables and a very large product catalog that may have completely different distribution requirements.”

To learn more, click here for the article from Cihan Biyikoglu’s blog, “Considerations When Building Database Schema with Federations in SQL Azure.

-Steve

Troubleshooting and Optimizing Queries with SQL Azure

2011-06-15T08:00:00Z

Dinakar Nethi has written an interesting TechNet Article about how the Dynamic Management Views that are available in SQL Azure and how they can be used for troubleshooting purposes. Take a look and get a feel for how easy it is to use SQL Azure.

Click here for the TechNet article, “Troubleshooting and Optimizing Queries with SQL Azure.

-Steve

Video How To: Synchronize and Share Data

2011-06-13T08:00:00Z

This walkthrough shows how to use SQL Azure Data Sync to provide bi-directional synchronization and data-management capabilities with on-premises and cloud databases. The video covers both the benefits and features of SQL Azure and explains how businesses can use SQL Azure Data Sync to share information efficiently.

The demonstration portion of the video covers how to establish synchronization between an on-premises SQL Server database and SQL Azure, as well as between two SQL Azure databases. It also shows the sync results in real time within a web application. The conclusion offers additional resource information to help users get started with SQL Azure and SQL Azure Data Sync.

View this video as a WMV

We have several other walkthroughs you can watch and download code for. Visit http://sqlazure.codeplex.com .

Thanks!

-Steve

FAQ about Features of SQL Azure

2011-06-08T16:00:00Z

We’ve been receiving questions about top on-going trends with regards to SQL Azure surrounding SQL Server limitations, and the access capabilities of co-administrators. Fortunately, the answers to both of these questions have been addressed in a MSDN article about SQL Server limitations, and a MSDN blog post focusing on co-administrators scenarios.

Take a few moments to give the above articles a quick read – they answer some of the more common questions surrounding SQL Azure.

-Steve

Integrating SQL Azure with SharePoint 2010 and Windows Azure

2011-06-06T08:00:00Z

Steve Peschka wrote a great TechNet article a little while back about how to integrate SQL Azure services with Sharepoint 2010. He shares a few SQL Azure tips and tricks to get you more incorporated more quickly into new development projects. He provides detailed steps and instructions to how to integrate the two services, plus some additional reference links which makes this an involving read.

Click here to view the TechNet article

-Steve

Video How-To: Creating Line of Business Applications using SQL Azure

2011-06-03T08:00:00Z

This walkthrough explains how to easily create Line of Business (LOB) applications for the cloud by using Visual Studio LightSwitch and SQL Azure. The video highlights the benefits of Visual Studio LightSwitch and explains how you can quickly create powerful and interactive Silverlight applications with little or no code.

The demo portion of the video shows how to build an expense application and deploy it using the Windows Azure portal. The conclusion points you to additional resources to help you get started creating your own applications.

Please take a look and if you have any questions, leave a comment. We have other several great how-to videos and code samples available on the SQL Azure CodePlex site at: http://sqlazure.codeplex.com.

View this video as a WMV

-Steve

Video How-To: Extending SQL Azure Data to Android and Other Platforms

2011-06-01T08:00:00Z

This video demonstrates how easy it is to extend, share, and integrate SQL Azure data with mobile and heterogeneous applications using other programming platforms via an OData service.

The video shows how easy it is to expose data by creating an OData service and how a variety of different client applications, including an Android phone, can easily and efficiently interact with a SQL Azure database. The video concludes by referring users to additional resources that offer further support.

Take a look at the source code on Codeplex.

Check it out, and if you have any questions, please leave a comment. Thanks!

View this video as a WMV

-Steve

Video How-To: Extending SQL Azure to Microsoft Applications

2011-05-30T08:00:00Z

This walkthrough demonstrates how easy it is to extend, share, and integrate SQL Azure data with Microsoft applications via an OData service. The video starts by reviewing the benefits of using SQL Azure, then goes on to show you how to enable cloud application to expose the data via an OData service.

By utilizing OData, SQL Azure data is made available to a variety of new user scenarios and client applications such as Windows Phone, Excel, and Javascript. We also include a lot of additional resources that offer further support.

Watch the video, and follow along by downloading the source code, all available on our page on Codeplex.

Take a look and if you have any questions leave a comment. Thanks!

View this video as a WMV

-Steve

Introducing OData: Data Access for the Web, Cloud, Devices, and More

2011-05-27T13:00:00Z

David Chappell recently completed a whitepaper on OData that I encourage you to take a look at. You can view it here, or download a PDF version. David does an outstanding job providing an overview of OData, the problems it solves, practical usage scenarios, and a look at the protocol itself. If you’re quitting work for the day, stop here and read David’s whitepaper. If you have a few more minutes to spare, then continue reading. :)

Many of our partners have started using OData in their commercial releases. Two notable recent ones are SAP, who are making it an integral part of their Netweaver offering to extend SAP data to devices and social applications. You can read more about it here.

EastBanc is also utilizing OData and SQL Azure to share real-time data from Washington metro area transit systems to share up to date schedules for trains and buses. A case study on that is here.

If you’re not already familiar with the Open Data Protocol (OData), it’s a Web protocol for querying and updating data that provides a way to unlock your data and free it from silos that exist in applications today. OData does this by applying and building upon Web technologies such as HTTP, Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) and JSON to provide access to information from a variety of applications, services, and stores. The protocol emerged from experiences implementing AtomPub clients and servers in a variety of products over the past several years. OData is being used to expose and access information from a variety of sources including, but not limited to, relational databases, file systems, content management systems and traditional Web sites.

At this point you may be asking – why talk about OData on the SQL Azure blog? Because OData is an open protocol and what I like to call “the language of data on the web”. Let’s take an example of a web service that does a lookup of an employee. The tricky thing here is that this turns into multiple service calls, or methods with multiple input parameters to get results with different input and output criteria, like:

GetEmployeeByLastName
GetEmployeeByID
GetEmployeeStartingWith

…and so on, making a simple lookup pretty complicated with multiple options based on different search criteria, and if multiple results are returned – having to factor in paging or selecting the top 50 results if there happen to be thousands. OData reduces this complexity by being able to accomplish all these queries and also allow updates to data in one service method. If you visit the OData SDK page, there are libraries for utilizing OData in PHP, Java & Android, Ruby, Windows Phone 7, iOS, Silverlight, and .NET (of course!). There’s also a library to interact with OData via JavaScript and jQuery, called DataJS.

One Service Powering Multiple Experiences

In addition to powering mobile experiences, the openness of the OData protocol can power multiple user experiences. In the videos below we show how to utilize OData to access SQL Azure cloud data on both Android and Windows Phone 7 devices. OData is also natively supported in PowerPivot, making complex BI attainable today with SQL Azure cloud databases – again using the same OData service that can power an Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and web experience.

Things get even more interesting for BI when you consider Windows Azure DataMarket, our one-stop shop for accessing public domain and commercial data-sets – all consistently accessible via OData. Joining that data with your application’s data can create some interesting new insights. Is there a relationship between retail sales and weather? Hmm…DataMarket has weather data available from WeatherBug.

View this video as a WMV

Sharing Data with Android and SQL Azure via OData

View this video as a WMV

Sharing Data with Windows Phone and SQL Azure via OData

Is it Hard?

No. And more partners are using it, like SAP and EastBanc I mentioned at the top. As I mentioned earlier there are libraries for most platforms. Here are some links to get started with SQL Azure:

SQL Azure Labs has an OData service you can get started with today that will create an OData endpoint for your SQL Azure database.
For .NET developers, you can also create your own in about 5 lines of code utilizing WCF Data Services that you can deploy locally, or in a web role in Windows Azure. These libraries are already included in the .NET Framework.

Hope this has whetted your appetite just a bit to get started. For all of you in the U.S., have a great Memorial Day weekend!

-Steve

SQL Azure Federations: Product Evaluation Program Now Open for Nominations!

2011-05-26T16:00:00Z

Cihan Biyikoglu, Senior Program Manager of SQL Azure, has posted information on the Microsoft SQL Azure Federations Product Evaluation Program. Nominations for the Microsoft SQL Azure Federations Product Evaluation Program are now open.

To learn more and discover how you can get involved, I encourage you to visit his blog entry here.

If you’re getting up to speed on the concept of federations, you can find an overview of the technology here.

TechEd 2011 Highlights: Highlighted Articles on TechEd 2011

2011-05-25T08:20:00Z

TechEd wound to a close last Friday. Our engineering leaders put together some great demos and presentations that help developers take advantage of cloud data with SQL Azure, as well as preview what’s coming next on the roadmap. The blogosphere has been very active with articles from people who have been excited to share their insights and experiences from the conference. Below are a few that deserve a closer look:

***

Mary-Jo Foley wrote a great post that summarized the SQL Azure announcements at TechEd, especially our initiatives in event-processing by putting StreamInsight in the cloud: All About Microsoft: “Microsoft readies 'Austin,' an Azure-hosted event-processing service"

Summary: Microsoft’s making a progression to transfer SQL Server capabilities into the cloud, and transform them into service solutions. Foley’s article details one of Microsoft’s latest solutions: Codename “Austin”. In addition to providing technical insight on “Austin”, the article elaborates on some of the possible scenarios that the solution could be implemented, as well as highlighting other fascinating SQL Azure news features that are worth reading about.

***

Robert Wahbe, Corporate Vice President of Server & Tools, authored a guest post on the The Official Microsoft Blog, titled “Charting your Course into the Cloud”

Summary: The article summarizes the keynote talk that he delivered to developers and other IT professionals at TechEd. During the conference, Wahbe highlighted evolving trends in technologies like cloud computing, the changes in the device landscape, the economics of cloud computing and how Microsoft is helping partners manage this new environment. The article references to several Microsoft press releases, a whitepaper and a case study which makes this a valuable read.

***

Author Paul Thurrott, who writes the blog, Windows IT Pro, wrote this post on TechEd: “What I’ve Learned (So Far) at TechEd 2011”

Summary: This article was written after Day 1 of TechEd, but it highlights some of the exciting technologies that were featured just in one day. Thurrott’s article highlights solutions such as MultiPoint Server 2011, and Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango” He also has written an article here, which summarizes Microsoft’s case for cloud offerings during the TechEd keynote speech.

***

Susan Inbach blogs in the Canadian Solution Developer and wrote this piece recently on TechEd: “Get Excited About Your Job Again- TechEd”

Summary: This article is more of an interesting lifestyle piece about what it’s like to be at a developer conference. Inbach highlights some of the networking tactics that she used at TechEd to make new contacts and get exposed to new ideas. It really got her engaged in the entire experience. I think that this is a fun piece that really highlights why, if you get the opportunity, you should go to a developer’s conference like TechEd.

There were so many things to write about TechEd this year. If you weren’t able to view the demonstrations and other presentations from TechEd 2011 that were reviewed in the articles above, take a look at them all here at Channel 9.

-Steve.

Real World SQL Azure: Interview with Kai Boo Lee, Business Development Director, aZaaS

2011-05-24T08:00:00Z

Real World SQL Azure: Interview with Kai Boo Lee, Business Development Director, aZaaS

As part of the Real World SQL Azure series, we recently talked to Kai Boo Lee, Business Development Director at aZaaS, about using Microsoft SQL Azure and Windows Azure to host the aZaaS Cloud Application Engine, a business application that customers can tailor to their needs. Here’s what he had to say:

MSDN: Where did you come up with the name aZaaS?

Lee: Our company name—aZaaS—means “anything from A to Z as a service.” We provide software-as-a-service solutions that make it possible for customers to enjoy the benefits of technology and automation without the need to purchase, install, or maintain software, hardware, and data centers.

MSDN: Tell me more about aZaaS.

Lee: aZaaS has been providing solutions to global customers of all sizes since 2009. During our first year of operations, we won the Partner of the Year award from Microsoft and we’ve been a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner since 2010. We also participated in Microsoft BizSpark, a program that supports the early stages for technology startup companies with software, training, support, and marketing resources. We have 40 employees who work in China, Taiwan, and Singapore. Microsoft has honored two of our employees with expert designations: One is a Microsoft Regional Director and another is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional. We specialize in cloud solutions based on Microsoft technologies and are recognized experts with Microsoft Silverlight, a development platform for creating rich media applications and business applications.

MSDN: What made you decide to build aZaaS Cloud Application Engine and make it customizable?

Lee: We developed a cloud-based application that features functionality for human resources management. Our customers around the world were frequently asking for customizations. A key factor for all our customers is time-to-market. We decided to build a platform that includes ready-made modules that could be customized with minimal effort by anyone. It had to be flexible enough that customers could easily develop solutions based on their own business models and processes.

MSDN: Why did you choose SQL Azure?

Lee: We’re at the point where we have a lot more customers—200 and growing—and as the volume of transactions on each customer’s application increases, we need to be able to scale on demand. We decided to go with SQL Azure, the cloud-based relational and self-managed database service. It’s part of the Windows Azure platform, a general-purpose cloud platform that makes complicated tasks simple across a dynamic environment. We needed the relational capabilities in SQL Azure to build complex relationships between the data that customers use. At the moment, SQL Azure has the only fully fledged relational database management services available for the cloud.

MSDN: How does the aZaaS Cloud Application Engine work?

Lee: The aZaaS Cloud Application Engine consists of two parts: Application Designer and Application Workspace. We developed the Application Designer to be used by people who are experts in their business domains. That is, business users who are familiar with their organizations’ work processes can easily design the various modules—and create forms or define reporting mechanisms—to meet internal requirements. After customizing the application, users can then publish their updates to the cloud. From the Application Workspace, users can operate the customized aZaaS Cloud Application Engine in the familiar Windows environment.

MSDN: What did you have to do to build the database functionality with SQL Azure?

Lee: aZaaS uses the relational cloud database, which is built on Microsoft SQL Server technologies, to provide a fully automated and highly available multitenant database service on the aZaaS Cloud Application Engine. We are capitalizing on the scale-out database features of SQL Azure. We are also taking advantage of the streamlined SQL Azure features for consolidating databases in the cloud and quickly provisioning databases. We partition the aZaaS Cloud Application Engine database for each tenant. Each tenant can access only those portions of the database that belong to them. It helps that SQL Azure has very granular access control, so we were able to achieve multitenancy quite easily.

MSDN: What benefits have you and your customers realized?

Lee: For any customer that’s making use of web-based applications—which is basically everyone—we believe that the Windows Azure platform is the way to go. It speeds time-to-market, for starters. We can deploy a new tenant to SQL Azure in less than one day. The entire deployment process is at least nine times faster than it is with an on-premises model. Plus, the cost of hosting the SQL Azure solution on the Windows Azure platform is about 20 percent of the cost of hosting it in a customer’s own data center. For aZaaS, we can provide subscription-based services to a larger portion of our customers at a much reduced cost. This gives us a more consistent revenue base. Also, we can add functionality and services without interrupting a customer’s business processes.

Read the full story at: www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000010017

To read more about SQL Azure, visit:
www.SQLAzure.com

TechEd 2011: From Servers to Services: On-Premise and in the Cloud

2011-05-23T10:30:00Z

Norm Judah, Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft Services, presented a Foundational Session at TechEd detailing examples of what is possible in the cloud this past week. The session covered four demos on 1) building a private cloud, 2) event based applications, 3) looking at SharePoint as an application platform and doing a burst out to Azure, and 4) redeploying an on-premises application into the cloud. The technologies and services focused on are: Hyper-Microsoft System Center, Windows Azure and Microsoft Office 365, Private and Public Cloud, application development and management.

I highly recommend taking a look at this presentation, as it highlights many of the possibilities of what can be done in the cloud today and in the future.

-Steve

Video How-To: Basic Architectural Considerations

2011-05-23T08:00:00Z

We’ve prepared a new how-to video which talks about basic architectural considerations when developing on SQL Azure. This walkthrough provides an overview that you can use to establish best practices and optimize your SQL Azure databases. Specifically, the video discusses standard database optimization techniques, database sharding, and table considerations.

The demo portion of the video shows how to create a clustered index in the Windows Azure portal and shows how to test for latency using SQL Server Management Studio. The conclusion points you to some additional resources to help you get started using SQL Azure.

Take a look at the source code on Codeplex.

Check it out, and if you have any questions, please leave a comment.

View this video as a WMV

-Steve

TechEd 2011: The Data and BI Platform for Today and Tomorrow

2011-05-18T20:55:00Z

Quentin Clark, Vice President for SQL Server, delivered a session after the TechEd keynote yesterday about the future of SQL Server for data and BI and moving towards the cloud in the upcoming “Denali” release.

There was a great demo by Roger Doherty that illustrates how well SQL Azure and SQL Server work together by making it much easier to move back and forth between on-premises and cloud utilizing improvements in the DAC Framework.

Additionally, new developer tools in “Denali”, specifically SQL Server Developer Tools Codename “Juneau”, provided a central point for developers to create database applications. Database edition and cloud-aware – “Juneau” provides the one tool for any SQL Server or SQL Azure development.

I encourage you to watch it in its entirety. However, if you want to skip ahead the SQL Azure demo starts at the 23:00 mark

-Steve

Video How To: Advanced Business Intelligence with Cloud Data

2011-05-18T08:00:00Z

We’ve created a new readiness video that introduces some of the features of SQL Azure Reporting and demonstrates the use of advanced analytical tools, such as using SQL Azure data with Excel and PowerPivot. Specifically, users will learn how to use SQL Azure data with Excel and create two pivot tables using employee expense report data. The conclusion points to some additional resources to help users get started.

-Steve

SQL Azure May 2011 Update

2011-05-16T19:30:00Z

Announced earlier today at TechEd, there are several key updates to the SQL Azure service that I wanted to share with you. Zane Adam covered these at a high level on his blog this morning as well as talking about improvements in AppFabric. The theme of this service release was to continue improving on making SQL Azure databases easier to manage, and the service enhancements go a long way towards making automation and keeping track of geo-distributed deployments more convenient.

For the May 2011 service update, there are four key improvements the engineering teams have been hard at work on:

SQL Azure Management REST API – a web API for managing SQL Azure servers.
Multiple servers per subscription – create multiple SQL Azure servers per subscription.
JDBC Driver – updated database driver for Java applications to access SQL Server and SQL Azure.
DAC Framework 1.1 – making it easier to deploy databases and in-place upgrades on SQL Azure.

Let’s go through these one by in a little more detail. For deeper technical details you can read more in the MSDN documentation here.

SQL Azure Management REST API: With the latest release, managing databases can be accomplished via a web API to programmatically manage SQL Azure servers along with configuring the firewall rules. While managing the servers via the Windows Azure developer portal is straightforward enough, doing this via an API provides the ability automate these tasks. Many SQL Azure solutions created by our partner ISVs create new databases or add a firewall rule when onboarding new customers. This API makes scenarios such as this much more convenient and efficient. The REST API we’ve implemented utilizes standard and open web protocols to make it easy to use by any variety of programming platforms.

Multiple servers per subscription: You can now create multiple SQL Azure servers per subscription, making it easier to manage multiple database deployments across different servers – whether they’re in the same datacenter, or a geo-distributed deployment across worldwide Windows Azure platform datacenters.

JDBC Driver: Java developers can download the updated driver here. The SQL Server JDBC Driver 3.0 driver is now available, a Type 4 JDBC driver. This version fully supports both SQL Server and SQL Azure and is free of charge. This enables on-premises Java applications to communicate with SQL Azure to make data available in the cloud; or to deploy a Java app to Windows Azure and utilize SQL Azure as the underlying data store. More information on Windows Azure cross-platform capabilities are here.

DAC Framework 1.1: At the end of March I put up a post about the new import/export feature for SQL Azure that makes migrating databases between on-premises SQL Server and SQL Azure pretty simple, and will be tightly integrated into the database tools shipping with the next version of SQL Server (“Denali”). Both schema and data are packaged together into a .bacpac file format (and no, I wasn’t involved in the naming of that file extension :) .

The improvements to the DAC Framework in 1.1 takes this a step further by enabling in-place upgrades of SQL Azure databases, changing the database schema as necessary while still preserving the data. Very cool. Used in conjunction with SQL Azure Data Sync, synchronizing data across on-premises and cloud creates very compelling opportunities to extend data from on-premises to reach users on the web, phone, tablets, and in next generation web apps via AJAX and jQuery.

Over the next few weeks I’ll post more updates and examples of the new service enhancements. Leave a comment and let me know which of these features you’re most interested in learning more about.

Thanks!

- Steve

SQL Azure And Data Services at TechEd 2011: What’s Coming This Week.

2011-05-16T08:30:00Z

TechEd is this week! As I wrote in my post on Friday, TechEd is May 16-19 in Atlanta. Unfortunately I am not there, I was at InterOp earlier this week in Vegas (I’ll send a recap of that in the next few days) and I’ll be sitting this one out to catch up on some work and to start work on an idea for a cloud application that I’ve been thinking about for a while.

Don't forget! My colleague, Tharun Tharian, will be there so I encourage you to say hi if you see him. Of course he’ll be joined by the SQL Azure, DataMarket, and OData engineering teams delivering the latest on the respective services and technologies, and also manning the booth to answer your questions. You’ll find them hanging out at the Cloud Data Services booth if you want to chat with them during the conference.

Reminder for those of you going, below are the SQL Azure and OData sessions that I encourage you to check out the sessions listed below – either live or over the web. I encourage you to attend either Quentin Clark or Norm Judah’s foundational sessions right after the keynote to learn more about how to bridge on-premises investments with Windows Azure platform, and how SQL Server “Denali” and SQL Azure will work together in both the services offered, and updates in the tooling and development experience. You may even hear some new announcements about SQL Azure and other investments in cloud data services.

Enjoy the conference!

****

Foundational Sessions:

FDN04 | Microsoft SQL Server: The Data and BI Platform for Today and Tomorrow

Speaker(s): Quentin Clark

Monday, May 16 | 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Room: Georgia Ballrm 3

FDN05 | From Servers to Services: On-Premise and in the Cloud

Speaker(s): Norm Judah

Monday, May 16 | 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Room: Sidney Marcus Audit

SQL Azure Sessions:

DBI403 | Building Scalable Database Solutions Using Microsoft SQL Azure Database Federations

Speaker(s): Cihan Biyikoglu

Monday, May 16 | 3:00 PM - 4:15 PM | Room: C201

DBI210 | Getting Started with Cloud Business Intelligence

Speaker(s): Pej Javaheri, Tharun Tharian

Monday, May 16 | 4:45 PM - 6:00 PM | Room: B213

COS310 | Microsoft SQL Azure Overview: Tools, Demos and Walkthroughs of Key Features

Speaker(s): David Robinson

Tuesday, May 17 | 10:15 AM - 11:30 AM | Room: B313

DBI323 | Using Cloud (Microsoft SQL Azure) and PowerPivot to Deliver Data and Self-Service BI at Microsoft

Speaker(s): Diana Putnam, Harinarayan Paramasivan, Sanjay Soni

Tuesday, May 17 | 1:30 PM - 2:45 PM | Room: C208

DBI314 | Microsoft SQL Azure Performance Considerations and Troubleshooting

Wednesday, May 18 | 1:30 PM - 2:45 PM | Room: B312

DBI375-INT | Microsoft SQL Azure: Performance and Connectivity Tuning and Troubleshooting

Speaker(s): Peter Gvozdjak, Sean Kelley

Wednesday, May 18 | 3:15 PM - 4:30 PM | Room: B302

COS308 | Using Microsoft SQL Azure with On-Premises Data: Migration and Synchronization Strategies and Practices

Speaker(s): Mark Scurrell

Thursday, May 19 | 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM | Room: B213

DBI306 | Using Contained Databases and DACs to Build Applications in Microsoft SQL Server Code-Named "Denali" and SQL Azure

Speaker(s): Adrian Bethune, Rick Negri

Thursday, May 19 | 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM | Room: B312

DataMarket & OData Sessions:

DEV308 | Creating and Consuming OData Services

Tuesday, May 17 | 3:15 PM - 4:30 PM | Room: B402

COS307 | Building Applications with the Windows Azure DataMarket

Speaker(s): Christian Liensberger, Roger Mall

Wednesday, May 18 | 3:15 PM - 4:30 PM | Room: B312

DEV325 | Best Practices for Building Custom Open Data Protocol (OData) Services with Windows Azure

Speaker(s): Alex James

Thursday, May 19 | 1:00 PM - 2:15 PM | Room: C211

Development Sessions:

DEV312 | Code First Development in EF 4.1

Tuesday, May 17 | 10:15 AM - 11:30 AM | Room: C307

DEV313 | Entity Framework 4 & Beyond: Building Real-World Apps

Wednesday, May 18 | 10:15 AM – 11:30 AM | Georgia Ballroom 1

DEV207 | Introducing SQL Server Developer Tools, Codename “Juneau”

Wednesday, May 18 | 3:00 PM - 4:15 PM | Room: B406

DEV314 | SQL Server Developer Tools, Codename “Juneau” & EF: Best Friends Forever

Wednesday, May 18 | 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM | Georgia Ballroom 3

Interactive Sessions

DEV374-INT | OData Unplugged

Wednesday, May 18 | 1:30 PM - 2:45 PM | B303

Product Demo Stations (all week during Expo hours)

Entity Framework & SQL Server Developer Tools, Codename “Juneau”

Data in the Cloud (OData, SQL Azure, Data Market)

Gaining Performance Insight into SQL Azure

2011-05-16T08:00:00Z

TechNet has an interesting article on understanding query performance in SQL Azure. The article discusses how database administrators can track exactly what Transact-SQL statements are being submitted, and how the database returns those results and .

Click here to read more on TechNet’s article: “Gaining Performance Insight into SQL Azure.

-Steve

TechEd 2011 – What To See, Where To Go For Cloud Data Services

2011-05-13T15:10:00Z

TechEd is next week! May 16-19 to be exact, in Atlanta. Unfortunately I won’t be there - I was at InterOp earlier this week in Vegas (I’ll send a recap of that in the next few days) and I’ll be sitting this one out to catch up on some work and to start work on an idea for a cloud application that I’ve been thinking about for a while.

My colleague, Tharun Tharian, will be there so I encourage you to say hi if you see him. He’ll be joined by the SQL Azure, DataMarket, and OData engineering teams delivering the latest on the respective services and technologies, and also manning the booth to answer your questions. You’ll find them hanging out at the Cloud Data Services booth if you want to chat with them during the conference.

For those of you going, below are the SQL Azure and OData sessions that I encourage you to check out the sessions listed below – either live or over the web. I encourage you to attend either Quentin Clark or Norm Judah’s foundational sessions right after the keynote to learn more about how to bridge on-premises investments with Windows Azure platform, and how SQL Server “Denali” and SQL Azure will work together in both the services offered, and updates in the tooling and development experience. You may even hear some new announcements about SQL Azure and other investments in cloud data services.

Enjoy the conference!

****

Foundational Sessions:

FDN04 | Microsoft SQL Server: The Data and BI Platform for Today and Tomorrow

Speaker(s): Quentin Clark

Monday, May 16 | 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Room: Georgia Ballrm 3

FDN05 | From Servers to Services: On-Premise and in the Cloud

Speaker(s): Norm Judah

Monday, May 16 | 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Room: Sidney Marcus Audit

SQL Azure Sessions:

DBI403 | Building Scalable Database Solutions Using Microsoft SQL Azure Database Federations

Speaker(s): Cihan Biyikoglu

Monday, May 16 | 3:00 PM - 4:15 PM | Room: C201

DBI210 | Getting Started with Cloud Business Intelligence

Speaker(s): Pej Javaheri, Tharun Tharian

Monday, May 16 | 4:45 PM - 6:00 PM | Room: B213

COS310 | Microsoft SQL Azure Overview: Tools, Demos and Walkthroughs of Key Features

Speaker(s): David Robinson

Tuesday, May 17 | 10:15 AM - 11:30 AM | Room: B313

DBI323 | Using Cloud (Microsoft SQL Azure) and PowerPivot to Deliver Data and Self-Service BI at Microsoft

Speaker(s): Diana Putnam, Harinarayan Paramasivan, Sanjay Soni

Tuesday, May 17 | 1:30 PM - 2:45 PM | Room: C208

DBI314 | Microsoft SQL Azure Performance Considerations and Troubleshooting

Wednesday, May 18 | 1:30 PM - 2:45 PM | Room: B312

DBI375-INT | Microsoft SQL Azure: Performance and Connectivity Tuning and Troubleshooting

Speaker(s): Peter Gvozdjak, Sean Kelley

Wednesday, May 18 | 3:15 PM - 4:30 PM | Room: B302

COS308 | Using Microsoft SQL Azure with On-Premises Data: Migration and Synchronization Strategies and Practices

Speaker(s): Mark Scurrell

Thursday, May 19 | 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM | Room: B213

DBI306 | Using Contained Databases and DACs to Build Applications in Microsoft SQL Server Code-Named "Denali" and SQL Azure

Speaker(s): Adrian Bethune, Rick Negrin

Thursday, May 19 | 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM | Room: B312

DataMarket & OData Sessions:

COS307 | Building Applications with the Windows Azure DataMarket

Speaker(s): Christian Liensberger, Roger Mall

Wednesday, May 18 | 3:15 PM - 4:30 PM | Room: B312

DEV325 | Best Practices for Building Custom Open Data Protocol (OData) Services with Windows Azure

Speaker(s): Alex James

Thursday, May 19 | 1:00 PM - 2:15 PM | Room: C211

****

-Steve

SQL Azure Connection Security

2011-05-11T16:07:00Z

Selcin Turkarslan has written an in-depth TechNet wiki article about connection security considerations when using SQL Azure. The article is primarily concerned with writing secure connection strings for SQL Azure Database. I’d highly recommend reading it, as it details good procedures and best practices when connecting with SQL Azure.

Click here to read "SQL Azure Connection Security"

If you have any questions about connection security within SQL Azure, please leave a comment. We’d like to be able to help you out if you have any questions.

-Steve

Video How To: Business Intelligence with Cloud Data

2011-05-11T16:00:00Z

This walkthrough discusses how businesses can take business intelligence to the cloud with SQL Azure. The video covers the benefits of SQL Azure—including the ability to establish business intelligence without adding hardware costs or IT overhead—and it also introduces SQL Azure Reporting.

The ability to embed SQL Azure reports into on-premises Apps and Windows Azure Web Apps—and the ability to create and export SQL Azure reports using available report authoring tools is also covered. The demonstration portion of the video shows users how to author a report with Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS), display reports, embed a report into a web app, and manage and deliver reports.

If you would like to view the code that was mentioned in this video, it is available on Codeplex.

-Steve

SQL Azure Diagnostics Tool Available

2011-05-09T08:00:00Z

Evan Basalik has written a post which details the arrival of CSS SQL Azure Diagnostics (CSAD), developed by the our support team. The tool has been developed to shorten the data collection process when troubleshooting SQL Azure issues. You can point CSAD to your SQL Azure instance, provide the appropriate credentials and will then be presented with some good summary data about your instance.

You can download the CASD tool here.

The full detailed article is on the CSS SQL Server Engineers’ blog: CSS SQL Azure Diagnostics tool released– Check it out.

-Steve