Windows Azure : sql azure,

Considerations When Building Database Schema with Federations in SQL Azure

Windows Azure Team — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:45:00 GMT

[This article was contributed by the SQL Azure team.]

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

Windows Azure Team — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 08:00:00 GMT

[This article was contributed by the SQL Azure team.]

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

Windows Azure Team — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 16:00:00 GMT

[This article was contributed by the SQL Azure team.]

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

Windows Azure Team — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:00:00 GMT

[This article was contributed by the SQL Azure team.]

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

Windows Azure Team — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 16:00:00 GMT

[This article was contributed by the SQL Azure team.]

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

Windows Azure Team — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 16:00:00 GMT

[This article was contributed by the SQL Azure team.]

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

Windows Azure Team — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 16:00:00 GMT

[This article was contributed by the SQL Azure team.]

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

Windows Azure Team — Mon, 30 May 2011 16:00:00 GMT

[This article was contributed by the SQL Azure team.]

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

Windows Azure Team — Fri, 27 May 2011 21:00:00 GMT

[This article was contributed by the SQL Azure team.]

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!

Windows Azure Team — Thu, 26 May 2011 16:00:00 GMT

[This article was contributed by the SQL Azure team.]

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.