Zach Skyles Owens

If you have been following progress on SQL Server 2008 you have probably seen mention of FILESTREAM which is an enhancement of the varbinary(Max) data type. As an application developer you might be asking yourself... "So what does this mean to me?" My...

Wow... It's been a long time coming. I promised that I would explain in more detail how to write FILESTREAM data to SQL Server 2008. This is the second article in a series and uses the sample published on the SQL Server Community Samples site on CodePlex...

By Zach Skyles Owens One of the biggest challenges we faced when designing this demo was trying to make the breadth of Microsoft's Data Platform technologies easily understandable in 5 minutes. The major architecture components are SQL Server 2008 , SQL...

Roger and I have been delivering a demo which highlights Spatial and FILESTREAM features of SQL Server 2008. One of the common things we've heard from developers is... For years we've been told that large binary files should never be stored in the database...

By Zach Skyles Owens (Perdona mi español) Acabo de escribir como la dedicación del equipo de desarrollo fue el clave a nuestro éxito. Aparte de los ingenieros a Microsoft trabajamos con Southworks que es un grupo de gente muy apasionante de su trabajo...

By Zach Skyles Owens Just minutes ago at TechEd 2008 Developers in Orlando Dave Campbell, Technical Fellow, was on stage with Bill Gates doing the Data Platform demo which included a host of exciting Microsoft Technologies. SQL Server 2008 - Supports...

A couple great questions came up last week when discussing FILESTREAM with some people within the Microsoft field which I thought were worth sharing.   Q: Will SQL Server 2008 Express edition support FILESTREAM? A: It sure will!   Q: Will the...

I was banging my head against a wall for a while today trying to track down a issue that wasn't letting my PHP 5.2.8 app do a basic connection to SQL Server 2008. I kept getting the following error. SQLSTATE: IM002 message: [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager...

For those who have been following Microsoft’s S+S message you may be excited to hear about SQL Server Data Services (SSDS) which was announced at the MIX08 Keynote today. So what is this new cloud storage offering by Microsoft anyway? Microsoft hosted...

We are really excited about the progress of PHP 5.3 release. This is a milestone release for PHP on Windows as libraries are being brought up to date, PHP Core developers can use the Visual Studio 9 compiler and performance will be greatly improved. Unfortunately...

By Zach Skyles Owens There were a lot of people involved with pulling together the Data Platform Demo for the TechEd Keynote. I want to take a minute to quickly thank the Southworks team who's dedication really made the difference. Special thanks to Tim...

After blogging about SSDS I saw that people are wondering what Microsoft's Cloud Storage offering is all about. One reader asked... Is it Windows Live Sky Drive? Is it Astoria? The answer is no... It's neither of the two above although it does have some...

I've been working on SQL Server and SQL Data Services evangelism for the past year and half. There was a period of time when SDS didn't look much like SQL Server so telling the story of how SDS fit into the Microsoft Data Platform was much more difficult...

When I started at Microsoft a couple years ago I decided to give MSDN blogs a try. Recently I decided to switch back to my own domain for my blog at http://www.ZachSkylesOwens.net . For the few of you out there that may have my MSDN blog in an RSS reader...

Well, Roger’s post linking to my new blog here on MSDN is just what I needed to get me started writing.  Thanks Rog! I’ve been here at Microsoft for a few weeks and I am really excited to get more deeply involved with all of the talented...

I recently wrote an article over at http://wordpress.visitmix.com about my experience migrating my blog over to WordPress on Windows and SQL Server which went pretty smoothly.  >> Read More NOTE: I moved my blog back to my domain at http:/...

So, now that you've got a token and can connect to SQL Azure , you probably want to create a database and start. >> Read More

It's been a while since my last post and this one isn't going to be able FileStream API's, SQL Data Services or other SQL Server features... Continue reading at your own risk :) I started off my software career working as a Partner in a small web-application...

Whether you have an established business or have a great startup idea this is an awesome opportunity to win some cash.  The SQL Server team is running a contest for PHP developers building apps on top of SQL Server or SQL Azure. >> Read More...

Nigel is one of the coolest technical people I know when it comes to having great conversations about technology. I had the opportunity to. Read More >>

Now that CTP1 is out the door a question that keeps coming up is. "I registered for a token a couple months ago. When am I going to. >> Read More

I recently interviewed Denny Lee from the SQL Customer Advisory Team about applying data mining to medical research which you can see a video of on Channel 8 .   I asked Denny about other areas of academic research where data mining could be applied...

Today at TechEd EMEA Microsoft announced 11 partners who will support SQL Server 2008 Spatial .  It is really exciting to see the industry build momentum around this powerful new feature. As Roger pointed out on his blog , he and I have been working...

It has been a long time coming and I'm really excited to announce that we have finally released a series of 22 screencasts on the SQL Server Channel 9 site .  These screencasts were part of a global training event taking the student through BI project...

As the SQL Azure CTP comes closer we've released the documentation which can be found. Read More >>