Welcome to the SQL Server Data Services blog! I am Istvan Cseri, architect on our data service (SSDS) which we announced at MIX ’08 today. These are exciting times in the services world – our solution is bringing one of the essential building blocks to the web: a ubiquitous, internet scale and highly available storage and query service built on SQL Server technology.

I have been working on a lot of different technologies in the past but this has been the most complex and exciting project so far – building a large scale storage service using the SQL engine running on thousands of small (by database standards) interconnected machines as a self managing and highly available cluster of data nodes. I started with video games back in the ‘80s (yes, I am an old timer in the software business !) moved onto building UI and UI frameworks first at Borland International working on Quattro Pro for Windows and later at Microsoft in the IE 4.0 team. Then came the XML era and I have spent a significant time on parsers, tools and later on XML database support at which point I joined the SQL Server team at the end of the ’90 – one decade on the client side and one decade on the server/service side so I had a chance to see the software business from both angles.

Having spent a lot of time manipulating and accessing data on the client side– most applications are about data after all and XML has been used very successfully shipping data around for example – and having worked on data server products I find the value proposition of a data service providing easy access from anywhere and anytime very compelling. In addition as an application/service developer you don’t have to worry about provisioning machines any more or build out a datacenter on your own – you can start small and scale up as needed on demand.

As we deliver on our Data Platform vision which this service is part of you will see more and more capabilities of the underlying SQL technology – we are starting with a simple but flexible data model which will grow richer over time just as the query capabilities will. You can access the service using internet standard protocols (REST and SOAP) from any platform.

You can read more about the service here www.microsoft.com/sql/dataservices - we are looking forward to your feedback and working with you as you take advantage of our offering.

-Istvan