SQL Azure Team Blog : Windows Azure

SQL Azure at PASS Summit 2009

davidrob — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:59:43 GMT

This upcoming week, PASS (Professional Association for SQL Server) will be holding its annual summit in Seattle, WA. The summit runs from November 2nd through the 5th and, as described on the website, provides:

In-depth technical sessions all focused on SQL Server
Unparalleled access to the industry’s top SQL Server experts and the Microsoft SQL Server development team
Unique opportunity to network with your peers, share challenges, and get answers and advice
Return to work with new skills and knowledge to do your job better, faster, easier – right away.

This year the SQL Azure team will be presenting the following sessions:

What’s new in SQL Azure - Patric McElroy
Come and learn how SQL Azure has evolved over the past year based on your feedback. In this session you'll learn how SQL Azure delivers on promise of Database as a Service. You'll see how easy it is to take an existing class of SQL Server applications and extend them to the service using existing SQL Server knowledge, protocols, client libraries and tools. With minimal changes, your application will be running in a highly available and scalable service. Finally we’ll touch on the business model, terms of use and present a roadmap for the service.

Building Applications with SQL Azure and Windows Azure – David Robinson and Liam Cavanagh
Are you looking to reduce the costs of building and maintaining enterprise applications? Do you want to extend the reach of your applications across multiple devices, locations and partners? SQL Azure and Windows Azure provides you a friction free, highly scalable platform for building applications. The scale and reach of the cloud lights up a new class of application scenarios. Come see how easy it is to consume SQL Azure from within Windows Azure. In addition, we will dive into Microsoft’s new Data Hub for businesses and see how this SQL Azure powered synchronization service allows for data aggregation within the Hub to provide straight-forward data sharing between on-premises databases, business partners, remote offices and mobile users.

Roles and Responsibilities Managing a Microsoft SQL Azure Database - Nino Bice
Come and learn about database administration in the new world of SQL Azure. Starting from the creation of an SQL Azure account, learn about tools and techniques for provisioning accounts, servers, and databases. See how billing is managed. Learn how to collaborate with your peers to build an Azure project that uses SQL Azure. We demonstrate the mechanisms for database management such as managing logins and permissions. See how SQL Azure automates the tedious and complex administrative tasks (e.g., machine failures) and allows you to spend more time on the important design functions of a DBA.

Windows Azure Platform Launch Update

davidrob — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:59:00 GMT

In October 2008 at our Professional Developer Conference we opened the Community Technology Preview (CTP) for the Windows Azure platform (Windows Azure, SQL Azure and .NET Services). The CTP has been invaluable in terms of shaping many aspects of the Windows Azure platform.

PDC 2009 is an exciting event for all of us who are working on the Windows Azure platform as it’s our opportunity to show you the work that we’ve done over the past year, including some brand new features. Concurrent with the conference we will begin the Windows Azure platform’s transition from a CTP to a business. For your planning purposes, this post maps out the key stages of that transition that you should be aware of.

At PDC 2009, on November 17th, 2009, a number of new features in Windows Azure will be made available for the first time. The CTP will remain open through December 31st, allowing you to experiment with the full feature platform and to give us any final feedback.
Beginning January 2010, new customers will have to sign up for an offer to access services on the Windows Azure platform. Usage during the month of January will be at no charge, so you can see your exact usage while still enjoying free service.
On February 1, 2010, we will begin charging customers for using the Windows Azure platform.

Making the transition in these three steps accomplishes a few goals. First, it gives you a chance to explore our full feature set for free. Second, it allows our team time to get your feedback on the new features and address any issues that arise. Finally, it lets you preview exactly how billing will work before you need to start paying.

We’d like to thank everyone who has participated in our Community Technology Preview so far. Your feedback has really shaped the platform, and we’re looking forward to sharing our launch with you next month at PDC 2009!

Updated 10/30/2009: Clarified that January is free of charge.

Try SQL Azure Database CTP Today

davidrob — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:01:00 GMT

Check out the free trial of Microsoft® SQL Azure Database Community Technology Preview (CTP). SQL Azure Database, a part of the Windows Azure platform, is a cloud-based database service built on Microsoft SQL Server technology. With SQL Azure organizations will benefit from a pay-as-you grow model with enterprise-class availability, data protection, scalability, and security.

Also available as a CTP is the SQL Server Driver for PHP 1.1, which provides new capabilities for building PHP applications and support for SQL Azure, enabling developers to build PHP apps with relational database capabilities using SQL Server or SQL Azure Database. The CTP for the SQL Server Driver for PHP is available for download today.

With the explosion of data-driven Web 2.0 applications, along with the need to extend existing applications and build innovative data solutions in the cloud – these are exciting milestones. With SQL Azure, developers building Web 2.0, ASP.NET and PHP applications can use familiar tools and data models to develop on a pay-as-you-grow, secure, scalable and highly available database service at minimal infrastructure cost. In fact, there are really no comparable solutions available today --- we are leading the industry by offering a relational database service. When hosting your application in Windows Azure and with SQL Azure as your cloud database, building credible, reliable cloud-based applications becomes very easy.

The SQL Azure Database CTP includes:

· Relational data model supporting Transact-SQL (T-SQL), including T-SQL stored procedures. Access SQL Azure with familiar data access APIs such as ODBC, ADO.Net, PHP, etc. The high degree of compatibility with SQL Server enables easy migration of existing Line of Business (LOB) or Web applications to the cloud.

· Self-provisioning, auto-healing and disaster recovery, with high availability and no physical database administration. Self service provisioning means you can provision any number of databases and not have to worry about machines, disks, or server configuration.

Pay-as-you-grow multi-tenant scalable service model.
Efficiencies from an enterprise class data center without the administrative overhead.
Support for familiar tools so developers can leverage existing skills to speed time to solution

SQL Server Driver for PHP CTP will include:

Support for SQL Azure, PHP version 5.3, and UTF-8
Support for Scrollable results and row count
Migration to the SQL Server 2008 Native Client framework with enhanced performance

SQL Azure Database will be available as a free trial until the service goes live in November. SQL Azure Database will be available in two editions: Web Edition, which will include up to 1 GB of relational data, priced at $9.99 per month, and Business Edition, which will include up to 10 GB of data, priced at $99.99 per month.

Other Resources:

· Register for SQL Azure Database CTP (Note: due to high demand there may be delays in issuing invitation codes as we onboard new participants.)

· Additional information on SQL Azure

· Windows Azure Platform Training Kit

· Download SQL Server Driver for PHP 1.1

· Additional information on SQL Server Driver for PHP.

SQL Azure - Same great platform, just a better aligned name

davidrob — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 04:18:00 GMT

Yesterday we announced a branding update to SQL Azure (formerly SQL Services). I think you will agree that our new name is a better fit. If you look across the Windows platform, you will see a consistent branding theme that runs the gamut from Windows Mobile on mobile devices, to Windows Client on the desktop, Windows Server as the leading server operating system and more recently Windows Azure as our soon to be released operating system in the cloud. SQL Data Services is now known as SQL Azure Database. Same SQL Platform, same team, same innovation. SQL Server is the data platform of Windows Server so it made sense to align the name of the relational database platform of Windows Azure, SQL Azure. SQL Azure is built on the SQL Server technology foundation which delivers relational database capabilities in the cloud.

Regardless of what platform your solution targets, your existing SQL Server skills and experience don’t change. That was the goal of the team when we decided to accelerate our relational capabilities and add TDS support. A goal we will be delivering upon when we release SQL Azure later this year.

The next few months are going to be exciting. On the technology front, we are getting ready for our next CTP in August. You can, however, get started today with SQL Express. The team has been working closely with some early adopters and the feedback has been overwhelming positive. Thank you for being so patient, the wait is almost over. Over the next day or two, we will be pushing additional details regarding SQL Azure, including posting our first round of SQL Azure Database documentation to MSDN (once it’s posted, I will post a link to it here).

Stay Tuned,

Dave

SQL Server - Your Data, Any Place, Any Time...and now in the cloud with SQL Azure Database

One more TechEd Video - The New Face of Microsoft SQL Data Services

davidrob — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:43:00 GMT

Here is one last video we filmed a few weeks back during TechEd. In this one, we discuss the new features of SDS including the development model, tools support, and how the services interoperate with the other building block services of the Azure Services Platform

The video can be found here

Provisioning an SDS Database

davidrob — Thu, 21 May 2009 02:00:00 GMT

The SDS team was extremely busy last week at TechEd North America in L.A.. We presented 3 sessions, recorded 4 TechEd online videos and spent a great deal of time speaking with customers.

Here is a video we did on what the provisioning experience will be like for SDS in the Azure Developer Portal. You can see the video here - Provisioning an SDS Database in the Azure Developer Portal

Enjoy!!!

Dave

Accessing SDS From PHP

nigele — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 02:44:00 GMT

Hi folks, this is Nigel Ellis and I’m an architect on the SQL Services team. I’ve just returned from MIX2009 where I announced our new relational service in my What's New with SQL Data Services talk. You can watch the full video and download the slides from here.

During my talk, I demonstrated running an application on Windows Azure using PHP to interact with a database hosted in our new relational SQL data service. I used the unified ODBC support built in to PHP to interact with SDS. I’ve included a sample code snippet below which uses an SDS server server.data.dev.mscds.com:

<?php

$host = "server.data.dev.mscds.com";

$dbname = "database";

$dbuser = "user@server";

$dbpwd = "password";

$driver = "{SQL Server Native Client 10.0}";

// Build connection string

$dsn="Driver=$driver;Server=$host;Database=$dbname;Encrypt=true;TrustServerCertificate=true";

if (!($conn = @odbc_connect($dsn, $dbuser, $dbpwd))) {

die("Connection error: " . odbc_errormsg());

}

// Got a connection, run simple query

if ($qh = @odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT A, B FROM myTable")) {

// Dump query result

$rows = 0;

while ( $row = @odbc_fetch_object($qh) ) {

echo("$rows: $row->A $row->B\r\n");

$rows++;

}

@odbc_free_result($qh);

}

else {

// Error running query

echo("Query error: " . odbc_errormsg($conn));

}

// Free the connection

@odbc_close($conn);

In this example, I’m using the SQL Server native ODBC driver which ships out of band from the operating system. Other driver choices may be used as outlined in the table below.

Item	Comments
Server	Name of the virtual SDS data server to connect to. This takes the form of *servername*.domain_name. In the example, I’m using a virtual server provisioned in the SDS pre-production domain data.dev.mscds.com
Driver	ODBC driver to use: {SQL Server} – Legacy SQL Server driver {SQL Native Client} – SQL 2005 Native Client {SQL Server Native Client 10.0} – SQL 2008 Native Client
Database	Name of the target database to connect to. If left unspecified the connection will default to the master database.
Encrypt	Force use of encryption over TDS – if left unspecified, SDS will force encryption
TrustServerCertificate	Trust the certificate returned by the data service – this is currently required due to implementation restrictions that will be relaxed before we release
UID	Username of the user – form should be user@server. Can be specified in the connection string or as argument to odbc_connect()
PWD	Password of the user account. Can be specified in the connection string or as argument to odbc_connect()

For those familiar with ODBC you’ll note this pattern is also used to connect to a regular SQL Server instance. The only change in the code is the name of the server, use of encryption and the use of SQL standard security (username and password).

In addition to the ODBC driver patterns, there is an open source Native PHP driver for SQL Server. This driver is a native client library built over the SQL 2005 Native Client. Today the driver requires the target SQL server support MARS. This prevents the driver from working with SQL 7.0, 2000 and SQL Data Services as MARS is not supported. The good news is that we’re working with the native driver folks to expose MARS as a configuration option; this support is already provided by the underlying ODBC driver. This change allows the use of the PHP Native driver with SDS without requiring SDS to support MARS.

In the end, you’ll see the patterns used to access SDS are identical to those you use to access SQL Server.

Nigel.

Microsoft Announces Windows Azure and Azure Services Platform

Soumitra Sengupta — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:47:00 GMT

Today at PDC, Ray Ozzie announced our all up cloud services platform. It was a great day for a whole bunch of us who have worked on the database part of the platform for the past 2 years. We announced our cloud compute, storage and management service called Windows Azure. These are the essential services and we can think of this as the Cloud OS. Next we have the Azure Service Platform. This includes .Net Services, SQL Services and Live Services. Microsoft SQL Services is now the all up brand for the scale out database service in the cloud (SQL Data Services) and will include services like Data Sync, Reporting Services, Analytics Services, Integration Services and Reference Data Services over time. As part of this announcement, we now have an all new landing page for SQL Services here. Note that SQL Server Data Services is now going to be called Microsoft SQL Data Services or simply SQL Data Services. We are just dropping a 'S' from our name to align with the all up services brand.

Today Dave Campbell will kick-off our server and services presentation at 5:15 p.m. As usual there is a really cool demo that ties together SQL Server, SQL Services and Microsoft Sync Framework to show how the Data Platform is evolving all the way from device to the cloud. Tomorrow David Robinson will be presenting his tips and tricks talk on how to take advantage of SQL Data Services at a lunch session. At 3:30 p.m. tomorrow, I will be presenting the Lap Around SQL Data Services Session to go over some of the new features. And if you really want to know where we are headed, on Wednesday Patric McElroy will be presenting the SQL Data Services Futures talk where he is going to present some cool new demos that will show you some of the stuff we are incubating. If you want to see how we will align with ADO.Net Data Services, I suggest you attend his talk. Finally, if you really want to understand how we build our scale out database service using SQL Server as the database engine, you should attend Gopal Kakivaya's talk titled Under the Hood of SQL Data Services. Gopal spent several years working on the technology that enables SQL Data Services to run on thousands of servers and provide a highly available service. He will dig into such geeky topics as failure detection, split brain, failover, partition management, ring topology etc. etc.

If you are at PDC, come see us at the Azure lounge in the big room where member of the team will be there to answer your questions. Look forward to seeing you at PDC.