SSDS at PDC 2008

Soumitra Sengupta — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:53:00 GMT

It is around 40 days to PDC and the excitement is building. We have a ton of work to do between now and then and the team is heads down getting ready for this major event. If you look at the PDC 2008 breakout sessions already announced, it is incredible that we will have 26 sessions on Cloud Services and 6 sessions related to SQL Server Data Services (SSDS). You can look it up here. You can see Mike and Jennifer's interview with Amitabh Srivastava here, where he talks about some of the things his team has been working on. Unfortunately he cannot talk much about it, but I can assure you coming to PDC this year will be well worth it. In my mind this is as big and maybe bigger than when we announced the .Net wave. The cloud wave is a major event and disruption in our industry and you will get to see and hear from the guys driving this wave inside Microsoft at PDC 2008.

That is as much as I can say about our overall Cloud services initiatives. Specifically, as a member of the SQL Server Data Services (SSDS) team, I am psyched to say that we have scheduled 3 talks directly related to SSDS, 1 talk from our Technical Fellow Dave Campbell on how we are evolving and extending our comprehensive Data Platform and the fast growing SQL business to the cloud and another 3-4 talks on technologies like Astoria, Velocity, Sync Framework and Entity Frameworks that are important to our cloud strategy. So here are the key talks and a brief outline of what you can expect from these talks at PDC.

1. Microsoft SQL Server: Data-Driven Applications from Device to Cloud - Dave Campbell. Dave has been through it all. He will present the key trends that are shaping our industry and how we are evolving our Data Platform from devices, desktop, server to the cloud and the services that makes this platform worth betting on. If you ever wondered what software and services have to do with data, you do not want to miss this talk. Dave's talk will set the stage for all the talks to follow on data and tie them together. So this has to be a must attend talk for you if you care about data.

2. A Lap around SQL Server Data Services - Soumitra Sengupta. This will be an advanced technical presentation where I will explain how we got started on SSDS, how it relates to our Cloud and Data Platform strategy, how we see our Cloud services vis-a-vis our on-premises SQL Server offering. You will also learn why SSDS seems like a departure from hosted SQL Server. I get that one a lot. Tables, Columns, T-SQL anyone. I will fly through this material quickly and spend most of the time coding up an application using our REST and SOAP interfaces. I promise there will be one or two surprises during this presentation. I will also explain how we run our service and the trade-offs and questions that should be on developers' mind as they build applications using SSDS.

3. Under the Hood: Building SQL Server Data Services - Istvan Cseri and Gopal Kakivaya. Man what can I say. These guys are going to take the lid off SSDS and really dive under the hood and talk about how this service is built. If you want to see how to build a fault-tolerant, highly available multi-datacenter service, you cannot miss this talk. It will demystify what we have built and how we operate this. This is the first time we will go this deep. These guys are real rock stars and I will not be upset if you miss my talk BUT DO NOT MISS THIS ONE.

4. SQL Server Data Services: Futures - Patric McElroy. If you are curious after listening to the first 3 talks about where we are headed with SSDS, this is the talk for you. There will be lots of surprises as Patric will show you how we are thinking about extending our entire data platform and services to the cloud. This is a real forward looking session but there will be demos on the way to give you a clear idea of the vision and the path ahead.

In addition we will have lunch sessions, lounges, booth and Hand-on-Labs. You will get to meet, greet, ask questions and socialize with the team members who are making it all happen and if there is enough interest, we will try to get a group together and do something fun during PDC. So if you are interested let, David Robinson know. I know he is in touch with Mike Amundsen already about this.

Aside from these 4 talks, we have the following talks where we will establish the linkages between Sync, ADO.Net Data Services (Astoria), Velocity and other Microsoft services and SSDS. So it would be interesting for you to attend these as well.

1. Microsoft Sync Framework: Enterprise Data in the Cloud and on Devices - Liam Cavanagh
2. Microsoft Sync Framework Advances - Lev Novik
3. Developing Applications Using Data Services - Mike Flasko
4. Entity Framework Futures - Tim Mallalieu
5. Project "Velocity": A First Look - Murali Krishnaprasad
6. A Lap around Building Block Services - John Shewchuk
7. Architecture of the Building Block Services - Dennis Pilarinos, John Shewchuk

Obviously there will be the Keynote from Ray Ozzie to set the stage for this wave and you cannot miss that. I also hear Don Box and Chris Anderson are cooking up something using SSDS. These 2 guys have always lit up PDC and I do not think you will be disappointed this time around.

See you all there.

Jon Udell cURL's with SQL Server Data Services

Soumitra Sengupta — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 03:31:00 GMT

Just read Jon Udell's post on SQL Server Data Services (SSDS) here. Happy to hear that Jon was able to explore SSDS with cURL "within minutes of cracking open the SSDS documentation". Readers who are wondering what Jon is talking about, should read Jeff Currier, one of the guys writing real code that we ship in SSDS, talking about using cURL to explore SSDS here.

When few of us crazies started thinking of SSDS, a non-negotiable requirement was that developers should be able to start exploring and using the service quickly. There is so much going on in the cloud services space that if it took too long to experiment with a new service, we were afraid that developers will put it on the shelve and may never give it a spin. I know I do not like to spend months on something to see if I would use it. It was hard for us to "cover up" the SQL Server heritage of SSDS, but we argued that simplicity is a virtue that we should aspire to.

Jon hits on an interesting point when he says 'while the novelty of “just coding to a URL” on a Microsoft platform will undoubtedly attract some tirekickers who otherwise wouldn’t show up, the real draw will be the ability to exercise choice along the whole continuum'. Internally we use the words "reach" and "rich". We believe that to be a platform with large adoption, one needs to provide both "reach" (so that people from all other platforms can use you) as well as "richness" (so that people who use your platform exlusively have a rich set of tools to leverage). Today it is easy to see that SSDS is aiming to "reach" as many developers as possible. To do this we have to address "the continuum of access styles". Jon seems to be saying that we are meeting that goal. What do you think? Are we close? Are we way off base? Or we should not worry about the "continuum of access styles".

It will be interesting to hear from you all.

c'Urling on SSDS with Jeff

kellyalt — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:06:00 GMT

Jeff Currier just posted this blog post where he talks about using cURL with SSDS. This illustrates why we are taking an incremental approach. Using cURL with SSDS was not even on our radar till one of the first customers to go on the "restricted beta" wanted to use this. Jeff dug into it and helped them along. Now he is sharing this out with everyone else. When we started down this path, we were willing to be surprised. This is one of them. I am sure many more are on the way.

SQL Azure Team Blog : cURL

SSDS at PDC 2008

Jon Udell cURL's with SQL Server Data Services

c'Urling on SSDS with Jeff