Microsoft Sync Framework : Huron

Announcing SQL Azure Data Sync (November CTP) Available for Download

liamca — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:42:00 GMT

Today in the opening keynote at PDC we announced the availability of SQL Azure Data Sync – November CTP, an early preview open to the public through a demonstration with Kelley Blue Book. For those of you who have been following our blog, you may be asking yourself, what exactly does this include and how does it compare to Project “Huron” that we have been talking about for some time now? In this post I want to give some additional details.

You can think of SQL Azure Data Sync as the first part of our overall Project “Huron” vision which is to create a Data Hub in the Cloud, or more specifically a place for you to easily consolidate and share all of your information. With SQL Azure Data Sync we have worked to simplify the task of sharing information whether that is from on-premises SQL Server to the cloud or from the cloud, down to mobile users, retails stores or remote offices. All of this being powered by the Microsoft Sync Framework.

SQL Azure Data Sync allows developers and DBA's to:

Link existing on-premises data stores to SQL Azure.
Create new applications in Windows Azure without abandoning existing on-premises applications.
Extend on-premises data to remote offices, retail stores and mobile workers via the cloud.
Take Windows Azure and SQL Azure based web application offline to provide an “Outlook like” cached-mode experience.

All of this is accomplished through

An end-user Data Sync Tool that keeps on-premises SQL Server data in sync with SQL Azure.
Visual Studio templates enabling developers to take Windows Azure and SQL Azure based web application offline within SQL Compact and SQL Server databases.

By downloading Microsoft Sync Framework Power Pack for SQL Azure November CTP along with the Microsoft Sync Framework 2.0, developers can use the built-in providers for SQL, allowing them to synchronize SQL Azure with other stores such as SQL Server and SQL Server Compact. SQL Azure Data Sync is optimized for performance over high latency networks by taking advantage of features like SQL Azure Table Valued Parameters to help reduce latency and significantly boost performance. Moving forward Microsoft we will continue to enhance this technology and focus on providing a linkage between current on-premises data sources and Windows Azure Storage as well as utilizing this technology as a basis of a developer technology that will enable the Windows Azure platform to be the platform for creating cached mode web applications.

To get started with SQL Azure Data Sync, you need the following:

· Microsoft Sync Framework 2.0

· Microsoft Sync Framework Power Pack for SQL Azure – November CTP

· SQL Azure Server Account (register here)

After installation, you will find 2 new components to help you get started:

1) SQL Server Provisioning Wizard: This wizard (launched from Start | Programs | Microsoft Sync Framework | SQL Azure Data Sync Tool for SQL Server) walks you through the process of connecting SQL Server to SQL Azure through data synchronization. Within this wizard you select the tables to provision in SQL Azure, it will create a new database and setup background synchronization to keep the two data stores in-sync.

2) Visual Studio 2008 Template: For users that would like to take an existing SQL Azure database offline, this new template simplifies the task of creating an offline data cache within SQL Compact. Using the template wizard (available by right clicking on a Visual Studio Solution Explorer Application and choosing Add | New Item | SQLAzureDataSyncClient, developers can choose the SQL Azure tables that they would like to be made available offline. After completing the wizard, a SQL Compact database will be created and code will be generated that allows the offline to synchronize changes on-demand between SQL Azure and SQL Compact.

- Liam

SQL Pass Conference & Synchronization to SQL Azure

liamca — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:34:00 GMT

Yesterday was the first day of the SQL Server conference, SQL Pass, here in Seattle. It was a really exciting day for me because I had the opportunity to present our new synchronization capabilities to the cloud in the opening day keynote and in a subsequent session.

We introduced the first piece of Project “Huron”, that is a technology based on the Sync Framework enabling people to use Windows Azure as a central Data Hub for all information. To accomplish this, later this month we will make available for download an early preview of a tool that provides the ability to extend a SQL Server on-premises databases to the cloud. Once configured users can then easily extend data from the cloud to mobile users and remote offices.

Using this tool and with the help of one of our partners, Archetype, we showed how companies can easily extend their on-premises SQL Servers to SQL Azure using data synchronization, allowing the data stores to co-exist and interoperate seamlessly.

All of this can be setup using a wizard. Then from an automatically generated SQL Agent, the synchronization process is executed periodically to move the incremental changes between SQL Server and SQL Azure.

Here are a few screenshots of the tool:

Watch for more details over this month at the Professional Developer Conference and in this blog for other new capabilities we are providing to for integration to Windows Azure and SQL Azure.

Liam Cavanagh

SQL Services is now SQL Azure

liamca — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:58:00 GMT

I thought I would help get the word out on this one. Given that we have been spending so much time on Project "Huron", which is a project to enable data synchronization to the cloud where the data store is ~~SQL Data Services~~ SQL Azure Database, I thought you should all be aware of this new branding. As we announced in the Data Insiders Blog earlier today:

"Effective immediately, SQL Services will be called Microsoft SQL Azure, and SQL Data Services will be Microsoft SQL Azure Database".

Also, I appologize that I have not provided much of an update on Project "Huron" lately. We are currently heads down in engineering and working out the specific details of the sync service to be hosted within Azure. I would like to thank all of you who offered to help us with our Early Adopter Program. The feedback we have been receiving from you has been absolutely invaluable.

Liam

TechEd 2009 - Building Applications with Microsoft SQL Data Services and Windows Azure (DAT316)

liamca — Tue, 05 May 2009 03:06:00 GMT

Hopefully a number of you will be attending this years TechEd in Los Angeles. This year I will be co-presenting with David Robinson where we will be discussing SQL Data Services and our "Huron" Data Hub project. I am really looking forward to showing you our latest demo so I hope you can all make it. If you are not able to make the session but are at the conference, I will also be at the SQL Data Services booth for quite a bit of the time, so please stop by so we can talk "sync".

Here is the abstract for the session:

"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 Data Services 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 Data Services from within Windows Azure. In addition, we dive into Microsoft's new "Data Hub" for businesses and see how this SQL Data Services powered synchronization service allows for data aggregation within the Hub to provide straightforward data sharing between on-premises databases, business partners, remote offices, and mobile users".

See you there!

Liam Cavanagh

Project "Huron" - Early Adopter Program

liamca — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:27:00 GMT

I wanted to give an update on our Project "Huron". For those new to it, this is an incubation project that we have been working on for some time to provide database "friction free" (this is a one fo those Microsoft terms that basically means simple to setup :-)) synchronization capabilities to the Cloud (SQL Data Service) via a hosted Sync Service sitting within the Azure data centers. The goal is to remove the typical complexities (configuration, scalability, security, etc) involved with sharing database information between local databases such as SQL Server and SQL Compact and provide simple UI tools for configuration and sync components developers can embed in existing applications.

One unfortunate scoping that we have decided to make is to temporarily hold off on direct support of Microsoft Access for v1. Although we realize that there are a LOT of customers that are looking to support this, based on our current resourcing this has been an unfortunate scoping that we have decided to take. The primarily jusitification was that we already had an existing SQL Server and SQL Compact provider from Sync Framework that we are able to easily re-use which greatly simplified our efforts. It is our hope that some of these Access customers will consider initially linking their Access forms to a SQL Server database to then synchronize via the cloud in the short term until we can provide the full Access support.

The good news is that in the short term we are still planning to offer direct support SQL Server and SQL Compact (desktop and devices). In fact we are very close to the point that we can start taking on some early adopter to verify some of our assumptioms and help us solidify the first release. What we are looking for are any customers that are looking to share SQL Server or SQL Compact databases via the cloud and have an existing project that would warrant this functionality. If you are interested please contact us using the "Email" link in the left sidebar and I can provide additional details.

With that I will leave you with a few screen mock-ups we are working with from our Huron Management Studio Dev UI.

Liam

The Clouds are clearing in Redmond

liamca — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:56:00 GMT

After a healthy dumping of March snow here in Redmond yesterday, the clouds have changed and it is now a clear and sunny day. Kind of appropriate I think given the announcement from our sister team SQL Data Services this morning. In today’s announcement it was stated that SQL Data Services:

"will become the first relational database service in the market to provide customers with the ability to use existing investments in T-SQL development and use a full relational data model in the Cloud"

We in the Sync Framework team have been patiently waiting for this big announcement. Just like the customers that have asked for this change, for our project "Huron" this has been an incredibly positive change in our goal to allow databases to be shared via the cloud. For us it has:

Greatly simplified the development effort. Now we can base even more of our architecture on Sync Services for ADO.NET technology. Specifically the server provider in Sync Services for ADO.NET, used to powers companies with scales of 80,000 mobile workers can now also be used within our hosted sync service.
Provided a well known and proven architecture and allows us to spend more resources on making the client side experience and sync service even better -- my personal goal is that an Access, SQL Compact or SQL Server user can start sharing their database via the cloud in under 3 minutes.
Allowed an even greater level of scalability. Previously, the architecture of SQL Data Services required us to transform from relational to entity format. Now, we will be able to maintain the relational format of the data which will have a big impact on performance.
Enabled the use of SQL Server integrated change tracking capabilities within our sync service for even greater sync and change tracking performance

In fact, we have been working for some time on a prototype of “Huron” using a new sync service hosted within Azure against relational cloud storage. Keep an eye out here for a webcast where I will walk through this and some of our other project goals.

While I am at it, I also wanted to send a thank-you to all of those who took the time to join our “Huron” early adopter program at SQLServicesLabs.com. As some of you may have noticed we have stopped accepting applications (for now). This is simply because we could not keep up with the responses and did not feel we could support any more customers in the early adopter stages of our program. If anything, we have heard loud and clear your requirements in this area, but please feel free to continue to send me your thoughts and ideas.

I am not quite ready to talk about the public release date other than to state that the goal is to get something into your hands to play with by the end of this year.

Stay tuned for more!

Liam Cavanagh