Zach Skyles Owens

Please update your RSS reader as my blog URL has changed!

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, I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to read my posts. Please update your feed reader to point to http://english.zachskylesowens.net/feed/

I've been posting the first couple lines of each of my posts on my MSDN blog and pointing to the full post on my domain. I wasn't doing this to be "one of these ultra annoying people that only puts a snippet of their blog posts into their RSS feed". I thought it was helpful, but maybe it is just annoying :)

-Zach

USE <database> statement is NOT supported in SQL Azure CTP1

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

SQL Azure Invitation Codes

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

Connecting to SQL Azure

So, now that SQL Azure CTP1 has been released there are a few things that most people will probably run into when trying to connect to SQL Azure with SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), SQLCMD and OSQL.  >> Read More

SQL Azure CTP1 is finally here!

It's a really exciting day for everyone involved in SQL Azure as today we've announced that CTP1 is available to customers.

Over the next couple of weeks everyone who has already requested an Invitation Code should.  >> Read More

SQL Azure Documentation is Live!

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

SSDS -> SDS -> SQL Azure

I was listening to an awesome speaker yesterday who said.  "Apparently, names have betas too." which I think was a great way to put it.  A couple of weeks ago at WPC we announced.  Read More >>

Details on TSQL Support in SQL Data Services - Coming Soon!

Stayed tuned.  Within the next week or so the SDS team will be publishing more details on what TSQL features. Read More >>

Interview with Nigel Ellis from SDS

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 >>

SDS is now a Killer Database in the Cloud

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.  With today's announcement about the changes to SDS.  Read More >>

PHP 5.3 on Windows and the SQL Server PHP Driver v1.0 are NOT Compatible

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, the current SQL Server Driver for PHP v1.0 does not support PHP 5.3 and will cause IIS to crash.  You will end up seeing something like this.

HTTP Error 500.0 - Internal Server Error

C:\php\php-cgi.exe - The FastCGI process exited unexpectedly

Followed by a Microsoft Windows error box.

CGI / FastCGI stopped working and was closed.

The dev team responsible for the SQL Server Driver for PHP is hard at work on v1.1 which will support PHP 5.3.  Please add their blog to your favorite RSS reader http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlphp.

SQL Server Driver for PHP Requires the SQL Server 2005 ODBC Driver

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] Data source name not found and no default driver specified

I have SQL Server 2008 Express installed on my Windows Server 2008 workstation so I didn't think I would have any issues like this.  To fix it all I had to do was install the SQL Server 2005 ODBC Driver from here which is part of the Microsoft SQL Server Native Client.

Talking to the PM for our driver it sounds like the next version will have a more explicit error making this much easier to diagnose.

Back to My Roots

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 development company in Marquette, Michigan called Web Media Works (WMW).  WMW was started as part of the Internet Bagel Cafe in Marquette where I made bagels one semester in college, and worked mostly with non-profit organizations the first year or two of it's existence.  It had been a couple years since I was slinging bagels and had moved on to studying Computer Science and Spanish at Northern Michigan University (NMU).  I had been bugging the owner of WMW to give me a job for months when one morning I got a call from him asking if I'd like to be a Partner. 

What?  Am I confused???  Did you just ask me to be a Partner?
He sure did... and the next few years of life were consumed by helping the company grow while finishing my undergrad degrees. 

We had a small army of interns from NMU who powered the company...  My main responsibility on the technical side was integrating the work of Designers and Developers.  We did a number of really cool projects building e-commerce and e-government applications based on PHP and MySQL.  We prided ourselves and differentiated ourselves from the competition by building applications with great User eXperience.  We were some of the early adopters of Flash as a UI for web-applications.  One of the main Designers, Dusan Harminc, has gone on to create a successful design company Stumptown Media.

The reason I'm recounting all of this is that I'm going to back to roots and will be focusing on evangelism to the PHP Community.

My main objective are:

• Demonstrate why developing PHP application on Windows, IIS and SQL Server rocks!
• Bring feedback into Microsoft on how we can make the PHP development experience on Microsoft even better

I'm really looking forward to this new role and am really excited to get Back to My Roots!!!

TechEd 2008 Developers – A Mi Gente de Southworks (ES)

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 y de tecnología.

Este proyecto requerido mucha dedicación porque no teníamos mucho tiempo y teníamos que desarrollar mucha tecnología. La mayoría del equipo estaba en Buenos Aires pero esto no fue un problema porque manteníamos comunicación muy abierta y tenían líderes muy efectivos. La verdad es que el equipo trabó en una fiesta porque teníamos que presentar el demo al equipo de BillG el día siguiente. Muchas gracias a las familias de ellos por tener la paciencia.

A mi gente de Southworks… Les saludo y tienen el respecto de muchos en Redmond!

TechEd 2008 Developers - Shout Out to Dev Team

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 Osborn, Pablo "Lito" Damiani and Johnny Halife.