Desktop Database Sharing - codename “Huron” | AzureJournal

One of the more active “azure groups” inside Microsoft is the SQL Services team. They have the so called “SQL Services Labs” where they keep the incubations and innovations, giving us an early look at what they’re working on. One of the things it got our attention (besides Data Mining In The Cloud which we covered here) is “Huron” - the new Desktop Database Sharing - a solution for enabling sharing of desktop and device databases with business partners, mobile users and other desktops. It is using the Microsoft Sync Framework which Microsoft is pushing hard to developers for adoption.

“Huron” provides synchronization capabilities within SQL Data Services to enable occasionally connected applications to easily and efficiently enable content flow through the data hub. It consists of:

A database in the cloud (SQL Server Data Services) that is used as main hub to store the data that comes and goes through the various endpoints.
A synchronization service layer that sits in the cloud and implements all the logic required to efficiently enable synchronizing with the various endpoints (local databases systems and databases) through the cloud.
A database provider on the client that interacts with the local database or database system and the remote service to apply remote changes and send local changes back to the cloud

The idea behind the project is to synchronize all endpoints (local copies of a database) with a database in the cloud. The database in the cloud acts as a hub and holds the full set of data that is exchanged between the endpoints. This hub also enables users to make changes to the database in the cloud which then are sent to the various endpoints. The current implementation of the service layer uses SQL Data Services as the cloud database.

With all the new services Microsoft is releasing, their only goal is to make it easy for developers to take advantage of the Azure Platform, mainly moving towards what they’re promising for a while now: a service based model - Software + Services to be more precise.

You can see Liam Cavanagh’s presentation at PDC this year, to get more information about Huron. There are also a couple of video demos:

The early adopter program is aimed to begin in the next 1-2 months. If you are interested in joining the early beta, email DataLabs@Microsoft.com with “Huron beta” in the subject.

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