The long awaited build of SQL Server Management Studio with support for SQL Azure is available today for MSDN and TechNet subscribers and will be generally available for the rest of the world as of tomorrow. The download page can be found here. This support is included as part of the November CTP release of SQL Server 2008 R2. This release not only includes SQL Azure support from within SSMS but a wealth of other SQL Server 2008 specific features. Check out this blog entry for more.

One thing in the Microsoft cloud I find really interesting is SQL Data Services and Huron/Data Hub - SQL cloud sync service, one of the “cloud” offerings I believe has lots of potential and will really make sharing of data in the cloud so much easier.

I had the pleasure to sit down and talk about this subject with Liam Cavanagh, Sr. Program Manager at Microsoft, with the SDS/Huron team, and get some insights about the current state and the future of this remarkable new technology. In this article I’ll talk about SQL Data Services, and I’ll follow up with one about Data Hub/Huron.

SQL Data Services is at the core, nothing more than a (Microsoft SQL) database-as-a-service offering from Microsoft, part of the Azure Services Platform. First thing you’ll find about SQL Data Services is that “is just SQL” (at least that’s how Microsoft is advertising it). And it is. Continue reading…

SQL Data Services team at Microsoft, proudly announced that SDS will deliver full relational database capabilities as a service. They promise to hold true to some on the main “cloud” principles, things like High Availability, Fault Tolerance, Friction Free Provisioning, Pay As You Grow Scaling, Immediate Consistency. They are still delivering on these promises and have added to the mix true relational capabilities, T-SQL and compatibility with the existing developer and management tools ecosystem.

The services can be accessed using TDS. TDS stands for Tabular Data Stream and it’s the published protocol that clients use to communicate with SQL Server. From its inception, SDS has always been built on the SQL Server technology foundation and it just made sense to allow our users to access their data via TDS. Most importantly for developers, this means symmetric SQL Server functionality and behavior combined with compatibility with the existing tools you are familiar with. This way, we’ll have: Tables, Stored Procedures, Triggers, Views, Indexes, Visual Studio Compatibility, ADO.Net Compatibility, ODBC Compatibility.

A majority of database applications will “just work”, allowing developers to target on and off-premises deployments with essentially the same code base. The initial scenarios they’re targeting are things like web and departmental applications.

What about Security?

Continue reading…

Amazon SimpleDB gets easier and easier to use. And more powerful. It is now easy to write simple SQL like statements for your table (domain). Of course, there are changes and additions to the language in order to accomodate SimpleDB’s unique multi-valued attribute model.

Here’s what you can do:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE name = 'John' OR name LIKE 'Mark%'
SELECT * FROM users WHERE name NOT LIKE '%John%'

Attribute values must be quoted with a single or double quote. If a quote appears within the attribute value, it must be escaped with the same quote symbol (e.g., ‘You ain’’t no Picasso’).

Quoting attribute and domain names is optional if the name only contains letters, numbers, underscores (_), or dollar symbols ($) and does not start with a number. However, attribute and domain names that contain any other characters, such as spaces, must be quoted with escaped quotes (e.g., ‘Invisible’ Pink’ Unicorn’ Sightings’). 

SELECT `Invisible`` Pink`` Unicorn`` Sightings` from `My Domain` WHERE location = 'O''Brien, TX' AND `timestamp-1` > '' ORDER BY `timestamp-1`

Other examples of usage:
Continue reading…