SQL Azure announcements at MIX

[This article was contributed by the SQL Azure team.]

This was an incredible week here at MIX and I presented a session on Developing Web Applications with SQL Azure. During the session I tried to drive home the point that we value and act upon the feedback you provide to us. We also recognize that we need to be more transparent on what features we are working on and when they will be available.

With that in mind, I was happy to announce the following features / enhancements:

Support for MARS

In SU2 (April) we are adding support for Multiple Active Row Sets. This is a great feature available in SQL Server that allows you to execute multiple batches in a single connection.

50GB Databases

We heard the feedback and will be offering a new 50gb size option in SU3 (June). If you would like to become an early adopter of this new size option before SU3 is generally available, send an email to EngageSA@microsoft.com and it will auto-reply with instructions to fill out a survey. Fill the survey out to nominate your application that requires greater than 10gb of storage. More information can be found at Cihan’s blog.

Support for Spatial Data

One of the biggest requests we received was to support spatial data in SQL Azure and that feature will be available for you in SU3 (June). Within this feature is support for the Geography and Geometry types as well as query support in T-SQL. This is a significant feature and now opens the Windows Azure Platform to support spatial and location aware applications.

SQL Azure Labs

We are launching a new site call SQL Azure Labs. SQL Azure Labs provides a place where you can access incubations and early preview bits for products and enhancements to SQL Azure. The goal is to gather feedback to ensure we are providing the features you want to see in the product. All technologies on this site are for testing and are not ready for production use. Some of these features might not even make it into production – it’s all based upon your feedback. Also please note, since these features are actively being worked on, you should not use them against any production SQL Azure databases.

The first preview on the site is the OData Service for SQL Azure. This enables you to access your SQL Azure Databases as an OData feed by checking a checkbox. It also provides you the ability to secure this feed using the Access Control Services that are provided by Windows Azure Platform AppFabric. You also have the ability to access the feed via Anonymous access should you wish to do so. More details on this can be found at the Data Services Team blog.

Keep those great ideas coming and submit them at https://www.mygreatsqlazureidea.com

From everyone on the team,

Thank You