SQL Azure – Let’s Get Started
As you may know we've announced that
Microsoft's cloud computing platform, Windows Azure, will have
commercial availability as of the first day of the upcoming Professional
Developer's Conference in Los
Angeles on November 17th, 2009. In addition to data storage via Windows
Azure, included in our offering will be SQL Azure. I've been following
the product team's progress with SQL Azure for quite some time now, given my
long-term interest in, and professional use of, SQL Server.
In fact, just this week the product group
announced on the the SQL Azure blog, that the current build is feature-complete for PDC09 now. The
product team's most recent blog details features that have been added to the
most current CTP, such as the ability to configure firewall (access) rules,
support for bulk copy (mostly for initial data load-in), and more. I've been
watching and waiting, eager to ask lots of detail questions of product group as
we start our first phase of commercial availability. Of course, the
paramount questions are around security of your data in our cloud. We
have a large number of sessions at the upcoming PDC in Los Angels, which runs
from November 17 to November 19. The announced schedule to date
already included 9 dedicated sessions on SQL Azure. These sessions are being
conducted by members of the SQL Azure product group team.
If you can't attend the PDC and want to
get started learning the capabilities of SQL Azure, then I recommend
downloading the October 2009 Windows Azure Platform Training Kit. It includes power point decks, demos, hands
on labs and more. Of course this kit will be updated to reflect changes
in the product as we add features. There will also be a good bit of SQL
Azure coverage at the upcoming SQL Pass Summit in Seattle from November 2 to 5th. In addition, there will be
sessions at TechEd, Europe in Berlin from November 9th to 13th.
An interesting new development is the
recent update to the SQL Azure management portal. The CTP access URL is
changing as of PDC (from https://ctpportal.database.windows.net to https://sql.azure.com)
and the portal itself has been updated to reflect the newly-added features of
SQL Azure.
Due to the level of interest in SQL Azure
(including my own interest), I have decided to write a technical book about the
topic. Readers of this blog will get to preview partial chapters, as I
plan to begin the writing in December. I intend to write about topics
thtat will have interest for developers, ITPros and architects. These
will include development of .NET and non .NET front-end solutions (i.e. PHP,
Java) which use SQL Azure as a partial or entire storage solutions, also
deployment and management considerations such as auditing and synchronization
between cloud and local copies of data stores. Of course there will be a
strong emphasis on security implementation best practices throughout the book.
I am quite interested in your feedback if
you have worked with any version of the SQL Azure CTP (beta). Take a
minute to drop me a mail via this blog to tell me what you've liked or not
liked about your experience so far.