Thanks for using the Data Transfer Lab

When we first envisioned the SQL Azure Labs site, we imagined a way to give our customers and partners access to prototype ideas that we've been kicking around. These services aren't production quality and we never intended to keep them around. Our objective was simply to start a discussion with you to determine what you find valuable – not through theory or discussion, but through concrete services that you could test and experience.

Today we announced, after seven months, that we have retired Microsoft Codename “Data Transfer" Lab. I want to thank all of you who used the lab and provided feedback through the SQL Azure Labs Support Forum on MSDN, through pop-up surveys in the tool and through your comments emailed to the team. Here's what we learned:

50% needed one-time transfers

25% needed scheduled transfers

40% were transferring data to custom application

30% were transferring data to use SQL Azure Reporting

59% wanted to import XML

 And, here are some of the top suggestions we received from you:

• Need to allow exporting SQL Azure data into CSV/Excel files
• Need to enable upload of zipped BCP csv files
• Ignore empty rows in files
• Allow uploading all files in a local directory that match a pattern

We would like to thank every one of you who participated for your valuable feedback!

Shoshanna Budzianowski and the “Data Transfer” Labs team

Email: datatransfer@microsoft.com

Twitter: @SQLAzureLabs #sqlazurelabs #datatransfer

Blog: https://blogs.msdn.com/b/data\_transfer

Comments

• Anonymous
  October 29, 2013
  I suggest that if you are retiring a service then its best to also retire the tutorial pages for that service, as its unproductive to read a tutorial only to find the service has been discontinued. social.technet.microsoft.com/.../5847.microsoft-codename-data-transfer-tutorial.aspx Or alternatively clearly mark the tutorial as redundant. Thanks C