Support for SQL Azure?

ehuna

The SQL Azure CTP has been released; I received an invitation token and I've been following the labs in the training kit and playing with it.

Right now, there's a lot of manual steps to clean up SQL Scripts generated from an on-premise SQL Server 2008 so they work on a SQL Azure database.

Are there any plans for SQL Compare to work with SQL Azure? If you act fast, you could have a killer app until Microsoft cleans up SQL Server Management Studio. I'll give you my left arm if you have it ready soon. ;-)

Here are some links:

The announcement that SQL Azure CTP is available
http://blogs.msdn.com/ssds/archive/2009/08/18/9874133.aspx

Page where you can register for the CTP
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/dataservices/default.aspx

Windows Azure Platform Training Kit
(includes a bunch of labs related to SQL Azure)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=413E88F8-5966-4A83-B309-53B7B77EDF78&displaylang=en

Note: I don't work for Microsoft - I've been a long time user of SQL Compare and I'd love for it to work between my development on-premise SQL Server 2008 and my future Staging/Production SQL Azure databases.

Nick

Thanks for your question, ehuna.
Currently we don't have any plans to support SQL Azure. This may change in the future depending on the success of SQL Azure.

The good news is there's no need to lose your left arm. I'll let you know if we ever require a finger as a down-payment.

mbaladi

To bad, you could have had my left arm as well.

I'm still on v5 of SQL/Data compare and I love it. Today i downloaded v8 to see if worked with Azure, but the same problem as v5. I would have upgraded TODAY if v8 had supported Azure.

I think the effort for you guys to make it work with Azure would be minimal since it's just a limited SQL server available over TDS and that you would need to make the first fix anyway soon...

Seems like SQL Compare requires sp_dbcmptlevel an in books online it says:
This feature will be removed in a future version of Microsoft SQL Server. Do not use this feature in new development work, and modify applications that currently use this feature as soon as possible. Use ALTER DATABASE Compatibility Level instead.

Nick

mbaladi

At the moment we don't have any firm plans, although we will keep an eye on the growth of SQL Azure and act accordingly.

Regards

Nick Wood

ehuna

Nick,

I understand you need to prioritize features depending on the popularity of the platform or device your code is targeting. That's one of the reasons so many developers are writing iPhone apps.

But if you had to bet on a platform related to SQL Server, I think SQL Azure is a safe bet. Microsoft has invested over 2 billion dollars already on Azure and it's creating 5 data centers in the US that are over 500,000 square feet each. There's a similar data center being built in Dublin, Ireland as well.

Only the SQL Azure CTP is available and hundreds of thousands of invitation tokens have been sent. Check out the SQL Azure CTP forums and you'll see dozens of threads each day - and the CTP was released less than a week ago!

As mbaladi mentioned - SQL Azure works on port 1433 - it's TDS! That should minimize your efforts to make a version of SQL Compare that works with SQL Azure. Check out for example my two blog posts on scripts for SQL Azure:

Cleaning up scripts for SQL Azure
http://blog.ehuna.org/2009/08/cleaning_up_scripts_for_sql_az.html

and

Windows PowerShell commands to clean up scripts for SQL Azure
http://blog.ehuna.org/2009/08/windows_powershell_commands_to.html

I also opened a thread on the SQL Azure forums to share cleaning tips with other developers:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ssdsgetstarted/thread/2e72f8a8-7e25-4149-98e6-2fd6c1506159

I spent 20 minutes and created the above PowerShell scripts that handle 90$% of my issues when cleaning up the generated scripts from SSMS for SQL Azure. I'm sure it wouldn't take you that long to come up with an integrated solution in SQL Compare.

Of course I can't make you fix SQL Compare so it works with SQL Azure - but even today you would make a lot of money from folks upgrading their old versions of SQL Compare to streamline their SQL Azure development. Seems line a no brainer to me.

sirana

I'm actively developing on SQL Azure now, and am current on my Red Gate maintenance for now. But support for SQL Azure will be the single metric I evaluate when it comes time for renewal. I really don't need any new features or whiz-bang items for regular SQL, since I use so little of the product as it exists today.

I only have one license, so who cares, right? But this is not just some random technology that's coming out of left field. Unless I'm completely wrong, I'd guess that MS SQL is the most popular platform for your customers so far, and this is just another variant of that. You have to have a response for this that's better than "we'll see in a year or two whether it makes a market".

Chris

David Atkinson

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your query. We're currently in the process of assessing the work required to support Azure. Of course even when we have this data we won't know for sure when will be the right time to implement Azure support, but we should hopefully have a better estimate for you. We'll post to this thread once we have more information. Thanks for your patience.

Regards,

David Atkinson
Product Manager
Red Gate Software

wmild

Just want to put my vote in for SQL Azure support. Ditto to everything the others said. You guys have an awesome tool and SQL Azure support would be a slam dunk.

David Atkinson

We have an early access build of SQL Compare that works with Azure. If you're interested in trying this out please complete the form at www.red-gate.com/Azure. We're very interested to know how you're getting on with Azure, what works for you and what doesn't work so well.

Thanks!

David Atkinson
Product Manager
Red Gate Software

ehuna

David, that's great news! Thank you for listening to your customers and following up with this early access build of SQL Compare with support for SQL Azure.

As more and more developers find out about Windows Azure and host their data on SQL Azure I'm convinced this will pay off for Red Gate. Thanks!

RMD

The Azure compatible releases expire in a couple of days. Any word on an update?

David Atkinson

[edit] SQL Azure builds are now part of the main SQL Compare 9 and SQL Data Compare 9 products, and can be downloaded from the Red Gate website. If you have any trouble, please email support@red-gate.com

Regards,

David Atkinson
Product Manager
Red Gate Software

jkrishnaswamy@comcast.net

Besides SQL Compare what other products are there supporting SQL Azure?

David Atkinson

SQL Data Compare is the only other tool that is SQL Azure aware. Which other tools do you feel SQL Azure would benefit from, and why?

David

mmooney

Hey guys,

Thanks for adding Azure support, it saved our tail when we switched to Azure, because we were able to use SQL Compare and SQL Data Compare to put together a pretty workable offsite backup solution for our Azure databases.

I wrote up the details here, hopefully it will help out some more people facing the same issue: http://mooneyblog.mmdbsolutions.com/ind ... sql-azure/

Thanks again, keep up the good work