SSIS Junkie : Silverlight

A cross-platform version of SQL Server?

jamie.thomson — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 18:04:00 GMT

I have just had an interesting off-line conversation with SQL Server MVP Chuck Boyce about Google Gears. If you read the blurb:

Google Gears (BETA) is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality

and includes the ability to

Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database

We started to wonder whether Microsoft would ever come out with a product to compete with Google Gears and if it did, would it include a version of SQL Server Compact Edition (CE)? SQL Server CE will start to proliferate on the Windows platform in the coming months and years. Already it is being used by Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta (its not a public beta yet so I can't link to it) and it will be bundled along with SQL Server 2008 to provide capabilities that aren't currently present (don't ask me what - I'm sworn to secrecy). At its core SQL Server CE is nothing more than 9 .DLL files with a disk footprint of no more than 2MB (get all the SQL Server CE info you need from here) which is very small and easily distributable.

We already know that Silverlight will, in the future, contain other technologies such as Photosynth and I theorised that SQL Server CE might one day be bundled along with it as well thus allowing similar offline capability that Google Gears allows. Well you know what that would mean don't you? Silverlight is cross-platform and if Microsoft were ever to do this it would mean that SQL Server CE would become the first version of SQL Server that runs cross-platform as well. That's a very interesting, possibly very compelling, story about where Microsoft, Silverlight and SQL Server might be headed in the future.

If Silverlight ever has SQL Server CE bundled along with it just remember where you read about it first! :)

Chuck passes comment here too.

One other twist to the tale. One of the main architects of Google Gears is Danny Thorpe. Danny has done the previously unthinkable and moved from Google to Microsoft and is now a big hitter in Microsoft's Online Services division.

-Jamie

Astoria

jamie.thomson — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 06:47:00 GMT

Just lately I've been doing a bit of searching around to see what data-centric offerings, other than the ones I normally deal with, Microsoft are pulling together. The one that has most caught my eye has been Astoria. I can't remember where exactly I first heard about it but it was this blog entry by Alex Barnett that really piqued my interest. The elevator statement to describe Astoria would go something like this: "Astoria is a technology that delivers relational data over HTTP via a RESTful web service". Another way of looking at it is that it maps the HTTP verbs POST, GET, PUT, DELETE to the create, read, update, delete (CRUD) semantics of relational data that anyone reading this blog should be familiar with. And yet another way of thinking about is "SQL statements in a URI".

Astoria is also built upon the Entity Data Model (EDM). Why is that a good thing? The EDM unifies access to data in that whoever the consumer be (be it a web app developer, ETL developer, etc...) they all access data in the same way. The EDM is an abstraction of the data that we can all use.

All the talk about Astoria currently is around using it to deliver data to web applications and some people are getting particularly frenzied about how it will be used with Silverlight when that particular technology enters the mainstream. Web applications are not my bag though; I'm all about data integration and to that end I'm interested in what Astoria could bring to the table. My northern bruvver in arms, Mick Horne, and I have written on this site about Service Oriented Business Intelligence (SoBI) and one of the key facets of that is the transfer of data in a service oriented architecture (SOA). Now, a service doesn't necassarily constitute a web service per se, but we envision that when people start to realise the benefits of this architecture then web services will proliferate. I work predominantly on the Microsoft platform so clearly Astoria will be a good fit for future SoBI projects that I work on.

My main focus on my current SoBI implementation is around Master Data Management (MDM) and one thing that is currently playing on my mind is how to deliver data out of our MDM system to the data consumer. I am exploring the use of web services for this due to the inherent openness that they provide via standards and well-understood protocols. I confess that REST isn't something I know much about right now but hopefully that will change soon.

Astoria is currently in beta but as it approaches being fully baked you'll probably find me talking about it a lot more. In the meantime, here's some great links to get you started:

The public face of Astoria is Pablo Castro. Check out his blog here.
Here is a demo of Astoria that allows access to Tagspace data. Alex talks through the demo at the post that I linked to above.
Astoria homepage - http://astoria.mslivelabs.com/

Is anyone else out there interested in integrating data over an HTTP network? Or is it just me?

-Jamie

UPDATE: Jon Udell has done an interview with Pablo Castro. Read more here: http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/07/03/a-conversation-with-pablo-castro-about-astorias-restful-data-services/

Posted to SoBI (RSS feed), MDM (RSS feed), Astoria (RSS feed), REST (RSS feed)

Windows Live Hotmail is out of beta

jamie.thomson — Mon, 07 May 2007 04:28:00 GMT

News just announced. Windows Live Hotmail is out of beta. No great shock there -this has been in the offing for a long time- but there are some other interesting bits of associated news. Here's the pertinent stuff

On the surface Windows Live Hotmail is simply an AJAX-enabled version of Hotmail that has been around for years. That doesn't sound like huge news but they are claiming that there are many changes under the covers that will enable them to add new fancy features in the future. So if I put two and two together correctly I'm guessing that we can expect a Silverlight interface one day.
Access to Live Hotmail from Outlook. And not just normal POP accounts, there will be full synchronisation abilities. Software and Services working together - the Ozzie revolution is well underway.
Synchronisation betwen Live Hotmail and your Outlook client will include all your contacts. So now you don't have to have seperate lists of contacts everywhere. Outlook, Hotmail, Messenger...they'll all use the same. Finally!!!
Windows Live Mail is a free desktop email client to replace Outlook Express (which comes with Windows XP) and Windows Mail (comes with Vista). That will be announced more formally in the coming weeks. Synchronisation will work there too.
@Live.com addresses aren't available yet

The gloves are off. Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Live Hotmail are about to do battle.

-Jamie

Posted to Windows Live (RSS feed)