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Given that most people walk around with a GPS enabled mobile device in their pocket all day, it is hardly surprising that there is increasing interest in spatial data. I was surprised, however, that three sessions on spatial data were voted in for SqlBits 7 happening this Saturday (2nd October 2010). 9:30 AM-10:30 AM, You can create UK maps ...

In future, more and more solutions will have data that is not stored directly in a SQL database but rather in cloud EAV (Entity Attribute Value) data stores, caches, client storage, document databases and so on.  Usually it is the existing DBA’s and other SQL biased database experts that are the custodians of corporate data and, in general, ...

Jamie and I gave presentations last night at the London SQL Server users group.  It was a good evening but I think I managed to upset about half the people there.  I suppose when your first two slides are these… …then you can expect a bit of an uphill battle. But, the other half seemed to enjoy it, and besides, if I am not pissing ...

Applications hosted on Windows Azure will create log files and given that we don’t have access to the running app instances the log files are the only means available to us for debugging and problem resolution so they’re a very important part of the whole service. Recently I wanted to take a look at the log files for my Tweetpoll Azure application ...

By scratching deep enough into available material on SQL Data Services (SDS) you will uncover the limitations of the platform that make it very difficult to scale. It does not scale upwards because of the size limitation of the instance and it does not scale outwards because the SQL model does not handle partitions very well. The data has been ...

I just came across an interview with Senior Product Manager for SQL Data Services (SDS), Niraj Nagrani at http://visualstudiomagazine.com/blogs/weblog.aspx?blog=3577. The interviewer asked a question that I think could be misconstrued: Are you basically not going to be offering SDS with the EAV tables any more? I think I know what the ...

Earlier this week The Register posted an article “'Full' SQL Server planned for Microsoft's Azure cloud” which included a few unsurprising comments about the feedback cycle that SQL Data Services (SDS), which is still in beta, is going through.  An interesting read, but not much news – and besides, The Register, could be called the IT Tabloid ...

There is no doubt that SQL Data Services (SDS) looks, feels and smells very different to the SQL Server that we have grown accustomed to over the years.  The model is obviously different but there is little formal and clear description by Microsoft on what that model is – the pros and cons and the reasons for the change within the context of ...

With direct access to relational databases being marginalised we need to question the next evolution of ORMs.  Now our architectures have to be more considerate of other ways accessing data as relational models hide behind services, sit on the cloud or are even replaced with non-relational storage. I have been involved in, and a spectator ...

There have been some snippets of information trickling out of the Microsoft PDC this evening about SQL Server Data Services (SSDS). Namely: That’s not its name anymore. Its now called SQL Data Services (SDS) SDS is the data layer in Windows Azure You can now do joins between different entities. Just by the very nature of cloud services ...