Azure

I was so glad to hear today that Azure is expanding to Australia. This helps with two remaining areas of concern that I’ve heard from a variety of customers:

• Compliance and data sovereignty (not wanting to store data outside Australia)
• Latency (previously high latency even to our nearest external data centres)

With both these concerns now disappearing, it’s time for more Australian customers to get involved with Azure if they’ve been resisting so far. 

2013-05-21

I recorded another podcast today with Thomas LaRock, aka SQL Rock Star.

In this show, Tom and I discussed the migration of many DBAs into architect roles, the challenges in constant learning (and useful resources for doing so), the hype around big data, the role of Windows Azure in our future, and upcoming PASS events.

It’s online now: https://sqldownunder.com/podcast

Enjoy!

2013-03-02

There has been a lot of discussion over the years about whether or not it’s a good idea to introduce new functionality in service packs (for SQL Server, the OS, and others). The concern is that it can invalidate testing, invalidate documentation, books, courseware, etc. However, it can also introduce much-needed features without having to wait for another version of the product. It’s been even-less likely that new functionality would be introduced in a cumulative update (or CU), which are basically a set of rolled-up hotfixes.

2013-01-27

One of the issues that is often raised with Windows Azure SQL Database is that you don’t get to pick the name of your server, so you end up with a bizarre name such as:

yy2l95dk1k.database.windows.net.

I can understand why the team did this. Apparently when they first set it up, they allowed you to pick your own server name, so everyone started registering Coke, Pepsi, etc. Not wanting to have yet another place for people to argue about name ownership, they quickly removed that ability. I’m glad they did.

2013-01-21

When I’ve been putting data into Windows Azure SQL Database (WASD) in the past, I’d normally been providing the dates from my own system. This week, I had the first time where I wanted to put a column default that provided a date in WASD. It suddenly dawned on me that I wasn’t sure what timezone the date would be from. As I was using the Southeast Asia data centre (in Singapore), I was presuming the value would be based on Singapore’s timezone. So it was time to find out.

2013-01-20

Hi Folks,

I have to say that I’m really impressed by the rate at which the Windows Azure Mobile Services team is rolling out updates and samples. In particular, it’s good to see a new sample for using Geolocation, given how common a requirement that is in mobile apps today. It’s worth checking out the following:

·         New Code Samples page on WindowsAzure.com

·         Updated WindowsAzure.com Tutorials and Resources page that includes new tutorials and related videos from the new Windows Azure Mobile Services channel 9 series

2013-01-11

While the level of compatibility of Windows Azure SQL Databases is high, there are a number of things that need to be dealt with differently, compared with how they are done with on-premises SQL Server.

An example of this, today I needed to know how full one of my databases was. I wanted to know how much space I had used but also to know what the limit was. My first attempt was the usual system views such as:

2013-01-03

Late last night I got to record an interview with Conor Cunningham.

Most people that know Conor have come across him as the product team wizard that knows so much about query processing and optimization in SQL Server. Conor is currently spending quite a lot of time working on Windows Azure SQL Database, which we used to know as SQL Azure.

I’m still trying to think of a good way to say “WASD”. I suppose I’ll pronounce it like “wassid”. Windows Azure SQL Reporting is easier. I think it just needs to be pronounced like “wazza” with a very Australian accent.

2012-08-22