The Bit Bucket

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’m back into the swing with a bunch of new podcasts coming, featuring SQL Server 2012. First up is Clustering MVP Allan Hirt discussing SQL Server HA with AlwaysOn. Allan also discusses the deployment of SQL Server on Windows Server Core.

Thanks for all the emails that said they loved the shows and told me to get them happening again soon. I think you’ll like the ones that are lined up. You’ll find the shows here:  http://www.sqldownunder.com/Resources/Podcast.aspx

2013-01-13

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

Scott Guthrie posted about the Azure-related changes that have happened over the last few days.

Of particular interest to me was that Data Sync was now in the new HTML portal, and that the Azure store now works in a bunch more countries.

Generally I like the newer HTML portal but I’m still finding that it applies different validation rules to SQL passwords than Windows Azure SQL Database itself does. That’s a pain as I still have to use the older portal.

2012-12-27

I was really excited about Windows Azure SQL Reporting being released. That lasted until I saw the pricing. If I just deployed a server and didn’t use it, the price was 89c per hour for up to 300 reports per hour. What many people didn’t understand is that the price applied whether or not you used the reporting server.

That meant that the minimum price for deploying a server was 89c x 24 hours x 365 days = $7796.40 per year.

2012-12-21

Lorem Ipsum has long been used to provide placeholder text for testing report and document layouts. Programs such as Microsoft Word have also included options for generating sample text. (For example, type =rand() anywhere in a blank area of a Microsoft Word document and hit enter).

Matthew Roche and Donald Farmer both sent me a link the other day to an online service that provides placeholder images. This could be quite useful when testing report layouts in SQL Server Reporting Services.

2012-12-17

One of the things that I’ve just come to accept is that the designers of Windows 8 and I think very differently.

It’ll take a long time to convince me that shutting down the computer is a “setting”. Even after using Windows 8 for quite a while now, I still find that I struggle nearly every day, just trying to do things that I previously knew how to do. That’s just not a good thing.

2012-12-10

One of the challenges in any application development is trying to make your application look like it’s really designed for the target environment. Using the same icons/images that are used in the target environment, and for the same purposes, helps greatly with this.

It’s great to see that Microsoft have published an image library for Visual Studio that lets your own applications use the same images that they use in the operating system.

2012-12-05