SDS Announcement - March 10, 2009

Question

If you haven't read our blog yet, there's a big announcement: http://blogs.msdn.com/ssds/archive/2009/03/10/9469228.aspx

Stan

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Program Manager, Cloud DB

Answer 1

Wow!  That changes a lot!  Expected timeline?

Existing accounts?

This obviously provides instance availability for Entity Framework.

Should I go back and architect my new project through EF on a local database until you guys release this?  Will there be an easy porting process?

Answer 2

My socks are knocked off: A mid-course reversal instead of correction.

That's a lotta work by the SSDS, SDS, and Astoria teams to throw down the drain.

--rj

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OakLeaf Blog

Answer 3

Roger Jennings said:

That's a lotta work by the SSDS, SDS, and Astoria teams to throw down the drain.

And developers like me who have been building a masterpiece on this technology :)

But I think this is a good change and it'll ultiamtely speed my development process.  Just need some input on how to get back on track.  Should I start making a regular db schema?

Answer 4

I literally just did the happy dance of joy in my office! This is great news, and is going to make my huge investment in Entity Framework so worth it.  Just yesterday I was getting the look of doom from my bosses about EF.  Thanks for listening to us, folks!  Wow.  Just wow! 

Answer 5

For my take, see http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/sql-data-services-abandons-rest-for-tds.html.

--rj

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OakLeaf Blog

Answer 6

my thoughts:

abandon all hope (for REST) ye who enter here

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Mike Amundsen [http://amundsen.com/blog/]

Answer 7

Wow.

I agree with Mike's assessment of the situation. SDS with ACE concept was awesome. It needed to be better evangelized.  Internally at my company, there were many that doubted that concept but I eventually convinced them (even hardcore DBA guys) of the benefit of simple flex entities.

I only hope that the Azure Data Table picks up where SDS leaves off (please add ordering and automatic indexing of properties!)

I'm guessing Azure will offer both solutions and let developers choose which ever suites their needs best, even in some cases a hybrid approach.

Answer 8

My doubts:

1. How Azure Data Table will continue to evolve in the ACE model direction?

2. What should we do with existing data trapped in our containers? We have to move all the flex entities and BLOBs out by ourselves?

3. Won't it be returning to the old days? We have to figuring out what to index, doing query optimization, etc? In this case, the database wouldn't be very scalable if I write poor queries....

Answer 9

Amen!

I beleive it to be a good choice.

Now the SDS team can focus more on the core things will allow me to get my existing codebase to market faster!

Rock on.

This statement alone puts me at ease: "Most importantly for developers, this means symmetric SQL Server functionality and behavior combined with compatibility with the existing tools you are familiar with.

                Tables?...Check

                Stored Procedures?...Check

                Triggers?...Check

                Views?...Check

                Indexes?...Check

                Visual Studio Compatibility?...Check

                ADO.Net Compatibility?...Check

                ODBC Compatibility?...Check

To be clear, the above is not a complete list of supported features.  However, given the feature set we are planning to support in SDS v1, a majority of database applications will “just work”, allowing developers to target on and off-premises deployments with essentially the same code base."

Answer 10

This is great for us to use existing skillsets!  And I hope that SDS Team are firm on their directions.  However, bits nowadays are doubling fast and there's a need to step up and scale out.  With the ACE model, we can meet current needs and may inject some best practices from the old models like query, pagination, and others.