SQL Azure Gets New Features -- Users Want More! -- Visual Studio Magazine

Data Driverby David Ramel

SQL Azure Gets New Features -- Users Want More!

Microsoft last week updated its cloud-based SQL Azure service, but some users are still clamoring for additional features to bring it up to par with SQL Server.

Service Update 4 enables database copying, among other improvements. Several readers, however, immediately responded to the announcement by asking for more. One issue is lack of a road map of future enhancements planned for SQL Azure.

"It is great to see the SQL Azure team constantly improving the service," wrote a poster called Savstars. "I think what a lot of people would like to see a feature implementation road map from the SQL Azure teams' management. This should assist project managers figure out when would be the best time to release their projects to the SQL Azure platform, based on when the required features become available."

A reader named Niall agreed: "Yeah I have been asking for some sort of road map previously. It would really help so that we can plan on when or if we use SQL Azure for production." He also said Reporting Services was his big requirement, while another reader asked for "free text support" -- I'm thinking he might've meant "full-text search support" or "free tech support."

Other limitations of SQL Azure as compared to SQL Server are numerous, as Microsoft points out. It also lists a page full of general similarities and differences.

Michael K. Campbell earlier this year wrote that missing features such as Geography or Geometry data types, Typed XML and CLR functionality could serve as "showstoppers" for database developers considering moving to the Azure cloud.

The lack of BACKUP and RESTORE commands has long been a sore point, though, which the new copy capability addresses. Other enhancements in the new service update include more data centers for the management tool code-named Houston, which will improve performance. Also, a documentation page has been put together, though right now topics there are about just connecting to SQL Azure through various means such as ADO.NET, ASP.NET, Entity Framework and PHP.

What features would you like to see added next? Comment below or drop me a line.

Posted by David Ramel on 08/31/2010

comments powered by Disqus

Featured

Hands On: New VS Code Insiders Build Creates Web Page from Image in Seconds

New Vision support with GitHub Copilot in the latest Visual Studio Code Insiders build takes a user-supplied mockup image and creates a web page from it in seconds, handling all the HTML and CSS.
Naive Bayes Regression Using C#

Dr. James McCaffrey from Microsoft Research presents a complete end-to-end demonstration of the naive Bayes regression technique, where the goal is to predict a single numeric value. Compared to other machine learning regression techniques, naive Bayes regression is usually less accurate, but is simple, easy to implement and customize, works on both large and small datasets, is highly interpretable, and doesn't require tuning any hyperparameters.
VS Code Copilot Previews New GPT-4o AI Code Completion Model

The 4o upgrade includes additional training on more than 275,000 high-quality public repositories in over 30 popular programming languages, said Microsoft-owned GitHub, which created the original "AI pair programmer" years ago.
Microsoft's Rust Embrace Continues with Azure SDK Beta

"Rust's strong type system and ownership model help prevent common programming errors such as null pointer dereferencing and buffer overflows, leading to more secure and stable code."
Xcode IDE from Microsoft Archrival Apple Gets Copilot AI

Just after expanding the reach of its Copilot AI coding assistant to the open-source Eclipse IDE, Microsoft showcased how it's going even further, providing details about a preview version for the Xcode IDE from archrival Apple.