Last week the Data Driver wondered if SQL Server was behind the recent Hotmail outage.
The answer is: No.
It was a script error, according to a Windows Blog post by Mike Schackwitz, pointed out to me by a helpful member of Microsoft's PR firm.
More
Posted by David Ramel on 01/12/20117 comments
Microsoft is providing scant details about last weekend's Windows Live Hotmail outage, but the Data Driver blog's interest was piqued by a Microsoft announcement in a blog post that customers "temporarily lost the contents of their mailbox through the course of mailbox load balancing between servers."
More
Posted by David Ramel on 01/05/20112 comments
As an addendum to last week's post about a recent SQL Server camp held for PHP developers, Microsoft's Brian Swan has published some new nuts-and-bolts details for converting MySQL queries.
Swan, who blogs on the "At the Intersection of PHP and Microsoft" page, said he learned the technique at the JumpIn! camp, where Microsoft hosted some 17 prominent PHP developers in order to share ideas and educate them about the process of supporting SQL Server and SQL Azure in their PHP applications.
More
Posted by David Ramel on 12/08/20103 comments
Microsoft isn't letting up on its full-court press to woo PHP developers into the SQL Server world.
The company earlier this month hosted 17 PHP developers at a SQL Server JumpIn! Camp, where they learned how to incorporate SQL Server support into their apps with the help of Microsoft experts, according to a post yesterday in the Microsoft SQL Server Driver for PHP Team Blog.
More
Posted by David Ramel on 11/30/20101 comments
Here's good news if you're a database developer who doesn't like working with SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS): You may not have to use it too much longer.
At the recent PASS Summit, Microsoft showed a packed roomful of database developers how the next version of SQL Server--code-named "Denali"--will include a unified development environment based on Visual Studio.
More
Posted by David Ramel on 11/15/20101 comments
There were plenty of "oohs" and "aahs" from the audience at the PASS Summit during Ted Kummert's keynote address Tuesday as he demonstrated new capabilities of the next version of SQL Server, called "Denali."
One notable demonstration was with Microsoft's Amir Netz, who ran a side-by-side comparison of a database query using some 2 billion records, with one side of the screen showing the query being run with regular technology and the other side showing the same query running many times faster with the VertiPaq technology borrowed from PowerPivot. Netz said the blinding speed of VertiPaq would equate to a theoretical processing rate of 1 trillion rows per minute.
More
Posted by David Ramel on 11/09/20101 comments
Microsoft last week announced that its portal to buy and sell data services has launched as DataMarket, part of the Windows Azure Marketplace.
Formerly called Project Codename "Dallas," the market serves as a repository "that makes it easy to discover, purchase and consume data through a variety of different sources, both public domain and commercial," said program manager Steve Yi in a PDC10 session.
DataMarket has a new Web site and new information sources available for subscription, with many more on the way. The site lists 13 data categories such as Financial, News, Statistics and Weather, along with 28 publishers and more than 70 individual data feeds.
More
Posted by David Ramel on 11/03/20100 comments
Even though SQL Server just underwent a major upgrade with 2008 R2, Microsoft is seeking customer input about new features you'd like to see added to the database technology.
The company this week posted the SQL Connectivity Customer Survey (Fall 2010), which will be up until Oct. 25.
The survey asks respondents to rate the importance of possible enhancements such as improved network performance (via tabular data stream compression), easier setup and configuration (through a richer GUI), "reducing the number of new connections that need to be opened" (through connection pooling improvements) and several others.
More
Posted by David Ramel on 10/20/20103 comments
Yesterday's Windows Phone 7 launch extravaganza renewed the months-long debate among developers about database options--specifically, whether the new mobile OS should come with persistent local storage such as built-in SQL Server Compact Edition.
Microsoft's answer, of course, is go to the cloud. And if you don't want to do that, you can opt for a local storage alternative such as XML files, isolated storage or third-party embedded solutions such as Perst.
More
Posted by David Ramel on 10/12/201027 comments
I've written before about Microsoft's overtures to the PHP community, with the August release of PHP Drivers for SQL Server being the latest step in an ongoing effort to provide interoperability between PHP and Microsoft technologies.
With a slew of other new products and services released (relatively) recently, such as SQL Azure, OData and WebMatrix, I decided to see if they all work together.
More
Posted by David Ramel on 09/30/20102 comments
You've probably heard about the uproar from professional developers about Microsoft's new direction of catering to amateurs with low-end tools like WebMatrix and Visual Studio LightSwitch, designed for quickly building data-centric apps without that pesky code-writing thing.
Some people complain that Microsoft is promoting poor programming practices; some complain that it devalues their jobs and leads to impossible expectations ("Joe in Finance did this in an hour, why can't you just flesh it out into a companywide app by the end of the day?"); some apparently just don't like opening up software development to the great unwashed masses.
More
Posted by David Ramel on 09/22/201011 comments
This data stuff is getting cooler all the time.
Continuing to explore new ways of looking at data, I've been fooling around with Pivot from Microsoft Live Labs.
It takes data visualization to a spectacular new level with intriguing manipulation of images and data. It uses "Collections," composed of XML data and images, that "combine large groups of similar items on the Internet, so we can begin viewing the relationships between individual pieces of information in a new way. By visualizing hidden patterns, Pivot enables users to discover new insights while interacting with thousands of things at once."
More
Posted by David Ramel on 09/13/20100 comments