SQL Data Services, now a “real” SQL Server in the cloud – Change the connection string to point to SDS and “have it just work”

SQL Data Services Team Blog - The no spin details on the new SDS features

“Today we announced the details of our plans to accelerate the delivery of core relational database features as part of SDS. There has been quite a bit of buzz about SDS over the past couple weeks and it is great to be able to share the details more broadly.

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…We are providing an experience where a developer can take an existing application and just change the connection string to point it to the cloud and have it just work.

How will we do it? Three letters TDS. TDS stands for Tabular Data Stream and it's the published protocol that clients use to communicate with SQL Server. From its inception, SDS has always been built on the SQL Server technology foundation and it just made sense to allow our users to access their data via TDS. 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.

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What about the ACE (Authority, Container, Entity) data model and developer experience? Since Windows Azure storage has a similar data model (property bag) and developer experience, we will stop supporting the current ACE Model sometime in the future. Does this mean you can't access your relational data via internet friendly protocols like REST? Not at all. You can still access your relational data (located on premises or in the cloud) via HTTP/REST using the ADO.Net Data Services framework. The compatibility with existing tools and technologies is a really important point to drive home and a super important value add that Microsoft provides.

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Nice… I was kind of hoping that ACE might take off, but then again there was really no way I was going to be able to do anything in that space for forever. A total data layer rewrite is killer (not that I have to tell you guys that ;) and just not something I was looking forward too .

So in bowing to the real world (i.e. listening and acting on the tons of feedback they received) Microsoft is going to give us something we can really use out the gate. Lets hope though that we get the best of both worlds, the uber scalability of the ACE model with the familiarity of the traditional. If nothing else, this dramatically lowers the bar of entry into the SDS world.