Search results matching tags 'SQL Server' and 'Project Houston'

Project Houston CTP released - try it out with brentotweets

jamiet — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:19:00 GMT

The SQL Azure team have just announced in their blog post CTP1 of Microsoft® Project Code-Named “Houston” now available that their web based admin tool for SQL Azure (codenamed Houston) has just hit CTP release - you can hit it up on SLQ Azure Labs at https://manage.sqlazurelabs.com/. The great thing about this? Its up on the web so as long as you have access to a SQL Azure server you can connect up and start playing (I'm making strong allusions here to my Some thoughts on PivotViewer and SQL Azure blog post earlier this week - let's hope that PivotViewer is the next SQL Azure Labs release).

One problem with that of course, you probably don't have a SQL Azure server however I do have one that you can jump onto if you wish. If you recall my December 2009 blog post TwitterCache now hosted on SQL Azure you'll know that I have hosted Brent Ozar's twitter cache up on SQL Azure and if you want to connect up here are the credentials:

server name	lx49ykb7y5.database.windows.net
username	ro
password	r3@d0nly
database name	brentotweets

Happy SQL-ing!!

2012-06-07 Update: All good things must come to an end - I have now shutdown this server. I hope it was useful to some of you in the two and a half years that it has been available.

@Jamiet

Is SQL Azure a newbies springboard?

jamiet — Thu, 06 May 2010 19:20:38 GMT

Earlier today I was considering the various SQL Server platforms that are available today and I wondered aloud,

wonder how long until the majority of #sqlserver newcomers use @sqlazure instead of installing locally

Let me explain. My first experience of development was way back in the early 90s when I would crank open VBA in Access or Excel and start hammering out some code, usually by recording macros and looking at the code that they produced (sound familiar?). The reason was simple, Office was becoming ubiquitous so the barrier to entry was incredibly low and, save for a short hiatus at university, I’ve been developing on the Microsoft platform ever since. These days spend most of my time using SQL Server.

I take a look at SQL Azure today I see a lot of similarities with those early experiences, the barrier to entry is low and getting lower. I don’t have to download some software or actually install anything other than a web browser in order to get myself a fully functioning SQL Server database against which I can ostensibly start hammering out some code and I believe that to be incredibly empowering. Having said that there are still a few pretty high barriers, namely:

I need to get out my credit card
Its pretty useless without some development tools such as SQL Server Management Studio, which I do have to install.

The second of those barriers will disappear pretty soon when Project Houston delivers a web-based admin and presentation tool for SQL Azure so that just leaves the matter of my having to use a credit card. If Microsoft have any sense at all then they will realise the huge potential of opening up a free, throttled version of SQL Azure for newbies to party on; they get to developers early (just like they did with me all those years ago) and it gives potential customers an opportunity to try-before-they-buy.

Perhaps in 20 years time people will be talking about SQL Azure as being their first foray into the world of coding!

@Jamiet

Project Houston

jamiet — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 19:53:35 GMT

Of late I’ve started to wonder about the direction that Microsoft may take their various development tools in the future. There has been an obvious move toward embracing the open source development community, witness the presence of open source advocate Matt Mullenweg on stage at the recent PDC09 keynote as proof of that. Also observe the obvious move to embracing the cloud as evidenced through the introduction of Azure and SQL Azure.

With all this going on though one thing struck me, Microsoft still have a need to keep the lights on and to that end one big way that they make money is by selling licenses for their development tools such as Visual Studio and SQL Server Management Studio and moreover one requires a license for Windows in order to run those tools. So no matter how much they say SQL Azure is open to none-Microsoft development shops (which indeed it is) you’re still pretty much reliant on some Microsoft software running on your laptop in order to make best use of it.

I started to wonder when this situation would change; more specifically I started to wonder when the development tools that we use would also become cloud-based. After all, if we’re using cloud-based services does it not make sense to have cloud-based tools that work with them? I think it does. I noted with interest then that the next version of Visual Studio (aka Visual Studio 2010) is built using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). WPF is very closely related to Silverlight and hence I wonder if and when Microsoft will supply a version of their development tools that run purely in Silverlight thus opening up their development experience to a lot more of the open-source community that invariably choose not to develop on Windows.

I’ve had these thoughts rolling around my head for a while but I haven’t wasted too many brain cells on discussing them or writing them down until today when I caught a glimpse of something that sparked my interest and then prompted this blog post. I was watching a session video from PDC entitled The Future of database development with SQL Azure by SQL Azure Program Manager David Robinson when he made mention of a pre-alpha project that they are working on called Project Houston. In a nutshell Project Houston is an attempt to build a Silverlight based development tool for SQL Azure. Here is a screenshot (apologies for the quality, this is a screenshot taken from a video):

Compared to SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) there isn’t too much going on here although we can see the beginnings of an Object Explorer plus later on in the video David demonstrates a T-SQL query window that behaves pretty much like the query window in SSMS today. Davis did stress that the tool isn’t even at the alpha stage as yet let alone beta but nevertheless we should expect to see a v1 release sometime in 2010. I also found it interesting that they seem to have adopted the “backstage” UI from Microsoft Office 2010 (see the red “File” box in the upper left hand corner as evidence of that).

There’s not much else to say about this right now. I’m writing this blog post because Project Houston was something that caught my attention and I thought others might also find it interesting. It is also the first incarnation of a Microsoft development tool that does not have a reliance on Windows and that in itself could be the start of a seismic shift in the way we develop for the Microsoft ecosystem.

If you want to learn more about Project Houston then fast forward to 34m30s in David’s video, it lasts for about 4m30s.

I’d love to read other people’s first impressions about this. Please feel free to write your thoughts in the comments section below.

@Jamiet