TechEd 2010 SQL Azure Summary

SQL Azure Extends to 50 GB

With our continued commitment to deliver increasing value in data cloud services to our customers we are happy to announce that SQL Azure database is now extending from 10GB to 50GB size of database storage capacity.
With 50GB, SQL Azure service offers customer much higher scalability for their applications and data, whether they extend their existing applications to the cloud or explore the cloud only new application scenarios. With 50 GB capacity now available, customers can have much broader use of the SQL Azure highly available, relational database service for many of their LOB business applications, taking full advantage of the SQL Azure elasticity, ease of provisioning and managing and familiar development environment and tools.
The new 50GB database size will be available to our customers worldwide starting June 28th

SQL Azure Subscription Offer

Microsoft is offering more flexible ways for customers to try larger SQL Azure databases. Starting August 1st, we will have a new discounted SQL Azure promotional offer (SQL Azure Development Accelerator Core) to customers, allowing them to subscribe to larger SQL Azure databases at a significant discount. This offer includes exclusively SQL Azure Business Edition database and will enable customers to use the larger database size with discounting. More information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/.

Public Preview of the Data Sync Service

SQL Azure Data Sync Service offers customers flexibility and control over their data, allowing them to make discrete and granular decisions on how their data and which components should be distributed across multiple datacenters in different geographic locations. Based on the customers’ internal policies and business needs, customers are encouraged to register at http://www.sqlazurelabs.com and within 1-2 weeks they will receive an invitation to subscribe to the service.

CTP of the SQL Server Web Manager for SQL Azure to be offered this Summer

Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Microsoft SQL Server Web Manager (SSWM), a lightweight and easy to use database management tool for SQL Azure databases, to be offered this summer. SSWM is designed specifically for Web developers and other technology professionals seeking a straightforward solution to quickly develop, deploy, and manage their data-driven applications in the cloud. SSWM is geared toward basic database management tasks such as authoring and executing queries, designing and editing database schema, and editing table data.

Access 10 Support for SQL Azure

Microsoft Office 2010 will natively support data connectivity to SQL Azure opening up opportunities for Office users and technology providers to create rich experiences using cloud computing.
For Information Workers, this gives an easy way to connect directly from Office applications to cloud-based relational databases, enabling ease of use and providing flexibility to IT. Microsoft partners will have more choices to integrate rich Office Business Applications that can connect directly to both on-premise or cloud databases creating unique and agile solutions.

The Pre-announced Spatial Data Support to Become Live

As it was pre-announced at MIX back in March ̵ http://blogs.msdn.com/b/edkatibah/archive/2010/03/21/spatial-data-support-coming-to-sql-azure.aspx ̵ SQL Azure will offer spatial data support. Spatial is a data type for storing location based information (like latitude, longitude) that enables spatial operations like mapping, distance between points, is a location in a region, etc. and enables development of the location aware operations.
We introduced it on-premise with SQL Server 2008 and pre-announced for SQL Azure back in March.
We’re announcing that this capability is now becoming available in SQL Azure.

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