Interoperability tools that makes life easier when you use SQL Server 2012

Present day data originates from all kinds of devices from hand held devices to mega data centers and it is not always homogeneous even from a single enterprise. The reality is that more often heterogeneous data from disparate systems needs to be consumed whether it is data from enterprise sites or from cloud based data sources. Interoperability tools make life easier to deal with this multifaceted data.

• Connectivity to data is the first thing that you need to take care of and in case you are accessing data on SQL Server 2012 from your LINUX box you need a connector and SQL Server 2012 provides the SQL Server ODBC Driver (v1.0) for LINUX. This release provides ODBC to support 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6 and tools such as SQLCMD and BCP. You need to download this here.

• ADO.NET Backward compatibility would be provided by Windows 8 but to have this now and leverage AlwaysON and SQL Server Express LocalDB support you need to apply an update for the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 you pick up from here.

• Connecting to SQL Servers from Java applications was provided by JDBC Drivers. The Microsoft JDBC Driver 4.0 now provides you with the following:

*Access data on SQL Server and SQL Azure from Java Applications

*Pure Java Implementation of Kerberos Integrated Security

*SQL Server AlwaysOn feature

*Support for SQL Server Parallel Datawarehouse

*Easy access to diagnostic info in extended events log

*Support for UTF-16

*SQL Azure support

Of course you need to download the following here.

Check out my SQL Azure book to find out how Java applications connect to SQL Azure

• A new SQL Server 2012 Native Client (with tasty acronym-Snac) consisting of a single driver (dll) which combines both a SQL Server OLE DB provider (hey! I thought this was being sent to oblivion) and an ODBC driver to connect to SQL Servers that ships with SQL Server 2012. It supports all the great features such as SQL Server Express 2012 LocalDB, AlwaysOn etc. Download this text file which lists all the features that you can have and the links from where you can get them. SQL Server Native Client 2012 is one of the features which you can install.

• PHP is another language that enjoys wide popularity and of course Microsoft does not want to leave out this very important language. For PHP applications to work with SQL Servers you need a helper. The Microsoft PHP Driver (version 3.0) provides this important support and you may want to download it from here.

While support for Java and PHP applications were available in earlier versions including SQL Azure, these new versions will be able to support all the new features of SQL Server 2012 discussed earlier like AlwaysOn, SQL Server Express 2012 LocalDB, etc.

If you want to learn everything about connecting securely to SQL Azure you may want to take a look at my book on SQL Azure. If you want to create front end applications with data on different versions of SQL Servers you may want to take a look at my book on Microsoft Lightswitch.

Of course my books on SSRS and SSIS will provide a strong background when you work with Business Intelligence projects with SQL Servers. BI, Interoperability and Cloud is all the rage in coming years!

SQL Azure is getting beefed up

SQL Azure Updates have been regularly paced and surely enriching the user experience from the day it entered production not too long ago.

The May 2011 Service Update enriches even further. The following are the recent improvements.
Read full story here,

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2011/05/16/sql-azure-may-2011-update.aspx

   1. SQL Azure Management REST API – a web API for managing SQL Azure servers.

REST API are great to work with and it makes automating SQL Azure managment a lot easier than through the portal. Now the guys who click will be replaced by guys who code as this is a programmatic approach. REST API is an open protocol, well documented and there is not too much to learn.

   2. Multiple servers per subscription – create multiple SQL Azure servers per subscription.

The servers could be anywhere North America or Singapore (is it?).  Makes distributing servers across the globe for truly golbal enterprises.

   3. JDBC Driver – updated database driver for Java applications to access SQL Server and SQL Azure.

DotNet is great but don't under estimate the power of JAVA. The JDBC driver 3.0, a Type 4 driver can handle both SQL Azure and SQL Server and what is more it is free. Now on premises JAVA Apps can capture the data from the Azure clouds.

   4. DAC Framework 1.1 – making it easier to deploy databases and in-place upgrades on SQL Azure.

Here is completely free article on DAC if you want to sample the experience.
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2010/02/working-with-data-gotten-lot-easier.html

DAC is a thing I personally love and the DAC Framework 1.1 takes it a little further. DAC makes it so easy to  import/export data it is truly amazing.

By the way, my book on SQL Azure was recently published and you may avail yourself of a free copy by sending an email to me, mysorian@gmail.com with the subject line, SQL AZURE. Your named will be entered into a raffle and the winner gets a copy of my book on SQL Azure(1st Winner hardcopy and 2nd Winner an eBook)

http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-sql-azure-book-is-published.html

Oracle SQL Developer Tool 1.5 with SQL Server 2005

Oracle SQL Developer Tool

Oracle SQL Developer Tool is a stand alone program that connects to Oracle as well as third-party databases which can be used to perform a variety of tasks from running simple queries to migration of databases from third party vendor products to Oracle. Please review the following articles on the earlier versions 1.1 and 1.2: MS Access Queries with Oracle SQL Developer 1.2 Tool and Migrating MS Access 2003 Data using the Oracle SQL Developer 1.2.

Oracle SQL Developer Tool 1.5

While the default installation is ready to connect to Oracle and Access databases the other third-party products such as SQL Server 2005, MySQL and Sybase require additional JDBC drivers. This article describes how you may connect to SQL Server 2005 and SQLExpress servers using the JDBC drivers.

Go ahead and read it...

http://www.packtpub.com/article/oracle-sql-developer-tool-1.5-sql-server-2005