Working with data gotten a lot easier with DACPACs: Data-tier applications in SQL Server 2008 R2

A Data Application Component is an entity that integrates all data tier related objects used in authoring, deploying and managing into a single unit instead of working with them separately( introduced in SQL Server 2008 in late 2009).
Programmatically DACs belong to classes that are found in The Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Dac namespace. DACs are stored in a DacStore and managed centrally. Dacs can be authored and built using SQL Server Data-Tier Application templates in VS2010 (now in Beta 2) or using SQL Server Management Studio. This article describes creating DAC using SQL Server 2008 R2 Nov-CTP(R2 server in this article), a new feature in this version.

Data-tier applications are not supported on SQL Azure databases. This may change in the future as more funcitonality is added to SQL Azure.

Data application Component extraction and deployment are wizard driven and easy to follow. The next two figures shows the two important stages of this process.

Extraction: The next screen shot shows how data is extracted

Deployment: This one shows how it is deployed

Does it not remind you of detaching and attachning a database?

Read this article to get the full story

Working with Data Application Components in SQL Server 2008 R2

Microsoft Azure cloud programs evolving fast

Microsoft delivered on its promise and XDrive is now a virtual reality called  Windows Azure Drive. This allows you to backup Windows applications automatically to the Micrsoft Azure. Read details here.

Windows Azure drive is implemented as a NTFS formatted Virtual Hard Drive for persisting data which may be accessed. It is implemented as Windows Azure Page Blob which means if the application using the drive crashes for any reason the data is still available.

In order to use this drive you should use Windows Azure Guest OS 1.1 (starting Feb 01,2010). Prior
December version was 1.0.

The APIs which goes with this support the following operations:


Create Drive
Initializa Cache
Mount Drive
Get Mounted Drives
Unmount Drive
Snapshot Drive
Copy Drive

More details are found here.

Technical documentation (Brad Calder and andrew Edwards ) may be found here.
In a very short time the verison has gone up from 1.0 to 1.1 where a number short comings of 1.0 has been fixed. The support for the forthcoming VS2010 RC is also included. The developers need to be on thier toes if this pace is kept up in releasing versions at this clip. How does the backward compatibility work? What happens to applications created with VS2010 Beta 2 with the new 1.1 version of Windows Azure?
These will surely crop up in the forums in the near future.