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 | SQL Server Data Service (SSDS) is a highly scalable
and cost-effective on-demand data storage and query processing web
service. It is built on robust SQL Server technologies and helps
guarantees a business-ready service level agreement covering high
availability, performance and security features. Microsoft SSDS
is accessible using standards based protocols (SOAP, REST) for quick
provisioning of on-demand data-driven & mashup applications. |
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SSDS is built on SQL Server database technologies, used for running mission-critical applications in the enterprise as well as on the Web. Since SQL Server is a broad data platform that can handle all data from birth to archival, there are many capabilities that our data platform provides. SSDS is exposing a subset of those capabilities and extending them as services in the cloud in ways that make it easy for customers and partners to consume and build upon over the Internet. Although SSDS in its first iteration exposes only a small subset of what is in the full SQL Server data platform, Microsoft expects this to increase over time, with likely features including binary large object columns, full text search, and richer data types.
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 | Microsoft will also offer a library that will enable SSDS for on-premise SQL Server databases. This will enable businesses with the use of both on-premise data platform and services-based SSDS capabilities.
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 | Customers can use SQL Server Data Services to store
virtually any amount of data in the Cloud. They can query and modify
data as required by the specific business scenarios.
SQL Server Data Services support standards-based REST and SOAP
interfaces designed to work with any Internet-development toolkit.
The primary wire format is XML. Developers and service providers
can quickly run on-demand applications with ease. The data has flexible
schema which can be modified dynamically by the application. The
data is provided with high availability and reliability virtually
anywhere, anytime. |
 | Target Customers: - Small to medium businesses looking to reduce their capital
and operational cost of storing and maintaining high-volume
data off-premise.
- Developers and Service providers hosting data-intensive
and mashup on-demand applications with minimal infrastructure
investments in security, availability and manageability.
- Enterprise customers building edge applications can collaborate
on large or shared data sets.
Target Customer Scenarios: - Archival data (e.g., aged data).
- Reference data (e.g., catalogs).
- Storing large amounts of structured or semi-structured data
with a flexible schema definition or unstructured data with
related structured metadata.
- Running applications that can tolerate data access latency
across the Internet.
- Storing data that is naturally partitionable into disjoint
data sets requiring little or no cross-correlations.
- Running applications that have limited or batched data access.
- Read-only or read-mostly data sets.
- Typical scenarios include business solutions like HR services,
healthcare records management, data archiving and internet facing
applications like social networking and picture sharing.
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 | - Easy access with REST and SOAP protocols
- Flexible, WEB 2.0 friendly data model and wire format (XML
and others) with query language
- Scale, with virtually no restriction on storage
- High availability, almost always available from any location
- Fast, reliable access, durable backup
- Easy to deploy solutions and modify user data
- Geo replication to help ensure business continuity
- Built on robust Microsoft SQL Server database technologies
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 | We are taking registrations for the first service beta release
scheduled in March 2008. Please register at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/dataservices.
Upon registration you will receive an invitation code to join the
beta program where you will have access to detailed documentation
and sample code examples on how to immediately consume the service.
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 | The service exposes SOAP and REST APIs which are functionally
equivalent. Each interface allows the creation of authorities, containers,
and the creation, update and deletion of single entities. You may
also query the entities in your containers. The documentation of
the beta service contains detailed examples on how to use the service
interfaces in your application. |
 | Developers will be able to use our simple, scalable, reliable
and easy to program service for on-demand mashup type applications
that work well with data in the Cloud. Service Providers and other
partners will lower the cost of acquiring new customers by eliminating
the cost of provisioning and operating the storage and switching
to paying for data usage on demand. Both developers and partners
can focus on innovating their business and minimize their infrastructure
and management cost. |
 | The SQL Server Data Storage Service can store multiple types
of data, from birth to archival. Users can upload and query structured
data, semi-structured data, stored in flexible entities, and unstructured
data. Customers will be able to associate entities with large unstructured
data objects (blobs) which could be accessed as URL addressable
resources. |
 | The service has been designed to store virtually any amount of
data, limited only by users' needs. The data will be partitioned
in order to scale to unlimited size. Each partition will be limited
to a high size (10s of GB) in order to be processed on a single
node of the cluster and to allow efficient replication and load
balancing. |
 | Data is stored in large storage clusters in various Microsoft
data centers located across North America. We are planning to offer
the service from international locations such as Europe and Asia.
Users can group their data into authorities, which are affiliated
with specific data centers and therefore provide control over the
geographic location of the data. |
 | The service will manage multiple copies of the data to help ensure
high availability and reliability. The service will have a back-up
of the data stored in each data cluster. Partitions are replicated
to help achieve reliability. Geo-redundant data-copies help
ensure business continuity. |
 | The service is highly available and very reliable. It is built
on Microsoft SQL Server relational database architecture that includes
data protection, compliance, enterprise-level security features,
real-time mirrored database replication, and high availability.
We will provide a business-level SLA (service level agreement).
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 | We will have some specifics on the pricing model later. |
 | We plan to add support for notifying customers of service outages. |
 | SQL Server Data Service supports the REST and SOAP protocols
and is built to work with any customer applications. We will provide
a great experience working with Microsoft products and development
tools. In addition, we will provide support for development on other
platforms and will invest in a strong development ecosystem around
our service. |
 | Microsoft SQL Server Data Services (SSDS) has been implemented
to address on-demand storage, delivery and data processing requirements
for on-demand hosted business applications. This enables customers
of all sizes to deploy their applications either onto their own
enterprise servers or into the Microsoft-run datacenters. Through
investments like SSDS, BizTalk Services and ASP.NET services, Microsoft
will deliver a new platform for businesses to exploit the full power
of our on-demand services vision. Ultimately this will help provide
developers and IT professionals with the flexibility to build and
deliver applications faster and more cost effectively. |