Monday, June 22, 2015

SQL Azure - SQL Server Database to Azure.

Microsoft with the change in leadership at the top, there has been a lot of push for cloud related offerings from Microsoft. One of the components of the cloud suite is SQL Azure which is the cloud based offering of the SQL Server Database system. With the advent of smartphones and increased used of apps in phones, there is a need for having a cloud based database. There are lot of folks using different cloud based offerings for the database, one of my colleagues has launched an app which uses the SQL Azure database. It is possible that folks could use a sql server initially to develop the database and then copy the database over to SQL Azure. Here is a link on how to SSIS to copy a sql server database to SQL Azure.
To quote the article: When migrating a SQL Server database to Microsoft Azure SQL Database, the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard in an easy way to create a SQL Server Integration Services package to transfer data. The package can then be modified to add more robust error handling and retry logic.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/jj156152.aspx

Monday, June 8, 2015

DataZen-Microsoft

Datazen is a Mobile product that allows BI on Mobile as per the website: Datazen Windows 8 app enables dashboard creation and publishing based on Excel, cloud and enterprise data sources. After publishing to a Datazen Server, dashboards and KPIs are accessible on any device via its native app, or through any major browser. The Mobile app can be downloaded for ios/andrioid and windows phones. For example: I downloaded the Datazen app on my andrioid smartphone. Once the app is downloaded when I launched the app, it connects to a demo server. The App pulls down a set of demo KPI and dashboards. This provides an overview of the type of dashboards that can be built with DataZen. Recently Microsoft has acquired Datazen, this would enable Microsoft to provide a robust BI offering in the mobile space. Datazen server requires Windows Server,IIS and .NET as the prerequisites. Please look at the image for a sample of what is possible with the Datazen tool.

The Datazen link is : http://www.datazen.com/overview/, all the details are available here.
 
There is a detailed blog on capabilities of Datazen by SQL Server Expert: Melissa Coates at her blog site: http://www.sqlchick.com/entries/2015/6/3/prototyping-layout-and-design-with-datazen. This blog post specifically talks about Prototyping and Design with Datazen.