SQL Azure and MS BI

These days I have been extremely busy with my BI-Satellite project, and this is one of the reasons I am not getting enough time for my blog. I try to keep blogging which keeps on re-inforcing new blood into my knowledgebase, but it's not easy to find genuine, new and useful topics everytime. I see many popular blogs which have posts that are rehashes of MSDN BOL or topics that are replica of issues picked up from community forums, and I opt not to blog instead of adhering to this practice. I think I should not have started on this track and came straight on the subject of this post.

I recently came to know that a few new SQL Azure features have been made available, namely MARS (Multiple Active Result Sets), features for renaming SQL Azure databases, Application and multi-server management for data tier applications (DACPAC) and introduction of 50 GB sized SQL Azure Databases. I see use of SQL Azure with MS BI applications for quite a few interesting purposes, the most prominent being for permanent staging purposes in ETL solutions. I have written two different articles on how to read/write to SQL Azure using SSIS and how to use SSRS with SQL Azure which can be read from here. Even in database administration purpose, SQL Azure can be used as a low cost bridge for replication and synchronization purposes, apart from it's use as a regular as-on-a-need-size-or-cost database. With the support introduced for data-tier applications, SQL Azure has now managed to be a favorite of .NET fraternity too, and DBA's are definitely going to give out a painful cry due to such ongoing support from SQL Azure coming down their way.

If I go mythical, I see SQL Azure as the flood in the database industry and DBA's better start building Noah's Ark for themselves, as in the near future, cloud computing is going to change the way we look at database and it's administrators administration.