Aim of “Getting started with SQL Azure" series is to offer you a set of brief articles that could act as a Launchpad for your to-be wonderful journey of exploring Microsoft’s cloud based database solution i.e. SQL Azure.
1) To spread awareness that with SQL Azure we do need to tune the databases – that part does not go away. Though many of the tasks are offloaded to cloud, the fact is, if you write a bad query – it’s going to run bad on the cloud too. yeah, It’s that simple!
2) To learn what “tools” do we have as a DBA to tune those bad running queries.
And I would thank Jacob sir for inviting me as a Quizzer (Now I have a badge on my beyond relational profile!) for this wonderful Quiz he runs! Thanks sir.
Have you heard about “Cloud Computing”? – of course you have, haven’t you? Have you heard about “Distributed Computing” – It’s great if you have. If you haven’t, no worries because that’s not your doing. you know why? because using this word is not in fashion anymore. yeah! [ I know I am talking fashion – how about that! ] Let’s put in differently, using the word “Distributed computing” is passé. want stats? Here they are:
Google is crazy! And I like crazy. What they are doing is digitizing zillions of book out there. And this tiny little Google lab thingy called NGram Viewer graphs (outputs) the occurrence of the “inputted word” in millions of books with respect to time. Sweet! so I have used this tool to draw a conclusion – which is my very own crazy speculation. Actually, I came to know about this tool and I ran some crazy experiments by inputting ****, **, **, ***, *****, ********, ********, * **** ** **** ***,etc. Then I don’t know what got me inputting “distributed computing”, “cloud computing”, etc etc – And the result is in front of you.
Anyways. The result shows only up to year “2008”. And if you note, I have inputted 2011 as year-end in my query but it just does not work. But you do get the point don’t you?!
Now how about “cloud computing” – BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! uncanny rise:
So a logical speculation is that “cloud computing” is replacing the use of “distributed computing”. Isn’t it?!
Any-who. whatever it is – it is pretty interesting. Let’s have some fun:
How about: Cloud computing vs Distributed computing vs Microsoft vs Google vs Facebook:
Facebook and cloud computing are recent trends. And as the graph shows they did not appear as many times as we might have guessed. But remember that it’s just until 2008. I wish we had data up to 2011!
And what about facebook? I would have done that if facebook had hastags (Alas it does not have it). And why did i shared it *ONLY* twitter because *ONLY* “hashtags” care for what I have to say. I know, it’s sad. But of course, you do – I can say because you read my entire post! if you liked it connect with me on twitter: Paras_Doshi!
Fact: All connections with SQL Azure are SSL encrypted. No exception.
Then what am I talking about? Why do I need to worry about Men in Middle attack now?
Turns out there’s a way, Men in Middle attack can happen – Not on your established connection But when the client first tries to establish a new connection. And in this blog post, we are going to see how to avoid Men in Middle attack when you first try establishing a new connection via SSMS.
BTW: I have not researched on how to do it from developers perspective, but if any developer is reading this and has figured it out – it would be great if you can share it with us via any communication means of your choice. (Thanks a lot – if you do so).
[Update: See Bottom of the post]
Any-who. Back to SSMS.
All you got to do to avoid this improbable situation to happen is just check the “Encrypt connection”in the connection property when you try establishing a *new* connection to SQL Azure.
That’s it.
if the client requests encryption from the beginning then our connection is not susceptible to Men in Middle attach while the client is negotiating with the server for encryption.
Categorize under “Best practice” if you wish to.
Update: Developers, When you connect to SQL Azure using ADO.Net – please do not forget to set 1. Encrypt = TRUE and 2. TrustServerCertificate = False to avoid man in middle attack.
And Thanks to Herve Roggero for his response on my (poorly framed) question on StackOverflow. I am glad, he understood what I meant! Thanks sir 🙂
“Even if cloud computing hides some back-end complexity from us, databases still need to be properly designed and queries properly written. To this end, Paras Doshi explains how to tune SQL Azure databases” – Excerpt from Editorial by Fernando G. Guerrero, Global CEO, SolidQ
Part 2/2 of “Tuning SQL Azure Databases” got published. The aim of the series was to show you the options that are available to tune a SQL Azure database. In part two, I discuss on how to use information made available through dynamic management views (DMV’s) available in SQL Azure; while the first part focused on examining execution plans and tuning the database based on that information. Here are the links to download the magazine:
Aim of “Getting started with SQL Azure” series is to offer you a set of brief articles that could act as a Launchpad for your to-be wonderful journey of exploring Microsoft’s cloud based database solution i.e. SQL Azure.
In this blog post, i have discussed:
1) How to sign up for a Free trial of windows azure (to play with SQL Azure)!
2) How to create your very first SQL Azure database (and a table too!)
3) How to connect to SQL Azure server Via SQL server Management studio.
I have written a blog post on my SolidQ blog that discusses in a step by step fashion on how to migrate Access database to SQL Azure using SQL server Migration assistant.
And you want to know why i am writing a blog post for it? spare couple of minutes and you will realize that you were better off just knowing the short answer. yeah seriously. And still if you are adamant on reading it – please drop me an email on contact[at]parasdoshi[dot]com, I want to talk to you! seriously!
Have you ever wondered how to import data from Azure Data market to PowerPivot Excel? And you know what I did? – since I knew we could load data from datamarket into powerpivot, I did that! There is an inbuilt support btw:
Now, I copied this data (CTRL C) and tried pasting it in Excel sheet (CTRL V). And you know what – nothing happened! So tried again! And again nothing happened. Now, i again selected the data from powerpivot window via right clicked -> copy. Went to excel worksheet and right clicked -> paste special. And guess, my laptop froze for a while and in a weird way I was happy because I thought that the copy was successful! But again it did not work. If it had, well I would not have written this blog post.
Any-who, so it was time to read some whitepapers blog posts. some googling and binging. And you know what, while I was binging and googling stuff, I liked the bing wallpaper, so i had to change my wallpaper. So I did that! Look at it, don’t you like it too:
And after a little tweeting facebooking searching, i found EXCEL ADD IN!! yeah! you can download it here: https://datamarket.azure.com/addin
After installation, you will find under the DATA tab. you can sign in to datamarket directly from there. you can create a datamarket account if you do not have one. you allow access if you have not done so before. And then you can browse available data-sets! it’s that easy.
Then you could just select the data-set you want to import and click on “import data”:
And then click on “import data” that you see at the bottom of the below screenshot.
And that’s it – downloading started! optionally you could filter the data if you want.
That’s it. Moral of the story:
Download Excel addin to import data from azure datamarket to excel
