Stuart Manning

Windows Azure Remote Desktop Access

Stuart — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 22:14:09 +0000

The latest relase of the WIndows Azure platform, portal and tools (check here) includes support for one of the features announced at PDC last month: remote desktop access to your role instances. This feature is pretty easy to use and currently allows you to deploy a preconfigured VM with IIS where you can play with the OS. No real application needed!

ASP.NET MVC SiteMap provider

Stuart — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 21:32:37 +0000

MvcSiteMapProvider is, as the name implies, an ASP.NET MVC SiteMapProvider implementation for the ASP.NET MVC framework. Targeted at ASP.NET MVC 2, it provides sitemap XML functionality and interoperability with the classic ASP.NET sitemap controls, like the SiteMapPath control for rendering breadcrumbs and the Menu control.

Find out more here

Silverlight Firestarter Keynote and Sessions

Stuart — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 21:15:50 +0000

Here is a quick jump-list of all 8 videos from the Silverlight Firestarter. This includes the keynote and the 7 sessions that are targeted at helping you build business applications with Silverlight. I included links to:

Each video, with multiple online and offline downloadable video file formats
Each speaker’s twitter ID (for those on Twitter) if you want to follow them
UPDATE: Download the slides and code here

By popular request, we are collecting the updated slides and code samples from speakers and will post them on the event site soon, too.

Azure Announcements from the PDC10 in Dublin – what do they mean?

Stuart — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:56:04 +0000

There where great announcement from the PDC10 in Dublin, and thankfully David Northy posted a great summary on Technet.

Here is the link

Scaling out with SQL Azure

Stuart — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 21:49:53 +0000

Great article on pre-planned strategies using partitioning techniques for SQL Azure.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/scaling-out-with-sql-azure.aspx

Pricing for the New Large SQL Azure Databases Explained

Stuart — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 19:34:57 +0000

Originally announced @ TechEd 2010

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cbiyikoglu/archive/2010/06/10/pricing-for-the-new-large-sql-azure-databases-explained.aspx

Excerpt follows

Assume we have a a web edition database that has a MAXSIZE=5GB. If the database size is 800MB, the daily charge for the database will be at the 1GB rate for web edition. if the next day, the database size grows to 3GBs, the daily charge will be based on the next billing increment for web edition which is 5GB for that day. If the next day, after some data deletion, the size drops back to 900MB, the daily charge will be based on 1GB back again.

The same example applies to a business edition edition database. Assume we have a business edition database with MAXSIZE=50GB. If the total database size is 8GB, the daily charge for the database will be at the 10GB rate. If the next day, the database size grows to 25GB, the daily charge will be based on the next billing increment for the business edition which is 30GB and so on.

- Cost Predictability Enhancements: Even though both editions can grow to larger ceiling sizes (such as 50GB), you can cap the data size per database and control your bill at the billing increments. MAXSIZE option for CREATE/ALTER DATABASE will help set the cap on the size of the database. If the size of your database reaches to the cap set by MAXSIZE, you will receive an error code 40544. You will only be billed for the MAXSIZE amount for the day. When database reaches the MAXSIZE limit, you cannot insert or update data, or create new objects, such as tables, stored procedures, views, and functions. However, you can still read and delete data, truncate tables, drop tables and indexes, and rebuild indexes.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing/#sql

Pricing at time of article on Tuesday 12th October 2010

Web Edition:
- Up to 1 GB relational database = $9.99 / month
- Up to 5 GB relational database = $49.95 / month**
Business Edition:
- Up to 10 GB relational database = $99.99 / month
- Up to 20 GB relational database = $199.98 / month**
- Up to 30 GB relational database = $299.97 / month**
- Up to 40 GB relational database = $399.96 / month**
- Up to 50 GB relational database = $499.95 / month**
Data transfers = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB – ($0.30 in / $0.45 out / GB in Asia)*

* No charge for inbound data transfers during off-peak times through October 31, 2010

Sql Azure : ALTER DATABASE & Pricing Implications

Stuart — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 19:29:26 +0000

So you need to migrate from SQL Azure Web to Business : Migrate your say? Wrong.

You can just look up SQL Managment Studio 2008 (R2) and Add the following

[code]

ALTER DATABASE database_name
{
    MODIFY NAME = new_database_name
    |MODIFY ( [, ..n])
}

 ::=
{
   (MAXSIZE = {1 | 5 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50} GB)
    |(EDITION = {'web' | 'business'})
}
[;]

[/code]

Assuming you are connected to the Master Db then it you could, for example upgrade from a 5GB Web to 10GB Business Azure DB

[code]

ALTER DATABASE [DB_NAME] Modify (EDITION = 'business', MAXSIZE = 10 GB)

[/code]

Another good article on this is http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlazure/archive/2010/06/16/10026036.aspx

More can be found out on MSDN @ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff394109.aspx

But how does this affect your pricing? Well you need to read the following document.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cbiyikoglu/archive/2010/06/10/pricing-for-the-new-large-sql-azure-databases-explained.aspx

Except from link below

“Lets look at a few examples; Assume we have a a web edition database that has a MAXSIZE=5GB. If the database size is 800MB, the daily charge for the database will be at the 1GB rate for web edition. if the next day, the database size grows to 3GBs, the daily charge will be based on the next billing increment for web edition which is 5GB for that day. If the next day, after some data deletion, the size drops back to 900MB, the daily charge will be based on 1GB back again.

Lets look at a few examples; Assume we have a a web edition database that has a MAXSIZE=5GB. If the database size is 800MB, the daily charge for the database will be at the 1GB rate for web edition. if the next day, the database size grows to 3GBs, the daily charge will be based on the next billing increment for web edition which is 5GB for that day. If the next day, after some data deletion, the size drops back to 900MB, the daily charge will be based on 1GB back again.
The same example applies to a business edition edition database. Assume we have a business edition database with MAXSIZE=50GB. If the total database size is 8GB, the daily charge for the database will be at the 10GB rate. If the next day, the database size grows to 25GB, the daily charge will be based on the next billing increment for the business edition which is 30GB and so on. “

Developer Developer Developer Ireland 2010 : Twitter Stats

Stuart — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 21:20:30 +0000

Another great Developer Developer Developer conference, this time it was in Dublin.

Some interesting stats.

The hashtag #dddie was mentioned 134 times between13:07 8th October 2010 to 21:32 11th October 2010

Total first degree audience for the hastag #dddie was 51468 people.

Some Chatter Graphs

Developer Developer Developer : Chatter Stats for 2010/10/09

Developer Developer Developer : Chatter Stats for 2010/10/08 - 2010/10/11

#DDDIE was mentioned by

Twitter account order by Influence.

You can find out more stats & tools for social network by registering @ http://exise.co

Sharepoint 2010, TFS 2010 but not SQL 2008 R2 WorkGroups

Stuart — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:35:33 +0000

Just hit a real snaffu on get our new dev server up and running. For some reason SQL Reporting Services are not part of SQL 2008 WorkGroups. However, in theory we should be able to do an in place upgrade to another SQL edition. It has only took about 2 hrs to find out why, but hey least know I know.

the inital probelm appear using the TFS Advance configutation Wizard dropping out with

[code]

Error [ Reporting ] TF255275: The following Web service for SQL Server Reporting Services could not be accessed: http://exsdev/ReportServer/ReportService2005.asmx.

Error [ Reporting ] TF255344: Either a connection could not be made to the server that is running SQL Server Analysis Services, or the service is not running. For more information, review the following exception message: Error encountered when creating connection to Analysis Services. Contact your Team Foundation Server administrator..Error [ Reporting ] TF255275: The following Web service for SQL Server Reporting Services could not be accessed: http://exsdev/ReportServer/ReportService2005.asmx.

[/code]

but after some research it actual turned out the be that SQL 2008 RC WorkGroups just does support this. It a bit dumb in my option not to just ship this, and it probably nested away somewhere.

Anyhow, some useful links

SQL Server® 2008 R2 Reporting Services Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint® Technologies 2010

Troubleshooting Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 1 error <- useful if outdate, but it show how to recreate reports db

Using Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010 <- nice example with a custom customer list with twitter integration and deployment to outlook

[Update]

Only ISO of SQL 2008 I had was developer, so upgrade/downgrade policy was not a valid scenario. Option was to download another ISO from MSDN

MS SQL Version and Edition Upgrades

[Update]

2 hours to find the bug. 5 mins to upgrade

Manage My Social Network – Exise

Stuart — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 23:05:59 +0000

We just launched our product website @ http://exise.co

“Manage multiple social networks for your company or clients with one easy to use web-based app.”

Interesting in the first 12 hours we received 412 unique visitors, with Chrome being the most popular browser.