by Edward
21 August 2009 11:55
Microsoft has rolled out a free trial of its cloud-based relational database, SQL Azure Database.
SQL Azure Database, a key component of the platform, is to rival Amazon's SimpleDB. SimpleDB is a distributed database written in "Erlang" by Amazon.com. It is used as a web service in concert with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Amazon S3 and is part of Amazon Web Services. Unlike the Amazon service however, it is a relational database. As with all cloud platforms, the idea is to provide scalable, hosted services on a pay-per-use basis, running remotely in Microsoft's datacentres.
Also available as a CTP. is the SQL Server Driver for PHP 1.1, which provides new capabilities for building PHP applications and support for SQL Azure, enabling developers to build PHP applications, with relational database capabilities using SQL Server or SQL Azure Database.
With SQL Azure organizations will benefit from a pay-as-you grow model with enterprise-class availability, data protection, scalability, and security.
The free trial of SQL Azure Database will last until November, when the service is fully rolled out.
There will be two editions of the SQL Azure Database:
- Web Edition storing up to 1GB of data and costing $9.99 (£6) per month, and
- Business Edition that stores up to 10GB at $99.99 per month.