M-A-O-L

The recent releases of SQL Anywhere 12 and SQL Server Compact 4.0 got me thinking about a pet project of mine, basically providing a very cheap SQL persistence layer to fill the gap between Excel / MS Access and the multi-gigabytes typically stored in ‘real’ RDBMS. I’ve been thinking in terms of SQL Clouds such as Microsoft’s SQL Azure or Amazon’s Relational Database Service. But why limit the developer’s freedom with the cloud services, and not just provide a simple integrated SQL store? H2 could be another popular candidate, but limited to Java.

I’ll be looking into that some more… for now, there are 10 Cool New Features In SQL Anywhere 12 and an Introduction to SQL Server Compact 4.0, the Next Gen Embedded Database from Microsoft. And a follow-up on a slightly related topic, (SQL) Azure Appliance, Gartner’s Chris Wolf has a nice write-up of On-Premise Microsoft Azure: An Inevitable Milestone in Azure’s Evolution.

Related posts:

1. Comparing SQL Server with SQL Azure
2. Sharding With SQL Azure
3. Windows Azure Platform Appliance
4. Loading data to SQL Azure the fast way
5. SQL In the Cloud