Delivering new features for SQL Azure Today
As of today following new features are available within SQL Azure:
1. SQL Azure Database size - We are expanding SQL Azure to support up to 50GB per database. With this update, SQL Azure now supports up to 5GB in the Web Edition, and up to 50GB in the Business Edition. SQL Azure can scale to multi-terabytes (across db instances) and is built from the ground up for scaling-out, high performance and high availability.
2. Spatial data support—Geography and Geometry types and query support in T-SQL are now supported in SQL Azure. Customers wanting to run location aware applications can now do so on the Windows Azure Platform.
3. Public preview of SQL Azure Data Sync Service (released at TechEd)— Expanding on the current ability to sync between SQL Server and SQL Azure, now you can also distribute and sync data across multiple datacenters and multiple SQL Azure instances around the globe. Click here to give it a try.
4. Office 2010 Support for SQL Azure (released at TechEd) – This new feature offers native data connectivity support from Microsoft Office (e.g. Access, Excel and PowerPivot) to SQL Azure databases, providing more choices to connect rich Office Business Applications with databases, running either on-premises or in the cloud.
Your feedback has been instrumental in all of the above announcements on SQL Azure and the future will continue to be bright as we set our sights on the next set of priorities for helping you more efficiently meet your IT needs.