Since Ray Ozzie dropped the Azure ball on all of us at PDC 2008 last year, the Windows Azure Platform team has been giving us the goods in the form of CTP bits for all of us developers to kick the tires and provide valued feedback back to the team. No one particular piece of the Azure pie has changed so substantially since that day back in October (2008) as SQL Azure has. Back then SQL Azure was very different from what it is today. Through the CTP process, our customers let us know that what were envisioning is not necessarily what they wanted. Our customers spoke and we listened. They told us they wanted SQL Server “in the cloud”. They wanted to utilize their relational database skill sets and knowledge to build out scalable databases in a cloud-based environment. The team stepped away from the original vision of SQL “in the cloud” (aka SQL Server Data Services aka SQL Data Services) and brought it back to what our customers were asking for, a true relational database in the cloud. With this, we answered with SQL Azure.

I’m happy to announce that SQL Azure is available in its first CTP release. You can now kick the tires of SQL Azure and determine how it might fit into your operational needs. To get access to the SQL Azure CTP1 you need to register for a SQL Azure development token. Fulfillment of development tokens may take a day or two. In the mean time, head over to MSDN to read up on the latest release of the SQL Azure documentation. Also, be sure to download the Windows Azure Platform training kit (August Update) where you will find a set of new demos, presentations and hands-on-labs focused on SQL Azure, not to mention additional training material for the other facets of developing on the Windows Azure Platform.

The training kit includes the following SQL Azure content:

Presentations

• Introduction to SQL Azure
• Building Applications using SQL Azure
• Scaling Out with SQL Azure

Demos

• Preparing your SQL Azure Account
• Connecting to SQL Azure
• Managing Logins & Security in SQL Azure
• Creating Objects in SQL Azure
• Migrating Database Schemas to SQL Azure
• Moving Data into and out of SQL Azure using SSIS
• Building a Simple SQL Azure App
• Scaling Out SQL Azure with Database Sharding

Hands on Labs

• Introduction to SQL Azure
• Migrating Databases to SQL Azure
• Building Your First SQL Azure App

  My colleagues and I have been hard at work for the past month or so working on bringing you the latest information to get you prepared for the upcoming launch of the Windows Azure Platform. We are going to discuss the latest and greatest of what the Windows Azure Platform has to offer and how our very own Microsoft IT team has been using it to build line-of-business applications.

This roadshow will travel across 17-cities in the Central Region with a session focused on the IT Professional in the morning and digging into the Development side of the house in the afternoon.

You can find all the details by visiting my Event Calendar.

What??? You didn’t know I had an event calendar? Well, I do. The Event Calendar gives me the ability to keep you up to date on the developer events taking place without getting lost in the blogroll.

We mixed up the process of recording the Thirsty Developer episode this time around. We’ve been wanting to get our good friend Tim Heuer back on for a discussion of the recently released Silverlight 3 and the future of Rich Internet Application development. The problem was, we weren’t going to see Tim anytime in the near future. All of our previous shows have always been recorded live. This time around, we went with a Skype hook-up with Tim across two time zones. You can certainly tell, but for what it was I think the quality sufficed to give you the opportunity to listen in on a great conversation with Tim.

With opening the possibilities of Skype, we have the opportunity to open the list of potential guests on the Thirsty Developer. If you have a technical topic that you’re passionate about and would like to share with the audience, let us know. Send an email to thirstydeveloper@live.com.

Thirsty Developer #71: Talking Silverlight with Tim Heuer

Don’t forget, you can subscribe to the Thirsty Developer podcast through iTunes or Zune Marketplace, or you can grab the RSS feed and drop it into your favorite podcast downloading tool.

One of my colleagues, Brian Prince, has put a call out for anyone heading to DevLink next week that would like to participate in a Technology Community Leadership Summit.

Our goal is to gather together anyone who is rabid about the community: all of the community leaders, speakers, and contributors. We want to get together and share best practices, and learn from each other. This is OPEN. We aren’t just talking about .NET user groups. We are talking Ruby, PHP, Python, OSS, Linux, ALM, and anything else you can think of. It doesn’t have to be a big formal user group; your community might be the small group of folks that crack code at a coffee shop at 7am. Whatever it is, come on over.

In our industry, community is important. The sharing of ideas. The opportunity for self improvement through learning from others. The networking opportunities. When I was in the consulting world, I made sure to attend various community events: User groups, Seminars, Conferences, etc. The interaction with peers from my industry allowed me to share and learn new ideas, new technologies, new ways of doing things. It was a stimulation for my mind and gave me the necessary gusto to excel in my career. Now, as a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft, it is my primary job responsibility to help foster and build these communities. Communities are important. They’re important for you and your career growth, and they’re important for our industry to help drive innovation.

If you’re interested in participating in a community, find your nearest users group. If you’re a community leader and/or contributor who’d like to work with others to share best practices in building a better technical community, head to Nashville on Aug. 12th for the Community Leadership Summit.

If you have any ideas how to build a better community, feel free to leave a comment here and let’s carry on the discussion.