I missed the MVP Summit last week in Redmond, and I wonder if there was some sort of SQL Azure push since there seemed to be a lot of news focused on cloud computing this week.  We even had a talk about cloud computing in our weekly Simple Talk Publishing call. SQL Compare supports Azure, and you can try it out after filling out this survey.  I ran across a note that the cloud is helping a hospital with their digital records in Israel. I think this is the same facility that gave a SQL Server presentation a few years ago on some of the platforms they'd built and how their applications had greatly improved their efficiency.

The idea of my health records being on a cloud server is a little disconcerting. Especially when I found this article talking about some of the compliance issues that we may face with cloud databases. As quickly as new offerings are appearing along with press released from vendors touting advantages, I think we need to quickly establish some type of security requirements for cloud databases.

Then there's the issue of patching, noted by Thomas LaRock. None of us likes having changes rolled out to our servers without our knowledge. We especially want to be able to test our applications against new patches to be sure that nothing will break, or to develop some type of fix. In our internal companies we can often hold off patching while we work on something, but that might not be the case in the cloud. That has to be a concern, and it is probably why IT pros are divided about whether cloud computing is a good idea.

Maybe the cloud isn't good for databases. This article talks about moving beyond SQL to get a truly functional database in the cloud. I don't know if I agree with that, but there might be a whole host of problem specific database services in the cloud that we can use in different ways. That might make the idea of managing multiple database platforms very challenging for DBAs in the future.

Steve Jones

Steve's Pick of the Week

Lessons from a SAN Failure - Interesting lessons from Bill Graziano, Vice President of PASS.