March 26, 2009
SQL in the cloud
This is a great idea. SQL and relational databases are probably one of the biggest productivity enhancers in enterprise computing, and back every single application type worth its salt, including any useful web app (*web app as opposed to web page.. which don't need no stinking' db.)
So do I really want to be isolated from the dear data, and forced into layers of abstraction, encapsulated web services calls, responses, html and browsers? For something that used to be a simple "select foo from bar" ? No.
A truly cloud based data access system could eventually take away layers of gunk that has built up between browser UIs and their data, slowing and obscuring things. Browser based data connections won't be far behind...kind of a new type AML (application markup language), not based on display, but applications.
Wow, I was thinking about this back in '99 while righting my first Perl "Web front end' to a database. Microsoft must have hacked into my thought space and created a product out of it 10 years later.