Microsoft's Azure SQL Data Sync is finally ending its preview run. The company announced this week that the service is now moved to general availability (GA). In shifting the solution to all users, Microsoft has also added some new capabilities.
If you are unfamiliar with Azure SQL Data Sync, it is a tool that lets users synchronize data between Azure SQL Database and other SQL endpoints. This can be achieved eithers bidirectionally or unidirectionally.
Other capabilities of the service include enabling hybrid SQL deployment and local data from Azure and on-premises apps.
“It also allows you to deploy your data applications globally with a local copy of data in each region, and keep data synchronized across all the regions,” Microsoft explains. “It will significantly improve the application response time and reliability by eliminating the impact of network latency and connection failure rate.”
There are some new features added to Azure SQL Data Sync with its move to general availability. Microsoft says the service is now more reliable when configuring workflow, while the data synchronization is now more secure.
You can check out what's new with SQL Data Sync:
- Better configuration experience – More reliable configuration workflow and more intuitive user experience.
- More reliable and faster database schema refresh – Load database schema more efficiently using new SMO library.
- More secured data synchronization – We reviewed the end-to-end sync workflow and ensured user data are always encrypted at rest and in transit. Data Sync service now meets GDPR compliance requirement.
Azure SQL Data Warehouse Targets Amazon Redscale
Last month we reported on Microsoft bringing Compute Upscale to Azure SQL Data Warehouse in a direct push against Amazon's Redscale.
Microsoft revealed the general rollout of the Compute Optimized Gen2 tier of SQL Data Warehouse. This is a performance optimized tier that can “turbocharge” analytics through the latest innovations in hardware and software.
