Three days ago I tweeted this:
Idea. MSFT could host read-only copies of all the [AdventureWorks] DBs up on #sqlazure for the
SQL community
to use. RT if agree #sqlfamily
— Jamie Thomson (@jamiet) March 24, 2012
Evidently I wasn't the only one that thought this was a good idea because as you can see from the screenshot that tweet has, so far, been retweeted more than fifty times. Clearly there is a desire
to see the AdventureWorks databases made available for the community
to noodle around on so I am pleased
to announce that as of today you can do just that - [AdventureWorks2012] now resides on
SQL Azure and is available for anyone, absolutely anyone,
to connect
to and use* for their own means.
*By use I mean "issue some SELECT statements". You don't have permission
to issue INSERTs, UPDATEs, DELETEs or EXECUTEs I'm afraid - if you want
to do that then you can get the bits and host it yourself.
This database is free for you
to use but
SQL Azure is of course not free so before I give you the credentials please lend me your ears eyes for a short while longer. AdventureWorks on Azure is being provided for the
SQL Server community
to use and so I am hoping that that same community will rally around
to support this effort by making a voluntary donation
to support the upkeep which, going on current pricing, is going
to be $119.88 per year. If you would like
to contribute
to keep AdventureWorks on Azure up and running for that full year please donate via PayPal
to [email protected]:
Any amount, no matter how small, will help. If those 50+ people that retweeted me beforehand all contributed $2 then that would just about be enough
to keep this up for a year. If the community contributes more that we need then there are a number of additional things that could be done:
Host additional databases (Northwind anyone??)
Host in more datacentres (this first one is in Western Europe)
Make a charitable donation
That last one, a charitable donation, is something I would really like
to do. The
SQL Community have proved before that they can make a significant contribution
to charitable orgnisations through purchasing the
SQL Server MVP Deep Dives book and I harbour hopes that AdventureWorks on Azure can continue in that vein. So please, if you think AdventureWorks on Azure is something that is worth supporting please make a contribution.
OK, with the prickly subject of begging for cash out of the way let me share the details that you need
to connect
to [AdventureWorks2012] on
SQL Azure:
Server mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net
Database AdventureWorks2012
User sqlfamily
Password sqlf@m1ly
That user sqlfamily has all the permissions required
to enable you
to query away
to your heart's content. Here is the
code that I used
to set it up:
CREATE USER sqlfamily FOR LOGIN sqlfamily;CREATE ROLE sqlfamilyrole;EXEC sp_addrolemember 'sqlfamilyrole','sqlfamily';GRANT VIEW DEFINITION ON Database::AdventureWorks2012
TO sqlfamilyrole;GRANT VIEW DATABASE STATE ON Database::AdventureWorks2012
TO sqlfamilyrole;GRANT SHOWPLAN
TO sqlfamilyrole;EXEC sp_addrolemember 'db_datareader','sqlfamilyrole';
You can connect
to the database using
SQL Server Management Studio (instructions
to do that are provided at Walkthrough: Connecting
to SQL Azure via the SSMS) or you can use the web interface at https://mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net:
Lastly, just for a bit of fun I created a table up there called [dbo].[SqlFamily] into which you can leave a small calling card. Simply execute the following
SQL statement (changing the values of course):
INSERT [dbo].[SqlFamily]([Name],[Message],[TwitterHandle],[BlogURI])VALUES ('Your name here','Some Message','your twitter handle (optional)','Blog URI (optional)');
[Id] is an IDENTITY field and there is a default constraint on [DT] hence there is no need
to supply a value for those.
Note that you only have INSERT permissions, not UPDATE or DELETE so make sure you get it right first time! Any offensive or distasteful remarks will of course be deleted :)
Thank you for reading this far and have fun using AdventureWorks on Azure. I hope it proves
to be useful for some of you.
@jamiet
AdventureWorks on Azure - Provided by the
SQL Server community, for the
SQL Server community!
