Microsoft acquires Dundas Visualizations

For many years, Dundas Data Visualization, Inc. has been known for producing industry standard data visualization components. They have also been producing for Microsoft technologies since ever. Microsoft acquired the codebase for these components, back in 2007, in order to deliver data visualization directly within products of Microsoft.

Microsoft also enabled Dundas to continue to sell, enhance, update and support the components for a specified duration as a service to their existing customers which was a part of an agreement that will expire on October 31, 2010.

As Dundas communicated this information directly to their customer base, the purpose of this post is to answer any questions related to the components/capabilities that have been released as part of the Microsoft Product Roadmap and how you can get access to them. Here is a FAQ site on SQL Server Reporting Services Team Blog that describes Frequently Asked Questions regarding Dundas Visualizations being acquired by Microsoft.

As Microsoft continues to acquire industry champs in relevant technologies, along with releasing other connectors and migration tools, this certainly can be computed in that sense as well.

SQL to MySQL migration tool from Microsoft

 

Ever wondered why Facebook, LinkedIn, Craiglist, Wikipedia (and the list goes on) use MySQL? Well as I came across this blog at ZDNET, I also believe that there is nothing ‘mission critical’ on these apps. I mean for all I know if something goes wrong with your data on Facebook or LinkedIn, it doesn’t make any difference to a certain scale. On the contrary, if you can imagine losing any single bit from a patient management system or stock exchange, you can easily understand the difference. This is where SQL come to play.

Microsoft announces the release of first version of SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) for MySQL! Microsoft also refreshed the existing SSMA family of products for Oracle, Sybase and Access with the latest v4.2 release alongside this release.

Migrate from MySQL to SQL Azure or SQL Server with ease!

Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) is a toolkit that dramatically cuts the effort, cost, and risk of migrating from MySQL to SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2 and SQL Azure.

The first version of MS SSMA toolkit is available for free download from Microsoft Download Center.

Excerpt from website:

Since the SQL Server Migration Assistants for Oracle became available in June of 2005, Microsoft has seen more than a 250,000 downloads across all of the SSMAs. US Department of Defense, Aon, AIM Healthcare, Motorola, Simon & Schuster, Sony Ericsson and Artesia are just a few of the customers that have downloaded and used the SQL Server Migration Assistant toolkit to migrate to Microsoft SQL Server.

With this wave of release, customers can migrate to any edition of SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 or SQL Server 2005. Brand NEW with this release, SSMA for MySQL and SSMA for Access products also support simple and direct migration to SQL Azure.

The latest SQL Server Migration Assistant is available for free download and preview at:

1. SSMA for MySQL v1.0, out of the two downloads, ‘SSMA 2008 for MySQL’ enables migration to SQL Azure

2. SSMA for Access v4.2 out of the two downloads, ‘SSMA 2008 for Access’ enables migration to SQL Azure

3. SSMA for Oracle v4.2

4. SSMA for Sybase v4.2

Customers and partners can provide feedback via ssmateam@microsoft.com.

SSMA for MySQL v1.0 is designed to work with MySQL 4.1 and above. Some of the salient features included in this release are the ability to convert/migrate:

· Tables

· Views

· Stored procedures

· Stored functions

· Triggers

· Cursors

· DML statements

· Control statements

· Transactions

The latest SSMA v4.2 release for Oracle/Sybase/Access includes:

· Console support for automated DB assessment/DB migration/SQL syntax conversion for application migration.

· Support for client side and server side data migration for convenience.

· Better support for 64-bit platform.

· Microsoft Access (Access 97 and above) to SQL Azure migration (you can continue to use existing Access front end applications though the data resides in SQL Azure)

· Support for migrating to SQL Server 2008 R2

· Support for migrating from latest Oracle (11g R2), Sybase (15.5) and Access (2010) releases