2012-06-07 Update: All good things must come to an end - I have now shutdown this server. I hope it was useful to some of you in the two and a half years that it has been available.
Earlier today Brent Ozar blogged about how he had been archiving tweets from various people that he follows into a SQL Server database.
He made a backup of that database available for download on his blog so that others could download it and have a play of their own. I thought that rather than have all those people that wanted to party on the data download and restore the database for themselves it might be fun (and prudent) to stick it somewhere where anyone could get it so (with Brent’s permission) I’ve hosted the database up on SQL Azure.
Here are the credentials that you’ll need if you want to connect:
| server name | lx49ykb7y5.database.windows.net |
| username | ro |
| password | r3@d0nly |
| database name | brentotweets |
You can connect using SQL Server Management Studio although if you’re not using the November 2009 community technology preview (CTP) of SQL Server 2008 R2 there are some hoops you need to jump through in order to do that. First thing to know is that you can’t connect the Object Explorer, only a query window. So, after hitting the “New Query” button here’s what you need to do:
Firstly, enter the details as shown in this screenshot:
and then hit “Options”. On the options screen you need to enter the name of the database that you need to connect to which, as I mentioned above, is [brentotweets]:
Then hit “Connect”. You’ll probably get the following error about not being able to get to sys.configurations. Don’t worry about it, you can safely click OK and ignore it:
Once you’re in you can hit the database just like you would any other SQL Server database:
SQL Azure requires that you specify a range of IPs that can connect to the server and I’ve made it as wide as possible so I’m assuming it should be OK:
Have fun! Note that this won’t be available forever because at some point I’m going to have to start paying for it, you’ll be good for the next few weeks though.
P.S. For those that are interested I pumped all the data up there using SSIS.
It took 41m 41s over my home broadband line from a Virtual PC guest. Bear in mind that I’m in London and the server is I believe somewhere in Texas, US. According to speedtest.net I’m getting 4.67Mbps up and 0.57Mbps down:
(Note to self: Get new ISP. Or move house!]