Question

I have a PC application (FoxPro) that uses a local database. I want to migrate it to a cloud database, but keeping the application intact.
Can I configure an ODBC Data Source in Windows XP/7 to point to a cloud database service such as SQL Azure, xeround.com, database.com or other?
Any experiences you’d like to share?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Whenever I discuss moving a client server application to cloud I always discuss moving the whole application + DB in cloud. If you move either one (application or database) to cloud and even when your application is geographically very close, you are still going to hit network latency as well as you would need to fiddle with your on-premise firewall settings to let other application get into. In most cases a client/server application needs be to converted to have a web front end to be cloud ready and there where I think the following article helps to understand the big picture:
http://www.visualwebgui.com/Technology/WhitePapers/tabid/528/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/919/Transformation-of-ClientServer-application-to-Windows-Azure-Cloud.aspx

About answer your question directly, if you want to use SQL Azure it is always good to understand the Limitation to move your DB to Cloud, because not every functionality in loca database is provided in most cloud databases:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee336245.aspx

Also be sure to know what you are going to get with your SQL Azure database:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee621784.aspx

Finally you sure can use ODBC database connector to talk with SQL azure and if you are using ODBC then you would need to use .NET Framework Data Provider for ODBC as described below:
https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/how-to-guides/sql-azure/#using-ODBC

Hope this helps to you and any other who is looking to migrate their client/server application to cloud. BTW this is a great question, +1 from me.