Offer from Microsoft

[shaib]

Hi,

I'm not aware of any other way to contact the contributors to this project, so I'm posting it as an issue...

A Microsoft representative wrote to Django developers, suggesting that Microsoft will work with them on getting the SQL Server support improved. The offer includes, besides technical work together, an invitation to a workshop to be held in Seattle, Washington, with all travel costs covered. Thought people here might be interested.

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/django-developers/7edd97f0-dcd9-4178-8398-b29429a52e78%40googlegroups.com

(To clarify: I am not affiliated with Microsoft in any way; I am a Django committer who have been involved in a Django-based project which used SQL Server and this backend, and thought passing the invitation here would be appropriate)

[meet-bhagdev]

Hello committers,
Hope you are all doing well. I am the representative that @shaib speaks of : )
If you have any questions regarding the workshop please let me know. We are inviting developers like yourself to fly out to our headquarters here at Microsoft. We have developers here at Microsoft who are willing to write code to provide first class support for Django and MSSQL and Azure SQL. We need help getting started and understanding the kind of work that needs to be done to make this happen. In that regards we are also considering contributing to already existing third party adapters like django-pyodbc-azure. Thus it would be great to have representatives from your team of authors to join us at the workshop.
Please let me know if you guys have any questions. My email is mebha@microsoft.com. Look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,
Meet

[michiya]

@shaib @meet-bhagdev Thank you for letting me know. I'm very happy to hear that Django is going to receive support from Microsoft to provide first class support for SQL Server and Azure SQL Database!

I hope Django will have its official backend implementation for SQL Server and Azure SQL Database, so you can use django-pyodbc-azure as you like to make an official one. And of course I'm willing to help you if there's anything I can.

django-pyodbc-azure is a fork of django-pyodbc and I keep the original credits in README to show my respect for the original authors. But actually there's no other active committer than me because it's just my personal project. I want to join the workshop if I can, though I live in Japan and Redmond is far away from my home.

[meet-bhagdev]

@michiya
I got in touch with you via email at this email: michiya.takahashi@gmail.com. Do let me know if you received my email :)

Best,
Meet

[chesstrian]

👍

[andhieka]

Hi guys, I'm wondering if this library is officially supported by Microsoft Azure. Reason being, I am considering using Azure SQL with my Django project but it really has to be reliable. I'm wondering how reliable is Azure SQL compared to PostgreSQL, when it comes to using it with Django. The benefits of easy scaling and management offered by Azure SQL seems to be very attractive. But I have no prior experience integrating Django with Microsoft SQL Server / Azure SQL. I hope someone more experienced here can enlighten me with experience using Django with Microsoft databases 😄 (for reference, I'm using Django 1.9.6 with Python 3.5.1)

[meet-bhagdev]

Hello @andhieka,
The Django-pyodbc-azure library is supported by Microsoft. We have been collaborating with @michiya and have helped him with technical aspects such as building retry logic, on-boarding for SQL Server on Linux and testing for Azure SQL DB. We are happy to work with you to help you get started and answer any questions you may have with Django and Azure SQL DB. If you find SQL with Django difficult or unreliable, we would love to get the feedback.

I recommend you sync with @FlipperPA who runs a Django-SQL Server workload at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania to learn about his experience with using Django with Microsoft SQL technologies.

Thanks,
Meet

[FlipperPA]

Howdy @andhieka - good to meet you! Feel free to follow up with me by email. We are mainly a SQL Server shop here at Wharton, but also have some PostgreSQL in the mix, and some sites that use both at the same time. I'd be happy to share our experience and some tips on getting set up - the recipe can be a little tricky to get going, but is reliable once you have the configuration in place! You can email me at tallen {at} wharton dot upenn dot edu.

[andhieka]

@meet-bhagdev:
Thank you for the introduction and update. Really appreciate it.

@FlipperPA:
Good to meet you too! I'm writing you an email. Looking forward to learning from your unique experience using Django with both SQL Server and Postgres :)

[shadiakiki1986]

Hello @shaib @meet-bhagdev @FlipperPA
Is this project unmaintained anymore? I just filed #125 asking @michiya the same.

[FlipperPA]

@shadiakiki1986 In the past, @michiya has typically released a working version a few weeks after a major Django release. I'm hoping we see the same pattern here. He deserves a lot of credit for keeping this rolling on his own. I'm wondering if Microsoft might want to step up here; @meet-bhagdev and our friends in Redmond have been great supporters of this project as well.