This week Microsoft announced its intentions to bring Hadoop to SQL Server and Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW). PDW was introduced last year and brought centralized data warehousing capabilities to SQL Server.
“As a first step, we will soon release a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of two new Hadoop connectors – one for SQL Server and one for PDW,” the SQL Server Team blog says.
The connectors provide interoperability between SQL Server/PDW and Hadoop environments, enabling customers to transfer data between Hadoop and SQL Server/PDW. With these connectors, customers can more easily integrate Hadoop with their Microsoft Enterprise Data Warehouses and Business Intelligence solutions to gain deeper business insights from both structured and unstructured data.
Microsoft also has its own alternatives to Hadoop, such as Daytona and LINQ for HPC (formerly known as Dryad). It also has a BigTable/HBase alternative called Azure Table Storage.
However, as Hadoop adoption has continued to spread it’s smart of Microsoft to offer support for Hadoop. Other vendors, such as Pentaho and Jaspersoft have announced connectors for Hadoop this year.
Microsoft also announced the Dell Parallel Data Warehouse appliance.
