I am pround to announce that we launched FREE SQL Server 2012 beta hosting (code name Denali) for our web hosting customers as part of our labs program. This is an opportunity for our customers to test out the next-generation in SQL Server database technology that will be available next year.
Every DiscountASP.NET webhosting account can enable a free 100 mb SQL 2012 beta database through their Control Panel.
Remember, this is a beta product and is intended for testing and experimentation so we do not recommend running production sites with this beta database. With the SQL 2012 beta hosting service, the SQL backup/restore tools, Attach MDF File tool and SQL Shrink tools are all available. However, the SQL 2012 beta server is not part of our nighly backups.
The SQL 2012 beta hosting program will end a week after the official release of SQL 2012. Of course, we will be notifying users via email before we take down the service.
For more information about SQL Server 2012, visit the Microsoft SQL web site.
If you run into any issues or have feedback, please post in our Community Forum.
This is the type of value added services and previews that we at DiscountASP.NET are continually working on to provide our customers with access to the latest cutting-edge Microsoft technologies as early as possible. We hope you enjoy the beta.
Having this post promoted on the #sqlhelp tag on Twitter is a great way to alienate the SQL Server community at large. The #sqlhelp tag exists for community members to get help with problems, not for marketing your webhosting products. Great way to ensure that I’ll never do business with this company.
We didn’t promote on #sqlhelp, we promoted on #sql. Twitter added the promoted post to #sqlhelp. When we asked them why the tweet wound up on the #sqlhelp hashtag their response was, “Oh, did it? It shouldn’t have.” Nothing we can really do about that. We’re still waiting for an explanation from someone on the technical side over there.
For what it’s worth, we don’t place any promotions anywhere that we don’t think is relevant. We’re not in business to annoy anyone (or waste our money ;)).
We are certainly not trying to alienate the SQL community. We know that the #sqlhelp tag exists for the community to get help and we did not target that hashtag. We don’t know why the tweet showed up there and we have contacted Twitter about it. Twitter is investigating.
We are definitely trying to let the SQL community know through multiple ways that we are offering a SQL 2012 beta hosting program because we believe the SQL community would be interested in it.
We are part of the community too and we try to help the community out as much as we are able. This is an example of the type of technology preview programs we support for the community.
Thanks for the explanation, hopefully Twitter can get this situation fixed soon as the Community is pretty protective of that hashtag. For future reference if you’re looking to get message to SQL Community at large the major hashtags are #sqlpass and #sqlserver .
Apparently, Twitter very recently changed the way promoted Tweets work (without notifying anyone). This is what they had to say:
So the promoted Tweets should not show up in #sqlhelp anymore.
We have also suggested that since they are going to take it upon themselves to promote outside our targets, that they provide some way to opt-out certain keywords or hashtags so that we can avoid this in the future.
Much appreciated for the updates and all the efforts you went through to fix this.