Microsoft Codename ‘Data Explorer’ CTP Available Soon

Early adopters will be able to get a taste of Microsoft codename “Data Explorer” in the coming months, according to the software giant, which promises that a testing release will be made available by the end of 2011.

Attendees of the PASS Summit 2011 have already been able to watch a demonstration during the speech of Microsoft Corporate Vice President Ted Kummer, on October 12.

Obviously, Microsoft codename “Data Explorer” was unveiled concomitantly with the Redmond company revealing that SQL Server 2012, formerly codenamed Denali, would ship to customers in the first half of 2012.

At the time of this article the webpage for the Microsoft codename "Data Explorer" was already live. Unfortunately, the same is not valid for the first Community Technology Preview of the offering.

“Data Explorer is a new concept which provides an innovative way to gain new insights from the data you care about. With Data Explorer you can discover relevant data sources, enrich your data by combining with other sources, and then publish and share your insights with others,” revealed a member of the Data Explorer team.

According to Microsoft, Data Explorer is capable of handling a range of sources, from Excel spreadsheets, to SQL Server databases, but also additional files.

It must be underlined that Windows Azure Marketplace is also supported, and that Data Explorer will play nice with datasets and data services from Microsoft’s Cloud bazaar.

“But that’s just the beginning. “Data Explorer” then enables you to easily enrich your data to find insights by combining your data from multiple sources including the data you have discovered,” the Data Explorer team representative added.

“Finally, “Data Explorer” brings the ability to seamlessly publish and share your results in order to collaborate with colleagues or to power other applications. “Data Explorer” can generate data feeds in open RESTful standard (Open Data Protocol) to be consumed by other applications and tools.”