Experimental Azure PaaS support in the SQL Server FDO provider

Do you use MapGuide? Do you also use SQL Server on Azure and have lamented for the longest time the inability of the SQL Server FDO provider to read/write data to a Azure-PaaS-hosted SQL Server db? 

Then boy, do I have news for you!

Thanks to some day-job dogfooding of FDO Toolbox and a test Azure account on hand I have finally tackled this 7 year old FDO ticket and landed experimental support for SQL Server on Azure PaaS.

You can download the 7zip archive of the patched provider from here.

Download, extract and overwrite the existing provider dll in your MapGuide Open Source 4.0 preview or FDO Toolbox 1.5.1 installation.

I have so far verified this provider can perform most provider operations needed for use in a MapGuide context.

The only operation I couldn't verify was whether the FDO CreateDataStore API worked for this provider in Azure PaaS due to insufficient permissions in the test account I was given. The CreateDataStore API is not used in the MapGuide context, so if this API doesn't work properly on Azure PaaS, it is not a deal breaker for use in MapGuide.

I'd be interested from anyone who tries this patched provider to let me know if this particular API works on Azure PaaS (ie. You can create a new FDO data store on Azure PaaS via FDO Toolbox with this patched provider)

Many thanks to Crispin Hoult of TrueViewVisuals (FKA LinkNode) for the original patch, which I had tweaked so the azure db detection is a runtime check instead of support you have to explicitly compile into the provider dll. If we had been using Azure PaaS earlier, the patch wouldn't have taken 7 years to finally be applied!