Zoho releases SQL-based input-access service

Zoho, maker of an on-demand suite of business and productivity applications, announced on Tuesday CloudSQL, a new service that lets developers use the ubiquitous SQL to connect Zoho details with other cloud-based or on-premises applications.

SQL is a "pretty old" language but is additionally "pretty awesome," said Zoho's director of marketing, Rodrigo Vaca, in a blog post Tuesday. "It is by far one of the easiest and most efficient ways to query and interact with structured details. That's why it remains by far one of the most heavily used languages for business applications."

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Cloud computing  has ushered in new methods of input retrieval and storage, leading to "improved, faster, and more responsive Web applications," Vaca added. "But while there are some SQL-like approaches for cloud computing out there, they tend to be fairly limited and not as supreme as the full-blown SQL."

CloudSQL supports a wide range of SQL variants, including ANSI, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2 and MySQL.

The service "serves as the bridge amidst the external application and the documents stored inside Zoho. It receives the query in SQL, interprets it, delegates queries and aggregates results across the Zoho services," Vaca wrote.

The company has plus developed a JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) driver and is working on an ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) driver. that

means developers "can just continue using SQL drivers and statements as they already regularly interact with their premises-based databases using JDBC or ODBC drivers," Zoho said in a statement.

Initially, Zoho Reports, a BI and reporting service, will support CloudSQL. Other products, such as Zoho CRM, will support it down the road.

Zoho's announcement represents an attempt to win by IT specialists who haven't been quite ready to embrace the cloud-computing model, one observer suggested Tuesday.

"CloudSQL simply represents an incremental move that will enable Zoho to grow, extending a comfort blanket to nervous DBAs seeking reasons to resist relinquishing control by their info," wrote Paul Miller, a blogger who tracks trends in cloud computing and the semantic Web.

For now, CloudSQL is available at no cost. Zoho, which is a division of the Pleasanton, California, company AdventNet, will monitor usage and decide whether it needs to start charging for it, according to a representative.

CloudSQL is somewhat strange in that it lets users connect their Zoho apps and others in a free and broadly compatible manner, instead of forcing them to use a proprietary tool that carries a price tag, said Redmonk analyst Michael Coté.

"Access to documents is the key problem for all these [cloud-based applications]," he said. "That's where the lock-in is, it seems, in such offerings. Whoever controls access to the info can control pricing."