Tweet-SQL: Interacting with Twitter through SQL Server
Nobody needs to be persuaded that Twitter is one of the biggest success stories to come out of
the Web 2.0 world so far. Its usefulness varies widely depending on the person using it -- some
find it a great way to stay on top of many trending subjects at once, while others use it as an
adjunct to email or other person-to-person communications.
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This was first published in February 2010
And yet, others have ambitions to connect it to other services, write interfaces and syndication
systems for it, or perhaps devise as-yet unheralded new ways to consume it (or provide it with data
for consumption).
If you're a SQL Server programmer looking for a fast way to make your databases talk to Twitter,
consider Tweet-SQL version 3, a third-party
(not endorsed or created by Twitter) set of Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 stored procedures and
CLR assemblies that encapsulate just about all of Twitter's APIs.
Installing and configuring Tweet-SQL is normally done through a GUI. You choose the database and
SQL Server and Twitter user accounts you want to use with your particular installation. Likewise,
the same GUI is used to remove Tweet-SQL, so it's relatively easy to clean up if you find it's not
what you need.
Tweet-SQL's stored procedures all begin with tweet_, so there's little chance of
a namespace collision with existing stored procedures. That said, you can always install Tweet-SQL
into its own database and work with it from there if you want to minimize the chances of a
collision. The internal settings for Tweet-SQL can also be modified either by way of the GUI or via
commands issued through its internal stored procedures, so they can be changed within a program or
through administrative action.
Many common things that people do with Twitter, but which aren't part of Twitter's native API
set, are also supported. For example, the tweet_util_tweetShrink stored procedure
abbreviates text in common ways (e.g. "2" for "two", "too", and "to") and even returns a value that
lets you know how many characters were shaved off.
A free download lets you try out Tweet-SQL for 30 days. As of this writing, the full version is
£25 (about $40 U.S.), though pricing may change. The licensing for the package lets you run it on
up to two machines—like one server and one end-user machine—but you're not restricted to using just
one Twitter account.
Note that right now there is no automatic tracking of Twitter's API rate limit through
Tweet-SQL, so whatever you create using Tweet-SQL, keep these restrictions in mind.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Serdar Yegulalp has been writing about computers and information technology for
more than 15 years for a variety of publications, including InformationWeek and Windows
Magazine.
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