Last year, we made .NET Core available as open source software, and we received a lot of enthusiastic contributions from the community. To complement the .NET Framework’s Open Source initiatives Azure SQL Database Elastic Database Client Library is now available as well as open source software on GitHub.

What is the elastic database client library?

The elastic database client library simplifies the creation of ADO.NET applications that implement and use the pattern known as database sharding in Azure SQL Database. Sharding is a technique used for physically partitioning data across a number of identically structured databases. This library simplifies the creation and management of shards to support the growing and shrinking data storage demands of an application. For detailed information about the elastic database client libraries, please view the documentation map.

Why open source?

Open sourcing the elastic database client library means customers will be able to engage directly with the product group in real time as contributors to the codebase. Of course, not every customer wants interact with us that closely. But those who do make the stack better for all of us because they provide early & steady feedback. In addition, open sourcing:

• Accelerates innovative features to market that our customers want

• Helps customers use our code with confidence

• Facilitates extending the elastic database client library to work with other client APIs

Are we accepting contributions?

Yes, we do accept contributions! All contributions will be thoroughly reviewed by the Azure SQL Database team before being accepted. The pull requests we receive will be reviewed using the following criteria:

• Roadmap. All projects focus their energy on certain areas. In order to keep the focus and the momentum it’s important that most of the work is aligned with the product’s roadmap.
• Quality. We have a responsibility to ship high quality code. Therefore, all contributions must meet the same quality bar required of Microsoft-developed code. This includes having the right design, architecture, sufficient test coverage and following the coding style.

All future releases of the Elastic Database client library available on NuGet will be built from the main open-source branch in GitHub, and Microsoft will continue to fully support these builds of the product as it evolves.

We welcome you to contribute and share your feedback on the Elastic Database Tools repo on GitHub, where you can find the client library code. To get started, please read the README.md on GitHub to get guidance on issues, contribution and branching.  Additionally, to ensure we incorporate your work into the project, please review and sign the Contribution License Agreement (CLA).

We look forward to reviewing your contributions. In the near future, we plan to open source Elastic Database Split/Merge tool as well. So stay tuned and start contributing!