Like many of us, you may have run into challenges when

importing real-time market data in Excel, Visual Studio &

SQL Server. With the recent addition of Xignite Financial Market

Data to the Microsoft Azure Marketplace Datamarket, users can now

pull live stock quotes directly into Microsoft Excel 2010,

develop data rich applications using Visual Studio 2010 and

seamlessly populate backend database with SQL Server

2010.

In late 2010, Xignite and Microsoft

teamed up to make XigniteBATSLastSale, a real-time stock quote

data service, available through the Azure Marketplace Datamarket,

with the addition of other datasets scheduled to rollout in the

months ahead. With this, Microsoft users can obtain instant

online access to real-time stock quotes from the BATS Exchange.

Now everyone from hardcore mobile app developers to garage based

startups can obtain access to the same professional grade APIs to

power their applications.

New to Xignite is

the addition of OData, or Open Data Protocol, a method of

querying and updating data which unlocks the data from the silos

that exist in legacy applications. Today, OData is being used to

expose and access information from a variety of sources

including, but not limited to, relational databases, file

systems, content management systems and traditional Web

sites.

Wes Yanaga with Microsoft's

Channel 9 sat down with Shoshanna Budzianowski (SQL Azure) and

Chas Cooper (Xignite) to get the low down on what this

partnership is all about, and how it will benefit end user around

the globe.

After the

Channel 9 video was completed, Shoshanna Budzianowski sat down

with Marc Bollinger, Web Service Engineer at Xignite, for some

one-on-one developer talk and a bit of programming fun (CLICK

MORE to see developer video)

Looking forward, Xignite has plans to put the vast

majority its data onto the Azure DataMarket. "We have

started with our most popular data sets, but will continue to add

data until the market is satisfied with what Xignite is

offering" said Chas Cooper, VP of Product management at

Xignite.

Microsoft brings a very horizontal

market to Xignite, with DataMarket providing broad coverage

across different verticals. When Microsoft looked for companies

to work with on Data Market, two things attracted Microsoft to

Xignite; 1) the fact that Xignite understands how to deliver

on-demand market data and financial web services" and

2) out of all the financial data providers evaluated for Azure

Datamarket, Xignite has the most reasonable, rational terms of

use across its data sets. Xignite also uses standards such as

SOAP, REST & JSON to make integrate with Xignite's web

services simple and straight forward.

Developers should visit href="http://datamarket.azure.com">http://datamarket.azure.com,

where they can type Xignite into the search bar there and see all

of the services available. More information is available at href="http://www.xignite.com/www.xignite.com">www.xignite.com.