The quiet achiever of the SaaS world, Zoho, has announced a new service called CloudSQL offering direct ODBC/JDBC access to certain cloud-hosted data with common SQL syntax. The service will also be available as an extension to Zoho's existing WebAPI, which means it will be accessible not only from direct application calls but also to most other online cloud services... and the company has already built out a demo project using Google's AppEngine to prove it.

CloudSQL seems to basically be taking the now-standard promise of cloud computing ("access your data anywhere, any way") and extending it into the SaaS space. Zoho and most other SaaS vendors already offer hooks into their systems to allow you access to your own data (gosh, how generous) from custom or third-party software, but Zoho in particular seems to be staking out a "we're more open than you are" place in the market. Their emphasis on providing technologies such as CloudSQL to enable this opens up options for programmers to use languages and methods which are both familiar to them and potentially more efficient for the tasks at hand.

More importantly, since CloudSQL is middleware, it will allow unified access to other cloud-based storage outside of Zoho's control. If I am reading the diagram right, the company needs only to build an entity mapping profile and the standard SQL syntax can be used for any Internet accessible storage mechanism. This has powerful implications for the robustness of cloud-based services... and serves as a warning shot for any cloud provider who thought they were going to have any degree of lock-in associated with their service.

The service is rolling out with access only to Zoho Reports, the business intelligence and reporting application, but the company promises that other application data will soon be available as well. A pricing model hasn't been announced yet, but the service is free for the moment.