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Hashed-block chains can be used to prove data history has not been tampered with, i.e. an audit log is true. If you change something in the history/audit the re

Hashed-block chains can be used to prove data history has not been tampered with, i.e. an audit log is true. If you change something in the history/audit the related blockchain from that point in time onwards becomes invalid. There needs to be some 3rd party interaction to completely believe what this chain of block hashes tells you, as someone editing history in a DB could in theory replay all other transactions and recreate the ledger from that point onwards to remove evidence of the modification. Search for "ledger tables" and "distributed ledger" for more info. The idea pre-dates cryptocurrencies by quite some time. I've seen small scale implementations of it, and talks about MS researching the area in relation to SQL Server and similar offerings. Edit: reading further down the comments, it looks like MS's work has recently left the research stage and is being offered as an alpha product in some Azure regions: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-sql/announcing-azure-sql-database-ledger/ba-p/2200401 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-sql/announcing-... Other comments below mention similar ledger features in other products/services too.

2cb 5y ago
Honestly, that Azure Ledger SQL idea makes more sense for today's enterprise systems than a decentralised blockchain. Not because "blockchains are bad" which unfortunately is what most of the comments have turned into, but rather because it makes a lot more sense in a business context. Azure's main competition is obviously AWS. And AWS already offer a cloud-based blockchain service used by many big names.[1] Seems to me that Microsoft is just following in their footsteps with that new approach of centralising the ledger. Basically the same thing Amazon's main offering does. Most large enterprises right now are turning to centralised cloud solutions, that's just the way the market is right now, companies just want to stick their entire businesses on hyperscalers. It's simply easier and cheaper to move an on-prem database to a cloud service than it is to create and maintain a decentralised network. Taking the blockchain's data integrity features and adding them to existing cloud services therefore makes a lot more sense for actual enterprise use today when you want to compete with AWS and sell cloud subscriptions which Azure does. I do believe decentralisation in general will mature over time, and certainly many arguments can be made in its favour including for enterprise. I do find it concerning that virtually every big company and even government organisations run everything on AWS, GCP, Azure. And once you have everything running in one of those bubbles there's lock-in. I'm sure most of us would agree that's hardly ideal. But at the end of the day if you're catering to enterprise and enterprise is saying "we want to throw everything on your servers and have you manage it for us" you have to listen to the market. [1] https://aws.amazon.com/blockchain/ https://aws.amazon.com/blockchain/

2cb 5y ago

Honestly, that Azure Ledger SQL idea makes more sense for today's enterprise systems than a decentralised blockchain. Not because "blockchains are bad" which unfortunately is what most of the comments have turned into, but rather because it makes a lot more sense in a business context. Azure's main competition is obviously AWS. And AWS already offer a cloud-based blockchain service used by many big names.[1] Seems to me that Microsoft is just following in their footsteps with that new approach of centralising the ledger. Basically the same thing Amazon's main offering does. Most large enterprises right now are turning to centralised cloud solutions, that's just the way the market is right now, companies just want to stick their entire businesses on hyperscalers. It's simply easier and cheaper to move an on-prem database to a cloud service than it is to create and maintain a decentralised network. Taking the blockchain's data integrity features and adding them to existing cloud services therefore makes a lot more sense for actual enterprise use today when you want to compete with AWS and sell cloud subscriptions which Azure does. I do believe decentralisation in general will mature over time, and certainly many arguments can be made in its favour including for enterprise. I do find it concerning that virtually every big company and even government organisations run everything on AWS, GCP, Azure. And once you have everything running in one of those bubbles there's lock-in. I'm sure most of us would agree that's hardly ideal. But at the end of the day if you're catering to enterprise and enterprise is saying "we want to throw everything on your servers and have you manage it for us" you have to listen to the market. [1] https://aws.amazon.com/blockchain/ https://aws.amazon.com/blockchain/