The TSQL command structure below provides will produce a copy of a database:

CREATE DATABASE  database_destination_name
AS COPY OF [source_server_name.]database_source_name

Note that this TSQL syntax allows for copying to a different Azure server. This is not necessary to protect the data from a disaster recovery point of view since the data is replicated across 3 geographic locations, but it might be required if you wish to copy the database to a different admin account or perhaps a different Azure account that would be billed separately to the source database account. If the database is copied to a new server the exact same login/password pair executing the command must exist on both the source server and destination server.

The copying process will not result in any downtime for the source database, and the copy will be a full copy complete with transactional data (note that this will be the transaction data as at the end time of the copying process not the start time of the copying process).

To monitor the copying process and determine if there were any copying errors you can query the sys.dm_database_copies view. The below command will retrieve all the data regarding the copying process:

Select * from sys.dm_database_copies

A major drawback to using Database Copy for backup is cost – each copy/backup will be charged as a new SQL Azure database.

Currently, there are 22 CDN locations:

United States

• Ashburn
• Bay Area
• Chicago
• San Antonio
• Los Angeles
• Miami
• Newark
• Seattle

Europe

• Amsterdam
• Dublin
• London
• Paris
• Stockholm
• Vienna
• Zurich

Asia-Pacific

• Hong Kong
• Singapore
• Sydney
• Tokyo
• Seoul
• Taipei

South America

• São Paulo

• $0.15 per GB for data from European and North American locations.
• $0.20 per GB for data from other locations.

In addition there is a flat charge of $0.01 per 10,000 transactions.

The CDN works by caching content at its 20 worldwide ‘edge’ locations, the first time that a file is requested at an edge location it must be transferred from Azure Storage and will thus incur Azure Storage costs in addition to the CDN pricing.

Azure CDN pricing is broadly comparable to Amazon’s competing CloudFront CDN, except that CloudFront prices transactions at $0.0075 per 10,000 and also offers discounts for larger data transfers (down to $0.03 for 1,000TB per month.

For this demo we will use SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to generate the SQL scripts and
migrate an existing database from SQL Server 2008 to  SQL Azure. It should be noted that there are several tools such as the SQL Migration Wizard for assisting in the migration, but in this article we will look at performing a manual migration.

Since SQL Azure is built from SQL Server 2008, the database should first be migrated to SQL Serer 2008 if necessary (note – it is not necessary to update to 2008 R2).

1. Open SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), right-click on the database node of the database to be migrated (AdventureWorks for this demo) and select Tasks > Generate Scripts , then select the database to be migrated and click Next:
   
2. In the Choose Script Options page, we need to configure the script to comply with the restrictions of SQL Azure, so make the following changes:
   • Convert UDDTs to Base Type: Set this  to true as SQL Azure does not support user-defined types. UDDT’s need to be converted into SQL Azure portable types.
   • Script extended properties: Set to false as SQL Azure does not support extended properties.
   • Script USE DATABASE: Set to false as SQL Azure does not support the USE statement.
   • Script Data: Set to false since we are not migrating the data right now.
3. In the Choose Object Types page – select all the objects except User Defined Data Types and click Next:
   
4. In a succession of screens you will be prompted to select the Stored Procedures, Views, Tables etc to be migrated (depending on which objects are in your database). Click Select All then Next for each.
5. Finally at the Output Option page select where the script should be generated (in this example I have elected to have the script generated in a new query window):
   
6. Click Next and SSMS will direct you to the Summary page before generating the scripts in a new SQL script window. The Generate Script Success screen shows the progress and results of the migration on the database objects (see below). Copy the script generated to the clipboard.
   
7. Log in to the Azure platform portal at https://sql.azure.com/ and create a target database on the online portal (simply click Create Database after navigating to the the SQL Azure tab and then select the database size).
8. Close and re-open SSMS to connect to SQL Azure and view your database (see Connect to SQL Azure from SSMS for details if neceesary) . Note – SSMS in SQL Server 2008 R2 can view the SQL Azure objects and should be used whenever connecting to SQL Azure.
9. Copy the script into a new script window in SSMS. Before we run the script against the target SQL Azure database we still need to make some modifications to the script:
   • SQL Azure’s first release does not support partitions. Therefore the KEY constraint statement for the table-creation scripts has to be removed and replaced by a separate script. For example, in the original script SSMS generated for creating a data table there are KEYconstraints such asPRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED
     (
     [TerritoryID] ASC
     )WITH (PAD_INDEX  = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE  = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS  = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS  = ON) ON [PRIMARY]
     ) ON [PRIMARY]

     This needs to be replaced with a separate ALTER TABLE Script to Assign a Key to a Table, such as:

     ALTER TABLE [Table_Name]
     ADD CONSTRAINT ID_PK PRIMARY KEY (Primary_Key)

   • If there are any CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX statements in the script, these will need to be modified. For example remove the bold type text from the below script section:CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [IX_UserTable_FirstName] ON [dbo].[UserTable]
     (
     [FirstName] ASC
     )WITH (STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, DROP_EXISTING = OFF,ONLINE = OFF) ON [PRIMARY]
     GO

That’s it, now run the script against the SQL Azure database (ie click New Query in SSMS, select the target SQL Azure database from the dropdown database listing  and click Execute).

It should be noted that this is as of SQL Azure Update 1 (February 2010) , SQL Azure is currently developing rapidly and not all the inconsistencies with SQL Server are well documented.

Continuous Backup is slated for release in late 2010.

Database

First you need to create a database. You need to be logged in to the Master database to create a database.

CREATE DATABASE AdventureWorks2008

After creating the database, you need to log into the database with the created database credentials.

Schema, UDF and UDT

Schema , UDF and UDTs will be created without any issues. However, if you generate the script from the AdventurkWorks2008 database there will be entries for stored procedure sp_addextendedproperty.

Table & DML Triggers

There are a few limitations in the CREATE TABLE statement when it comes to SQL Azure which are highlighted in the following image.

You will need to remove these tags and columns to create tables in SQL Azure. As you can see in the above image, ROWGUIDCOL, xml and hierarchyid data types are not supported.

Triggers will be created but you shouldn’t use columns with more than two parts.

If you run this statement you will receive following error.

Deprecated feature ‘More than two-part column name’ is not supported in this version of SQL Server.

In the Update statement above, RevisionNumber is referred as [Purchasing].[PurchaseOrderHeader].[RevisionNumber] which will not be supported by SQL Azure.

View

Views don’t have major issues except that the above mention column types are not supported.

Stored Procedures

Store procedures behave same as views.

DDL Triggers

DDL Triggers can be created but with a major limitation – the EVENTDATA() function is not supported in SQL Azure (the EVENTDATA() function used to capture event information).

Using SQL Azure

SQL Azure is still in CTP , the SQL Azure Database CTP is available for free and you can register below to receive an invitation. Due to high demand for the SQL Azure Database CTP, there may be some delays in receiving your invitation codes. http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=149681&clcid=0×09

Editions & Pricing

There are two editions for SQL Azure, namely Web and Business. While self-managed DB and auto high-availability features are supported in both editions, there are few differences between them.

Main difference is the storage, as the Web edition supports only 1 GB of database storage space and the Business edition supports 10GB. In case you need to store more that 10GB of data, you will have to break the databases into small sizes. Apart from basic T-SQL facilities, there will additional features like auto-partition and CLR in the business edition. However, these features are not yet available in CTP.

Upon the availability of production ready SQL Azure, the fee will be as below:

•Web Edition: Up to 1 GB relational database = $9.99 / month

•Business Edition: Up to 10 GB relational database = $99.99 / month

•Bandwidth = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB

Using SQL Azure Databases

As there are no options in the web interface to create tables or databases, you will need to use other tools for creating and designing Azure based databases:

SQLcmd

SQLcmd is supported on SQL Azure and you can connect to an Azure database using the below command.

C:>sqlcmd -U <User> -P <PPassword> -S <ServerName> -d master

Management Studio

SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is the most frequently used tool to connect to SQL Server databases. However, when connecting to SQL Azure there several additional steps you need to follow.

1. Open SSMS

2. Cancel out of the first connection dialog that pops up and click on the New Query button from the toolbar. If you enter credentials without performing this step the following error will appear: (Microsoft is working on this issue).

3. When you are prompted to connect to a database, cancel that dialog.

4. You should be left with an empty management console. Click New Query.

5. For the server name, take the fully qualified host name from your SQL Azure connection string. It should look something like mlqe0vurwb.database.windows.net.

6. Choose SQL Server Authentication as SQL Azure does not support Windows Authentication. Supply the username and password that you used for your database.

7. Click on the Options button on the bottom right of the dialog box

8. Set the database name, manually, to the name of your database. It will not show up in the drop-down list. Please note that in case you need to connect other databases, you have to connect again.

9. Make sure the server type is set to the database engine.

10. Click Connect.

For SQL Azure SSMS does to show the objects in the Object Explorer and you will need to write T-SQL for all your needs.

Visual Studio

You can view the connection strings for the relevant databases by clicking the Connection String button.

Using above connection strings, you can connect to SQL Azure from Visual Studio.

?

Third Party Tools:

As demonstrated, SSMS may not be a good tool for SQL Azure. There are couple of third party tools that I have been working with:

Omega Web Client

Omega Web Client has a great set of functionalities. It has a great object explorer. You can access this tool online at https://onlinedemo.cerebrata.com/SQLAzureClient/default.aspx and therefore no installation is needed.

Below is the main view of the UI that you will see from this tool.

SQL Azure Manager

SQL Azure Manager is another tool which supports SQL Azure. However there are quite number of draw backs which will be discussed later.

You can download this tool from http://hanssens.org/tools/sqlazuremanager/.

The SQL Azure Manager UI is much better than SSMS or the Omega web client.

Though SQL Azure Manager has a much better UI than SSMS 2008 or Omega, it is still lacking a lot of features in the object explorer. For example, it shows the views in object explorer, but does not allow the user to create the alter script for a view. Also, it does not display stored procedures or functions in the object explorer and can only show data of tables with the dbo schema.

SSIS & SQL Azure

SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is used to integrate data between different data sources.

The first thing to note is that SQL Azure currently does not support OLE DB. The normal recommendation for SSIS is to use the OLE DB Source or Destination to access SQL Server. However, if you want to work with SSIS and SQL Azure, you must use the ADO.NET Source and Destinations. This is fine for 2008, but if you are using SSIS 2005, there is no ADO.NET Destination, so you will have to implement your own through a script component. This can be done by creating a source or destination and then using the SSIS control flow tasks and data flow tasks.

After it will be the standard way of write SSIS packages.

When using SSIS for SQL Azure, tables without a clustered index are not supported hence you are required to create a clustered index.