Azure Support

OK, Windows Azure isn’t a year old yet (it only came out of Beta in February) but it is almost year since it was made widely available and demoed at PDC 2009. So before PDC 2010, its a good time to reflect on the past year of Azure with a report card for Azure to [...]

SQL Azure is essentially a cut down version of SQL Server and so we would expect that migrating from SQL Server to SQL Azure should be a straightforward task. However, in the first release of SQL Azure, the scripts generated by SQL Server Management Studio will require some extra cleanup since not all the SQL [...]

SQL Azure comes with a built-in  firewall, through which all connection attempts to a SQL Azure database must pass. By  default the firewall blocks all access to the database even from your own Azure applications. The first step in configuring the firewall is therefore to navigate to SQL Azure in the online Azure developer portal, [...]

As of January 2010 launch encryption and compression are not included in the SQL Azure feature list. Encryption should definitely be introduced in 2010 and compression is also currently in testing.

As of August 2010 SQL Azure does not contain any inbuilt backup options. The closest to an inbuilt backup functions is support for the TSQL Database Copy command which produces a transactionally complete copy of a database. Coming in 2010, Azure will deliver two backup methods – Clone and Continuous Backup. Clone (targeted for release [...]

There are several methods available to migrate data to a SQL Azure database. BCP using the .exe bulk load/export tool. SSIS Bulk API’s in ADO.NET and ODBC (see below). Third Party Tools Sync Framework BCP BCP is probably the fastest way to move the data. BCP is a command line tool introduced with SQL Server [...]

One of the key benefits of Azure is the inbuilt failover protection, in the event of a hardware failure the automatic failover kicks in and a mirror of the database is brought online. This failover is not completely seemless as the current sessions will first be disconnected and then must be reconnected. If the fail [...]

As Azure is a common platform shared by many users Microsoft has implement resource utilization limits to prevent excessive use of resources. This seems a little strange on a cloud based system which should isolate users and provide effortless scaling but some resources need to be managed carefully to prevent an adverse impact on the [...]

Connecting to a SQL Azure database is extremely simple, connection can be done using the classic ADO.NET  method. When a database is created in SQL Azure a connection string is generated. This connection string follows the normal  syntax for connection strings and can be substituted for a connection string to a SQL Server in an [...]

So how do you know whether all the T-SQL syntaxes are working with SQL Azure? For the purpose of this example we will use the TSQL from the AdventureWorks database. 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 [...]