Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Administration

Chapter 24

SQL Azure Administration and Configuration

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER

• SQL Azure Configuration
• Server and Database Management
• Administration Tasks

This chapter provides a look at administering and configuring SQL Azure, assuming that you already have an Azure account and that you have some familiarity with the Azure platform. Microsoft SQL Azure is a database service provided as part of the Windows Azure Platform. Based on Microsoft SQL Server, it is a transactional database that includes many of the same SQL Server features that you know and love. Unlike SQL Server though, you don’t need to worry about installing and maintaining the hardware and software in which SQL Azure runs. SQL Azure is provided as a service, hosted in a Microsoft datacenter. As such, Microsoft takes care of the physical maintenance of the hardware and software layer, enabling you to focus on the important aspects such as database design and development.

INTRODUCTION TO SQL AZURE

SQL Azure is Microsoft’s transactional and relational database offering for cloud computing based on Microsoft SQL Server 2012. It supports many of the features of SQL Server including tables, primary keys, stored procedures, views, and much more.

SQL Azure exposes the tabular data stream interface for T-SQL just like SQL Server. Therefore, your database applications can use SQL Azure databases in the same way they use SQL Server. The only difference is that SQL Azure is a database delivered as a service, meaning administration ...