Chapter 2

Table Storage

IN THIS CHAPTER

  • Understand the criteria that impact design decisions in Table Storage
  • Learn how to create Table Storage tables
  • Discover how to query and update Table Storage objects

It’s almost a tradition for any discussion about Azure Table Storage to start by suggesting that developers have a difficult time understanding it. The reason for this premise is that the vast majority of developers spend most, if not all, of their data access time working with relational databases. Some of the confusion might arise from the fact that both types of data storage have a table as one of the fundamental elements. However, if you approach Table Storage properly, you will find that the differences are more in terms of the collection of capabilities supported by the two models, and in how you approach the design and administration of the tables, as much as they are the idea of Table Storage itself. This chapter tries to not only get you past this limitation so that you have a solid understanding of the benefits (and pitfalls) of Table Storage, but also shows you how to create and utilize Table Storage within your Azure applications.

DESIGNING TABLE STORAGE

The scenarios in which Table Storage might be used in the real world were covered in Chapter 1. Table Storage is the Windows Azure implementation of a NoSQL data store. This means that the information stored in Table Storage fits into the category of structured storage (as opposed to unstructured storage, like Blob ...

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