Introduction on SQL Azure

Hi Friends,

Last week I've attended a session on “SQL Azure”. So thought of sharing the key points on the blog for our all reference. Till before attending the session, it was just a word for me “AZURE” with zero knowledge on this technology (or rather my understanding was just limited to “it is something related to Cloud”).

Following are some points I’d like to share which I learned from the session:

i.    We can consider SQL Serve Azure (SSA) just like a SQL Server (SS) Version (Cloud version). 

     It is the light version of SS.

ii.   SSA is Scalable, HA, RDBMS and Secure.

iii. SSA runs only on “Windows Azure Platform”.

iv.  One can connect the server through Azure Portal as well as SSMS.

v.    SSA has two Editions. Web Edition and Business Edition with 5 GB and 50 GB DB limit     respectively.

vi.   Data can be migrated from any other RDBMS such as Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, etc...

vii. Pricing is based on the Usage (DB Size). Large the DB size is more your billing would be.

Difference between SQL Server (SS) and SQL Server Azure (SSA):

1.  Only SQL Authentication is possible in SSA; whereas SQL as well as Windows Authentication is also possible in SS.

2.  While making login Azure does not allow login name like sa, admin, guest, administrator and root. There is no as such restriction in SS.

3.  No CPU, CAL licensing is involved in SSA like SS; rather billing is done based on consumption (More the DB Size more the bill will be).

4.  Since SSA is a light version many features are not present in SSA compared to SS.

5.  SSA table must have Cluster Index whereas it’s not compulsory in SS.

6.  Only Master DB is present in SSA on contrary Master, Model, MSDB & Tempdb is present in SS.

7.  Max size of DB in SSA is 50 GB; whereas in SS it’s in TB’s.

8.  Transaction should stay in single DB; whereas in SS it can run adhoc queries.

9.  As it is in Azure only TCP\IP protocol is supported; where as in SS it supports many protocols.

10. In Azure, Application cannot go down unexpectedly.

Guys this is just a welcome note on SQL Azure.  There are lots of things to learn in SSA. Will keep on posting as and when I‘ll have the content along with the necessary snapshots.

Note: Above points are my understanding from the session, there might be some flaws. Looking forward for your note to correct me if I’m wrong anywhere.   

Thanks for reading the article. Stay Tuned.