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by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 9/2/2010 4:58:26 PM
SQL Azure doesn’t currently support page level or row level compression like the enterprise edition of SQL Server 2008. However, you can implement your own column level compression in your data access layer to take advantage of the performance and cost savings of compression. I will discuss how to do this and provide some example code in this blog post. Column level compression is the concept of compressing your data before you write it to the database, and decompressing it when you it from the ...
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by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/31/2010 7:40:00 PM
Liam Cavanagh has posted a webcast to Channel 9 that shows you how to extend the capabilities of SQL Azure Data Sync by writing a custom sync applications to enable bi-directional data synchronization between SQL Server and SQL Azure. This enables you to add customization to your synchronization process such as custom business logic or custom conflict resolution through the use of Visual Studio and Sync Framework 2.1. Watch the Video Read The Blog Post ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/30/2010 3:10:38 PM
In a previous blog post I covered how to calculate the cost of a covered index, allowing you to evaluate if the performance of the covered index was worth its monthly cost. In this blog post I am going to use Transact-SQL to calculate the average cost of a row in a table. Imagine that you are running a web site that reviews restaurants and you sell advertising space on the web page to generate revenue. The advertising engine can output how much you make in revenue each month for each review. Wo ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/26/2010 3:20:00 PM
In this example application, I am going to build a Bing Maps tile server using Windows Azure that draws push pins on the tiles based on coordinates stored as spatial data in SQL Azure. Bing Maps allows you to draw over their maps with custom tiles; these tiles can be generated dynamically from a Windows Azure server. The overlay that this example produces corresponds to latitude and longitude points stored in a SQL Azure database. There is another option for drawing pushpins, using JavaScript t ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/25/2010 5:46:21 PM
Microsoft® Project Code-Named “Houston” is a lightweight and easy to use database management tool for SQL Azure databases. It is designed specifically for Web developers and other technology professionals seeking a straightforward solution to quickly develop, deploy, and manage their data-driven applications in the cloud. Project “Houston” provides a web-based database management tool for basic database management tasks like authoring and executing queries, designing and editing a database schem ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/25/2010 2:32:28 PM
With the release of Service Update 4 for SQL Azure you now have the ability to make a snapshot of your running database on SQL Azure. This allows you to quickly create a backup before you implement changes to your production database, or to create a test database that resembles your production database. The backup is performed in the SQL Azure datacenter using a transactional mechanism without downtime to the source database. The database is copied in full to a new database in the same datacent ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/24/2010 4:36:00 PM
The new version (v4.2) of SQL Server Migration Assistant that came out on August 12th, 2010 allows you to move your Microsoft Access Tables and queries to SQL Azure. In this blog post I will walk through how to use the SQL Server Migration Assistant migration wizard to move the North Wind database to SQL Azure. Download You can download and install the SQL Server Migration Assistant for free from here, note that you will want the 2008 version of the download that aligns with SQL Azure which is b ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/19/2010 3:10:00 PM
In a previous blog post I discussed creating covered indexes to increase performance and reduce I/O usage. Covered indexes are a type of non-clustered index that “covers” all the columns in your query to create better performance than a table scan of all the data. An observant reader pointed out that there is a financial cost associated with creating covered indexes. He was right, SQL Azure charges for the room required to store the covered index on our server. I thought it would be ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/17/2010 2:44:33 PM
Currently Microsoft doesn’t provide a PaaS version of SQL Server Reporting Service, where you can run your server-side (.rdl) reports in the cloud. However, if you want to run reports using Microsoft reporting technology you can use Windows Azure to host your client report definition (.rdlc) in a ASP.NET web page. This techique uses the ReportViewer control (that ships with ASP.NET) to execute, generate and display the reports from Windows Azure. This allows you to have your reports in the cloud ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/16/2010 8:24:40 PM
To me, as a DBA, the most important thing about the Windows Azure Platform Appliance, announced here, is the translation of my SQL server skill set across all deployment scenarios. The knowledge is portable because the database technology is scalable and the tools are shared. Skills translation goes hand in hand with database portability. You can move your SQL Server platform database from desktop applications using SQL Express to: Enterprise on-premise SQL Server installations Off-prem ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/13/2010 4:02:11 PM
Slow or long-running queries can contribute to excessive resource consumption and be the consequence of blocked queries; in other words poor performance. The concept of blocking is not different on SQL Azure then on SQL Server. Blocking is an unavoidable characteristic of any relational database management system with lock-based concurrency. The query below will display the top ten running queries that have the longest total elapsed time and are blocking other queries. SELECT TOP 10 r.session ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/12/2010 5:30:20 PM
SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA for MySQL v1.0) has been updated to support migration from MySQL to SQL Azure. This release makes it possible to move data directly and easily from local MySQL databases into SQL Azure, to help you better consolidate your disparate departmental or ad-hoc data into a centrally managed and highly scalable environment on SQL Azure. The SQL Server Migration Assistant toolkits were designed to tackle the complex manual process customers deal with when migrating da ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/12/2010 5:28:54 PM
SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA for Access v4.2) has been updated to support migrating your schema and data from Microsoft Access to SQL Azure. This release makes it possible to move data directly and easily from local Microsoft Access databases. The SQL Server Migration Assistant toolkits were designed to tackle the complex manual process customers deal with when migrating databases. By using the SQL Server Migration Assistants, customers and partners reduce the manual effort; as a result ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/11/2010 3:57:33 PM
I see this come up from time to time, so I thought I would set the record straight; a server isn’t a machine. In SQL Azure, there is a concept of a server, which appears in the SQL Azure portal looking like this: However, a server isn’t the same as a server in an on-premise SQL Server installation. In an on-premise SQL Server installation a server is synonymous with a machine, which has a fixed set of resources, storage, and hence can hold a limited number of databases. With SQL Azure, a ser ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/10/2010 5:00:00 PM
SQL Azure databases are capped in size; one reason for this is that we don’t want to send you a surprise bill if your data grows beyond your expectations. You can always increase or decrease the cap of your database (up to 50 Gigabytes); however this is not done automatically. This article will discuss the various tricks and tips to handling the size of your SQL Azure databases, including: making them bigger, querying your current cap, figuring out the current size, and detecting size erro ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/6/2010 4:04:47 PM
How would you like to try SQL Azure and Windows Azure for a month - for free? Now you can, with the Windows Azure Platform One Month Pass USA. Through this unique offer, US developers can get a one month pass to try out SQL Azure and Windows Azure - without having to submit a credit card! Limited to US developers, the first 500 to sign up each month will get a full month's pass good for the one calendar month. In addition, you'll get free phone, chat and email support through ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/4/2010 7:12:00 PM
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a stateless protocol; the advantage of a stateless protocol is that web servers do not need to retain information about users between requests. However, in some scenarios web site developers want to maintain state between page requests to provide consistency to the web application. To create state from a stateless protocol, ASP.NET has the concept of a session which is maintained from the user’s first request to their last request for that visit to the ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/3/2010 3:23:47 PM
Currently, SQL Azure doesn’t have the concept of a SQL Server Agent. In this blog series we are attempting to create a light-weight substitute using a Windows Azure worker role. In the first blog post of the series, I covered how the Windows Azure worker roles compare to SQL Server Agent, and got started with Visual Studio and some code. In the second blog post, I covered how to code a worker role that only executes a job once per day. In this third post in the series, I am going to dive into er ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/2/2010 5:02:46 PM
Currently, SQL Azure doesn’t have the concept of a SQL Server Agent. In this blog series we are attempting to create a light-weight substitute using a Windows Azure Worker role. In the first blog post of the series, I covered how the Windows Azure worker roles compare to SQL Server Agent, and got started with Visual Studio and some code. In this blog post I am going to create a mechanism to complete the “job” once per day. Creating a Database Windows Azure is a stateless platform, where the wo ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 7/30/2010 2:37:06 PM
Currently, SQL Azure doesn’t support running SQL Server Agent in the cloud. If you need SQL Server Agent type functionality for SQL Azure, you can use a Windows Azure worker role and some custom code, I will show you how in this blog post series. “Secret agent man, secret agent man They've given you a number and taken away your name” – Johnny Rivers SQL Server Agent SQL Server Agent is a Microsoft Windows service that executes scheduled administrative tasks, which are called jobs. ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 7/29/2010 4:03:34 PM
SQL Azure has two types of access control: SQL Authentication logins and passwords and a server side firewall that restricts access by IP address. This blog post will discuss how to programmatically modify the firewall settings. For information about programmatically creating logins, see this blog post. Firewall SQL Azure maintains a firewall for the SQL Azure servers, preventing anyone from connecting to your server if you do not give their client IP address access. The most common way to do ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 7/28/2010 3:00:51 PM
Both SQL Server and SQL Azure have a procedure cache which is used to improve the performance of queries on the server. This blog post will talk about how the procedure cache works on SQL Azure. SQL Azure has a pool of memory that is used to store both execution plans and data buffers. This pool of memory is used for all databases on the physical machine, regardless of owner of the database. Even though the pool is across all databases on the machine, no one can see execution plans that they do ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 7/27/2010 4:22:29 PM
As a DBA I have done a lot of work improving I/O performance for on-premise SQL Server installations. Usually it involves tweaking the storage system, balancing databases across RAID arrays, or expanding the count of files that the tempdb is using; these are all common techniques of SQL Server DBA. However, how do you improve your I/O performance when you are not in charge of the storage subsystem, like in the case of SQL Azure? You focus on how your queries use the I/O and improve the queries. ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 7/26/2010 2:55:40 PM
Microsoft Project Code-Named “Houston” (Houston) is a light weight database management tool for SQL Azure. Houston can be used for basic database management tasks like authoring and executing queries, designing and editing a database schema, and editing table data. Currently, Houston is its first community technology preview (CTP), the instructions and screen shots shown in this blog post are from the CTP version of Houston. In this blog post I am going to show how to get started using Houston. ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 7/22/2010 7:46:32 PM
While this might seem like a non-announcement, the data type hierarchyid has just been added as a supported data type with SQL Azure Service Update 3, announced here. The hierarchyid data type is used to manage hierarchical data and tables that have a hierarchical structure. For example, employee manager relationships, and thread forum data. SQL Azure also supports the hierarchyid functions as of Service Update 3. This seems obvious; you need these functions to interact with the hierarchyid dat ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 7/20/2010 3:18:55 PM
The Open Data Protocol (OData) is an emerging standard for querying and updating data over the Web. OData is a REST-based protocol whose core focus is to maximize the interoperability between data services and clients that wish to access that data. It is being used to expose data from a variety of sources, from relational databases like SQL Azure and file systems to content management systems and traditional websites. In addition, clients across many platforms, ranging from ASP.NET, PHP, and Ja ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 7/19/2010 3:15:18 PM
In this article I am going to touch on some of the aspects of transaction handling in SQL Azure. This blog post was originally published on 7/19/2010, it has been updated on 8/06/2010 for clarity and to address some of the issues raised in the comments. Local Transactions SQL Azure supports local transactions. These types of transactions are done with the Transact-SQL commands BEGIN TRANSACTION, ROLLBACK TRANSACTION, COMMIT TRANSACTION. They work exactly the same as they do on SQL Se ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 7/16/2010 2:48:28 PM
Geographic redundancy is a fancy word for distributing your data across multiple data centers globally. One way to accomplish this is to spread your data across many SQL Azure data centers using Data Sync Service for SQL Azure to synchronize a hub database to many global member databases. SQL Azure has six data centers worldwide In the future I will blog about a more complicated technique that provides real time writes and geographic redundancy with Data Sync Services. Considerations The tech ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 7/15/2010 2:57:42 PM
When you horizontally partitioning data across multiple SQL Azure databases or using Data Sync Server for SQL Azure, there might come a time when you need to write to a member database without causing primary key merge conflicts. In this case you need to be able to generate a primary key that is unique across all databases. In this article we will discuss different techniques to generate primary keys and their advantages and disadvantage. UniqueIdentifier One way to generate a unique primary k ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 7/14/2010 3:14:22 PM
I have been deep diving into SQL Azure by blogging about circular references and connection handling for the last couple of months – which are great topics. However, in an internal meeting with the Windows Azure folks last week, I realized that I hadn’t really talked about what SQL Azure is and how to get started with SQL Azure. So I am going to take a minute to give you my unique perspective on SQL Azure and how it relates to our brethren, Windows Azure. SQL Azure is a cloud-based relational ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 7/13/2010 3:34:10 PM
Steve Ballmer made big new yesterday at the company's annual Worldwide Partner Conference with the announcement for the Windows Azure Platform Appliance. Here is what the media is saying: Microsoft Lures Giant Partners With Windows Azure Appliance Microsoft this week is taking Windows Azure to the next level, and its taking some of its largest partners along for the ride. New Windows Azure Platform Focusing the Cloud on Businesses and Consumers The announcement is significant, as it carries ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 7/8/2010 5:34:41 PM
For certain scenarios it makes sense to distribute your data and your web site closer to the end user; reducing the network latency and providing a better user experience. You can think about it like your own data delivery network, very similar to the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network. This data delivery network can be built with SQL Azure and Data Sync Server for SQL Azure, we will talk about how in this blog post. Geo Distributed Web Sites When you deploy your Windows Azure web role (y ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 7/7/2010 5:52:42 PM
In this previous blog post, I covered the basics of Data Sync Service for SQL Azure. In this post I will talk about a scenario where partial table access is provided to a superset of users for PowerPivot reporting. There is a common enterprise scenario where you would like to expose certain tables to a wider user base so that they can access the table for reporting. At the same time you don’t want to give them access to your main database because you are unsure of the workload that those users ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 7/6/2010 9:25:58 PM
Data Sync Service for SQL Azure allows you to perform bi-directional synchronization between two or more SQL Azure databases. This blog post will discuss the basics of Data Sync Services for SQL Azure. Under the Covers SQL Azure Data Sync Service runs on the Windows Azure making use of web and worker roles using the Microsoft Sync Framework. The Windows Azure account is one that is owned by the Microsoft Sync Team, and is managed by them; Data Sync Service for SQL Azure is not an application t ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 6/30/2010 2:49:23 PM
In this former blog post I discussed how to enable access to SQL Azure from PowerPivot. Now that access is enabled and the data is available to you, let’s examine how PowerPivot and SQL Azure work from a security perspective. Accessing the Data In order to use PowerPivot against your SQL Azure data you need to download the data into the Excel workbook. How to enable the user access to the SQL Azure firewall, and create a user account in SQL Azure for accessing the data is covered in this earli ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 6/28/2010 3:32:00 PM
In this blog post, we are proving code for a sample WinForm application that streams images from SQL Azure to a PictureBox control. Our goal is to show how you can stream large BLOB data from a varbinary(max) column in SQL Azure to the WinForm application, in this case, an image. One of the nice things about streaming data is that you can update a process bar control to give the user some indication of how long it will take to download all the data. This blog post is an extension of this blog po ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 6/26/2010 12:28:37 AM
We have just completed the rollout of SQL Azure Service Update 3 and now available are some exciting new features we have been promising for the past couple months. 50 GB Database Support – You can now store even more data in a single SQL Azure database as the database size has been increased to 50 GB. This will provide your applications increased scalability. For detailed pricing information on SQL Azure and how to create or modify your database to take advantage of the new size, see ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 6/25/2010 3:41:03 PM
There are a lot of articles and discussion about calling SQL Azure from Windows Azure; however, I am personally fascinated with calling SQL Azure from the Windows’ desktop. This article will talk about some of the considerations of calling SQL Azure from an application running on a user’s local computer, and best practices around security. The Benefits Clearly, the biggest benefit is that you can read and write relational data to a remote database using ADO.NET without having to open access t ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 6/24/2010 4:57:00 PM
SQL Azure currently supports 1 GB and 10 GB databases, and on June 28th, 2010 there will be 50 GB support. If you want to store larger amounts of data in SQL Azure you can divide your tables across multiple SQL Azure databases. This article will discuss how to use a data access layer to join two tables on different SQL Azure databases using LINQ. This technique horizontal partitions your data in SQL Azure. In our version of horizontal partitioning, every table exists in all the databases in the ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 6/23/2010 7:07:00 PM
PowerPivot is a powerful, downloadable extension to Microsoft Excel 2010 that allows you to perform business intelligence and analytics against known data sources. One excellent data source you can use is your SQL Azure database. This article will talk about getting started with SQL Azure as a data source, a process that is so easy you will need little help. One big advantage of using SQL Azure as a data source is that it can be accessed anywhere there is Internet connectivity, and you can store ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 6/22/2010 6:03:00 PM
I have written a simple console application (run from the command line) to upload multiple BLOBs from files into SQL Azure. This article discusses how it works, provides a complete Visual Studio solution of the console application and the source code in case you want to modify the code to meet your needs. It is an extension of this former blog post that introduces the SqlStream class. In some scenarios you might wish to deploy images from your desktop directly to SQL Azure into a varbinary(max) ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 6/21/2010 5:36:48 PM
When you generate a SQL Azure server via the SQL Azure portal, you generate a user name and password at the same time. This is your administrative account it has access to all databases on that server. However, you might want to give other people access to some or all of your databases on that server, with full or restricted permissions. This article will show you how to generate additional user accounts on your SQL Azure databases. Currently, the SQL Azure portal does not allow you to administ ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 6/18/2010 2:55:00 PM
One of the more interesting things that we can do with the SqlStream class introduced in this blog post is to write to Windows Azure Storage from SQL Azure. Windows Azure storage provides persistent, durable storage in the cloud. To access the storage services, you must have a storage account, created through the azure portal. Imagine that our company mandates images of their products to be stored in the database along with other product data like title, price, and description. One way to serve ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 6/17/2010 4:00:00 PM
Because of the remoteness of SQL Azure it is beneficial to have some tricks in your coding toolbox for dealing with large binary objects, the varbinary(max) data type in SQL Azure. One of these is to be able to stream large binary objects (BLOB) -- reading or writing a piece of the data at a time. This article provides a SqlStream class written in C# code. The class implements the abstract Stream class for the varbinary(max) data type on SQL Azure; Stream is an abstract class defined in the .NE ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 6/15/2010 4:24:57 PM
Every web startup plans to hit the big payday and exit through IPO or acquisition; SQL Azure and the Windows Azure Platform can make the acquisition process easier. What most young entrepreneurs do not understand is that when they sell their web site for $100 million dollars, they do not get all the money up-front when they sign the contract. In fact, full payment does not come until all the assets are transferred. Usually these assets include domain names, intellectual property, physical asset ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 6/14/2010 5:39:52 PM
SQL Azure’s Transact-SQL syntax requires the DROP DATABASE statement be the only statement executed in the batch. For more information, see the MSDN documentation. So how do you execute a conditional drop? Maybe you only want to drop the database when the database exists. Here is how: DECLARE @DBName SYSNAME, @Command NVARCHAR(MAX) SELECT @DBName = 'db1' IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.databases WHERE name=@DBName) BEGIN SELECT @Command = 'DROP DATABASE [' + @DBName + '];' EXEC @Command EN ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 6/11/2010 6:07:24 PM
A collation encodes the rules governing the proper use of characters for either a language, such as Greek or Polish, or an alphabet, such as Latin1_General (the Latin alphabet used by western European languages). The default collation for character data in SQL Azure databases is SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS. This collation is also used across the SQL Azure infrastructure to sort and compare metadata that defines database objects. The server and database level collations are not configurable in S ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 6/9/2010 2:54:45 PM
If you are migrating tables from SQL Server to SQL Azure, one of the easiest ways is to use bcp utilityto draw data out of your SQL Server into a file and then move the data from the file to SQL Azure. However, it can be tedious to write all the bcp utility commands by hand, since bcp utility requires that you execute a single command for each table, moving one table’s worth of data at a time (Find about more about how to use bcp utility with SQL Azure in our early blog post). Would it not be ni ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 6/8/2010 3:58:27 PM
Today is T-SQL Tuesday #7 and the SQL Azure team is blogging as part of T-SQL Tuesday for the first time. This Tuesday’s topic: “What’s your favorite hot new feature in the SQL Server 2008 R2?” Of course, SQL Azure integration is our favorite topic of SQL Server 2008 R2. SQL Server tools, including SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), BCP Utility, and SQLCMD all have been upgraded in SQL Server 2008 R2 to work with SQL Azure. In the SQL Server development t ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 6/7/2010 3:30:00 PM
We are excited about TechEd North America in New Orleans and have lots of news to share with you but if you can’t make it, you can see many presentations online including today’s keynote with Bob Muglia. With more than 1000 sessions, this is the place to be. We have been busy implementing your feedback and updates on our progress are below. SQL Azure Database is extending five-fold to offer 50GB of the database storage capacity to offer even more scalability to applications ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 6/4/2010 7:32:18 PM
One cause of bcp utility upload errors in SQL Azure is trying to upload too much data in a single batch. Each batch of rows from your table is a single transaction, and SQL Azure has constraints on transactions that could cause the bcp utility upload to fail if BCP violated those constraints. This article will address how to avoid violating the constraints. The bcp utility is a command line utility that ships with Microsoft SQL Server. It bulk copies data between SQL Azure (or SQL Server) and a ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 6/3/2010 2:18:17 PM
Once you have your server allocated via the SQL Azure Portal you can create and drop databases from your desktop’s command line using sqlcmd.exe. This can be handy for clean slate testing where you want to create a database from scratch, unload a schema and then do some testing in a repeatable way. One thing to note is that you want to target the master database when creating and dropping databases. It is also important to encrypt your connection using the –N parameter, you can learn more about ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/27/2010 4:11:48 PM
SQL Azure allows you to create your database in datacenters in North Central US, South Central US, North Europe, and Southeast Asia. Depending on your location and your network connectivity, you will get different network latencies between your location and each of the data centers. Here is a quick way to test your Network latency with SQL Server Management Studio: 1) If you don’t have one already, create a SQL Azure server in one of the data centers via the SQL Azure Portal. 2) Open the fire ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/26/2010 4:24:11 PM
If you have been paying close attention, you will have noted that SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2 has added a new property for connections to SQL Azure -- the Session Tracing ID. A session tracing identifier is a unique GUID that is generated for every connection to SQL Azure. On the server side, the SQL Azure team tracks and logs all connections by the Session Tracing Id and any errors that arise from that connection. In other words, if you know your session identifier and have an error, ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/24/2010 3:03:00 PM
When moving a SQL Server database to SQL Azure the first step is to generate a script that will transfer the schema of your SQL Server database to SQL Azure. SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2 easily does this with a newly added advanced setting that allows you to target SQL Azure as you engine type. Here is the step by step walk through: 1) Open SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2 2) Connect to your SQL Server that contains the source database that you want to transfer. 3) Right click on the ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/22/2010 4:46:00 AM
From RBA Consulting Blogs, a video about creating a SQL Azure server and database using the SQL Azure portal. ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/21/2010 4:00:00 PM
BCP is a great way to locally backup your SQL Azure data, and by modifying your BCP based backup files you can import data into SQL Azure as well. In this blog post, we will learn: How to export data out of tables in SQL Azure server into a data file by using BCP and How to use the BCP utility to import new rows from a data file into SQL Azure tables. What is BCP? The bcp utility is a command line utility that ships with Microsoft SQL Server. It bulk copies data between SQL Azure (o ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/20/2010 8:34:19 PM
From RBA Consulting Blogs, a video about quickly and easily loading AdventureWorks (Lightweight version) into SQL Azure. ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/20/2010 4:00:00 PM
In using the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard found in SQL Server 2008 R2 to export data to SQL Azure, I noticed that it was having trouble with a column that was the data type of varbinary(max). This article will discuss how to the fix the issue I encountered in hopes that it will help you. The Problem In using the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard, I was using a .NET Framework Data Provider for SqlServer data source to connect to SQL Azure, and a SQL Server Native Client 10.0 data sour ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/19/2010 3:13:00 PM
In this blog post we will show you how to export data from your SQL Azure database to a local SQL Server database using the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard in SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2. This is a great technique to backup your data on SQL Azure to your local SQL Server. We have installed the Adventure Works database for SQL Azure to test with on our SQL Azure account; you can find that database here. The first thing we need to do is connect SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2 t ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/19/2010 4:48:00 AM
Starting with SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server Management Studio can connect directly to SQL Azure. The minimum install to do this is SQL Server Management Studio Express Edition (download here for free); however any version of SQL Server (except SQL Server Express) that includes the SQL Server Management Studio will work. Here is how to us SQL Server Management Studio to attach to SQL Azure: 1. The first step is to figure out your server name, to do this go to the SQL Azure Portal. 2. Login wi ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/19/2010 1:43:14 AM
Starting with SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server Management Studio can connect directly to SQL Azure. The minimum install to do this is SQL Server Management Studio Express Edition (download here for free); however any version of SQL Server (except SQL Server Express) that includes the SQL Server Management Studio will work. Here is how to us SQL Server Management Studio to attach to SQL Azure: 1. The first step is to figure out your server name, to do this go to the SQL Azure Portal. 2. Login ...
by Wayne Walter Berry via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/18/2010 4:49:00 AM
SQL Azure currently supports 1 GB and 10 GB databases. If you want to store larger amounts of data in SQL Azure you can divide your tables across multiple SQL Azure databases. This article will discuss how to use a middle layer to join two tables on different SQL Azure databases using LINQ. This technique vertically partitions your data in SQL Azure. In this version of vertically partitioning for SQL Azure we are dividing all the tables in the schema across two or more SQL Azure databases. In c ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/17/2010 3:35:00 PM
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/13/2010 4:28:54 PM
This is a work in progress blog post that gives you easy links to SQL Azure resources. We will be updating it frequently with current links and additional resources. Make sure to book mark it. Management SQL Azure Portal: Where you manage your servers and database, including: creating new databases, configuring your firewall, etc. Microsoft Online Customer Portal: Manage your account, billing, and services. Windows Azure Platform Status Dashboard: Provides the current status of the health o ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/12/2010 5:42:00 PM
This paper in the Microsoft Download Center compares SQL Azure Database with SQL Server in terms of logical administration vs. physical administration, provisioning, Transact-SQL support, data storage, SSIS, along with other features and capabilities. Download Now: SQL Azure vs. SQL Server ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/12/2010 4:00:00 PM
“Why?” my five year old asks. “Because I said” is my usual response. In the blog comments, we have noticed an abundance of “Why do we have to have a clustered index on our tables?” In this case “Because we said” is not going to cut it and really does not work with my daughter either. Clustered Indexes SQL Azure requires clustered indexes for our replication technology. At any one time, we are keeping three replicas of data running – one primary replica and two secondary replicas. We use a quorum ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/12/2010 3:40:37 PM
John R. Durant's has a great blog post about accessing SQL Azure data via Microsoft Excel 2010 on the MSDN blogs. Read it here. ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/11/2010 9:30:30 PM
When using a web enabled database like SQL Azure, it requires connections over the internet or other complex networks and because of this, you should be prepared to handle unexpected dropping of connections. Established connections consist of: connections that are returning data, open connections in the connection pool, or connections being cached in client side variables. When you are connecting to SQL Azure, connection loss is a valid scenario that you need to plan for in your code. The ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/7/2010 4:22:57 PM
Interested in learning firsthand about SQL Azure? Come meet our team at Microsoft TechEd North America. We will be presenting at six sessions and hosting an open lab so that you can experiment with SQL Azure. DAT209: What’s New in Microsoft SQL Azure SQL Azure provides a highly available and scalable relational database engine in the cloud. In this demo-intensive and interactive session, learn how to quickly build Web applications with SQL Azure Databases and familiar Web technologies. ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/6/2010 4:00:00 PM
Ready to jump in and learn SQL Azure? Here are some resources from Microsoft’s Channel 9. Introduction to SQL Azure In this lab, you will walk through a series of simple use cases for SQL Azure such as: preparing your account, managing logins, creating database objects and query your database. Here are the direct links to the various sections: Overview Exercise 1: Preparing Your SQL Azure Account Task 1 – Provisioning a SQL Azure Account Task 2 – Connecting to SQL Azure and Creating a Data ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 5/4/2010 4:34:22 PM
SELECT INTO With SQL Azure SQL Azure requires that all tables have clustered indexes therefore SELECT INTO statements, which creates a table and does not support the creation of clustered indexes. If you plan to migrate to SQL Azure, you need to modify your code to use table creation instead of the SELECT INTO Statement. This goes for both temporary tables (where clustered indexes are not required) and permanent tables. Quick query to get some sample data to use: CREATE TABLE Source (Id int N ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 4/30/2010 4:00:00 PM
You could be completely oblivious to the SQL Azure patching process and successfully use SQL Azure – however if you are curious here are some details. The Microsoft SQL Azure team is responsible for patching SQL Azure – you do not need to download, install, or worry about the availability of your data during patching. A SQL Server DBA usually has concerns when updating SQL Server, usually around successful installation and post installation data accessibility. We are going to try to address thes ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 4/29/2010 4:06:50 PM
We are going to start a new series of posts focusing on the basics of SQL Azure and build on top of these to give you more detailed information about building and migrating applications to SQL Azure. Unlike SQL Server, every table in SQL Azure needs to have a clustered index. A clustered index is usually created on the primary key column of the table. Clustered indexes sort and store the data rows in the table based on their key values (columns in the index). There can only be one clustered in ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 4/16/2010 10:24:29 PM
Following up with the availability of the Windows Azure platform which includes SQL Azure in an additional 20 countries beginning April 9, 2010, our global customers and partners can now take advantage of new SQL Azure features which provide continued ease of design and deployment between on-premises and the cloud DBMS. These news features include: MARS (Multiple Active Results Sets), which simplifies the application design process ALTER rename process for symmetry in renaming dat ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 3/22/2010 2:46:02 PM
This post was put together by one of our incredible support engineers, Abi Iyer, to help you to troubleshoot some of the common connectivity error messages that you would see while connecting to SQL Azure as listed below: A transport-level error has occurred when receiving results from the server. (Provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.) System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior t ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 3/19/2010 4:02:00 PM
This was an incredible week here at MIX and I presented a session on Developing Web Applications with SQL Azure. During the session I tried to drive home the point that we value and act upon the feedback you provide to us. We also recognize that we need to be more transparent on what features we are working on and when they will be available. With that in mind, I was happy to announce the following features / enhancements: Support for MARS In SU2 (April) we are adding support for Multiple Activ ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 2/18/2010 2:24:00 AM
Two short weeks have passed since the general availability of SQL Azure and the Windows Azure platform and our first Service Update (SU1) is live. Thank you for continuing to provide feedback; we are already incorporating some of it. In addition to a few bug fixes, we have added the following new features: Troubleshooting and Supportability DMVs Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) return state information that can be used to monitor the health of a database, diagnose problems, and tune per ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 2/10/2010 11:07:48 PM
Hi Folks, I’m happy to announce that SQL Azure is now available in our North Central US datacenter. Starting today, when creating a new SQL Azure server, there will now be four options in the region drop down - North Central US, South Central US, East Asia, and North Europe. Sorry for the short post. Bigger announcements coming soon.. -Dave ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 2/1/2010 11:41:00 PM
Starting today, customers and partners in countries across the globe will be able to launch their SQL Azure Database production applications and services with the support of the full Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Customers who have yet to upgrade their CTP accounts to paid commercial subscriptions are encouraged to do so at the earliest in order to maintain access to their accounts. SQL Azure Database CTP customers who have not upgraded their accounts will be able to keep using t ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 1/9/2010 3:17:36 AM
It’s been great to see the enthusiasm of people looking forward to using the entire Windows Azure Platform in Europe. I’m happy to announce that SQL Azure is now available in North Europe. Starting today, when creating a new SQL Azure server there will now be three options in the region drop down South Central US, East Asia, and North Europe. Any questions, just ask. -Dave ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 1/7/2010 10:09:35 PM
Hi Folks, Just a quick update that we just released the Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant 2008 for MySQL v1.0 CTP1. Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) 2008 is a toolkit that dramatically cuts the effort, cost, and risk of migrating from MySQL to SQL Server 2008 and SQL Azure. SSMA 2008 for MySQL v1.0 CTP1 provides an assessment of migration efforts as well as automates schema and data migration. The tool can be downloaded here. -Dave ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 1/4/2010 5:36:29 PM
SQL Azure Database ended the year on a high note and continues to experience major momentum with more than 13,000 accounts during the Community Technology Preview (CTP) phase. We are grateful for the feedback from the CTP users and to the 25 TAP customers. You can see how some of those customers are using SQL Azure. Upgrade today: Starting today you can upgrade your Community Technology Preview (CTP) accounts to paid commercial subscriptions. If you upgrade your CTP accounts during the month of ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 11/30/2009 4:52:54 PM
Hi Folks, Each and every time we are out speaking with customers, we always make sure we thank them for the incredible feedback they have given us. As I have said before, and will continue to say, it’s our awesome users that have shaped SQL Azure into the relational database service it is today. With that being said, we are looking for feedback. There are two ways you can go and provide us info on the features you want to see in the service. http://www.mygreatsqlazureidea.com – This is a g ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 11/11/2009 8:38:12 PM
Hi folks, As promised, here are the download links for SSMS in 32bit and 64bit flavors. The full download of SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP can be found here. I’ll post some walkthroughs of SSMS in the coming days. 6 days to PDC - W00t!!!! See you there, Dave ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 11/10/2009 2:45:48 PM
Hi Folks, Just a quick post to let you know that the long awaited build of SQL Server Management Studio with support for SQL Azure is available today for MSDN and TechNet subscribers and will be generally available for the rest of the world as of tomorrow. The download page can be found here. I will post a link to the tools only install when it becomes available tomorrow. This support is included as part of the November CTP release of SQL Server 2008 R2. This release not only includes SQL Azur ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 11/6/2009 5:05:49 PM
Hi Everyone, We received an inquiry earlier this week about a user who was trying to access the SQL Azure Portal and was unable to log in. I want to take a quick moment to respond broadly just incase anyone else had the same experience. There were no issues with the SQL Azure Database service this week. There was, however, an availability issue with the SQL Azure Portal while some configuration changes were being made in preparation for the launch of SQL Azure Database at PDC on November 17th. ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 11/1/2009 10:59:43 PM
This upcoming week, PASS (Professional Association for SQL Server) will be holding its annual summit in Seattle, WA. The summit runs from November 2nd through the 5th and, as described on the website, provides: In-depth technical sessions all focused on SQL Server Unparalleled access to the industry’s top SQL Server experts and the Microsoft SQL Server development team Unique opportunity to network with your peers, share challenges, and get answers and advice Return to work with ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 10/29/2009 6:59:00 PM
In October 2008 at our Professional Developer Conference we opened the Community Technology Preview (CTP) for the Windows Azure platform (Windows Azure, SQL Azure and .NET Services). The CTP has been invaluable in terms of shaping many aspects of the Windows Azure platform. PDC 2009 is an exciting event for all of us who are working on the Windows Azure platform as it’s our opportunity to show you the work that we’ve done over the past year, including some brand new features. Concurrent w ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 10/14/2009 4:58:47 PM
A few short weeks ago we announced the SQL Azure Database August CTP. Since the announcement, tens of thousands in the community have signed up for the service and have provided us with a tremendous amount of positive feedback. Today, the SQL Azure Database October CTP (CTP 2) update is another major milestone as we get ready for the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) on November 17th - 20th, 2009. We are also excited to announce that this CTP represents the complete feature set that will ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 10/5/2009 7:02:14 PM
Hi Folks, Its almost conference season. Starting in November, we have SQL PASS, followed by Tech-Ed Europe and culminating with the launch of SQL Azure at PDC. Its going to be an exciting few weeks. Liam recorded a Channel 9 video along with Buck Woody and Michael Rys on the upcoming SQL PASS Summit. You can view the video here Here is the synopsis of the video: Join thousands of SQL Server & BI professionals at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center in Seattle from Nov. 2 ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 9/18/2009 12:50:00 AM
We experienced a short blip in the availability of SQL Azure today and I wanted to post a quick note to let you know what happened. Inside of SQL Azure we have these automated monitoring tools called watchdogs. These watchdogs monitor every aspect of the system and if one of them notices that something is not functioning correctly, it raises an alert to our operations staff and will, depending on the issue type, start some sort of corrective maintenance. Shortly before noon (PDT) an alert was ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/24/2009 5:40:42 AM
One of the most important pieces of information a product team can get is an understanding of what people think about their product, and how they are using it. My question for you is…What do you think? How has your experience been thus far? We would love to know – the good and the bad. So please feel free to either post a comment or drop me an email (david.robinsonATmicrosoft.com). Also, don’t forget the SQL Azure documentation can be found here and the SQL Azure Getting Started forum is locat ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/18/2009 6:01:00 PM
Check out the free trial of Microsoft® SQL Azure Database Community Technology Preview (CTP). SQL Azure Database, a part of the Windows Azure platform, is a cloud-based database service built on Microsoft SQL Server technology. With SQL Azure organizations will benefit from a pay-as-you grow model with enterprise-class availability, data protection, scalability, and security. Also available as a CTP is the SQL Server Driver for PHP 1.1, which provides new capabilities for bui ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 8/11/2009 5:27:48 PM
Just a quick post. As I am sure some of you have noticed, the SQL Azure MSDN documentation is live and can be found here. This is an important milestone as we get ready for the upcoming CTP and go live later this year. The documentation should answer any questions you have, and if not feel free to let us know or post a question to the Getting Started forum located here. Speaking of the CTP, it will be here before you know it so go here and sign up to be notified when it is available and to get ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 7/10/2009 4:18:00 AM
Yesterday we announced a branding update to SQL Azure (formerly SQL Services). I think you will agree that our new name is a better fit. If you look across the Windows platform, you will see a consistent branding theme that runs the gamut from Windows Mobile on mobile devices, to Windows Client on the desktop, Windows Server as the leading server operating system and more recently Windows Azure as our soon to be released operating system in the cloud. SQL Data Services is now known as ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 3/20/2009 4:16:45 PM
Hi Everyone! This is Lev Novik, one of the architects on the SQL Data Services Team. We get a number of questions about whether or not we have abandoned or downgraded REST access to SDS, and if so, why. To summarize: not at all --- rather than abandoning REST, we intend to support it in precisely the ways and places where we believe most people want it. Allow me to explain. Consider an average (web) application today. Most often, it consists of a: client (often running in a browser), m ...
by davidrob via SQL Azure Team Blog on 3/10/2009 3:50:00 PM
Today we announced the details of our plans to accelerate the delivery of core relational database features as part of SDS. There has been quite a bit of buzz about SDS over the past couple weeks and it is great to be able to share the details more broadly. If we flash back about a year ago to Mix 08, Nigel Ellis got up on stage to introduce the community to SDS which, at the time, was a flexible entity based cloud database that you accessed using standard internet protocols. We made this ...
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