(updated 8/15/2019) I am sometimes asked to compare Azure SQL Database (SQL DB) to Azure SQL Data Warehouse (SQL DW). The most important thing to remember is SQL DB is for OLTP (i.e. applications with individual updates, inserts, and deletes) and … Continue reading →
For companies that sell an on-prem software solution and are looking to move that solution to the cloud, a challenge arises on how to architect that solution in the cloud. For example, say you have a software solution that stores … Continue reading →
Pricing Azure SQL database is difficult because various database service tier options such as database transaction units (DTU’s), max database size, disaster recovery options, and backup retention days are used to determine pricing instead of hardware (CPU/RAM/HD). Generally I recommend starting out … Continue reading →
A limitation with Azure SQL database has been its inability to do cross-database SQL queries. This has changed with the introduction of elastic database queries, now in preview. However, it’s not as easy as on-prem SQL Server, where you can … Continue reading →
(updated 10/28/20). Life we be so much easier if we could just trust everyone, but since we can’t we need solid security for our databases. Azure SQL Database and Azure Synapse Analytics have many security features to make you sleep … Continue reading →
Even though an Azure SQL Database stores all data on the Azure cloud, it does not mean that your options for managing and monitoring the databases are limited compared to on-prem databases. In fact, the options available are very similar to on-prem, … Continue reading →
One of the advantages Azure SQL Database has over on-prem SQL Server is the ease in which it can scale. I’ll discuss the various options for horizontal scaling, vertical scaling, and other similar features. Horizontal scaling refers to adding or removing … Continue reading →
This blog describes the various approaches you can use to migrate an on-premises SQL Server database to Azure SQL Database. In this migration process you migrate both your schema and your data from the SQL Server database in your current … Continue reading →
Azure SQL Database is a relational database-as-a-service in the cloud. It uses a special version of Microsoft SQL Server as its backend that is nearly identical to SQL Server (see Azure SQL Database Transact-SQL differences). While there are many benefits … Continue reading →
In a previous blog I talked about copying on-prem data to Azure Blob Storage (Getting data into Azure Blob Storage). Let’s say you have copied the data and it is sitting in Azure Blob Storage (or an Azure Data Lake) … Continue reading →
Microsoft Azure provides you two options when hosting your SQL Server-based data warehouse: Microsoft Azure SQL Database and SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machine. Which one is appropriate based on the size of the data warehouse? What are some hardware features to … Continue reading →
SQL Azure is a cloud-based service from Microsoft that uses a special version of SQL Server as its backend. SQL Azure helps to ease provisioning and deployment of multiple databases. Developers do not have to install, setup, patch or manage any … Continue reading →