What is Windows Azure SQL Database

In this Azure tutorial, we will discuss What is Windows Azure SQL Database. Along with this, we will also discuss a few other topics like Azure SQL Database Tutorial, Key Features Of Windows Azure SQL Database, Benefits of Windows Azure SQL database, Create an Azure SQL database and along with this, we will also discuss How To Create Tables In SQL Azure Database, Azure SQL Database Is Paas or Iaas, How Is Azure SQL Database Auditing Configured?, Azure SQL database is an example of what type of service, Azure SQL Database vs SQL Server, Azure SQL Pricing, etc.

What is Windows Azure SQL Database

Well, let’s discuss here an excellent topic, What is Windows Azure SQL Database and all it’s key features, Benefits and all other details.

• How to Export Azure SQL Database
• How to Create Azure Blob storage

Azure SQL Database Tutorial

Windows Azure SQL Database is an excellent, scalable, durable, intelligent database service that is built for the Cloud. Microsoft takes care of the resource management, Storage Size, Infrastructure, etc.

Another most important part is, the resources scale on-demand automatically and it’s always up to date and AI-Driven. You can check out some more information on Windows Azure SQL Database now.

Key Features Of Windows Azure SQL Database

There are many essential features available for Windows Azure SQL Database. We will discuss here a few key features of Windows Azure SQL Database that are available.

1- Highly Secure

One of the important features of the Windows Azure SQL Database is that it is highly secure. As we all know that when it comes to our data, security is key and is very important.

Microsoft provides advanced security mechanisms with extra layers of protection with the help of Authentication with Active Directory integration, different data encryption facilities,audit logs, data-masking, etc.

Another important feature in terms of, security is, Windows Azure SQL Database provides an Adaptive threat detection feature that actually helps you to identify harmful attempts and Suspicious activities.

2- Scalability and Resource Management

Windows Azure SQL Database scalability helps to provide the information on what you need for growth. The important point here is it provides you support with Elastic Pools where you can push your large databases for cool performance and the Elastic Pool also helps you to manage the resources based on the rising and falling of your business needs.

The Elastic Pool feature also helps you to manage the changes that happen in the Workload and also it makes sure all the databases are performing good keeping costs in mind.

Microsoft Provides 4 workloads and those are Basic, Standard, Premium, and Premium RS that helps you to create robust and high-performing applications and cool databases with zero downtime.

3- Performance Tuning

Microsoft provides you inbuild performance tuning with the Azure SQL database that provides you the best performance for your database. It always monitors and manages the changes that are actually needed immediately to make sure that your databases are performing well.

It has batch mode memory grant feedback, batch mode adaptive joins and interleaved execution

Different batch processing features like interleaved execution, batch mode memory grant feedback and batch mode adaptive joins help to enhance the performance.

4- Responsive SLA-based support 

Windows Azure SQL Database supports the responsive SLA-based support that actually helps you to keep the resources up at all the time which is a key factor for a business.

5- V12 Portability

V12 Portability is another excellent feature provided by the Azure SQL Database. You can consider it as a core benefit of the Azure SQL database that allows you to move a database to the cloud and from the cloud and off it or into such services as IaaS and Paas.

In earlier days, it was quite challenging to migrate the SQL server to the Azure SQL database but now Microsoft provides many tools that help you quickly migrate the SQL server DB to Azure SQL.

6- Query Store 

Query Store helps you to track the performance and history of the databases across many different hardware, different platforms, or service tiers. It helps you to track your database performance metrics.

Query store feature can get you the historical data that will give you the desired information about the database that helps the organization to take different decisions on databases.

These are a few of the Key Features Of Windows Azure SQL Database.

Benefits of Windows Azure SQL database

• Windows Azure SQL Database comes with High-Speed performance and with no Down Time.
• Azure SQL DB is highly scalable in nature.
• The pricing structure of Azure SQL is another interesting factor and that is based on the pay-as-you-go model, meaning pay that much how much you are actually using which is really a great benefit for an individual or for an organization.
• Windows Azure SQL Database is highly available. This is another big advantage with Azure SQL and quite important for an organization.

Create an Azure SQL database

You can quickly create a blank Azure SQL database in the Azure Portal using few quick steps

Step-1: Login to the Azure portal (https://portal.azure.com/)

Step-2: Search for Azure SQL and select the search result Azure SQL as highlighted below.

Check out How to create an Azure SQL database for the complete steps.

Create an Azure SQL database PowerShell

Not only by using the Azure Portal, you can able to create the Azure SQL Database, But also you can able to create an Azure SQL Database easily by using PowerShell.

Set the subscription details

You can use the below PowerShell cmdlet to set the subscription details.

$MysubscriptionId = '23345rt-ikkkll-3215-9c9c-geea72a5cbd1'
Set-AzContext -SubscriptionId $MysubscriptionId 

For the complete step, you can check out How to create an Azure SQL database PowerShell now.

Connect to the Azure SQL Database

There are multiple ways to connect to the Azure SQL database like by using SQL Server management Studio, Visual Studio, etc.

To know the complete information, you can check out How To Connect To Azure SQL Database now.

How To Create Tables In SQL Azure Database

Now, the time to create a table in Azure SQL database. Follow the below simple steps to create a table in Azure SQL DB.

1. Connect to Azure SQL DB Instance using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
2. Locate the Database node –> Right-click on the Database –> click on the New Query option.

3. On the Query window, write the query as below.

CREATE TABLE Student
(
    StudentId INT IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY,
    FirstName NVARCHAR(128) NOT NULL,
    LastName NVARCHAR(128) NOT NULL,
    DateOfBirth DATE NOT NULL
)

4. After writing the Query click on the Execute button as shown below.

5. Now, you can able to see that it is showing Commands completed successfully.

6. To, verify if the table is created, you can expand the Database node –> Expand the Tables –> You can able to see the dbo.Student table has been created successfully without any issue.

This is How To Create Tables In SQL Azure Database.

Azure SQL Database Is Paas or Iaas

Microsoft Azure SQL Database is Platform as a service (Paas) that is built on a well set of hardware and software which is hosted, owned, and managed by Microsoft. Not only that, but Microsoft also takes care of the patching, backups, and monitoring, etc. You no need to worry about that part.

Basically, Azure SQL Database is a Paas offer from Microsoft. Whereas, remember that the SQL server inside the Azure Virtual Machine is an Iaas offer.

How Is Azure SQL Database Auditing Configured?

Well, you can easily configured the Azure SQL Database auditing in the Azure Portal using few easy steps as below.

• Log in to the Azure Portal (https://portal.azure.com/)
• On your Azure SQL Database page, on the left navigation, click on Auditing which is present under the Security heading. You can click on the View server settings link if you want to view or modify the settings as highlighted below.

• Now to enable the Azure SQL Auditing, switch Auditing to ON.
• Then, you need to choose the audit log destination where you want to store or write the audit logs. The options are Storage account, Log Analytics, Event Hub. Based on your requirement, you can click on the Configure option. After configuring the Audit log destination you need to click on the Save button to save the changes.

• Now, if you want to configure the Audit Log Destination as a Storage account or you want to write the audit logs to the storage account then click on the Configure option.
• On the Storage settings window, provide the below details

1. Subscription: Provide a valid subscription that you want to use here.
2. Storage account: Select an existing storage account or if you don’t have an existing storage account, you can click on the Create button to create a new storage account.
3. Retention days: You can select some specific days based on your requirements by sliding the Retention (Days) slider. If you won’t change anything then the default value for the Retention days is zero that means unlimited retention days.
4. Storage access key: Select Primary or Secondary based on your need.

Finally, click on the Ok button to Save the changes.

• If you will choose the Audit Log Destination as the Log Analytics option, then click on the Configure option, on the Log Analytics Workspaces window, click on the + Create New Workspaces button to create a new Log Analytics workspace or you can select an existing workspace if you already. You can also select the default workspace if you want.

If you want to select the Audit Log Destination as the Event Hub, then click on the Configure option and on the Select event hub window, you need to provide the below details

1. Subscription: Select a valid subscription that you want to use here.
2. Event hub namespace: You need to provide the Event hub namespace.
3. Event hub name: It is optional but if you want, you can provide a name for the Event Hub.
4. Event hub Policy name: You must provide the Event hub Policy name.

Finally, click on the Ok button.

Once You have configured any of the Audit Log Destination. Finally, click on the Save button on the SQL Database page. This is how to configure Azure SQL Database Auditing.

Azure SQL database is an example of what type of service

Azure SQL database, a relational database, and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), that consists of a set of hardware and software which is hosted, owned, and managed by Microsoft. You no need to take any headache for the environment and infrastructure as Microsoft takes care of this part.

Azure SQL database vs SQL server

Azure SQL Database by Microsoft Azure Platform is basically a cloud-computing database service. It is used to host and use a relational SQL database in the cloud without the need for any hardware or software installation.

Azure SQL Database is a fully managed cloud database (PaaS), which is provided as a part of Microsoft Azure.

Whereas, SQL Server by Microsoft is a relational database management system that comes with an assortment of add-on services. As it is a database server, it is basically a software product with the main aim to store and retrieve data as requested by different other software applications.

For a complete information, check out Azure SQL database vs SQL server now.

Azure SQL Pricing

Well, here we will discuss the details on

The pricing of the Azure SQL Database depends upon the Purchase model, Compute tier, Service tier, hardware type, etc.

Check out the Azure SQL Pricing now for complete information.

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Wrapping Up

Well, in this article, we have discussed What is Windows Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Database Tutorial, Key Features Of Windows Azure SQL Database, Benefits of Windows Azure SQL database, Create an Azure SQL database and along with this, we have also discussed How To Create Tables In SQL Azure Database, Azure SQL Database Is Paas or Iaas, How Is Azure SQL Database Auditing Configured?, Azure SQL database is an example of what type of service, Azure SQL Database vs SQL Server, Azure SQL Pricing.