SQL Azure Q & A - 1


The Stack Overflow forum's Azure section is a great place to know about real-world issues and find answers to them. As part of my learning, I plan to collect short summarized answers of questions that I find useful, for quick reference -

Q. What is the difference between the Web Edition and Business Edition of SQL Azure?
The two editions are identical except for capacity. Both offer the same replication and SLA.

Web Edition scales from 1GB to 5GB, whereas Business Edition scales from 10GB to 50GB in 10GB increments, plus 100GB and 150GB.

Q. How to change maximum capacity or edition of a SQL Azure database?
To increase (or decrease) capacity -
ALTER DATABASE Test MODIFY (EDITION='WEB', MAXSIZE=5GB)

To switch to the Business Edition -
ALTER DATABASE Test MODIFY (EDITION='BUSINESS', MAXSIZE=10GB)

You can also change the size of the database through the Azure SQL portal. Simply choose the database and go to the scale tab and select the size you want.

Q. When should i use SQL Azure and when should I use Azure Table Services?
SQL Azure is more expensive than ATS (Azure Table Services). A popular opinion is that frequently accessed data that does not need huge scalability and is not super large in size should be destined for SQL Azure, otherwise Azure Table Services.

Q. How to profile queries running on SQL Azure?
Though not as detailed as the results of SQL Profiler that is available for a local database, SQL Azure now has some native profiling capabilities.

Q. What are the differences between SQL Server and Windows Azure SQL Database?
This MSDN & Technet articles explain the differences.

For migrating data from local SQL to SQL Azure, use the SQL Migration Wizard that is available on Codeplex

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