Introduction

There are very few relational database systems as established and widely used as Microsoft's SQL Server. Azure SQL Database, released on February 1, 2010, is a cloud database service that is based on Microsoft's SQL Server.

It is compatible with most SQL Server features and is optimized for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications.

As organizations are adopting cloud computing and moving their applications into the cloud, Azure SQL Database offers everything that Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) can offer. Azure SQL Database is a DBaaS option for any organization with applications built on SQL Server Database.

Azure SQL Database uses familiar Transact-SQL programming and a user interface that is well known and is also easy to adopt. It is therefore important for SQL Server Database administrators and developers to learn how to use Azure SQL Database.

Note

Azure SQL Database is also known as SQL Azure or SQL Database instance.

This lesson covers the Azure SQL Database architecture in detail. After familiarizing ourselves with the architecture, we'll learn how to provision Azure SQL Database through activities and explore pricing, settings, and its properties. We'll also identify the key differences between Azure SQL Database and SQL Server – mainly the SQL Server features that are not supported by Azure SQL Database.