Microsoft Azure SQL Database (formerly known as SQL Azure, SQL Server Data Services, SQL Services, and Windows Azure SQL Database) is a managed

cloud database A cloud database is a database that typically runs on a cloud computing platform and access to the database is provided as-a-service. There are two common deployment models: users can run databases on the cloud independently, using a virtual machin ...

(

PaaS Platform as a service (PaaS) or application platform as a service (aPaaS) or platform-based service is a cloud computing service model where users provision, instantiate, run and manage a modular bundle of a computing platform and applications, w ...

) cloud-based Microsoft SQL Servers, provided as part of

Microsoft Azure Microsoft Azure, or just Azure ( /ˈæʒər, ˈeɪʒər/ ''AZH-ər, AY-zhər'', UK also /ˈæzjʊər, ˈeɪzjʊər/ ''AZ-ure, AY-zure''), is the cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It has management, access and development of ...

services. The service handles database management functions for cloud based Microsoft SQL Servers including upgrading, patching, backups, and monitoring without user involvement.

Overview

Azure SQL Database supports multi-modal storage of

structured Structuring, also known as smurfing in banking jargon, is the practice of executing financial transactions such as making bank deposits in a specific pattern, calculated to avoid triggering financial institutions to file reports required by law ...

, semi-structured, and non-relational data. Azure SQL Database includes built-in intelligence that learns app patterns and adapts them to maximize performance, reliability, and

data protection Data protection may refer to: * Information privacy, also known as data privacy * Data security {{Authority control ...

. Key capabilities include: * Learning of the host app's data access patterns, adaptive performance tuning, and automatic improvements to reliability and data protection. * Scaling on demand. * Management and monitoring of multi-tenant apps with isolation benefits of one-customer-per-database. * Integration with open-source tools such as cheetah (

Command-line interface A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...

utility), sql-cli,

Visual Studio Code Visual Studio Code, commonly referred to as VS Code, is an integrated development environment developed by Microsoft for Windows, Linux, macOS and web browsers. Features include support for debugging, syntax highlighting, intelligent code comp ...

, and Microsoft tools like

Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed by Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including web site, websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development ...

SQL Server Management Studio Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is a software application developed by Microsoft that is used for configuring, managing, and administering all components within Microsoft SQL Server. First launched with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 ...

Azure Management Portal Microsoft Azure, or just Azure (Help:IPA/English, /ˈæʒər, ˈeɪʒər/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''AZH-ər, AY-zhər'', British English, UK also Help:IPA/English, /ˈæzjʊər, ˈeɪzjʊər/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''AZ- ...

PowerShell PowerShell is a shell program developed by Microsoft for task automation and configuration management. As is typical for a shell, it provides a command-line interpreter for interactive use and a script interpreter for automation via a langu ...

, and

REST REST (Representational State Transfer) is a software architectural style that was created to describe the design and guide the development of the architecture for the World Wide Web. REST defines a set of constraints for how the architecture of ...

APIs. * Data protection with

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, authentication, limiting user access to the subset of the data, continuous monitoring and auditing to help detect potential threats and provide a record of critical events in case of a breach.

Popular use cases

* Relational data storage for cloud-based applications and websites * Business and consumer web and mobile apps * Manage databases for multi-tenant apps (

software-as-a-service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike oth ...

) * Quickly create dev and test databases to speed up development cycles * Scale production business services quickly and at a known cost * Containerize data in the cloud for isolation and security * Reduce database administration overhead through increased automation

Design

Azure SQL Database is built on the foundation of the SQL server database and therefore, kept in sync with the latest version of it by using the common code base. Since the cloud version of the database technology strives to decouple it from the underlying computing infrastructure, it doesn't support some of the context specific T-SQL features available in the traditional SQL server. However, the rest of the features are the same with incompatibilities spelled out by Microsoft. Azure SQL Database is also similar to Microsoft's SQL Managed instance offering, with some differences.

Timeline

* 2009 – Service announced * 2010 – Service went live * 2014 – New version announced and rebranded from Windows Azure to Microsoft Azure * 2015 – Major Architectural Revision * 2016 – Elastic Pools Introduced * 2017 - Azure SQL Database Managed Instance launched * 2019 - Introduced Azure SQL Database Hyperscale, Serverless, and Instance Pools

Deployment Models

Azure SQL Database is offered in two deployment models, as a Standalone database or an Elastic database pool (with shared storage and compute resources).

References

External links

*
Microsoft Azure Security TechnologiesWhat is Azure SQL Database?
{{Microsoft development tools Azure SQL Database