Windows Azure Storage and SQL Azure. Delivered at UK Azure Net meeting 6th of Oct 2009

1. Storing data in the cloud Eric Nelson Microsoft UK Email: eric.nelson@microsoft.com Blog: http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable Twitter: http://twitter.com/ericnel and http://twitter.com/ukmsdn Podcast: http://bit.ly/msdnpodcast Newsletter: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/flash

3. Queues

4. Blobs

5. Tables

6. RelationalAgenda

8. Storage in the Cloud… Windows Azure Storage and SQL Azure

9. Solve using the Cloud aka Windows Azure Platform Browser p1 p2 p3 Web Role N L B Worker Role N L B Browser AzureStorage Web Role Browser Worker Role Worker Role Browser Web Role Browser You don’t see this bit You don’t see this bit You don’t see this bit or… Maybe you do

10. Solve using the Cloud aka Windows Azure Platform SQLAzure Browser p1 p2 p3 Web Role N L B Worker Role N L B Browser AzureStorage Web Role Browser Worker Role Worker Role Browser Web Role Browser You don’t see this bit You don’t see this bit You don’t see this bit Ok, you definitely do

11. 3 Important Services 3 Critical Concepts Windows Azure Compute and Storage SQL Azure Storage .NET Services Connecting Computation Web and Worker Storage Table, Blob, Relational Messaging Queues, Service Bus

12. Blobs, Tables, Relational

13. Queues

14. Blobs, Tables, Relational

15. Blobs, Tables, Relational

16. Provides structured storage Massively scalable tables (TBs of data) Self scaling Highly available Durable Familiar and easy-to-use API, layered .NET classes and LINQ ADO.NET Data Services – .NET 3.5 SP1 REST – with any platform or language Introduction to Tables

17. No join No group by No order by “No Schema” Not a Relational Database

18. Table A Table is a set of Entities (rows) An Entity is a set of Properties (columns) Entity Two “key” properties form unique ID PartitionKey – enables scale RowKey – uniquely ID within a partition Data Model

19. Key Example – Blog Posts Partition 1 Partition 2 Getting all of dunnry’s blog posts is fast Single partition Getting all posts after 2008-03-27 is slow Traverse all partitions

20. Query a Table REST: GET http://account.table.core.windows.net/Customer?$filter=%20PartitionKey%20eq%20value LINQ: var customers = from o in context.CreateQuery<customer>(“Customer”) where o.PartitionKey == value select o; Azure Table Storage Worker Role http://account.table.core.windows.net

21. Demo: Windows Azure Storage

22. Lessons LearnedAzure Storage – Entity Group Transactions Different Entity types in the same table E.g. PK = CustomerId Customer, Order and OrderDetails in the same table

23. Blobs, Tables, Relational

24. SQL Azure (July 2009)aka SQL Data Servicesaka SQL Server Data Services

25. On Premise Programming Model This is what we do on-premise... Data TDS RDBMS Client SQL Server

26. Same for the cloud? So, is this is what we would like to do in the cloud... Data TDS RDBMS Client SQL Server

27. SQL Azure can do this Data TDS RDBMS Client SQL Azure

28. SQL Azure can also do this HTTP TDS RDBMS Browser Web Role SQL Azure

29. And this! Queue TDS HTTP RDBMS Browser Web Role Worker Role SQL Azure

30. Which means you can easily migrate from this “The Data Center” TDS HTTP RDBMS Browser Web Tier Bus. Logic SQL Server

31. To this… Windows Azure and SQL Azure “The Cloud” Queue TDS HTTP RDBMS Browser Web Role Worker Role SQL Azure

32. Demo: SQL Azure

33. Lessons LearnedSQL Azure From the database “down” it’s just SQL Server Well, almost … Many tools don’t work today System catalog is different Above the database is taken care of for you You can’t really change anything

34. Lessons LearnedSQL Azure Tooling SSMS partially works – “good enough” Can not create connection using Visual Studio designer Other tools may work better No BCP (currently) DDL Must be a clustered index on every table No physical file placement No indexed views No “not for replication” constraint allowed No Extended properties Some index options missing (e.g. allow_row_locks, sort_in_tempdb ..) No set ansi_nulls on

35. Lessons LearnedSQL Azure Types No spatial or hierarchy id No Text/images support. Use nvarchar(max) XML datatype and schema allowed but no XML index or schema collection. Security No integrated security

36. Lessons LearnedSQL Azure Development No CLR Local temp tables are allowed Global temp tables are not allowed Cannot alter database inside a connection No UDDT’s No ROWGUIDCOL column property

37. Lessons LearnedSQL Azure vs Windows Azure Tables SQL Server is very familiar SQL Azure *is* SQL Server in the cloud Windows Azure Storage is…very different  Make the right choice Understand Azure storage Understand SQL Azure Understand they are totally different You can use both

38. Lessons Learned SQL Azure vs Windows Azure Tables SQL Azure is not always the best storage option SQL Azure costs more Delivers a *lot* more functionality SQL Azure is more limited on scale

39. Lessons Learned SQL Azure and Sharding Can be done Many 10GB databases Not fun 

40. In Summary

41. Resources Slides, links and more http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable Azure Training Kit (August update) www.azure.com Sign up, links to resources etc http://www.cerebrata.com