Getting started with Microsoft Azure development

Question

I just started developing in Azure and I bump in to a lot of questions that might help others as well.

My goal is to learn more about:

• azure
• html5
• jquery
• ASP.NET MVC4
• entityframework

My first steps:

• subscribing to Azure. (5 minutes)
• create a website, and added a database to my azure account. (5 minutes)
• create a TFS environment (5 minutes)
• download the publish settings file that can be used in visual studio to publish directly into azure (1 minute)
• installed visual studio 2012 (2 hours) (required)
• installed azure SDK for .NET (30 minutes) (required)
• installed resharper (30 minutes) (optional)
• installed SQL server 2012 (still downloading, 1 hour and counting) (needed?)

I started in parallel and began with this great tutorial for getting hands-on experience with website, html5, azure.

Since I deviated from the tutorial by adding my entity classes in a different project I ran into errors running enable-migrations. Here you can read the answer to that problem.

Now the "toughest" part for me until now: tha world of databases. I am no expert on database development so I was wondering how deep do I need to dive. The goal remains the same: I want to build a webapp where I store and retrieve data from a database. So far the azure experience is quite easy going and everything integrates pretty easily.

I kinda liked the idea that I only need visual studio to work from, and that I can get addins that help me develop the things that I need. Does that end when you get to database development? Is SQL server 2012 the way to go?
Or are there "more easy" alternatives? Is it a lot of work to update the database in the cloud with the stuff that I changed locally? I do want to store stuff in the database in azure in the end.

Can you folks shed some light on the possibilities there are out there with its cons and pros?

Answer 1

When you work with windows azure environment in emulated environment (local development) You can use desk top version of SQL server 2012.But at the end you have to store your data schema on Azure SQL Database when you publish your cloud Application for production.

What is Windows Azure SQL Database ?

Microsoft Windows Azure SQL Database is a cloud-based relational database service that is built on SQL Server technologies and runs in Microsoft data centers on hardware that is owned, hosted, and maintained by Microsoft.

Similarities and Differences

Similar to an instance of SQL Server on your premises, Windows Azure SQL Database exposes a tabular data stream (TDS) interface for Transact-SQL-based database access.

This allows your database applications to use Windows Azure SQL Database in the same way that they use SQL Server.

Because Windows Azure SQL Database is a service, administration in Windows Azure SQL Database is slightly different.

Unlike administration for an on-premise instance of SQL Server, Windows Azure SQL Database abstracts the logical administration from the physical administration; you continue to administer databases, logins, users, and roles, but Microsoft administers the physical hardware such as hard drives, servers, and storage.

This approach helps Windows Azure SQL Database provide a large-scale multi-tenant database service that offers enterprise-class availability, scalability, security, and self-healing.

Because Microsoft handles all of the physical administration, there are some differences between Windows Azure SQL Database and an on-premise instance of SQL Server in terms of administration, provisioning, Transact-SQL support, programming model, and features.

Features and Types

Windows Azure SQL Database does not support all of the features and data types found in SQL Server.

Analysis Services, Replication, and Service Broker are not currently provided as services on the Windows Azure platform.

Because Windows Azure SQL Database performs the physical administration, any statements and options that attempt to directly manipulate physical resources will be blocked, such as Resource Governor, file group references, and some physical server DDL statements.

It is also not possible to set server options and SQL trace flags or use the SQL Server Profiler or the Database Tuning Advisor utilities.

Windows Azure SQL Database supports many SQL Server 2008 data types; it does not support data types that have been deprecated from SQL Server 2008.

For more details you can follow below mentioned links.

Windows Azure SQL Database Overview

Tools and Utilities Support (Windows Azure SQL Database)

Guidelines and Limitations (Windows Azure SQL Database)

Deploying an ASP.NET Web Application to a Windows Azure Cloud Service and SQL Database

I hope this will help to you.