Windows Azure persistent storage tip

Question

Ive just activated my Azure account, created ny first Asp Mvc 3.0 project (just the template) and deployed it :). Wonderfull

However im about to create a small app (just to get to learn Azure) and have hit a minor issue. Heres what i want to do: Create an mvc app which displays my music library and allow for searching, sorting, add new albums, etc. Theres proberbly about 3000 albums.

What kind of storage should i use and does anyone know of a good tutorial example about how to dó this in c# with mvc?

Please note i dó not want to use SQL Azure, that would be to easy. I need to dig in and learn blob/table/? Types.

I just need a Sound recomendation on which storage type i should start studying, and more importantly where i should study it :).

Answer 1

Azure Storage Tables are different from SQL in which they are managed by the Azure and not by a DBMS. The have a Key field through which you can find data within the table, and you can use LINQ to access it. That said, there should be performance considerations when choosing where each data would go. SQL Azure should provide better relational access, so if you are going to have a high number of tables and expect a lot of joins operations, I'd go with it. But, if you are using a simple structured data that you need to maintain in your application, you can choose tables.

Of course, since storage is 10x cheaper than SQL Azure, you will always want to design applications that make good use of storage, but remember to check for any performance issues you might have.