SQL Azure

Microsoft Azure SQL Database (formerly SQL Azure, SQL Server Data Services, SQL Services, Windows Azure SQL Database) is a cloud-based service from Microsoft offering data-storage capabilities (similar to Amazon Relational Database Service) as a part of the Azure Services Platform. Unlike similar cloud-based databases, SQL Database allows users to make relational queries against stored data, which can either be structured or semi-structured, or even unstructured documents.[1] SQL Database features querying data, search, data analysis and data synchronization.[1]

SQL Database uses a special version of Microsoft SQL Server as its backend. It provides high availability by storing multiple copies of databases, business continuity and disaster recovery with backups and geo-replication, elastic scale and rapid provisioning. It exposes a subset of the full SQL Server functionality, including only a subset of the data types — including string, numeric, date and boolean.[2] It uses an XML-based format for data transfer.[1] Like Microsoft SQL Server, SQL Database uses T-SQL as the query language and Tabular Data Stream (TDS) as the protocol to access the service over the Internet.[1][3] (The product does not provide a REST-based API to access the service over HTTP[1] - Microsoft recommends using ADO.NET Data Services for this purpose.[1])

Footnotes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Microsoft SQL Services FAQ". Microsoft. Retrieved 2009-04-16.
  2. ↑ Ryan McMinn. "SQL Server Data Services". MSDN Blogs. Retrieved 2008-03-07.
  3. ↑ "SQL Server Data Services". Microsoft. Retrieved 2009-04-16.

References

External links

Template:Microsoft sql azure overview

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, April 25, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.