Scale-first approach to database design refer to the approach used when designing data models that has scalability as their primary concern. To recap the purpose of federations I talk about 2 properties: unlimited scale and the best economics. These are...

10 weeks ago we shipped federations in SQL Azure and it is great to see the momentum grow. This week, I'll be spending time with our MVPs in Redmond and we have many events like this where we get together with many of you to talk about what you'd like...

I started programming on mainframes and all of us would have thoughts these mainframes would be gone by now. Today, mainframes are still around as well as many Windows XPs, Excel 2003s and many more Reporting Services 2008s out there. Doors aren't shut...

In case you guys have not seen this; Maxim Glukhankov has a new sample on codeplex that shows how to set up OData on top of SQL Azure Federations. Just go under “Source Code” at the top and download! http://odatafederation.codeplex.com/ Not every tool...

Well I am sure you noticed that federation’s support SPLIT AT and DROP AT commands but not MERGE AT yet today. What would this MERGE command do? It would do the symmetric opposite of SPLIT. SPLIT introduces a new split point into the federation. So MERGE...

The new pricing model is an amazing improvement over the original model. In 60 seconds here are the 2 major improvements you will notice: #1 - New 100MB Option: Smaller databases has been a big ask. If you do not have a multi-tenant database tier,...

Ambrish posted a great new article on the Windows Azure Team Blog on new functionality coming in SQL Server 2012 Management Studio for Federations. Here is the full writeup; http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2012/02/15/managing-federations...

What a great day! first there is some great news on SQL Azure pricing changes and now the AdventureWorks database is out with a new version for SQL Azure and it contains a flavor that is scaled-out with Federations. Thanks to Scott we now have a scalable...

Sharding has been around for a while and I have seen quite a few systems that utilize SQL Azure with 100s Databases and 100s of compute nodes and tweeted and written about them in the past. Like this case with Flavorus; Ticketing Company Scales to Sell...

If you worked with federations, I am sure you are already know about the online tools like SQL Azure Management Portal that give you the ability to orchestrate your federations with repartitioning operations or resize member MAXSIZE and edition. In episode...