As we were developing this week's posts on utilizing Entity Framework with SQL Azure we had an opportunity to sit down and talk with Faisal Mohamood, Senior Program Manager of the Entity Framework team. As we've shared in earlier posts this week, one...

One of the great uses for ADO.NET Entity Framework 4.0 that ships with .NET Framework 4.0 is to use the model first approach to design your SQL Azure database. Model first means that the first thing you design is the entity model using Visual Studio and...

This week I’ll be spending some time diving into using Entity Framework with SQL Azure. The Entity Framework provides the glue between your object oriented code and the SQL Azure relational database in a framework that is fully compatible with your skills...

The Microsoft Patterns & Practices group has published the second free online book volume about Developing Applications for the Cloud on the Microsoft Windows Azure Platform . This book demonstrates how you can create a multi-tenant, Software as a...

This is the second post in a series about getting started with Microsoft Project Code-Named “Houston” (Houston) ( Part 1 ). In part 1 we covered the basics, logging in and navigation. In this post we will cover how to use the table designer...

Hi everyone. I’m Steve Yi, technical product manager for SQL Azure . You’ll start seeing posts from me on the SQL Azure blog so I wanted to start off by saying hi and introducing myself. I work closely with the engineering teams on listening...

We are pleased to announce the launch of the new SQL Azure web site -- bookmark this now! www.microsoft.com/sqlazure . This new site has an improved customer experience with faster discovery of relevant and richer information on SQL Azure. Highlights...

Nick Bowyer interviews David Robinson about SQL Azure at Tech.Ed New Zealand 2010.

Often you may require number table for various purposes like parsing a CSV file into a table, string manipulation, or finding missing identities (see example below), etc. Numbers tables are used to increase performance (by avoiding cursors) and simplify...

This is the fourth part in a multi-part blog series about securing your connection string in Windows Azure. In the first blog post ( found here ) a technique was discussed for creating a public/private key pair, using the Windows Azure Certificate Store...

This is the third part in a multi-part blog series about securing your connection string in Windows Azure. In the first blog post ( found here ) a technique was discussed for creating a public/private key pair, using the Windows Azure Certificate Store...

This is the second part in a multi-part blog series about securing your connection string in Windows Azure. In the first blog post ( found here ) a technique was discussed for creating a public/private key pair, using the Windows Azure Certificate Store...

One of the challenges you face in running a highly secure SQL Azure environment is too keep your connection string to SQL Azure secure. If you are running Windows Azure you need to provide this connection string to your Windows Azure code, however you...

SQL Azure doesn’t currently support page level or row level compression like the enterprise edition of SQL Server 2008. However, you can implement your own column level compression in your data access layer to take advantage of the performance and cost...