Getting Started with SQL Azure

Author
Selcin Turkarslan

Technical Reviewer
David Robinson, Lubor Kollar

Published
July 2010

Summary
This document provides guidelines on how to sign up for SQL Azure and how to get started creating SQL
Azure servers and databases.
Copyright
This is a preliminary document and may be changed substantially prior to final commercial release of the
software described herein.

The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the
issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market
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date of publication.

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© 2010 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Microsoft, ADO.NET Data Services, Cloud Services, Live Services, .NET Services, SharePoint Services,
SQL Azure, SQL Azure Database, SQL Server, SQL Server Express, Sync Framework,
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All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

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Getting Started with SQL Azure
Microsoft SQL Azure Database is a cloud-based relational database platform built on SQL Server
technologies. By using SQL Azure, you can easily provision and deploy relational database solutions to
the cloud. SQL Azure Database is the relational database service on the Windows Azure platform.

To start using SQL Azure, you must first purchase a Windows Azure Platform subscription. To purchase
a Windows Azure Platform subscription, you can either visit the Windows Azure Platform offers page or
the Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal. The Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal allows
you to purchase a subscription to the SQL Azure platform and to other Microsoft Online Services. Follow
these four steps to purchase a Windows Azure Platform subscription:

1. If you are on the Windows Azure Platform offers page, choose one of the available offers and
click Buy. Then, go to step 3.
2. If you are on the Microsoft Online Customer Portal, click Sign in on the upper-right corner.
3. Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal will ask you to sign in with your Windows LiveID
account. After you type your Windows Live e-mail address and password, click Sign in. If you
don’t have a Windows LiveID account, visit Windows LiveID sign-up page and get a Windows
LiveID account for your account administrator or owner. For more information on Windows
LiveID, see Windows Live ID Online Help.
4. To purchase a subscription from Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal, click the Services
panel at the Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal. Add services to your shopping cart. If
you have already chosen an offer on the Windows Azure Platform offers page, this offer will be
shown at the Shopping Cart automatically. For more information on Microsoft Online Customer
Portal, see Microsoft Online Customer Portal Help.

Important: A single account may contain zero or more subscriptions. An account represents the way
that you establish a billing relationship with Microsoft. A single Windows Azure Platform subscription
can contain multiple services, such as Windows Azure, Windows Azure AppFabric, and SQL Azure.

The following image demonstrates the available offers on the Windows Azure Platform offers page. As
an example, choose Windows Azure Platform Introductory Special and click Buy. After your purchase
is complete, you will receive a confirmation notification in e-mail with instructions for accessing your
account in the SQL Azure platform.

Note: The Windows Azure Platform Introductory Special will end on October 31, 2010 and all usage
will then be charged at the standard rates.

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This opens the Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal Sign up page. Use your Windows Live Id
and password to sign in.

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After you type your Windows Live e-mail address and password, click Sign In. The Microsoft Online
Services Customer portal will show up. Click Shopping Cart. Review your purchase details in the
Shopping Cart and click Checkout.

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Then, the Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal asks you to enter the payment options. Choose New
credit card option and click Next.

Note: When you want to purchase your subscription to the service through Microsoft Online Services
Customer Portal, you will be prompted to enter information regarding your account owner. The account
owner or account administrator is the person who signs up for the SQL Azure platform and other
Microsoft Online Services. As an account owner, you own the billing relationship with Microsoft.
Account Administrators can log in to the Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal to manage their
subscriptions and to the SQL Azure portal to manage their SQL Azure servers.

Enter Payment Information and Billing Information as shown in the following window.

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Next, read the Microsoft Online Subscription Agreement. Accept the Terms and Conditions by clicking
the check box. Enter your Full name and Title, and click I Accept.

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Review and confirm the order as shown in the next page. Once you review all, click Confirm Order.

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After you click Confirm Order, the following Confirmation page appears. Click Proceed to
activation….

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This opens the Service Activation page. In the Service Activation page, enter SQLAzure_Introductory as
a subscription name and click Next.

The subscription name will be used to identify the subscription on bills. It will also be used to name your
project in the Windows Azure Platform. One subscription refers to one project. Make sure to name each
subscription uniquely based on your business needs. As an account administrator, you can purchase one
or more subscriptions of each offer except the Windows Azure Platform Introductory Special offer.

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Then, Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal asks you to enter contact details for the person in your
company who will be responsible for setting up and managing your service. This person is called the
service administrator, and is assigned by the account owner. The service administrator defaults to the
account owner from your profile, in case your service administrator is the same as your account owner. If
your service administrator is not the same as your account owner, he/she can only access the SQL Azure
portal and manage their servers. The service administrators cannot manage the subscriptions via the
Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal but the account administrators can.

As soon as activation is complete, an e-mail message is sent to the account owner and the service
administrator, outlining the next steps to take.

Enter the information in the Service Activation window and click Next.

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Then, you will see the Summary page as follows. Review all the information and click Finish.

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After you click Finish on the Summary page, Confirmation window appears. Click Close.

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At this point, a confirmation e-mail message will be sent to your Windows Live ID account. You can see
the status of your subscription under the Subscriptions tab at the Microsoft Online Services Customer
Portal.

After purchasing a Windows Azure Platform subscription, you will receive an email, which will show
you how to activate your account. The following image shows an example confirmation email. In the

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confirmation email, click Microsoft SQL Azure and sign in with your Windows Live ID username and
password.

After creating and activating your subscription, you can create your server at the SQL Azure Developer
Portal. Once you sign in the SQL Azure Portal, a list of projects you have created will show up. By
default, the subscription name will be used to name your project. Check the Status column to verify if
your subscription is Enabled or not. For more information, see Status Codes for SQL Azure Accounts.

When you click the project name, SQL Azure Portal asks you to read and accept the Terms of Use.

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Click I Accept. Then, you can create your logical server. Choose the location that is closest to you to
avoid extra bandwidth costs and achieve better performance. For more information on bandwidth costs,
see Accounts and Billing in SQL Azure.

Note: One subscription maps to one logical SQL Azure server 1:1. A SQL Azure server is a logical
server and contains one or more databases.

Enter Administrator Username and Password, click Create Server.

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After you click Create Server, the provisioning process creates an SQL Azure server, a database named
master, and a login that is the server-level principal of your SQL Azure server. That login is similar to
the server-level principal, sa, for an instance of SQL Server on your premises.

Note: Once you create your server, you can create your SQL Azure databases either by using the SQL
Azure portal or connecting to the master database and running the CREATE DATABASE statement. A
master database is created automatically. You must be connected to the master database whenever you
CREATE, ALTER, or DROP databases. If you do not specify a database in the connection string, you
will be connected to the master database by default. Each SQL Azure server has a fully qualified
unique domain name, such as servername.database.windows.net. The servername refers to the name of
your SQL Azure server.

Next, the Server Administration page appears.

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Click Create Database to create a new database.

Type TestDB and choose 1GB Web Edition database and click Create. For more information on different
database sizes and editions, see Accounts and Billing in SQL Azure.

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If you want to see an example connection string that can be used to connect to your SQL Azure database,
select TestDB database, click Connection Strings. This will provide ADO.NET and ODBC connection
strings that can be used in your application.

Select your SQL Azure database and click Test Connectivity. Enter your Username and Password as
shown below and click Connect. Initially, all access to your SQL Azure server is blocked by the SQL
Azure firewall; connection attempts originating from the Internet or Windows Azure will not be able to
reach your SQL Azure server. Therefore, the connection will not succeed.

Similarly, if you want to connect to your SQL Azure server by using the sqlcmd utility and if the
connections are blocked by the SQL Azure firewall, an error message is returned by the service:

Note: When a computer attempts to connect to your SQL Azure server from the Internet, the SQL
Azure firewall checks the originating IP address of the request against the full set of firewall settings. If
the IP address of the request is not within one of the ranges specified, the connection attempt is blocked
and does not reach the SQL Azure server. If you want to connect to the SQL Azure server and the
connection is blocked by the SQL Azure firewall, the service returns an error message.
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In order to begin using your SQL Azure server, you must specify one or more firewall settings that enable
access to your SQL Azure server on the SQL Azure Portal. Use the firewall settings to specify which IP
address ranges from the Internet are allowed, and whether or not Windows Azure applications can
attempt to connect to your SQL Azure server.

To do that, click the Firewall Settings tab on the Server Administration page.

If you want Windows Azure applications to be able to connect to your SQL Azure server, you must click
Allow Microsoft Services access to this server. This will add a new firewall rule, which is called as
MicrosoftServices and its IP Address Range would be 0.0.0.0 – 0.0.0.0 by default.

If you want to add a new firewall setting for Internet-based connections, click Add Rule. In the dialog
box, specify a unique name in the Name field with the corresponding IP address range. Then select
Submit. The IP address of your computer must be within the IP address range of one of the firewall

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settings. For more information, see SQL Azure Firewall and SQL Azure Connectivity Troubleshooting
Guide.

The following images demonstrate the firewall rules that are enabled in this subscription.

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To modify the existing firewall rule, select the rule and click Edit Rule.

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After you create your SQL Azure server, databases, and set the firewall rules, you can connect to your
SQL Azure database either by using the sqlcmd utility or SQL Server 2008 R2 Management Studio. For
more information, see Developing and Deploying with SQL Azure.

Just like SQL Server, SQL Azure allows you to create additional logins and users. For more information,
see Managing Databases and Logins in SQL Azure.

In addition, SQL Azure allows you to use a subset of the Transact-SQL query language to query a
database and to insert, update, and delete data in tables in a database. For more information, see Transact-
SQL Reference.

When you write applications for SQL Azure, you can use one of the .NET Framework programming
languages, which come with Visual Studio 2008 or later: Microsoft Visual Basic, Microsoft Visual C#, or
Microsoft Visual C++. You can also use the ADO.NET data provider for SQL Server, the SQL Server
2008 Native Client ODBC driver, and the SQL Server 2008 Driver for PHP version 1.1. For more
information, see Development Guide.

References:
 SQL Azure Portal
 SQL Azure Developer Center
 SQL Azure Documentation
 SQL Azure Team Blog

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