Windows Azure SQL Database and SQL Server — Performance and Scalability Compared and Contrasted

Curious about the differences in approaching performance and scalability in SQL Server vs. Windows Azure SQL Database (formerly SQL Azure)? Check out this new paper that brings together insights from the Microsoft SQL Engineering and Customer Advisory Teams (CAT) to detail the differences between on-premises SQL Server and Azure SQL Database tuning and monitoring techniques and best practices for database performance testing. If you’re an on-premises SQL Server whiz and currently integrating the cloud or considering a move to Platform as a Service, this paper is a must read!

Paper Overview

While SQL Server and Windows Azure SQL Databases have large and important similarities, they are not identical, and while the differences are relatively small, they affect the way that applications perform on SQL Database compared to SQL Server. As a result, the application architecture and performance evaluation techniques for each platform also differ.

This document explains these performance differences and their causes and includes real-world customer wisdom from experience troubleshooting performance on production customer SQL Databases. This document also examines common SQL Server performance evaluation techniques that do not work on SQL Database.

Read the full paper.