Question

When should I use SQL Azure and when should I use table Storage? I was thinking, use table storage for transaction processing scenarios e.g. debit-credit accounts kind of scenario and use SQL Azure when data will not be used for transactional purposes e.g reporting. What do you think?

Answer 1

There are multiple aspects which are there to be considered:

 

• SQL Azure is relatively expensive for massive storage, does not scale super well and is limited to 150gigs/database, There are no transaction fees against SQL Azure and developers already know how to code against it.

 

• ATS(Azure Table Services) is capable of mega-scalability, it is dirt cheap to store but gets expensive to frequently access. a significant amount of CPU power is required from nodes to manipulate. It basically forces to compute nodes to become mini-DB servers as the delegation of all relational activity is turned over to them.

 

• frequently accessed data that does not need huge scalability and is not super large in size should be destined for SQL Azure, otherwise Azure Table Services.

 

• For example, transactional data from financial transactions is a perfect place for ATS, while meta information (account profiles, names, addresses, etc.) is perfect for SQL Azure.