Microsoft Azure SQL Database (formerly known as SQL Azure, SQL Server Data Services, SQL Services, and Windows Azure SQL Database) is a managed cloud database (PaaS) cloud-based Microsoft SQL Servers, provided as part of Microsoft Azure services. The service handles database management functions for cloud based Microsoft SQL Servers including upgrading, patching, backups, and monitoring without user involvement.[1]
Data protection[11] with encryption, authentication,[12] limiting user access to the subset of the data, continuous monitoring and auditing to help detect potential threats and provide a record of critical events in case of a breach.
Popular use cases
Relational data storage for cloud-based applications and websites
Quickly create dev and test databases to speed up development cycles
Scale production business services quickly and at a known cost
Containerize data in the cloud for isolation and security
Reduce database administration overhead through increased automation
Design
Azure SQL Database is built on the foundation of the SQL server database and therefore, kept in sync with the latest version[2] of it by using the common code base. Since the cloud version of the database technology strives to decouple it from the underlying computing infrastructure, it doesn't support some of the context specific T-SQL features[13] available in the traditional SQL server. However, the rest of the features are the same with incompatibilities spelled out by Microsoft.[14] Azure SQL Database is also similar to Microsoft's SQL Managed instance offering, with some differences.[15]
Azure SQL Database is offered in two deployment models, as a Standalone database or an Elastic database pool (with shared storage and compute resources).
