Management tools

As we've mentioned in this chapter, developers who are used to the GUI interface of SSMS, will find managing SQL Azure frustrating. A good grasp of DDL query commands is necessary to fully manage a SQL Azure database. Sometimes, creating and managing a SQL Azure database may involve two or more tools.

SQL Azure portal

The SQL Azure portal is the only place where databases can be created and firewall rules can be set. We can also retrieve connection strings from the SQL Azure portal.

SSMS 2008 R2

Because SQL Azure was released after SQL Server 2008, SQL Server Management Studio Express 2008 R2 or any higher version must be used to connect to SQL Azure. Only the client tools need to be installed, but this will upgrade any client tools and drivers currently installed on the system.

Unlike SQL Server, tables in SQL Azure cannot be created using the properties grid style of table designer. Instead, every configuration must be performed via SQL queries. And we do mean everything...