Building the solution

We will focus our efforts here on building a cloud-based solution and the data portion of a cloud application.. Cloud computing requires a significant shift in how one thinks of building applications, particularly in the case of database professionals. Those of us who spend hours each day worrying about issues like I/O, disk contention, backup and recovery, storage and partitioning, or other similar issues related to hardware now have no worries. The effect can be a bit scary, similar to removing the training wheels from a child's bike. Sure you can go wicked fast, but how do you keep your balance?

If you have not already done so, go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/ and set up your Azure account. As of this writing, Microsoft is offering a free version to help you get started. As a first step, we will want to create a database and populate it. One thing each of the lawyers will need is data on employees and their jobs, so they can ascertain who was involved...