Microsoft Azure SQL Database Reviews

Microsoft Azure SQL Database serves as a structured relational database for everyday database usage. My team and I build applications, often conversational AI and generative AI applications. Whatever we are building, we need to store relational data somewhere, either for the app to run independently or for logging and auditing purposes.

The features of Microsoft Azure SQL Database that I appreciate most are how simple it is to integrate with other Microsoft SQL-based integrations and applications. Most of our customers are established organizations with a long history of working with us. They still have a lot of on-premise Microsoft SQL Servers, and some have migrated to Azure SQL Managed Instances. The platform-as-a-service offering provides a seamless journey for customers who do not want to deal with the typical legacy Microsoft on-premise SQL Server setup. We can reuse a lot of existing integrations with SQL Server and reuse a lot of the tooling from SQL Server, and it is just nice and flexible.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database can be easy to use. On a scale of one to five, five being really easy and one being not easy, I would probably rate it a four. I cannot really say why it is not five, as I do not rate anything as a ten out of ten or a five out of five, but it is very easy to use.

The biggest return on investment from my perspective when using Microsoft Azure SQL Database comes from how easy it is to set up and how much of a foundation it already has in terms of being a trusted platform. Most of our return on investment comes from the fact that it is a tried and tested platform. There are lots of people around, both in my organization and the customers that we work for, who are very familiar with it. So it does not matter that we are building a completely new solution or a completely new application; the data layer beneath it is still that tried and tested, trustworthy platform that people are familiar with. Our return on investment is that we do not have to spend too much time training new people on the next new platform. It is something that people already know.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database can be improved overall by being able to compete with some of the features that come from things such as PostgreSQL. From my team's perspective in terms of building AI applications, more native integrations with some of the newer AI data types, such as vectors for storing embeddings, would be beneficial. I think all of that is coming. It is just a big product, so I think it is naturally a little bit behind the curve. However, that is not necessarily a bad thing because a lot of customers, because it has been around for so long, they trust it and they are willing to wait until those features become available.

I have been using Microsoft Azure SQL Database for probably close to five or six years.

I would assess the reliability of Microsoft Azure SQL Database in terms of maintaining uptime and availability as being excellent with zero complaints. I have never had an outage or a problem affect us. Even though for the most part we typically do zone-based redundancy within one region and very rarely do we have the need to go beyond that into a geo-redundant setup, despite that and obviously the lower SLA and lower redundancy that we get with that, we have never had any problems.

The ability to scale workloads with Microsoft Azure SQL Database is great. Going back to using the dev and then the testing and then the production environment and being able to identify demand and bandwidth constraints and how much anticipated usage we get across the different environments. Being able to scale up and down based on different rules such as traffic and also being able to do that manually, the scaling features that are available within Microsoft Azure SQL Database and Microsoft SQL Server are great. I have not really had any problems with it.

I would rate the customer service and technical support of Microsoft Azure SQL Database as an eight out of ten. I have personally never had any issues with the platform, so I have never had to go through the process of logging a support ticket or getting IT support from Microsoft for SQL specifically. However, for colleagues who have, and generally speaking more about the Azure platform as a whole, the experience is usually pretty good and I have never had an issue or a problem that could not be resolved.

Positive

I have always used Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Azure SQL Database; I was not using another solution to address similar needs before choosing Microsoft Azure SQL Database. This comes down to familiarity and what our customers tend to use. It is only more recently, in the last year, that we have been expanding beyond that to things such as PostgreSQL. We still use it quite a lot, but more recently we have been looking at other services.

I faced no challenges during the migration or implementation of Microsoft Azure SQL Database.

I would say Microsoft SQL Server has probably helped reduce my company's total cost of ownership. I sit in the wrong team to answer that question properly, but I know that we use SQL Server both on-premise and in Azure. From what I can tell from our internal infrastructure teams, they are all very happy with it. There is almost certainly going to be a return on investment and a lower total cost of ownership.

Pricing-wise, I think Microsoft Azure SQL Database is actually pretty good. We use the DTU-based tiers, certainly for proof of concepts and early development, because for what you get for your money and how simplistic it is to set up, there is not much out there that really beats it. Going beyond that, there is sometimes almost too much choice when it comes to the pricing and how much it can scale, but ultimately, I am not going to complain that you have all that flexibility.

My impressions of Microsoft Azure SQL Database's ability to power next-generation AI applications are that, more often than not, we tend to be looking at other services, such as Postgres or some of the NoSQL Cosmos offerings. However, that is not to say that Microsoft Azure SQL Database or Microsoft SQL Server cannot be used for that. A lot of the time for us, being a Microsoft partner and a service provider, it is most of the time going to come down to what the customer wants. Given that a lot of our customers do use Microsoft SQL Server and always have and probably still plan to from an ongoing maintenance perspective, we have built AI applications that use Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Azure SQL Database.

I would give this review an overall rating of eight out of ten.

My main use cases for Microsoft Azure SQL Database are OLTP and OLAP, as well as ODS for applications.

There has been an impact on my company's operations in AI operations because of Microsoft Azure SQL Database; we are slowly scaling that up.

The impact of the automatic tuning feature on my database performance has increased performance while keeping costs at realistic levels, and it has removed some of the engineering workloads for our DBAs who would have had to worry about manually performing tuning.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database's security features have made a good impact on my data protection strategy; the integration with Purview and everything has made it a lot easier to perform data governance and lineage management for us.

The biggest return on investment from my point of view when using Microsoft Azure SQL Database is not having to worry about actual physical infrastructure and being able to scale based on application needs; if it's a small app, we can have a dedicated database and minimal spend on it, whereas if it's a significant one, we don't have to lay out all the capital expenses. It's all OpEx-based, so it really scales well with the business.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database has absolutely helped me reduce my company's total cost of ownership.

My impressions of Microsoft Azure SQL Database's ability to scale workloads are fantastic; I've never had an issue.

The features of Microsoft Azure SQL Database that I like the most are easy scaling and high availability.

I appreciate those features because it's easy to make Microsoft Azure SQL Database readily available in a multi-region infrastructure.

Using Microsoft Azure SQL Database is very easy; it's much easier than SQL on-premise because I don't have to worry about deploying infrastructure, and I can rapidly deploy via infrastructure as code.

I am using the automatic tuning feature in Microsoft Azure SQL Database.

We are using the new feature of data encryption in Microsoft Azure SQL Database with customer-managed keys only.

The reliability and stability of Microsoft Azure SQL Database platform are rock-solid; it's as good, if not better, than what our on-premise stability has been from an uptime perspective.

I am very happy with Microsoft Azure SQL Database; I don't think there's anything in particular I would change, except to make it cheaper.

I have been using Microsoft Azure SQL Database for eight years.

The resources or support from Microsoft that I have found particularly helpful are our CSAs assigned to our account team; they have been invaluable for that.

I would commend JD Grillo, Mike Petrowski, Phil Feinberg, our main account CTO; they have been instrumental in building out our Azure infrastructure.

From one to ten, I would rate the customer service and technical support of Microsoft an eight to nine; it's good most of the time. We're a big company, and we always have some growing pains, but I would say particularly from our account team's perspective, they're top-notch.

Positive

I was not really using another solution to address similar needs before choosing Microsoft Azure SQL Database.

The setup costs and licensing for Microsoft Azure SQL Database are minimal; it's pay-as-you-go, so we don't have to worry about the licensing costs.

I have not faced any challenges during the implementation or migration of Microsoft Azure SQL Database; it's one of the easier ones to migrate.

Microsoft expertise in SQL Servers was very important when considering cloud database options.

Realistically, it's about ten percent; we're looking to scale that higher.

I don't have an exact percentage, but it's about fifteen to twenty percent off of our standard deployments, particularly across our multiple SDLC environments.

The setup costs and licensing for Microsoft Azure SQL Database are minimal; it's pay-as-you-go, so we don't have to worry about the licensing costs.

I have considered other solutions along the way; we have looked at the other clouds from that perspective, but we're Azure-first.

The reason we're Azure-first is our expertise, and we're trying to get really good at one cloud before we move on to others.

My impressions of Microsoft Azure SQL Database's ability to power next-generation AI applications are that it's getting there; it's not as good as Cosmos DB right now, but we're seeing significant improvements in Microsoft Azure SQL Database space.

My experience with the backup and restore functionalities of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is that they are very straightforward and easy to use.

My advice for other companies that are considering Microsoft Azure SQL Database is that it's a great opportunity to reduce on-premise dependencies; it's an easy lift and shift to a modern platform. If you're looking for a way to begin your cloud adoption journey and start making an adoption move, Microsoft Azure SQL Database is a great way to start. I would rate this product a nine out of ten.

We work in Azure on our applications. We work with SQL, Cosmos DB, PostgreSQL, and we work with some services: AKS, Kubernetes services, managed Kubernetes, which we use in our applications. We use App Services. We use Event Bus and many services in Azure. Since one year, we have been using OpenAI services and Foundry services in order to integrate AI in our apps.

The SQL SDK is very simple for the dev team. It is not a problem to integrate SQL in our applications.

The reason I chose Microsoft Azure SQL Database is that the first goal is data encryption managed by Microsoft. It is a good feature for us. The second goal is perhaps the scalability on serverless. We work with serverless tier and SKU. Serverless is good for scalability. You can scale from 1 to 10 cores, which is a good feature for us.

We use data encryption by default with encryption by Microsoft. It is the first level of encryption. We do not use BYOK in SQL. We just use Microsoft keys, and Microsoft encrypts the database with Microsoft keys. We do not implement BYOK at this time.

This question is complicated. Some developers know the SQL language, but they are not database managers. They can develop with some queries, which is acceptable for us, but management of SQL engines is complicated. Our choice is Microsoft Azure SQL Database because developers cannot manage SQL instances. It is just our choice. Regarding TCO, I do not know, but we cannot use SQL in simple mode or on-premises mode. It is impossible for us. Microsoft Azure SQL Database is good for us. We can deploy Microsoft Azure SQL Database on the MCO, and MCO is in Azure.

The price is high, but we can use some features. For example, we use reserved instances in SQL. We can use HUB. We have Software Assurance and we can buy some licenses with a lower price. We can apply these licenses on Microsoft Azure SQL Database with HUB function. We mitigate the price with reserved instances and HUB mechanism. The price is high in my opinion, but we can lower the price with mechanisms like Azure Hybrid Benefit.

DTU in Microsoft Azure SQL Database, at the first deployment, you can choose DTU or core for billing. DTU is a unit designed by Microsoft, but this unit is very dark. It is complicated to work with this unit because it is not transparent. We cannot see exactly if SQL consumes IOPS or if SQL consumes CPU. It is a dark unit. You can increase the visibility of this unit in Microsoft Azure SQL Database.

For global impression for SQL, I think I can put an eight.

Four years. One year in production and two years integration workload.

At this time, we do not call technical support on SQL. We had no problems, and we have no problems currently in Microsoft Azure SQL Database. There is no contact to support. I do not know the quality of this support because we do not have any problem with Microsoft Azure SQL Database now.

For scaling, we can use many SKUs. You can work with General Purpose SKU, you can work with Business Critical SKU, or you can work with Data Analytics SKU. For scalability, Microsoft Azure SQL Database is good, very good. We can choose many SKUs. We have a large choice of SKUs for scalability. We do not have any problem choosing any SKU with scalability. It is automatic. The serverless SKU is interesting. We can work with scalability with serverless, and we can scale up to more than 20 cores in serverless. For us, it is a good feature.

There are no complaints. We use Microsoft Azure SQL Database with vCore, not in the first mode. The first mode is DTU.

For migration, we migrated one workload in two different regions of Azure with no problem. We used backpack. There are many tools to migrate your workload in Azure. It is simple with no problem.

We work with SQL, Cosmos DB, PostgreSQL, and we work with some services: AKS, Kubernetes services, and managed Kubernetes, which we use in our applications.

We work on our applications. We work with SQL, Cosmos DB, PostgreSQL, and we work with some services: AKS, Kubernetes services, and managed Kubernetes, which we use in our applications. We use App Services. We use Event Bus and many services in Azure.

Microsoft Azure products provide good return on investment. For example, in a simple workload or simple apps, we use managed services in Azure. It is a good thing for return on investment. We can deploy simply and rapidly with a lower price for a workload. It is important for us. Our applications are simple and are designed for Azure. It is a good thing for return on investment. It is our pattern.

For pricing, it is a good benefit. You can decrease the price by approximately 25% or 30% maximum. It is a good opportunity for us. Software Assurance and Azure Hybrid Benefit is a good opportunity. We use this opportunity.

For next applications with SQL, I do not know at this time, but I think Cosmos DB can provide some types of data, for example a vector database. Cosmos DB is compatible with vector database. It is a good thing for AI integration in our workload. PostgreSQL is compatible with vector database too. We can integrate it in our workload. Regarding SQL, I do not know if there are examples for SQL in AI generative workload or what features SQL offers for this purpose.

For the data encryption with Microsoft key, it is mandatory for our security manager. We cannot implement Microsoft Azure SQL Database on-premises or in Azure without encryption. In Azure, it is automatic. The first feature for Microsoft Azure SQL Database is database encryption. It is good for us. We can deploy databases in Azure and we can have this mandatory feature for our security manager.

DTU evolution with transparency would be helpful rather than a dark unit being a complete feature set. For backup and restore, we have restored some databases with this functionality. It is good functionality with point-in-time restore. It is very simple to restore a database. Point-in-time restore is a good feature that is simple and reliable.

I would rate this product an eight.

We are looking at a reduction in costs of maybe 30 to 50%, depending on the customer and the use case, so that's what we're considering for a ballpark figure.

In our testing, it has been promising, and we are definitely going to move forward with it.

The specific benefits I see so far mainly involve cost; we want to get away from the bulk of the cost for Azure SQL Managed Instances. When we go to Microsoft Azure SQL Database, we'll be able to achieve that cost efficiency while also scaling up and down dynamically.

The impact of automatic tuning on our database performance has shown us how we can scale up and down dynamically for cost efficiencies, so it's been a big factor in that regard.

The Microsoft Azure SQL Database security features have a significant impact on our data protection strategies because we try to lock it down from public access, which is important for security for our customers and for us as well; it's a big feature that we lean on quite a bit.

I assess the reliability of Microsoft Azure SQL Database in terms of maintaining uptime and availability as good; there are more options and more flexibility with Microsoft Azure SQL Database than there are with Managed Instances, so we are looking forward to that as well.

I am impressed because if we have a bigger customer with a larger database, we must be able to scale it up to meet the demand for all their customers trying to make payments online or whatnot; for our smaller customers, we can scale it down to achieve that cost benefit.

Our estimate for how much it will reduce total cost of ownership is probably 30 to 50%, which is what we're aiming for.

In terms of ease of use, I assess Microsoft Azure SQL Database as easy to use; it's just the migration of our database that presents a few challenges that we're having to change as developers, but it's a process we're getting through.

My impressions of Microsoft Azure SQL Database's ability to power next-generation AI applications are still developing; we are just now dipping our toes in AI, and we're probably still a year or two away from integrating it fully, so I don't know much about its capabilities on that front just yet.

I am using the automatic tuning feature in Microsoft SQL, and it's a great aspect of the platform.

The primary reason I want to reduce the cost of ownership with Microsoft Azure SQL Database is that it offers more flexibility regarding scaling, and it fits our product better than what it is today versus what it was 20 years ago with the same back end that we had.

During the migration or implementation of Microsoft Azure SQL Database, I didn't really find any challenges; as far as Microsoft Azure SQL Database itself goes, there are some database changes to manage, but there are really no issues with SQL to begin with; it works for us, and we have a team that manages it, so it's a good spot for us.

Microsoft's expertise in SQL Server was very important when considering cloud database options; our database is legacy right now with the way it's designed, so we're still moving towards Microsoft Azure SQL Database. There are a lot of steps to get there, but we are making progress.

Regarding Microsoft's expertise in SQL servers and databases, we haven't really leaned on them much yet; we've got a developer team of about 21 or 22, and they're pretty good with SQL, but we haven't had to reach out.

I would rate Microsoft Azure SQL Database overall as a solution and a database at a nine on a scale of one to ten. A nine is my rating, and what would make it a ten for me is maybe cost, as cost can always come down, and that's always a factor.

My main use cases for Microsoft Azure SQL Database in my current company are for transactional databases to support our business applications that we build in-house. We also use Microsoft Azure SQL Database for our analytics data warehouse.

I am not using automatic tuning features in Microsoft Azure SQL Database, as that would be a better question for our infrastructure, IT, or networking teams.

In my role as a data engineer, I manage our data warehouse, and currently, we are using Microsoft Azure SQL Database, but we're migrating to Snowflake right now. My role is migrating us away from Microsoft Azure SQL Database.

The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure SQL Database for me are that it stores data in a structure that I'm very familiar with, relational databases. Relational databases are the bread and butter of data warehousing, so that's probably the biggest value for me.

The value of that familiarity with Microsoft Azure SQL Database comes from my background with on-premises SQL Server, making Microsoft Azure SQL Database an easy transition for me. I've taken the Microsoft Azure Foundational certificate, AZ-900 and DP-900, so I know about the other services, but the companies I've worked for have made it easy for me to transition from company to company.

In terms of ease of use, I found Microsoft Azure SQL Database as easy to use as the on-premises version. My experience was that it really was pretty seamless. I didn't have to learn any new SQL. We're still able to access it using SSMS, the same similar interface, so it was a seamless transition.

Areas where Microsoft Azure SQL Database could improve include expanding the data types that can be supported. My company is working with a lot of geography data now, and that would be something great to see.

My impression of Microsoft Azure SQL Database's ability to scale workloads is that I haven't had a lot of experience with it, but from what I hear from my senior data engineers, there are some workloads that we feel are too big and that it doesn't really do a good job of handling. We have some workarounds that we have to use for our data warehousing pipelines for that very reason.

When it comes to what too big means, it's not even talking about terabytes. Our data warehouse in total is about two terabytes, and the tables we're referring to are around 60 million rows, which are approximately 60 to 70 gigabytes.

I have been in my current role for a little over a year.

In terms of assessing the reliability of Microsoft Azure SQL Database regarding uptime and availability, I would say it's pretty good. We don't get too many failures—maybe one, sometimes twice a month—but they're nothing that requires more than clicking a button and getting things restarted. So it's pretty easy.

We hear that moving those takes a longer time than we'd prefer, which is one of the reasons why the director was able to convince them to move to Snowflake, as they said it would be quicker. So far, I haven't seen any improvement.

I have not used Microsoft support specifically for Microsoft Azure SQL Database.

Neutral

Prior to Microsoft Azure SQL Database, the company I worked with used Excel.

The primary driver to move to Microsoft Azure SQL Database was that I left the other company because I didn't feel they were keeping up with the latest technology such as Microsoft Azure SQL Database.

I wasn't involved in the migration or implementation of Microsoft Azure SQL Database since I'm new at the company, but the migration is currently taking place as we're migrating away.

I haven't seen any return on my investment in Microsoft Azure SQL Database, nor a reduction in total cost of ownership.

I have not seen a reduction in operational costs.

I have evaluated other databases while considering or moving to Snowflake; we looked at data warehousing solutions including Fabric, Databricks, and Snowflake, which were the three we focused on.

The main difference between Snowflake, Databricks, and Microsoft Azure SQL Database, both in terms of pros and cons, is that I'm typically very tool-agnostic. A lot of them have the same pros. Cons were more context-specific. Since our company is a Microsoft company, it would have made more sense to stick with Microsoft products. Snowflake's pro is that it provides a similar interface, so it's not too difficult to transition from Microsoft Azure SQL Database or Microsoft SQL Server to Snowflake. The con is that Microsoft SQL and Microsoft use T-SQL, while in Snowflake, we have to learn a portion of ANSI SQL. It's not too different, but there are some differences. Databricks has the big pros of supporting a number of languages, and a similar pro for both Databricks and Snowflake is having more control over compute, such as determining how large you want your cluster in Databricks or your warehouse size in Snowflake based on the number of nodes.

A pro within Microsoft Azure SQL Database over these databases is just a preference; to be honest, right now, the main pro with Microsoft Azure SQL Database is that it's what I've always used.

The decision to migrate was indeed a manager's decision, but he's not even there anymore.

We're still moving; I'm still seeing what's available because it's caused some headaches. Now that that manager isn't there, who knows? We might be able to have another conversation about staying with Microsoft since we already have the account. There definitely were some challenges in the migration.

The impact of Microsoft Azure SQL Database's security features on my data protection strategies is limited, as I don't work with security often.

I'm not using the new feature of data encryption in Microsoft Azure SQL Database since that's also not my primary role.

I have some experience with the backup and restore functionalities of Microsoft Azure SQL Database, but it's very minimal. We do our daily backups using Microsoft Azure SQL Server.

My impression of its backup functionalities and restore functionalities is that we haven't had to restore, so I don't have much of an impression or any feedback to give on that. Backups run smoothly, and we haven't had any issues or failures with any of our backups so far.

I would rate Microsoft Azure SQL Database as a seven on a scale of one to ten. I'm giving it a seven because it's something that I'm familiar with, and it's easy for me to work with. What would make it better would be expanding the support for different data types; I think that would be a big thing for me because right now, being able to support geography data types is important for our company. We work in land and building homes, and we are trying to use more geographical data to help us pinpoint good places to help build homes.

I have recently started using Microsoft Azure SQL Database for some of our clients allowed to use it from outside. So far, so good. Most of our clients are development companies using Microsoft Azure SQL Database. Until now, no one complains. They are using Microsoft Azure SQL Database along with Fabric plus some AI capabilities from Azure. Our part is only to provide those resources plus the first deployment of the landing zone. So far, no one complains, and everyone is working with their applications. We also have minimal managed support tickets coming from those teams.

I assess Microsoft Azure SQL Database's ability to integrate with other Microsoft applications as quite seamless. For example, you could use the same database for Power BI. Your Power BI team could use it. At the same time, maybe your SharePoint is developing some pages and requires some database from Microsoft Azure SQL Database. This is how both business teams could use the same database without going for additional third parties or different containers. The same cluster, the same database cluster, if you have for example, Enterprise, will support multiple applications and multiple systems from Microsoft.

I recently learned that they increased the encryption rate in Microsoft Azure SQL Database, so we use the default of AES 256. It depends on the client. Sometimes if a client needs more visibility about encryption and data and VDBL control, we will suggest third-party tools from AvePoint. We have implemented this with several clients here in Saudi Arabia, but those are restricted to sharing who those clients are where we used enhanced encryption. We provide more visibility on data and how the data moves to ensure VDBL compliance, and the tool we use for this is from AvePoint.

Do I see any room for improvement when it comes to Microsoft Azure SQL Database? This depends on what I hear from my clients. What could be enhanced is the price of Enterprise to be reduced. Enterprise has a Standard and an Enterprise version. The price of Enterprise is a point. It relates to why the banking sector always goes for PostgreSQL. They said it has a much better speed in transmitting data compared to Microsoft Azure SQL Database. Those two points need to be reevaluated, and it could be a mess.

For the future, I believe they need to do some awareness and provide incentives for clients once they enter Saudi Arabia. They should create incentives for clients moving from traditional Microsoft Enterprise to Microsoft Azure SQL Database. In Microsoft Enterprise, as I mentioned earlier, we are using third-party tools such as AvePoint to protect those databases. In Azure, it is already protected, so there is no need to invest in additional security. It will not be your own database; it is pay-as-you-go, and the consumption may increase your bill suddenly. However, at least you are not paying for security for your data center or server. You can rely on Azure cloud for that.

I assess the reliability of Microsoft Azure SQL Database in maintaining uptime and availability as very good. To be honest, so far, we have not faced any problems. Since I have been working in ESET for more than three years, I have not encountered any problems or complaints from clients regarding either Microsoft SQL or Oracle databases. No one is complaining. Some clients complain about PostgreSQL, but not about availability; they need some additional configuration and cleaning, but they do not have experts for that. So far, there are no complaints.

My impressions of the technical support by Microsoft so far are quite positive from my personal experience. I have some Windows PCs, and they support me very well. In terms of work, as a managed service provider, my managed service center typically handles client requirements. In some cases, we face three to four tickets per year that our team does not solve, and we need to reach out to the Microsoft team. Each time they support us very well. They are very responsive. Once you open a ticket, they follow up. Sometimes, the ticket might close, and you did not acknowledge them. After a day or two, they let you know what happened, follow up, and make sure everything is okay before closing the ticket.

I would rate their support eight out of ten until they enhance the Copilot and chat support. If they handle this part well, I will give it ten out of ten. The team is ten out of ten. However, the portal which has the chatbot for support needs enhancement.

If you ask people in the market how easy it is to use Microsoft Azure SQL Database and deploy it, they will tell you PostgreSQL is the most difficult, with Oracle following. However, since I use PostgreSQL and Microsoft, I can tell you PostgreSQL is much easier to deploy. You have a lot of articles on GitHub and other places to make it so fast and easy. When we talk about embedded databases or cloud solutions such as Microsoft Azure SQL Database or Oracle MySQL, those are very easy to set up. When it comes to complexity, for example, for Enterprise version with a specific cluster and specific rules, you need to invest more time. Regarding difficulty, I would rate it medium. The most difficult is Oracle, then Microsoft, and then PostgreSQL. However, if you ask people in the market, they will say PostgreSQL is the most difficult because they lack experience with it. For me, it is the easiest.

We use the articles provided by Microsoft to help us in the implementation because Microsoft has articles on how to do the configuration, deployment, clustering, and if there are any certificates or API calls. Everything is there. Internally in ESET, we also have our standard operating processes and manuals that our technicians or team will follow to see how we do it and what benchmarks we use, and then we will deploy.

People in the banking sector prefer PostgreSQL because they say it is faster in transferring data to their application than other types of databases. However, what is the downside? The downside, I have been working with PostgreSQL since five years. The downside is that you will not have a lot of experts in the market here in Saudi Arabia. When you have PostgreSQL, it is really hard to manage or do cleaning or specific configuration because you do not have a lot of expert people. While on the Microsoft side, you have a lot of companies, such as ESET for example, that will help you in doing this configuration.

I am not sure about the automatic tools mentioned, but as an IT team member, we use some configuration for auto failover, or if I have a DR site or high availability, I use some synchronization methods, sometimes some synchronization tools for both SQL and file sharing. This is from an IT perspective. This is what automation we are using. We use it for high availability, but not for cleaning and other purposes. I am not aware of those tools.

I am not the right person to discuss Microsoft Azure SQL Database's ability to power next-generation AI applications. We have people here in ESET because we develop our AI tool to work on Microsoft Azure SQL Database and other databases. We call it River. It is better I let the person who develops it speak about it.

My experience with the backup and restore functionalities of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is that I am not directly involved in this part, but we usually have multiple copies; for example, in OCI, we copy the whole machine. We have other methods for backups. We let third-party tools, such as Acronis or AvePoint, copy these databases. We are not facing any issues until now. Hence, we maintain multiple vendors for backup. For synchronization, always-on configuration, and DAG, all this is applied by default. However, for backup, we use different tools.

I would rate my overall experience with Microsoft Azure SQL Database as nine out of ten.

The benefit of the user-friendly feature in Microsoft Azure SQL Database for our company is that developers do not need to search everywhere to get information directly. I will not mention the name of the other cloud provider, but it can be very difficult to get information in a simple way. If a manager asks for information, there is often a struggle to obtain it. In Azure, we know exactly where to look for that information, and if there is a problem such as an application being down, we need to know where to run that query. It is straightforward, so we just go to the data plane and get that information.

I assess Microsoft Azure SQL Database's ability to integrate with other Microsoft applications as straightforward. Since everything is on the cloud and we are mostly using the cloud, it is easy to install a connector and connect the hybrid setup from on-premise to cloud or vice versa. Microsoft Learn also helps us because their documentation is straightforward.

The impact of Microsoft Azure SQL Database's security features on our data protection strategies is significant. We use many security features such as data sensitivity and also use Purview for that. Since it comes from Microsoft, it is natively supported, which is what we want. We do not have any plan to use another third-party database solution provider, which is why we started using everything on Azure, including Microsoft SQL Managed Instances and Microsoft Azure SQL Database.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database is a reliable product. The whole world mostly uses it, and I find it reliable. Whenever we need information, we can get it, which is the most important thing.

Pricing could be one area for improvement, as it is always a concern for every customer regarding costs. It is unlikely that a price reduction will happen.

Neutral

We are using the automatic tuning feature in Microsoft Azure SQL Database. Although I have not been in touch with the database administrators, they told us about a year ago that it is easy to use on a day-to-day basis. They are satisfied with how auto-tuning has made their jobs easier because they do not need to struggle to get a fix deployed, and they know when to deploy it specifically for non-production and production databases.

Data encryption is a by-default requirement for us in Microsoft Azure SQL Database as it is a policy.

I do not know of any impact that the automatic tuning feature has had on our data security strategies.

My experience with the backup and restore functionalities of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is limited, as this is handled by the database team.

I understand that feedback will go somewhere and possibly lead to changes, but I do not have much to add on this issue.

My overall rating for this product is nine out of ten.

My main use cases for Microsoft Azure SQL Database are storing data for our developers. We support our developers and they use it particularly to store their data.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database has helped us tremendously with regards to cost and scaling. In regards to identity and governance, it has been amazing with authenticating with MFA, which is very important to our company. It is simple to use as well. It is just really easy to use and really easy with permissions as well through Entra ID.

The features from Microsoft Azure SQL Database that I like the most are that it is easily scalable, easy to manage, security, and identity. Using managed identities for our apps is pretty easy to use. Scalability is also valuable.

Azure's Active Directory integration and Azure Key Vault have helped manage data security. We manage everything through Entra ID and we also use managed identities for apps in order to use authentication for the database.

I would describe my experience deploying Microsoft Azure SQL Database as pretty straightforward. We have it all in code, so we deploy through Bicep. It is pretty straightforward with code.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database can be improved by making the interface a little easier for users to manage. A lot of the configuration has to be done through PowerShell, but perhaps they could include some more enhancements and settings to do through the portal.

I have been working in my current role for about three years.

I have not used Azure Database Intelligence Performance features. I don't think we have automatic tuning enabled for Microsoft Azure SQL Database.

I would evaluate my customer service and technical support as honestly having very minimal issues, but Microsoft has been very helpful.

On a scale from one being the worst and ten being the best, I would rate my customer service and technical support an eight. I rate it an eight usually because of timing. Sometimes it takes time and sometimes they are not really straightforward to the point of the issues.

Positive

We had no other solutions before selecting Microsoft Azure SQL Database. That was all we wanted to do.

I was not using another solution to address similar needs prior to adopting Microsoft Azure SQL Database.

I have seen a return on investment with Microsoft Azure SQL Database from our developers.

I actually do not do anything with the pricing setup cost or licensing for Microsoft Azure SQL Database.

I would assess the effectiveness of Microsoft Azure SQL Database security features in meeting compliance standards as currently pretty open, as we are just implementing policies for the database. We have not really gone into much of a compliance standard. Right now, it is an open network. We do plan on doing that in the next few months.

The compatibility with SQL Server for transitioning legacy systems to Microsoft Azure SQL Database is important, but I got in when it was already established, so we did not really migrate much. Therefore, I cannot really speak to the migration.

From their end point, I think they have mentioned that Microsoft Azure SQL Database is pretty efficient to use. It is pretty easy to manage as well on their end.

Being straightforward is something that works well, and I did not face any challenges. Mostly it is documented, so it is pretty easy to do.

My advice to another organization that is considering Microsoft Azure SQL Database would be that if they are on cloud, there are many options, but they should explore their options and see what makes more sense to their customers. Our customers really did not have a vision for anything else other than SQL, and they have also used it before, so it was easier for them. I would recommend exploring options and if it makes sense, going for it.

I would rate this review a nine out of ten.

The major use cases for Microsoft Azure SQL Database are related to managing database-related information. We are running a health system, so we manage all health data. We are using in-house AI applications on the AI platform, and we are integrating them with Microsoft SQL databases.

We are using automatic tuning. When we discuss performance and query results, we are mainly focused on automatic tuning and query optimizations, including memory, CPU utilization, and other computing resources. This greatly helps optimize our performance.

The impact of data encryption influences our data security significantly, leading to many improvements. On Microsoft SQL, I have many years of experience, and recently I have moved more toward the Azure side.

Currently, I do not see any other potential areas for improvement because we have not experienced any issues other than email or modern authentication. We have not faced any challenges with SQL, but the main challenge is memory utilization.

Regarding the integration part, it is mostly with Microsoft platforms, Microsoft applications, Azure Entra ID, and application integration. While it is not good with third-party or email integration, I feel it is good on the infrastructure side.

In SQL, we have experienced that it supports legacy authentication, and we face many challenges with modern authentication when using SQL for email sending or similar tasks.

My experience is between five to ten years.

On the support side, Microsoft support is not good. We encounter many issues and challenges with Microsoft support, as they tend to circulate around issues for a long time without solving them, and ultimately we get solutions from other sources.

We are using Microsoft Azure SQL Database and do not face any limitations. We are using SQL as a scalable solution and do not have any issues.

If I had to rate the support from zero to ten points, I would say it is average. I would rate it four out of ten.

I have not had much experience with AWS or others because we are mainly working on SQL. In the past, we have used Oracle, but we no longer use that.

For Microsoft Azure SQL Database, I would say the deployment is very simple. We do not encounter much complexity there.

Regarding TCO, it is beneficial for the cost-saving side based on utilization. If we utilize the hybrid licensing solution, then we save a lot on licensing costs, and when we use the reservation, we also save costs and achieve greater TCO.

Return on investment is evident. We are getting more ROI because we are using SQL as IaaS, Infrastructure as a Service. We are also utilizing managed instances as flexible solutions for managed-like services, but mostly we operate with IaaS. Regarding value for money, we are getting much return on the basis of our investments.

With the reservation and hybrid licensing solutions, it becomes cheaper.

I have not worked much with similar products to Microsoft Azure SQL Database. Occasionally, we have used other products such as DB2, but mostly we are using Microsoft SQL.

The majority of my work is with Hyper-V, not AWS, but I occasionally work on AWS. Mostly, I work with Hyper-V. Regarding Microsoft, I am also working on a Microsoft platform. I do not work mostly with Azure Cosmos DB or Microsoft Azure SQL Database, but I occasionally work on them. When I say occasionally work with Azure Cosmos DB, I mean SQL, specifically Microsoft SQL on the VM or Azure SQL Managed Instances. I work as a customer with Microsoft.

What I appreciate about Microsoft Azure SQL Database is that we are associated with SQL, so we have been using it for the last couple of years. It is user-friendly and easy to integrate with the Microsoft platform. We are taking backups in various ways, including bare metal recovery at the database level, VM level backups, transaction log backups, and offline backups. Therefore, we do not face any challenges there. My experience with backup restoration is good.

I would rate this product seven out of ten.

The major use case started with moving to Microsoft Azure SQL Database from on-premises captive data centers, focusing on modernization and cloud migration with associated changes. Post that, everybody started using the PaaS solutions around the always-on features. That's where core enterprise use cases and scalable models come into play.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database's ability to segregate read-write operations helps me manage my application and workloads effectively. The fact that a lot needs to go wrong for it to go down is valuable. The high availability, always-on feature, and the way it integrates is simpler for the end user.

Automatic tuning in Microsoft Azure SQL Database helps in simplifying administrative practices. Something that can repair itself is always beneficial. In production, you cannot use it extensively because you don't know the impact of those fine-tuning adjustments. There's always a cost in terms of performance when you do fine-tuning, so there has to be a balance. For the initial 30%, it's great. For the rest, enterprises need to keep monitoring it.

The effectiveness of Microsoft Azure SQL Database's security features in meeting compliance standards has been amazing.

Active Directory definitely helps manage data security, and Key Vault adds to the advantages. There are some use cases where you will not be using it.

There are two aspects to Microsoft Azure SQL Database that can be improved. While the cost versus benefit debate continues, Microsoft Azure SQL Database has been cost-driven for a very long time rather than value-driven. Real price optimization needs to come into place. Running something this complex, I understand that when compared to solutions like Oracle, they appear very much cheaper. However, that is a story we've been using for a very long time and have been paying for accordingly. As a customer, I believe something which has been established, stable, and rugged for a very long time also needs cost optimization.

I have been using Microsoft Azure SQL Database for around five years.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database helps me keep my business on. Most importantly, it helps me continuously and predictably serve my customers.

We manage our support in-house for Microsoft Azure SQL Database. Unless there's a real escalated issue, we are generally pretty self-sufficient.

Positive

I have a very small on-premises footprint now, with everything else on the cloud.

The deployment process of Microsoft Azure SQL Database was earlier quite challenging because everything had to be done manually. Since the advent of GitHub and infrastructure as code, many things have become easier. People now work more on first-time implementation and re-implementation is much easier.

We are continuously trying to work on optimizing Microsoft Azure SQL Database. Switching is probably not being considered.

The biggest return on investment for me when using Microsoft Azure SQL Database is my control on uptime.

All ROI discussions regarding Microsoft Azure SQL Database center on cost versus value. If your value is worth it and your stakes are high enough, the value justifies the investment.

Regarding the setup cost and licensing, pricing is a significant consideration.

A whole lot of evaluation is required for Microsoft Azure SQL Database. For some applications it may be suitable, for others it may be less appropriate. Decisions go on an application-to-application and use-case-to-use-case basis.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database is not being used to its full potential. Having a good amount of database engineers was probably one of the reasons for not using it to its full capacity.

If your data is not reaching your application, what is the value of that data?

My user misbehavior has less impact on my uptime and data flow. I might not know what will come or what will not come. However, because I am on Microsoft Azure SQL Database, I have better capability and better options than to go down. Definitely, if I compare it with my old days on premises, it is superior. The comparison from my IaaS implementation to PaaS implementation clearly shows the advantage. I would rate this review a 9 out of 10.