Microsoft Azure SQL Database Reviews

We usually work on a valuation basis. When a customer wants to get on to our cloud, we suggest SQL Azure to them.

The preset configuration switches we can select on SQL Azure should be made more liberal to work on. The licensing cost for the solution is very expensive and should be improved.

I have been using SQL Azure for eight years.

SQL Azure is a stable solution.

SQL Azure is a scalable solution. Around 30 to 40 customers are using the solution.

Their customer support is not ok at all because sometimes the tickets we raise don't get authorized.

The initial setup for the solution is easy. It takes around 10 to 15 minutes to set up the solution. The deployment of the solution is straightforward.

The ROI depends on the customer and the scenario.

SQL Azure's licensing cost is expensive.

SQL Azure is a cloud-based solution. We usually require one or two people to deploy and maintain the solution. I would recommend SQL Azure for other people who don’t want to manage their environment. The worst thing about Microsoft is that it has a very bad license agreement that nobody understands.

Overall, I rate SQL Azure an eight out of ten.

We are using SQL Azure for databases that are hosted in Microsoft Azure.

SQL Azure is reliable and scales well.

The solution could improve by allowing the export of the data more seamlessly. It is difficult to copy and back up data.

I have been using SQL Azure for three years.

I rate the stability of SQL Azure an eight out of ten.

We have approximately 1,000 people using the solution in my organization.

I rate the scalability of SQL Azure a nine out of ten.

The support is good.

I rate the initial setup of SQL Azure a nine out of ten.

The solution is expensive.

I rate SQL Azure a nine out of ten.

About 25 people in my office use SQL Azure. Including customers, there are about 400-500 people.

We have multiple applications running for our customers that we can integrate into Azure SQL.

Scalability is an issue because we can't upgrade to new versions due to hardware limitations. 

I've been using SQL Azure for a couple of years.

I rate SQL Azure nine out of 10 for stability because we haven't faced any major issues.

I rate SQL Azure six out of 10 for scalability.

We haven't used technical support because we haven't faced any major challenges, but I would rate their documentation and knowledge base eight out of 10. 

Positive

I rate SQL Azure eight out of 10 for ease of setup. In the worst-case scenario, deployment takes a few days. A couple of employees could do it easily. Usually, it's an admin and a developer. 

I rate SQL Azure six out of 10 for ROI. We've seen a 40-50% ROI

I rate SQL Azure eight out of 10 for affordability. I live in a developing country where cost is always an issue. The price should be negotiable, and there should be more discounts.

I rate SQL Azure eight out of 10. I recommend it because we haven't faced any major issues. 

I think this product can improve its integrations with business intelligence software. The integrations are always cumbersome due to the approvals, passwords, et cetera. 

I have been using this solution for the last three years.

My impression is that this solution is quite stable. I would rate its stability an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

I would rate the scalability of this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. Currently, there are two users of this solution in our company.

I will be doing the implementation myself with the help of a third party.

We evaluated the SQL Server in addition to this solution, but we ultimately chose Azure mainly to have everything on one platform.

Overall, I would rate this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

We use SQL Azure to store our relational data. Whenever I have complex relational data with consistency requirements, I use SQL Azure Database.

I'm currently working in a small startup. There are just two people using this solution now: a developer and myself. I'm working as a technical consultant and an architect.

Microsoft recently added a JSON feature. I use all the features in a normal relational database, and they're very helpful. I prefer using Microsoft SQL Server because I like the experience and the way Microsoft handles the query tuning and security. These are really good features for database experts.

One of the nice features in Microsoft SQL Server is the SQL Server CLR, which we sometimes need to protect our procedures using C# or CLR. This feature isn't available in the SQL Azure database. It's available in the Managed Instance in the Azure Database.

You can create SOAR procedures using C# and can get user-defined functions using C#. You can extend the database and the data files using CLR files. This feature isn't available on the Microsoft Azure SQL Database. I understand they can't add it because it's a managed service, and having CLR probably doesn't work for them, but it would be nice if they could add this feature.

I have used this solution for almost six years.

I would rate the stability as eight out of ten.

It is very scalable, depending on how much you're willing to pay. We can have up to 4,000 DTUs, but we haven't needed that much scalability.

We had an instance where we weren't able to deploy Cosmos DB on a UAE data center, and Microsoft helped us. We haven't had any issues so far with technical support.

Setup is straightforward. You just create an SQL Server instance account on Azure, and then you can create SQL databases. It's very easy to create tables and procedures. I mainly use the SQL data buckets inside Visual Studio. From there, I deploy databases to Azure from Visual Studio.

It's easy to do the deployment in-house. Visual Studio provides a lot of functionality to make deploying solutions to Azure simple and easy.

Using SQL Server database with all the features will provide a good return on investment. Once you move to Azure, you remove all the capital expenses by having to acquire the license and deploy it on-premises.

When you go with SQL Azure Database, you can create a small database, which is around $4 to $5 per month for development purposes. It's very cheap in that respect. I think it's a little bit expensive compared to other services that Microsoft offers on Azure. PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MariaDB are a bit cheaper than SQL Server.

If the price were lower, I think it would become more attractive for developers to use.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten. 

It's a very easy solution. Microsoft also has Data Explore. The entire Microsoft environment makes things easy for developers. It's very easy to set up SQL on Azure. I highly recommend it. I really like it, and I've been working with SQL Server since 2000.

This is one of the applications where we are supporting in production.

If we are using SQL STL, it is a manual process. If we use STL Azure, we will import all the templates from the Azure cloud or Microsoft cloud. There are already pre-defined templates and pre-defined procedures in Azure. We will be using those instead of manual processes. Azure is helping us to be more flexible and handle time scaling.

I have limited experience with the tool. It's hard to describe its best feature. 

It's pretty helpful from a technical standpoint.  It's also dominating other clouds, including AWS and Google. It's better at improving itself. 

The product is easy to set up.

It's stable and reliable. 

I find the product to be scalable. 

The solution is pretty affordable. 

Microsoft has a lot of useful security privileges. 

I haven't really come across any shortcomings. I also have limited experience. We need to do more training and research.

It does take some time to learn about the environment. 

I've been using the solution for six months. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution is easy to scale. 

We have more than 1,000 people using the solution. I'm not sure of the exact number of users. We have multiple accounts and end customers. 

In terms of technical support, we do have a lot of subscription privileges. We do have seniors, and tech leads to assist. They can discuss issues with the vendor and technical support.

We have used different solutions in the past. We found that if we worked manually, we would need more resources. With this solution, we have more time flexibility and stability. More complex things can be worked around.

The initial setup is straightforward. 

It is easy. We only use one account, a Microsoft Azure account, and we can pull all templates from there. It's got an easy user interface and admin interface which makes implementation straightforward. All you have to do is deploy all the scenarios. After that, it will take some time and flexibility to understand the environment.

It takes six hours to finish all the setup, including completing the installation of SQL and integrating with Genesis.

We find the solution to be less expensive than other options. 

We're customers and end-users.

I would recommend this solution. Microsoft is very efficient and forward-looking - making it less expensive to build the setup for Azure SQL. Even though we do have one Microsoft account, we can directly integrate it with everything at one time. We do have limited licenses which makes it less expensive compared to the Google cloud or AWS or whatever else is in the other market. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Our primary use case of this solution is to host our databases and it is fulfilling our requirements.

The most valuable feature from the infra point of view is you don't have to keep any on-prem infrastructure, it is available all the time whenever you want to access it.

The solution can be improved by reducing the cost so more users can be added.

I have been using the solution for 15 months.

Our customers work in the space of small and medium businesses area segment. For them, the way the solution is being offered and used is working and is considered to be stable.

Not much is required in terms of scalability. So the foreign enterprises which are spanning the globe that requires scalability could be different. Small and medium businesses have a presence only in one location or maybe a couple of cities within a country. this is a reasonably scalable solution for them.

The license is based on the number of users.

I give the solution nine out of ten.

Currently, we have 25 to 30 developers using the solution.

There are alternative solutions available like Oracle or MySQL but I have not used any of them.

I recommend the solution.

I'm using SQL Azure mostly for database purposes, including data modeling, data architecture for business applications, and also for Data Lake.

What I like about SQL Azure is that it's similar to your on-premises SQL databases. It's not much different, so it's easy to start quickly on the solution if you know Microsoft SQL. I find its ease of use most valuable, and I also like that SQL Azure is also easily integrated with the Azure Cloud platform.

What would make SQL Azure better is users having the capability of managing the database solution from the cloud, instead of having to do it from an actual machine because currently, database management via SQL Azure is done on a virtual machine or a PC. The solution should have the data functionality of managing SQL databases inside the cloud.

I've been using SQL Azure for almost six years now.

SQL Azure is a stable solution.

SQL Azure is a scalable solution.

The technical support for SQL Azure is pretty good because it's from Microsoft. Based on the subscription you have, support would be included, and if you have a premium subscription with Microsoft, you can get all the support you need.

SQL Azure is easy to set up because it's already part of your cloud infrastructure. You don't need to do any installation.

Your return on investment from SQL Azure would depend on your business applications. The solution will give you more scalability, and more functionality, and would reduce costs from on-premises to cloud databases, so there are a lot of cost reductions. As SQL Azure is pay-per-use, you can control your cost, so in terms of the return on investment, it's more centrally managed in the cloud, which means you don't need so many data warehouses to be managed separately in the infrastructure. You can reduce your infrastructure costs through SQL Azure as Microsoft has taken care of the infrastructure costs.

In terms of the cost, SQL Azure is a pay-per-use solution, particularly because it's a cloud subscription, so you pay as much as you use it, but I cannot give a number because I don't manage the cost or the price for this solution.

My company is using the cloud version of SQL Azure, so it's always the latest version.

There are thousands of people using the solution for business applications. My client is a big company with at least one thousand users of SQL Azure.

In terms of maintaining the solution, it's already managed as a Microsoft-managed product, so in that sense, you don't need people to maintain SQL Azure, but for the application database, you need one person for maintenance.

My advice to others looking into implementing the product is that if you are building a solution on Microsoft Cloud, you should choose SQL Azure for your data warehouse, database for your application, and your enterprise Data Lake needs.

My rating for SQL Azure is nine out of ten.

My company is a service company, so it's a partner, a customer, and a reseller.