If I have an Azure table, what (if anything) do I need to do to expose it through OData?
Also, what does the OData URL look like? If my Table Url is mytable.table.core.windows.net, where should I point my Visual Studio Web reference to have access to this data?
It depends on what you mean by:
expose it through OData
The only way to access data in an Azure table is via the REST API which is all OData. So as long has you have the correct authentication details (which might be non standard, I haven't tried to use it this way), all of your tables are already exposed as OData. (the url should be http://myaccount.table.core.windows.net/mytable)
If you're looking to use Azure tables in a Visual Studio project, rather than accessing it via the API, generally it's easier to just use the storage client library.
If you want to expose the data in a table using some form or authentication other than what is currently provided (maybe you want to make it available publicly without giving away your storage keys) you will have to create your own wrapper service to do this (similar to the method that is mentioned in the link provided by Gaurav)
Related
Is it possible to expose an Azure Data Lake Store via OData? The main goal is consume this service in Salesforce (via Salesforce Connect).
If so, should it take place through Azure Data Factory?
Update
A little bit more of context:
We have historical data stored in Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) that we want to expose via OData (to be visualised in Salesforce via Salesforce Connect / External objects). After digging into the issue and potential solutions, we don't think ADLS is the right service to be used in this particular case. Instead, we'll might need to configure a Data Factory pipeline to copy the data we are interested in to a SQL Database and read the data from there via a simple ASP.Net application using Entity Data Model and WCF Data Services Entity Framework Provider (got some insights from this website).
I don't think OData has a connector for ADLS. However, given OData is basically a REST API, you could probably build an OData API over the existing ADLS REST APIs if they are not providing what you need. I am not sure how ADF would come into this picture?
Maybe it would be useful if you tell us what you want to achieve?
I am new to Azure Search and I have just seen this tutorial https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/search-howto-dotnet-sdk/ on how to create/delete an index, upload and search for documents. However, I am wondering what type of database is behind the Azure Search functionality. In the given example I couldn't see it specified. Am I right if I assume it is implicitly DocumentDb?
At the same time, how could I specify the type of another database inside the code? How could I possibly use a Sql Server database? Thank you!
However, I am wondering what type of database is behind the Azure
Search functionality.
Azure Search is offered to you as a service. The team hasn't made the underlying storage mechanism public so it's not possible to know what kind of database are they using to store the data. However you interact with the service in form of JSON records. Each document in your index is sent/retrieved (and possibly saved) in form of JSON.
At the same time, how could I specify the type of another database
inside the code? How could I possibly use a Sql Server database?
Short answer, you can't. Because it is a service, you can't specify the service to index any data source. However what you could do is ask search service to populate its database (read index) through multiple sources - SQL Databases, DocumentDB Collections and Blob Containers (currently in preview). This is achieved through something called Data Sources and Indexers. Once configured properly, Azure Search Service will constantly update the index data with the latest data in the specified data source.
I am trying to get to grips with Azure Mobile Services and am a little lost about which Azure services I should be using for what. When you set up a new Azure Mobile Service you only get the option to create it with Microsoft SQL Server as the database. Can you configure it to use the documentDB service instead?
Also a lot of what I read about Azure Mobile Services seem to be setup around storing data for a particular user. Is this the correct place to store data and query it for all the systems users rather than an individual or should that be handled elsewhere?
thanks
Andy
using the .NET backend, you have a choice of using Azure SQL Database,MongoDB or Table Storage. There's no out of the box support yet for DocumentDB, but you can make it work as shown here
what you store in the storage listed above is up to you, there is no specific reason/restriction/limitation that's its only for user specific data. the samples just happen to show that.
You may use any backend database service. It's true you have to set up SQL when you create a new mobile service space. And the SDK has a Table provider that maps to SQL (or MongoDB). However, you can ignore all that if you want. As long as you can access the appropriate driver for your database-of-choice, you can make calls to the database from the API backend methods. This is especially true when building custom API methods.
I need to store multiple files that users upload, and then provide these users with the capability of accessing their files via http. There are two key considerations:
- Storage (which is my primary concern here)
- Security (which let's leave aside for now)
The question is:
What is the most cost efficient and performant way of storing all these files and giving access to them later? I believe the answer is:
- Store files within Azure Storage Account, and have a key that references them in an SQL Azure database.
I am correct on this?
Is a blob storage flat? Or can I create something like folders inside it to better organize my files?
The idea of using SQL Azure to store metadata for your blobs is a pretty common scenario, which allows you to take advantage of SQL for searching, and blobs for storage.
Blobs are organized by container. So you'd have something like:
http://mystorage.blob.core.windows.net/mycontainer/myfile.doc
You can also simulate a hierarchy using a delimiter, but in reality there's just container plus blob.
If you keep the container or blob private, the user would either have to go through your web front end (or web service), or you'd have to provide them with a special URL with a Shared Access Signature appended, which is a time-limited URL.
I would recommend you to take a look at BlobShare Sample which is a simple file sharing application that demonstrates the storage services of the Windows Azure Platform, together with the authentication and authorization capabilities of Access Control Service (ACS). The full sample code is located at following link:
http://blobshare.codeplex.com/
You can use this sample code immediately, just by adding proper reference to your Windows Azure Account credentials. The best thing with this sample is that you can provide blob access directly through Access Control Services. You can also modify the code to add SAS support as well as blob download from public containers. Once you have it working and understood the concept you can tweak to make it the way you would want.
I'm developing a .NET app, which needs to run both on Azure and on regular Windows Servers(2003). It needs to store a few GB of data and SQL Azure is too expensive for me, so I'll use Azure tables in the cloud version. Can you recommend a storage solution, which will run on standalone servers and have an API and behavior similar to Azure tables? From what I've seen Server AppFabric does not include Tables.
If you think what Windows Azure Table Storage is, it is a Key-Value pair based non-relational databse which is accessible through REST API. Please download this document about Windows Azure and NoSQL database details.
If I were in your situation, my approach would have been to find something similar to Azure Table Storage which I can access over REST and have similar accessibility API. So if you try to find the similar database to run on a machine you really need to look for:
Key Value Pair DB
Support for basic operations i.e add, delete, insert, modify an entity
Partition Key and Row Key based Accessibility
RESTful Interface to connect
If you would want to try something you sure can look at:
DBreeze (C# based Key Value Pair NoSQL DB) I just saw it and looks exciting
Googles LevelDB (Key Value Pair DB, open source and available on Windows) I have no idea about API
Redis (Great Key-Value Pair DB but not sure for Windows compatibility and API)
Here is a list of key/value databases without additional indexing facilities are:
Berkeley DB
HBase
MemcacheDB
Redis
SimpleDB
Tokyo Cabinet/Tyrant
Voldemort
Riak
If none works, you sure can get any of open source DB and modify to work for your requirement and then make that available to others as your contribution to community.
ADDED
Now you can use Windows Azure Virtual Machine to run any kind of Key-Value pair DB on Linux or Windows Machine and connection with your application.
I'm not sure which storage solution to recommend, but just about any database solution would work provided that you write an Interface to abstract all your data storage code. Then write implementations of that interface for Azure Table storage and whatever other database you want to use on the non-cloud server
You should be doing that anyway so that your code isn't tightly coupled with Azure Table Storage APIs.
If you combine coding against that Interface with an IoC container, then a single line of code or a single configuration setting would enable you to switch between data implementations based on which platform the code is running on.