Azure table with different entities in development storage? - azure

Still searching for an answer to this question:
It's my understanding that there is no requirement that there be any structural or type similarity between different entities in a table in Azure storage. But what about development storage? I recently read that this is not true as development storage requires a schema because it stores the data using SQL Server Express.
Can someone confirm this. Also if this is the case then how could I use Dev storage to model different entities within a table in production?
Thanks in advance

Gordon,
Development Storage uses SQL server under the hood to simulate the live azure storage. (It must store the data somewhere). Think of it as an emulator. You use the same API to access live storage or development storage. You are not required to use a schema for development storage.
Think of it as changing a connection string from a staging server to a production server.
Check out this link for more detailed information:

You are not required to use a schema in production, but all objects in a development storage table must have the same set of columns (see here). I'd suggest using multiple tables in development, and switching to one table in production if you need to (maybe use a configuration value to indicate what table tables to use?)

Related

Get data from Azure Synpase to Azure Machine Learning

I am trying to load the data (tabular data in tables, in a schema named 'x' from a spark pool in Azure Synapse. I can't seem to find how to do that. Until now i have only linked synapse and my pool to the ML studio. How can I do that?
The Lake Database contents are stored as Parquet files and exposed via your Serverless SQL endpoint as External Tables, so you can technically just query them via the endpoint. This is true for any tool or service that can connect to SQL, like Power BI, SSMS, Azure Machine Learning, etc.
WARNING, HERE THERE BE DRAGONS: Due to the manner in which the serverless engine allocates memory for text queries, using this approach may result in significant performance issues, up to and including service interruption. Speaking from personal experience, this approach is NOT recommended. I recommend that you limit use of the Lake Database for Spark workloads or very limited investigation in the SQL pool. Fortunately there are a couple ways to sidestep these problems.
Approach 1: Read directly from your Lake Database's storage location. This will be in your workspace's root container (declared at creation time) under the following path structure:
synapse/workspaces/{workspacename}/warehouse/{databasename}.db/{tablename}/
These are just Parquet files, so there are no special rules about accessing them directly.
Approach 2: You can also create Views over your Lake Database (External Table) in a serverless database and use the WITH clause to explicitly assign properly sized schemas. Similarly, you can ignore the External Table altogether and use OPENROWSET over the same storage mentioned above. I recommend this approach if you need to access your Lake Database via the SQL Endpoint.

Storage for Nodejs bot on Azure?

First time using Azure. I have a basic node js bot built with Microsofts Bot Framework, and deployed on Azure. What are my options for storage?
I will most likely just be needing simple key:value storage. Mongodb was my first though but I dont think Azure supports it nativeley.
That said, what are my options for storage on Azure? I usual shy away from MySQL just from preference, but theres no actual reason that wouldnt work either.
Take a look at Azure Table Storage for a NoSql solution
Table storage is a key/attribute store with a schemaless design. Because Table storage is schemaless, it's easy to adapt your data as the needs of your application evolve. Access to data is fast and cost-effective for all kinds of applications. Table storage is typically significantly lower in cost than traditional SQL for similar volumes of data.

ORM code for Azure Dev storage emulator

Tricky question - Does anyone know where the ORM SQL code lives that the Azure Dev storage emulator uses for Table Storage?
I'm wanting to implement a SQL version of Azure Table storage for use on-premises (outside of Azure).
And before explaining to me the differences between a relational db like SQL Server and a NoSQL key/value store like Azure Table storage - I know already, thanks :)
Go to the SQL server you installed the Storage Emulator. You will see a database called "DevelopmentStorageDb20110816" if you have installed the Azure SDK v1.5+ (It was a different date previous to that - something like DevelopmentStorageDb20090919 I think).
In that database you will find all the tables, stored procedures and functions needed to emulate Windows Azure storage.

Windows Azure table storage or SQL Azure

I have an application that looks up data for a page. The data is looked up by primary key and row key in table storage.
I am considering SQL Azure storage. Is there some advantage in my going to this kind of storage being that the look up will always be very direct. Note that I do NOT need any reporting. ALL I want is single row look up
I am considering SQL Azure storage. Is there some advantage in my going to this kind of storage being that the look up will always be very direct. Note that I do NOT need any reporting. ALL I want is single row look up
Assuming that your requirements are fully stated as will only ever need single row access, and assuming that you only want to know about advantages and not disadvantages, then the only advantages I can think of are that SQL azure offers:
time-based subscription pricing instead of pricing per transaction
options for backup (in CTP)
options for replication/synchronisation
more client library options (e.g. Entity Framework, Linq2SQL, etc)
more data types supported
more options for moving your app outside of Azure if you ever want to
Use Table Storage if you don't need relational database functionality.

Alternative to Windows Azure tables out of the cloud

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.

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