Question

When should I use SQL Azure and when should I use table Storage? I was thinking, use table storage for transaction processing scenarios e.g. debit-credit accounts kind of scenario and use SQL Azure when data will not be used for transactional purposes e.g reporting. What do you think? Select the correct answer from above options

Answer 1

There are multiple aspects which are there to be considered: SQL Azure is relatively expensive for massive storage, does not scale super well and is limited to 150gigs/database, There are no transaction fees against SQL Azure and developers already know how to code against it. ATS(Azure Table Services) is capable of mega-scalability, it is dirt cheap to store but gets expensive to frequently access. a significant amount of CPU power is required from nodes to manipulate. It basically forces to compute nodes to become mini-DB servers as the delegation of all relational activity is turned over to them. frequently accessed data that does not need huge scalability and is not super large in size should be destined for SQL Azure, otherwise Azure Table Services. For example, transactional data from financial transactions is a perfect place for ATS, while meta information (account profiles, names, addresses, etc.) is perfect for SQL Azure.