Book Review: Pro SQL Database for Windows Azure

IMG_2963Earlier this year I wrote a blog series on the system tables available in SQL Azure. It was not long after that series was done that I was asked to be the technical reviewer for a book about SQL Azure. I jumped at the chance to learn even more about SQL Azure, because I know that my future is cloudy, and that’s a good thing.

Writing a book about anything in Windows Azure is risky because of the amount of changes that happen in the Cloud. To give you an idea of how rapidly Azure changes, in the amount of time it took to pull together all the chapters for the book the name “SQL Azure” changed! It is now called “Windows Azure SQL Database”.

As I reviewed the book I did my best to provide feedback to the authors Scott Klein (blog | @SQLScott), Herve Roggero (blog | @hroggero) that they needed to focus more on the concepts for SQL Databases, as those concepts are likely to be more stable than the typical “click here, do that” books filled with nothing but screenshots for 800 pages.

Some of the topics covered in the book include:

  • Designing for high performance
  • Performance tuning
  • Federations
  • SQL Data Sync
  • Security
  • Windows Azure Mobile Services

You should head over to Amazon and buy yourself a copy of Pro SQL Database for Windows Azure: SQL Server in the Cloud today, there is still time to get it delivered for Christmas!

I’m now thinking of adding a new bookshelf to my library: https://thomaslarock.com/sqlserverbooks for Azure or Cloud topics in general, and placing this book there. If there are other books on Azure that I should be reviewing, just leave me a comment below so I can get them into my reading list.

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