Azure SQL Database

In the Ultra Transcenders books

AZ-305AZ-104AZ-700SC-500AI-103DP-900DP-800

Each book explains Azure SQL Database in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.

Terms in this definition

• Schema

  The middle part of a Unity Catalog name (catalog.schema.table), grouping tables, views, volumes, functions and models inside a catalog. A grant on it covers everything in it now and later, and nothing inside can be reached without USE SCHEMA.

• Elastic pool

  A group of Azure SQL databases drawing on a shared allocation of vCores or eDTUs, ideal when many databases peak at different times.

• Hyperscale

  Azure SQL Database tier built for very big databases (as much as 128 TB), offering quick scale operations and read replicas across which load is balanced.

• SQL Agent

  The job scheduler for SQL Server, offered on SQL Server on VMs and SQL Managed Instance but not on Azure SQL Database.

• CLR

  Lets .NET code run inside SQL Server (common language runtime); SQL Server on VMs and SQL Managed Instance support it, while Azure SQL Database doesn't.

Related terms

• Active geo-replication

  Azure SQL Database feature that replicates a single database to as many as four readable secondaries, failed over manually. SQL Managed Instance does not offer it.

• ADR

  A recovery design in the Database Engine. Changes are versioned inside the user database, in what's called a persistent version store, which makes rolling back almost immediate and recovery time constant. Azure SQL Database, SQL database in Fabric and Managed Instance have it permanently enabled.

• ALLOW_BUILTIN_TVF_IN_ALL_COMPAT_LEVELS

  Lets functions like REGEXP_SPLIT_TO_TABLE, REGEXP_MATCHES and OPENJSON be used whatever the database's compatibility level. It is a database scoped configuration, currently in preview, for SQL database in Fabric and Azure SQL Database.

• ALTER ANY EXTERNAL MIRROR

  A permission that the account used for mirroring must hold in an Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance or SQL Server source before Fabric can mirror it. Anyone with CONTROL, or in the db_owner role, already has it.

• ASSUME_FIXED_MAX_SELECTIVITY_FOR_REGEXP

  A query hint for SQL Server 2025 and Azure SQL Database that gives REGEXP_LIKE a fixed, higher selectivity, for cases where the normal cardinality estimate comes out too low.

• ASSUME_FIXED_MIN_SELECTIVITY_FOR_REGEXP

  A query hint for SQL Server 2025 and Azure SQL Database that gives REGEXP_LIKE a fixed, lower selectivity, for cases where the normal cardinality estimate comes out too high.

• Automatic index management

  Lets the database add and remove indexes by itself to match the workload, through the CREATE_INDEX and DROP_INDEX automatic tuning options. You'll only find it in SQL database in Fabric and Azure SQL Database.

• azure/sql-action

  Used in GitHub workflows to publish a SQL project or .dacpac to SQL Server or an Azure SQL database; it is a wrapper round SqlPackage.