Getting started with Microsoft Azure development

When you work with windows azure environment in emulated environment (local development) You can use desk top version of SQL server 2012.But at the end you have to store your data schema on Azure SQL Database when you publish your cloud Application for production.

What is Windows Azure SQL Database ?

Microsoft Windows Azure SQL Database is a cloud-based relational database service that is built on SQL Server technologies and runs in Microsoft data centers on hardware that is owned, hosted, and maintained by Microsoft.

Similarities and Differences

Similar to an instance of SQL Server on your premises, Windows Azure SQL Database exposes a tabular data stream (TDS) interface for Transact-SQL-based database access.

This allows your database applications to use Windows Azure SQL Database in the same way that they use SQL Server.

Because Windows Azure SQL Database is a service, administration in Windows Azure SQL Database is slightly different.

Unlike administration for an on-premise instance of SQL Server, Windows Azure SQL Database abstracts the logical administration from the physical administration; you continue to administer databases, logins, users, and roles, but Microsoft administers the physical hardware such as hard drives, servers, and storage.

This approach helps Windows Azure SQL Database provide a large-scale multi-tenant database service that offers enterprise-class availability, scalability, security, and self-healing.

Because Microsoft handles all of the physical administration, there are some differences between Windows Azure SQL Database and an on-premise instance of SQL Server in terms of administration, provisioning, Transact-SQL support, programming model, and features.

Features and Types

Windows Azure SQL Database does not support all of the features and data types found in SQL Server.

Analysis Services, Replication, and Service Broker are not currently provided as services on the Windows Azure platform.

Because Windows Azure SQL Database performs the physical administration, any statements and options that attempt to directly manipulate physical resources will be blocked, such as Resource Governor, file group references, and some physical server DDL statements.

It is also not possible to set server options and SQL trace flags or use the SQL Server Profiler or the Database Tuning Advisor utilities.

Windows Azure SQL Database supports many SQL Server 2008 data types; it does not support data types that have been deprecated from SQL Server 2008.

For more details you can follow below mentioned links.

Windows Azure SQL Database Overview

Tools and Utilities Support (Windows Azure SQL Database)

Guidelines and Limitations (Windows Azure SQL Database)

Deploying an ASP.NET Web Application to a Windows Azure Cloud Service and SQL Database

I hope this will help to you.