An Azure SQL Database provides relational database technology to the Azure platform. It is a specific derived version of the SQL Server. However, Microsoft provides all management of the physical server, leaving the customer responsible for managing individual databases on a logical but not a physical level.

The SQL Database administrator must provision a SQL Database server, which is the administrative and security boundary for a collection of SQL Databases This is a logical server, more like a container than a physical server, as the SQL Database customer has no access to the physical servers on which SQL Databases are stored. In the Creating a SQL Database server and database recipe, we will see how to create one using the Azure Portal.

The next step after creating a SQL Database server is to create some SQL Databases in it. We can do this using either the Azure Portal or by invoking a Transact SQL operation. This is almost the same as the traditional Microsoft SQL Server,...