SQL Azure provides relational database technology to the Windows Azure Platform. It is essentially a hosted version of 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 Azure administrator must provision a SQL Azure Server which is the administrative and security boundary for a collection of SQL Azure databases. This is a logical server not a physical server, as the SQL Azure customer has no access to the physical servers on which SQL Azure databases are stored. In the Provisioning a SQL Azure server recipe, we see how to create one using the Windows Azure Portal.
The next step after creating a SQL Azure server is to create some SQL Azure databases in it. We can do this either by using the Windows Azure Portal or by invoking a Transact SQL operation. This is almost the same as with traditional Microsoft SQL Server except that there are...