In the previous chapter, we had an overview of the Entity Framework and Microsoft Azure SQL database as a data source for the Web API application. Despite the fact that a database is a good approach to store and query data, often the more efficient approach is to use something simpler. Microsoft Azure Storage is a REST-based storage-as-a-service, so it can be consumed from every platform that supports HTTP. Microsoft Azure Storage can be both an alternative and a complementary solution to the Microsoft Azure SQL database.

In this chapter we will have an overview of Microsoft Azure Storage and its services: Blobs, Tables, and Queues. We will go through the process of modifying our existing Web API application with the technologies described in the chapter. To do this, we will use Visual Studio 2013.