TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Azure SQL Database Reviews & Insights

Score8.9 out of 10

279 Reviews and Ratings

Get a Demo

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Azure SQL Database are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Reliability and Accessibility: Users consistently praise Azure SQL Database for its constant availability, emphasizing its reliability and ease of access. They find it reassuring that the platform is always accessible when needed, ensuring uninterrupted workflow and data access.

Ease of Use: Reviewers commonly highlight the simplicity in creating data models and managing databases with Azure SQL, making these tasks straightforward and user-friendly. This ease of use streamlines their workflow, simplifies database management processes, and allows them to focus on more critical aspects of their work.

Integration Capabilities: Many users appreciate how easily all their applications connect with Azure SQL Database, enhancing usability and integration possibilities. This seamless integration allows for efficient collaboration between different tools within their ecosystem, promoting a cohesive working environment.

Azure SQL Database Reviews

7 Reviews
Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees)

Azure SQL Databases is quick to scale

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Azure SQL Database was being utilized at first for development as a low-cost option for development and then was later explored as an option for running production workloads. SQL Database Servers have a relatively high fixed cost and this allowed for a great option at a reduced impact to the budget.

Pros

  • Extremely Flexible- You have the ability to increase and decrease the performance resources as needed without taking a downtime or other burden.
  • Connectivity- Connection to your SQL Database is easily accomplished with SSMS or PowerShell.
  • Speed- Azure SQL Databases are quickly set up. You can have access and begin using your database within minutes.

Cons

  • It would be appreciated for better integration between SSMS and Azure Database service. Example, you need to a provision user account with the Azure portal. It would be great to be able to do this within SSMS.
  • Being able to run a back from SSMS versus from within the Azure Portal would be great. (Ability to create a standard .bak database backup).

Likelihood to Recommend

Azure SQL Database will be great to use for an organization that needs an extremely flexible database solution or a low-cost solution. Some scenarios such as healthcare or banking may require for the solution to remain hosted onsite due to security/regulations. For most scenarios, Azure SQL Database is a great solution.
MJ
Michael Jipping
Digital Imaging Architect in Corporate at OhioHealth (Hospital & Health Care, 51-200 employees)
Vetted Review
Azure SQL Database
2 years of experience
View profile

Azure SQL Database: The Best PaaS offering for SQL Server

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Azure SQL Database provides an easily managed PaaS-based persistence layer for all our web apps, including internal business systems and the products we sell to our customers. It provides a scalable, globally distributed database engine for our development team without a large admin overhead.

Pros

  • Providing a SQL Server instance at low entry-level cost and global high-availability
  • Elastic offerings so SaaS applications can cheaply have one-database-per-customer approach for high data segregation
  • Intelligence performance recommendations from both Azure and the SQL Server engine itself

Cons

  • Intelligent recommendations are not a silver bullet, since they often fail to detect opportunities that are obvious to a human database admin with any experience.
  • Certain advanced database features - most recently I found: column store indices - are locked behind pricing tiers that one would naively assume are just about performance.

Likelihood to Recommend

Azure SQL Database, like most PaaS platforms, is best when you want to save money on human resources by paying a little more for computing resources. Especially cases where the developer is already deep into the Microsoft stack, such as situations where you're already using an Azure Web App for hosting your application. In these case, SQL Database is a no-brainer decision. Obviously, Azure SQL Database is less appropriate for Big Data applications (where a NoSQL technology or at least Azure SQL Data Warehouse would make more sense) and it's delivering SQL Server, so lots of open source stacks would be averse to it (e.g. Wordpress and most PHP technologies where they want MySQL).
ER
Erik Ralston
Chief Architect in Information Technology at LiveTiles (Computer Software, 51-200 employees)
Vetted Review
Azure SQL Database
7 years of experience
View profile

Intro to Azure SQL DB

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Azure SQL Database as the data store for our public website. It allows us to meet our uptime goals and provides a point of contact with our customers regardless of the state of our internal network.

Pros

  • High availability
  • Security features
  • Ease of upgrade from on premise SQL

Cons

  • Lacks full feature parity with SQL server
  • More limited access to metrics for performance troubleshooting
  • Hard to understand metrics used for sizing

Likelihood to Recommend

Works great for simple applications where you don't need functionality like cross-database queries. Also good for elastic use cases since it can be scaled up and down easily.
VU
Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology (Investment Management company, 201-500 employees)
Vetted Review
Azure SQL Database
1 year of experience

Easy to maintain large and complex data

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We used it store customer data on servers and it provides many feature like dynamic queries. We create stored procedure in it to parse different types of format. We also save customer credentials in it.

Pros

  • It is best to store large scale data. We can connect with it in any language.
  • Interface is very easy and the debugging feature is really effective at discovering real errors.
  • Speed of processing large files and store into database is very fast. Data export and import is very safe and simple.
  • Login security features protect against unauthorized users.

Cons

  • Overall it is the best tool to mange large and complex data, but it needs enhancements in the speed of accessing large data volumes.
  • Sometimes it get hung if we forcefully stop the select query.
  • It should show consistent performance through SQL profiler tool.

Likelihood to Recommend

It is used to secure store customer client information. It also provides a multi-task feature. For example we can open different inatances of the same server or a different server, and can perform any number of operations. I always prefer to use this product, but there are some areas in which it struggles a little bit. For example, it should decrease CPU cost and require less system resources . I hope the next version overcomes these issues,
SS
Simranjeet Singh
Software Developer in Research & Development at OATI (Computer Software, 501-1000 employees)
Vetted Review
Azure SQL Database
2 years of experience
View profile

Reviewing Azure SQL Database

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Mainly used for customer/product management. Azure has been a huge help in the process improvement realm. I've used this to enhance and speed up numerous processes. My experience with databases spans a decade and I've used a few different types of services available on the market. Azure was typically a 'go to' tool in most aspects. I advise companies to use this tool the majority of the time.

Pros

  • Marketing automation and tracking
  • SharePoint servers
  • General Business Intelligence

Cons

  • For what I use it for I haven't come across much
  • User interface could be improved
  • Navigation could be simplified

Likelihood to Recommend

It's appropriate with anything relating to product/customer/marketing efficiency. I work in consulting for numerous small and medium size businesses. Most of the time I consult on business development, marketing, online reputation, process improvement, and database work. When appropriate, I recommend Azure as a solution to whatever problem exists. The platform typically works out and helps me with clients.
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Engineering (Internet company, 51-200 employees)
Vetted Review
Azure SQL Database
4 years of experience

Azure SQL Database - a modern cloud solution

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Azure SQL database can be used to replace traditional onsite SQL Server databases. It is a fit for many different business funtions within many different verticals and horizontals.

Pros

  • The newest SQL Server features and functions are pushed to the service, so unlike onsite SQL there is never a need for upgrading.
  • Azure SQL database does not require onsite infrastructure.
  • Because this is a cloud solution, you will never need to patch the Operation System, install a service pack, or install an update.
  • Unlike onsite databases, scaling up or scaling down is very easy with Azure SQL database.

Cons

  • Azure SQL database does not contain the SQL Agent service, so if jobs needs to be scheduled you still need to do this using a traditional SQL Server.
  • Given that there are 10 different pricing options, It can be difficult to determine which one to select.

Likelihood to Recommend

SaaS shops that need to react quickly to customer demand can benefit greatly from the speed and ease at which a database can be created and scaled. Azure SQL Database also works extremely well with PowerBI and a plethora of other Azure services.

Azure SQL database is not likely to be a fit for replacing the database behind a large ERP, this isn't what its meant for. It also is not a fit if you have over 1 TB of data.

TJ
Tom Jaskula
Data Analytics Practice Lead in Professional Services at Peters & Associates (Information Technology and Services, 51-200 employees)
Vetted Review
Reseller
Azure SQL Database
3 years of experience
View profile

Azure SQL - Making Life Easier

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Azure SQL Database is being used by multiple business units in our organization. We use it in conjunction with Cloud Services (web applications).

Pros

  • Point In Time Backup
  • High Availability
  • Scaling

Cons

  • Provide customers more examples with Azure Automation (ways of doing backups, etc.) and then emailing when there is a failure.
  • Decrease costs on premium.
  • Allow customers to define a longer point in time backup recovery period.

Likelihood to Recommend

Since they have different tiers, I'd say any business in need of a database could benefit and save time.
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology (Computer Software company, 201-500 employees)
Vetted Review
Azure SQL Database
3 years of experience