Azure SQL Database Reviews & Insights

Score8.9 out of 10

279 Reviews and Ratings

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

12 Reviews

Information Technology

Azure SQL Databases is quick to scale

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

January 14, 2019

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.

Michael Jipping

Digital Imaging Architect in Corporate at OhioHealth (Hospital & Health Care, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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Azure Sql rocks

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

December 21, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it globally across all member firms for Enterprise solutions. It's the back-end for corporate applications and going forward analytics.

Pros

Agility of the platform
No infrastructure maintenance and worry about upgrading, it's managed.
Always on and universal availabilities
No worry about backup recovery

Cons

PowerBI connectors need improvement across 365 platform
Data bricks can be inherent feature
More robust integration to flow

Likelihood to Recommend

It's well suited for enterprise applications, as development to implementation cycles are shortened and less risky. The Azure platform and ARMs are our favorite now for budget and time.

Atul Gupta

Enterprise Data Architect in Information Technology at BDO Canada (Financial Services, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

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Azure SQL Database: The Best PaaS offering for SQL Server

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

November 6, 2018

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).

Erik Ralston

Chief Architect in Information Technology at LiveTiles (Computer Software, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

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Intro to Azure SQL DB

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

August 10, 2018

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.

Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology (Investment Management company, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Azure SQL DB is an example of how a DBaaS should be done.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

August 7, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Azure SQL DB is a great service. It optimizes licensing cost and lets you pay per usage. You can grow as needed and it supports from small to large databases. Be aware it can require some networking/security steps to have it in large or more controlled environments.

Pros

It optimizes cost - pay per usage. It can scale up and down as needed.
It can be migrated to from Oracle, MySQL and other on premises databases.
It is always updated with management and administrative functionalities being added weekly.

Cons

Migration from on premises databases can be painful at first - but after couple of migrations it becomes easy.
Network capabilities and restrictions should be carefully evaluated.
It can be costly if you don't implement scale up/down automations.

Likelihood to Recommend

For large databases cost should be carefully evaluated as it can be very expensive. But for medium and small databases (usually 80% of the organization) it has perfect fit. Data replication (for disaster recovery), backup, security and performance recommendation are great tools and work very well. When planning to migrate from Oracle, start first with smaller databases - but be aware Microsoft is always improving its migration tools.

Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology (Mining & Metals company, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

The Hidden Savings of Using Azure

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

March 13, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It is used in firm-wide operations via RDP to enter data into a proprietary vertical market legal database. It resolves the problem of a law firm that is in several cities across the US.

Pros

The fact that it is available for the Azure cloud platform.
The fact that it is easy to license as a monthly subscription and software access is simple.
The fact that it functions exactly as its local server based counter part.

Cons

It appears to have a slight delay in revealing data in the client software, then data will appear almost instantly. It is an odd feel when using it until you get used to it.
It seems a bit slower than its local server based counter part.
The tool bars icons are a little different and took some getting used to.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you are a small operation and your focus is on dollar for dollar comparison to a local server based product, it will seem more expensive, until you look at the big picture of total cost of ownership. In the alternative if you consider the cost of IT with this product compared to a local server based product it shakes out in your favor. Specifically when you consider that IT help can be had remotely from around the world at huge savings and by being cloud based you can get some very brilliant but value based talent by shopping globally. Azure products help accomplish this because IT can add and remove features and resources without any need for local boots on the ground. Where local servers and databases are subject to power outages, tampering by local employees, local access security issues.... It is just built for high availability on a more reliable backbone with secure access from anywhere.

Rick Hahn

Consultant \ Law Office Practice Management & Accounting Software in Professional Services at Rick Hahn Tech Services (Legal Services, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

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Easy to maintain large and complex data

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

March 2, 2018

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,

Simranjeet Singh

Software Developer in Research & Development at OATI (Computer Software, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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Reviewing Azure SQL Database

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

August 24, 2017

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.

Verified User

Analyst in Engineering (Internet company, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

Read about my experience with Azure SQL Database. You might be surprised!

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

March 29, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We had acquired a new casino and the move for them to be on our domain was TBD. We did, however, need data from some of their systems. Since they did not go through a full security evaluation yet, we were not willing to allow access to their end. As a solution, we implemented Azure SQL Database so we could push the data to the cloud, to then access it on our end. We would have the data without having to directly access their end from our domain.

Pros

Scales easily
Performance is solid
It just works
Elastic pools are great

Cons

It would nice to have Azure SQL Database provide closer to full support of T-SQL
Cross database queries
More performance reports would be nice

Likelihood to Recommend

It would perform great in a SaaS scenario. You could use elastic pools to manage multiple databases.

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (Gambling & Casinos company, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Azure "The Best to catch a breath for your self"

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

July 27, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Azure database is currently used by a specific department at my organization and we mainly focus on auditing and monitoring so it pretty much serves our purpose and most importantly it is easily secured with firewall and DNS resolutions. Migrating databases is no more a hectic task from shifting a large scale database to a more managed engine.

Pros

The great thing about is even you are a pro or a newbie with Azure, you will not be tired of setting up SQL Server, the befitting pipelining of AZURE to cloud service where you don't need it onsite.
You always don't need to update services, patches and deployment of supporting services. Cloud does make it someone else's job to do this.
Generally obviates the need for building high availability architectures; Azure databases built within it are automatically highly available.
Highly scalable and has vast support for non Microsoft technologies.
One of the ways SQL Azure manifests being part of the whole stack is by offering multiple levels of implementation. If you simply need a website and a database, you can hitch an SQL Azure instance to an Azure website and be done with it.

Cons

No schedulers available in case you require cron jobs.
Certain username are not allowed (root, admin, administrator).

Likelihood to Recommend

Sync and migration tools: If you already have a clutch of SQL Server-stored data somewhere and want to either sync it with SQL Azure or passively migrate it via sync, Microsoft has published a service -- the appropriately named SQL Data Sync to accomplish this. Use of the service itself is free, and all inbound data to Azure costs nothing, so you won't have to worry about racking up costs by syncing gigabyte-sized tables.

Zimran Azim

Software Project Manager in Information Technology at Forman Christian College (Information Technology and Services, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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Azure "The Best to catch a breath for your self"

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

July 27, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

The great thing about is even you are a pro or a newbie with Azure, you will not be tired of setting up SQL Server, the befitting pipelining of AZURE to cloud service where you don't need it onsite.
You always don't need to update services, patches and deployment of supporting services. Cloud does make it someone else's job to do this.
Generally obviates the need for building high availability architectures; Azure databases built within it are automatically highly available.
Highly scalable and has vast support for non Microsoft technologies.
One of the ways SQL Azure manifests being part of the whole stack is by offering multiple levels of implementation. If you simply need a website and a database, you can hitch an SQL Azure instance to an Azure website and be done with it.

Cons

No schedulers available in case you require cron jobs.
Certain username are not allowed (root, admin, administrator).

Likelihood to Recommend

Zimran Azim

Software Project Manager in Information Technology at Forman Christian College (Information Technology and Services, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

View profile