In this series of posts I describe how Azure initially kept me busy.
A friend of mine asked me to develop a small application which would help him creating dive plans. As usual, the deadline was very short (I would have about 3 days to develop the application) and the end user would be located 800 km away from my home. (So no quick drive to check on the user’s issue).
Due to the type of data the application processes and how the data is visualized, I decided to use a database. So after the 3 days, I proudly presented the STABLE (that kept me busy) application to my friend. You can imagine what happens next. The typical “Wouldn’t it be nice if…”. Or in other words, the application does what I requested, but now I want something “slightly” different.
My plan was to install the MS SQL Express edition on the end-users PC. Due to the last minute changes (and my good nature), I had to find a new solution. The most of have heard and read a lot about cloud services but maybe never used them. So I decided to try these “Cloud Services” and see where what they can do.
Being a Microsoft Developer, my choice of “Cloud Services” was Azure. My first impression after the signup was: “Well, there are a lot of possibilities”. My primary focus was getting an SQL database to work. At that precise moment I had my first WOW moment with Azure. Being a developer for 14 years and having installed/configured numerous SQL instances, I NEVER had an SQL instance this quick up and running.
But getting an instance up and running is only part of the cookie. I needed to get the SQL schema and data to the Azure SQL database. At that time I was a completely newbie to Azure so I chose my standard approach when working with new Technology: “Try and Error”.
This kept me busy for: 10 minutes
Up next: Busy with the Azure Database