Azure storage tables vs SQL

azure azure-sql-database azure-storage azure-table-storage
TheWommies picture TheWommies · Apr 21, 2012 · Viewed 31.3k times · Source

I'm just starting to learn Azure and I can't see too many scenarios where you would want to put something into an Azure storage table as opposed to SQL. I guess maybe I'm used to working in environments where I need related data?

When is it better to put something into an Azure storage table and not in a table in a Azure SQL database?

Answer

Ragnar picture Ragnar · Apr 21, 2012

SQL Azure is great when you want to work with structured data using relations, indexes, constraints, etc.

Azure storage table is great when you need to work with centralized structured data without relations and usually with large volumes.

The Price: SQL Azure: $25.98/mo for 5GB

Storage table: $21.88/m for 175 GB (without transactions or bandwidth) So when you store large volumes of data, storage table is a lot cheaper... think of logging for example.

The centralization: Windows Azure is a distributed environment for servers so if you save something on one machine, others won't know about it, therefore storage table is a good solution for centralized loggins, session handling, settings or whatever (keep on mind that there is latency even in one datacenter)

The speed: If you design it right, in many cases storage table should be faster than sql azure but it probably depends on use cases and I haven't really tested this.

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