Leon Welicki: Hello there, and thank you very much for joining
us in this new Azure Portal How To video.
Today, we learn to create and query an Azure SQL database.
And for that, we have Ninar Nuemah, who’s going to show us
how to do that. So, thank you very much for joining us.
Ninar Nuemah: Thank, Leon. Thanks for having me. Hello,
everyone. Like Leon said, we’re going to create a SQL
database. If you’re unfamiliar with SQL database, it’s a
high performance reliable cloud database. You can if you
have a data driven application or a website that you want to
create a database to support it, you can use any programming
language that you prefer and you don’t have to manage any
of the infrastructure. So, we’ll go ahead and create a database.
Go to create a resource. SQL database is right here. You
could use the quick start tutorial if you weren’t watching this
video to walk you through it.
So if we go to create, if you’re familiar with any of the other
videos or creating a resource, you’re familiar with this
experience. And basics you have just the bare minimum that
you would need to do to create the database. At the very
least, you need to enter a database name and you could go
ahead and click create right away very easy. But we’ll
walk through a couple of the other things that you can do
in case you wanted to customize it a bit. So first, there’s
the project details. For any resource you want to create,
you need to specify a subscription and a resource group.
The resource group you could use sort of a folder or a
bucket; you put all the related resources together. You
manage policies, permissions. Once you’re done with it,
you just can delete it and you’re all good. And then
where we’ve entered the database name, I select a server
and a region for the database or I could create a new one.
If I had a large number of databases I wanted to manage
the performance and the cost together, I could put it in an
elastic pool. But we’re just kind of testing things out today.
So, I’m going to have just a single database and a low end
tier, leave it at the default.
And then the last thing that I’m going to want to do is fill
the database with some sample data, so I can play around
and query it later, like Leon said. I could also fill it with
a backup if I had a former database. But by default, it’s
just going to be an empty database. I can do whatever I
want with it. And that’s all I need to do.
I’m going to go to review and create. See it’s running some
validation, make sure there’s no errors. I didn’t make any
mistakes. And then I can have one final look at the cost
of the database, make sure I’m familiar with all the settings
and defaults that were answered. Make sure I’m happy with
everything. And I go ahead and just click create.
Leon: And at this point with this very little information that
you provided you are creating a full database in the cloud,
right?
Ninar: Yeah.
Leon: That’s very nice. And this experience, like you mentioned,
is the same that we use for any other resource like storage
accounts, virtual machines, etc.
Ninar: Mmm hmm. Try to make it as simple and clear as
possible, just the bare minimum things you can do. But you
can customize anything else after that.
Leon: Very nice.
Ninar: So then while it’s creating, we have this nice deployment
status blade that gives us a play by play of what’s going on
when we’re creating. In this case, we only have one database,
one resource creating. Sometimes there are a number of
resources and we’ll see that as it happens.
In the meantime, I’m going to go back and look at an active
database and take a look at the overview status of that
database and what I can see there. And then in the meantime,
the create will have a notification that lets us know when the
database is ready to be looked at. So, I have this database
that has some activity. I can look at the compute and storage
usage, see if there are any problems. If there were any
notifications, I would get that right here. If there’s alerts,
any performance recommendations, things that I’d want to
pay attention to. Otherwise, I just get this set of features,
so I can see, oh, I’m not using georeplication. Is that
important to me? I can configure that from right here.
Leon: So, basically from here, you can see all the options
that are available to set up your database and with one
click, get to them and configure that database.
Ninar: Yep.
Leon: Very nice.
Ninar: Alright. Looks like the database is not quite done.
That’s alright. I have a backup.
We’ll go take a look and we’ll go to the query editor.
So, this is a great feature where I can if I want to query
or edit my data, I can do it right from the portal. I don’t have
to exit, go somewhere else, go into SQL Server Management
Studio. I can just go right here. And I can either, I have
Azure Active Directory. I have my account on this server,
so I could go ahead and just click or I can enter my
credentials and log in that way.
Leon: And in this case, you decided to use Active Directory.
Ninar: Mmm hmm. It’s very convenient. I didn’t have to
enter my password; I could do it either way. It just
automatically connected me, and I just click OK.
And so if I want to query the database, just checking on
the sample data that’s in here, I can run really quick
under a second, I ran this query and I can take a look at
all the data that’s in these tables. And here on the site,
I can view my tables, view stored procedures. Say, I just
want to go to the customer table and I want to edit my
data. I need to install a previous feature, so I accept the
terms. And then it opens another tab. I’m going to see
all of the data in this table.
Leon: So, basically, you can inspect the schema and
everything that is available to you in the database.
Ninar: Yep. So, I can see right if I expand on this table,
it’ll give me that full schema, all the columns that are
actually in this table. So, I get that full list, sort of a
light version of SQL Server Management Studio. I get
the basic things that I need if I want to access my data.
Leon: So, basically, you can either write your own queries
or you can explore by clicking and going through the schema.
Ninar: Mmm hmm. So once all of this has loaded, I can go
through, I can edit any of the cells in this table. If I want to
change a customer’s name, I want to add a new customer,
I can just add a row and start entering all the information
there. If I’m not super familiar with writing TSQL queries, I
could just edit the data. I don’t have to figure out how do
I create a row and add all of the data. I can just edit it right
here in place.
Leon: That’s perfect. All in the portal without installing
any additional tool.
Ninar: Yep.
Leon: In the convenience of your browser, right?
Ninar: Mmm hmm.
Leon: Thank you very much, Ninar. And thanks, every
one of you for watching. Please leave us a comment in the
comment section or follow us on Twitter. Look forward
to seeing you in the next video. Thanks for watching.
Ninar: Thank you.