Azure SQL is a cloud-based database service that offers a highly available, scalable, and fully managed platform for hosting your SQL Server databases. By moving your databases to Azure SQL, you can take advantage of the cloud’s benefits, such as automatic backups, scaling on demand, and reduced operational overhead. This manual will guide you through the process of connecting to, migrating, and analyzing diagnostics of your Azure SQL databases.
Connecting to your database
- via the Azure Portal: Log in to the Azure portal, navigate to your database, and use the built-in query editor to interact with your database using SQL.
- via Connection Strings: For application connectivity, a formatted string is used. It contains the necessary information for establishing a connection to the SQL Server database hosted on the Azure platform. Those information being server name, database name, authentication credentials, and encryption settings. This connection string is used by applications to connect to and interact with the database. For guidance on how to set this up, please refer to this guide by Microsoft.
Migration guides
From on-prem SQL to an Azure SQL
Prior to migration, the Azure SQL database instance is deployed by True Engineers and delivered to you through our ticket system, including technical details to use the instance. Depending on the service you have, you can use the appropriate section from this guide provided by Microsoft to migrate your existing SQL database onto the cloud.
Existing MySQL database to an Azure SQL database
Prior to migration, the Azure SQL database instance is deployed by True Engineers and delivered to you through our ticket system, including technical details to use the instance. Then, you can follow this migration guide by Microsoft.
For any specific questions, you can request these in a ticket from our Cloud engineers.
Diagnostics of a database
With database access, you can analyze and find out which and why queries are running slow. Refer to this guide in order to do so.
When/if you need the slow query logs, please request through our ticket system. Our engineers will confirm this with you and turn on the log. Slow query logs are records that capture database queries taking longer than a specified threshold, aiding in performance analysis and optimization. After running for some time, the log will start to fill with the slowest queries that run over a predetermined amount of seconds. Upon request, we will send you those. Of course, we also will do our best to run an analyses and provide you with recommendations such as limiting the number of joins, or retrieving more filtered data from your database to suit your needs.