ALTER’ing SQL Azure for MIX

So, this post will really serve two purposes.  The first is to serve as a shameless plug for the some of the sessions coming up this week in Las Vegas for SQL Azure.  My friend and colleague David Robinson will be in town giving what I can only tell you will be an EXTREMELY cool demo of some upcoming features that we’ll be releasing over the next couple of weeks.  Trust me…  You will want to attend.  I’ve linked some of the relevant SQL Azure session below to make it easier to locate these for those of you attending.

SQL Azure sessions for MIX 2010 

The second purpose here is to really go over some usability things that we’ve added to the service recently (mostly in our last service update but it continues in our upcoming one).  The first is that you now have the ability to easily change the SKU for any databases you previously created.  This was a pretty big piece of feedback we heard from you and ended up being holiday project of mine. 

As you know you can easily determine the number of db’s you have of a particular SKU using a query like the following in your master database.

select * from sys.database_usage where time = '2010-03-13’

So, let’s say that you presently have a Web SKU database and you would likely to switch to a Business SKU database.  You can now easily do this using the following syntax:

alter database <database_name> modify (MAXSIZE=10GB)

Pretty simple right?  Hopefully you think it is.

The team is beginning to look at opening other alter capabilities that make sense.  Some of the ones high on our list, and I’d like to hear feedback on this, include:

DB Rename, Read-Only DB access, DBO access only mode, etc. 

Again, can’t stress enough of this.  We love to hear feedback on the features we take on, the priorities and pain points you have with the service.  As always, please feel free to drop me feedback here or even better here for others to comment on.

--Jeff--