SQL Data Services (SDS) Part II

In the last article, we discussed the overview of SDS and how to start using the CTP by asking for an invitation.

Once you receive the invitation, you will have to go to URL https://sql.azure.com and login with your Windows Live Id where you have received the invitation. You will be shown a single project in My Projects tab with “SDS – only CTP project” and provided with ‘Manage’ as action.When you click on ‘Manage’ you will be shown Server name, Server administrator and the location for the server. You will need this information for further usage. You will observe that master database already exists. You can create a database of your choice by selecting Create Database button and enter name of the database.

In this article we will create our first table in the newly created database. Currently you cannot connect to SQL Azure by using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). This feature will be made available later. We can still make use of ‘New’ query, enter the server name and specify SQL Server authentication we created. SQL Azure only allows SQL Server authentication.

Make sure that you have selected the proper window for connection. Do not specify credentials in connect window for SSMS, as you will get an error similar to the one shown below

Make sure you click on Options tab and specify the database you need to connect to as shown. Do not select browse on server but enter name of the database. Keep the remaining properties as default.

You will get a warning as follows

Click on OK and continue.

Enter first query as SELECT @@ version

Let us create a table in the database with the name as Names and 3 columns as UserId , User Name and password. Make sure you are connected to the newly create database.

Add some records to the table by writing T-SQL as

INSERT INTO Names VALUES (1,’Name’,’Password’)

And finally enter the query

SELECT * FROM Names 

to view the added rows.

In this post, we created a database, created a new table in the database, added rows to the table and even retrieved the newly added rows. In the next post, we will view and edit the table programmatically.