Chapter 11. The Table service, a whole different entity
This chapter covers
- Introducing the Table service
- Getting started developing with the Table service
- Using the Table service in a production environment
In typical web applications, you’d normally store your data in a relational database, such as SQL Server. SQL Server is great at representing relational data and is a suitable data store for many situations, but it’s very difficult to design scalable SQL Server databases at low cost. To get around the problems of scalability, Windows Azure provides its own table-based storage mechanism called the Table service.
Problems of scale in relational databases
As the web server load increases for a site, you may need to scale up the number of servers to cope with the increase in demand. But what do you do if you need to increase the capacity of your data store? Unfortunately, most databases aren’t designed to scale beyond a single server, which means the only way to cope with the increase in demand is either to scale up your hardware or redesign your application.
Although it’s possible to design scalable federated databases with SQL Server, the licensing costs, the design complexity, the cost of development, and the operational costs of running such a system make it very difficult to justify for many companies on a budget.