Can anybody help me in understanding how to upload large files in SQL azure using block.
I am not able to find any good implementation of Blocks to upload files in SQL azure.
Thanks,
Ashwani
You may want to look at storing large files in Azure BLOB Storage. You will end up running out of size in your SQL Azure database, or put yourself into a more expensive SQL Azure price point, by storing files in your relational database. You can always store the pointer to your BLOB in your relational database.
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Hello folks first post in stack, btw wonderful community and helps out a lot.
like mentioned in the title what is the best way to copy such a large database? we got an ~ 500 GB Database and im currently moving this database from managed instance to a azure single database using smss:smss copy via deploy to microsoft azure sql database and it takes me right now 22 hours. i feel like im back in early 20s.
it's all in the same subscription and also in the same network configuration. afaik the process of that is that smss creates a bacpac file and then import it back to the single database. but 16 hours is just too long. so do you know any better option to do this quicker because i've a hell of more and partly larger databases to copy.
Did you think about using ETL tools, such as Azure Data Factory? It has good performance to migrate the big data. Ref this performance table:
It supports SQL database and Azure SQL MI. Ref these tutorial:
Copy and transform data in Azure SQL Database by using Azure Data Factory
Copy and transform data in Azure SQL Managed Instance by using Azure
Data Factory
It may takes some money but save much time. As we all know, time is money.
HTH.
I am currently in the process of building a SQL database in Microsoft Azure for handling pictures, documents, etc. What is the most efficient/best way of storing data? Uploading the files directly to the DB, or by sourcing the files from something like Azure BLOB? I have read numerous posts about people uploading it directly to the DB, but I am concerned about its efficiency.
Thank you in advance for any replies.
You can store in something like Azure SQL DB for example but I would not recommend it, you should definitely store in Azure Storage (BLOB) and then for reference store in a DB. Azure has multiple relational and NoSQL data stores which are offered as platform services.
I would do two things, use a NoSQL platform data store like Cosmos DB using SQL Core API to store the metadata for the images, here you can use the filename as the partition ID to do a point read (this is very fast read and it would be a very cheap option with blazing fast performance) and secondly I would use Azure CDN to make sure images are accessed via CDN so that they are faster.
Azure CDN has three options; Akamai, Verizon and Microsoft. You can test which CDN is faster from where you are from here: https://cloudharmony.com/speedtest-for-azure
Using the above URL you can also use to test which Azure region is closer to you so to use that region, or test for your end-users and choose the region closer tot them.
I would say storing in Azure BLOBs is a better idea. Imagine you have 100 GB files stored in DB.
It will slow down your query if your table is not designed properly.
Backup & Restore DB will be very slow.
Azure DB is more expensive than Azure BLOB for the same size.
If your total file size is small enough, it doesn't make much difference.
Is there a way to output U-SQL results directly to a SQL DB such as Azure SQL DB? Couldn't find much about that.
Thanks!
U-SQL only currently outputs to files or internal tables (ie tables within ADLA databases), but you have a couple of options. Azure SQL Database has recently gained the ability to load files from Azure Blob Storage using either BULK INSERT or OPENROWSET, so you could try that. This article shows the syntax and gives a reminder that:
Azure Blob storage containers with public blobs or public containers
access permissions are not currently supported.
wasb://<BlobContainerName>#<StorageAccountName>.blob.core.windows.net/yourFolder/yourFile.txt
BULK INSERT and OPENROWSET with Azure Blob Storage is shown here:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2017/02/23/loading-files-from-azure-blob-storage-into-azure-sql-database/
You could also use Azure Data Factory (ADF). Its Copy Activity could load the data from Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) to an Azure SQL Database in two steps:
execute U-SQL script which creates output files in ADLS (internal tables are not currently supported as a source in ADF)
move the data from ADLS to Azure SQL Database
As a final option, if your data is likely to get into larger volumes (ie Terabytes (TB) then you could use Azure SQL Data Warehouse which supports Polybase. Polybase now supports both Azure Blob Storage and ADLS as a source.
Perhaps if you can tell us a bit more about your process we can refine which of these options is most suitable for you.
I am writing a new application at the moment and certain entities in the application have images (just used for display purposes on the website).
I want to host my application on azure later and I am trying to figure out whether it would be better to use Azure Blob storage to store all images or just store them in the DB?
What is better performance wise when loading the images on the website?
SQL: Controller -> DB -> VIEW
Azure Blob: Controller -> Webcall to Azure DB -> VIEW
Could someone please explain benefits of either solution to me so that I can make up my mind?
How you design your database storage scheme is subjective, but there are objective things to consider in your scenario. I'll address those, and leave the "which should I choose" to you...
Azure Storage blobs are designed for bulk "block" data (such as documents, images, etc). Something like SQL Database is designed for metadata (stuff you search/index/query).
Everything can be done via SQL Database, and you would only need to worry about SQL queries (and it sounds like that's something you're already familiar with). SQL Server (and SQL Database) have always had the ability to store binary content via its BLOB type.
While you can store your images in SQL Database, you will find that your database size increases considerably, vs just storing queryable metadata. And while SQL Database service allows you to scale your storage, you'll find larger scale in blob storage (up to 500TB) at a lower cost than SQL Database service. If you run SQL Server in a VM, then you'll still have storage cost (attached disks) equivalent to blobs, along with VM costs.
Storage blobs, by themselves, don't provide a query language - you will need to know the container and/or blob name. So, for optimum searching, you'll want a queryable database with your metadata (e.g. SQL Database).
If you store your images in blobs, and reference them via URI in your database, you will be able to query against your database, find the image's URI, and then read from blob storage appropriately.
Also note: With blobs, you'll be able to provide direct image URI access to, say, a browser or an app (even if the blob is marked as private), which allows you to then bypass your app tier when delivering binary (image) content to the end-user. Blobs may also be cached in the CDN, which you cannot do with SQL Database.
Which you choose is ultimately up to you; I simply provided the objective reasons to use each.
Much cheaper in BLOB.
You are also probably going the get faster transfer as BLOB. Now the initial lookup may be a little faster with SQL but for a large image I think BLOB would win. SQL is just plain not optimized for big stuff and BLOB is.
And you keep SQL free to serve up short stuff.
I'm extremely confused, so I've created an SQL Database in Windows Azure, created a "video table" with a "video_file" column as "varbinary(max)" because I want to upload a video file into that field, however Azure offers no "Upload" option like say, PHPMyAdmin does where you can hit "browse" and upload a video directly into the field. Can anyone guide me as to how to actually upload a file into a Windows Azure SQL Database so it can be read as a varbinary type? Can it be done within the Azure management portal? Or does it require some sort of external program/service?
To answer your question, the functionality to upload files directly into SQL Azure Database does not exist. This is something you have to do on your own.
Can anyone guide me as to how to actually upload a file into a Windows
Azure SQL Database so it can be read as a varbinary type?
Do a search for uploading files in SQL Server and you will find plenty of examples on how to do that. Take a look at this link for example: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/225446/Uploading-and-downloading-files-to-from-a-SQL-Serv
Can it be done within the Azure management portal? Or does it require some sort of external program/service?
No. This functionality does not exist in Azure Management Portal. As mentioned above, you would need to write some code to do so.
A little bit off-topic comment:
May I suggest that instead of saving the image files in the database you save them in Blob Storage and store the URL of the blob in your table. There're some advantages I could see in this:
Compared to SQL Database, Azure Blob Storage is much cheaper. If you store video files (or in other words large files) in the database, you will end up with large database and thus end up paying more money.
You will be choking the database when reading this large data from the database which will impact the performance of your application.