Windows Azure: Is the Relational Database Dead? Benjamin Day

Who am I? Owner, Benjamin Day Consulting, Inc. – –Web: –Blog: Trainer, Consultant –Visual Studio Team System, Team Foundation Server Microsoft MVP for VSTS Microsoft VSTS/TFS Customer Advisory Council Microsoft Cloud Services Advisory Group Leader of Beantown.NET INETA User Group

Agenda Big thanks to –Steve Microsoft –Manuvir Microsoft –David Microsoft Is the relational database dead? What is Windows Azure? Develop Your Application Deploy To Staging and Production Some Stuff To Think About

Is the relational database dead? It depends. (Probably not.) Cloud will change everything. Relational database “best practices” are probably dead… …at least in the cloud.

AZURE

The Azure Platform

The “cloud” in Cloud Services? Think data-center somewhere on the internet Allows you to run your app Allows you to read and write data

Ok. So what’s Windows Azure? Microsoft’s “cloud” –Every cloud has an Azure lining? Custom version of Windows –Optimized for utility computing applications –Always runs virtualized on the Azure Fabric Azure Fabric –Runs instances of your apps –Handles “everything” Azure Storage Azure SDK for Visual Studio

Why Azure? “I’ve got my awesome data-center so…” No more worrying about… –Buying, configuring, maintaining hardware –Buying, configuring, maintaining the operating system –Network infrastructure Routers, Switches, Load Balancers –Your data-center’s power and internet connections –Failovers Worry less about… –App deployment –Capacity planning Focus on writing your app

Simple Scale Out Changes in traffic Need more servers? Need fewer servers?

I want everything… …and it should be easy. Azure let’s you worry about writing your app Don’t have to learn a whole bunch of new stuff Leverage your existing dev skills

Azure: The Developer View Write it in Visual Studio –New project types –Debug your code.NET, ASP.NET, WCF, IIS7, LINQ Azure Storage –Database in the cloud –(with a few caveats) Desktop development versions of –Azure Fabric –Azure Storage

Demo 1: Hello, World

Hello, World: Discuss. Doesn’t look like much but… –that’s “internet scale”-able –Highly available Mostly stuff you already know

Debugging In The Cloud We can debug a service in Visual Studio How do you debug a service that has been deployed? –Answer: you don’t Logging is the answer RoleManager.WriteToLog(eventLogName, message) –Event log name values: Error, Information, Warning, Debug, Critical

Demo 1.1: Hello World + Logging

AZURE STORAGE

Azure Storage Simple database in the cloud –Tables (aka. “structured storage”) –Blobs –Queues You don’t worry about replication Scales like nobody’s business Development version –DevelopmentStorage.exe –Uses SQL Server Express

Table Storage Every row has RowKey & Partition Key RowKey = primary key PartitionKey –Helps you tell Azure how to scale your data –You have to think about how you’ll be querying –By State? By Hour? Other? RowKeyPartitionKeyFirstNameLastName 1MABenDay 2MAJohnMalkovich 3WABillGates 4CASteveJobs

PartitionKey Your partitions could be on different servers Best practice: If you know your PartitionKey, add it to the WHERE clause No PartitionKey in the WHERE  insane table scans Recommendation: More partitions is (probably) better Think hard about your partition key in the beginning –Else, roll your own re-partitioning

Column Data Types Partition key and Row key –String (up to 64KB) Other properties –String (up to 64KB) –Binary (up to 64KB) –Bool –DateTime –GUID –Int –Int64 –Double

Demo 2: Azure Table Storage

RELATIONAL VS CLOUD

What is “relational” Tables, Rows, & Columns –All rows in the table have the same column structure –You design the database BEFORE you add the data Relationships between the tables Constraints on the columns Normalization eliminates duplicate data –Data “nuggets” stored in one place only –Makes it clear what the definitive version is

Relational in your app Data is organized for the sake of the data rather than the sake of the app –App is temporary but Schema is forever. –Represents itself as normalization and relationships between the tables Scales nicely on a single node but going to a cluster, it gets ugly

Relational DB Engine Does A Lot Non-trivial SELECT p.FirstName, p.LastName, ph.PhoneNumber FROM Person p LEFT JOIN Phone ph ON p.Id = ph.PersonId WHERE p.LastName LIKE 'D%'

Performance Issues in Relational Avoiding duplication can cause performance issues De-normalizing If you de-normalize and duplicate some data: –you can lower the number of required to build an "object" –You can lower the amount of "heavy lifting" that the db has to do to retrieve your data That JOIN isn't easy Indexes help but it still is a lot of work

Why Stored Procedures? (1 of 2) Abstraction between the app & data Externalize the queries –Remove them from the code –Makes the queries live with the data  more "database me me me!"

Why Stored Procedures? (2 of 2) Security –lock down direct access to the tables –Users get rights to specific procs Performance –Less compelling: cached execution plan Largely irrelevant after SQL Server 7 –More compelling: the query logic is near the data

Stored Procedures In The Cloud Azure can distribute physical location of data by partition key –Is the stored proc near the data anymore? (Well, that pretty much wraps it up for stored procedures.)

What you won’t get in Azure Storage Stored Procedures Views Triggers Foreign Keys Database enforced referential integrity User defined indexes –(Maybe later.)

While I’ve “dissed” relational… I’m not saying “skip best practices.” Don’t put everything in the same table You’ll still have relationships between tables –…the relationships just won’t be enforced by the DB

THE VERDICT?

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

OK. MOVING ON.

MORE THAN JUST ASPX

Utility Compute without a UI Azure uses the concept of “Roles” Hello, World used a “Web Role” The other role is a “Worker Role” –Think windows service in the cloud

Web & Worker

Demo 3: Worker Role and a Queue In a web role, create an ASP.NET page –Creates a queue –Writes to a queue –Gets queue depth Worker Role –Reads the queue –“Processes” the message

DEPLOYMENT

Demo 4: Deploy To The Cloud Change the storage config to use production servers

MISCELLANEOUS

Things to think about No foreign keys No triggers No stored procedures In Table storage, strings can only be 64k –You’ll need to use a mix of Blob and Tables Think hard about what config values you put in web.config/app.config vs ServiceConfiguration.cscfg

The Big Questions When? –Sometime in 2009 An actual Service Level Agreement (SLA) More data-centers –Now in US only –Global at go-live What will it cost? –It will depend on what you use

More resources My Blog – –Sample code –More Azure content to come… Steve Marx’s blog – –Evangelist for the Azure team Azure.com

Final questions?

Who am I? Owner, Benjamin Day Consulting, Inc. – –Web: –Blog: Trainer, Consultant –Visual Studio Team System, Team Foundation Server Microsoft MVP for VSTS Microsoft VSTS/TFS Customer Advisory Council Microsoft Cloud Services Advisory Group Leader of Beantown.NET INETA User Group