Designing the Application Architecture - Transact-SQL Support (SQL Azure Database)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee336250.aspx

Transact-SQL is a language that contains commands used to administer instances of SQL Server including creating and managing all objects in an instance of SQL Server, and inserting, retrieving, modifying, and deleting all data in tables. Applications can communicate with an instance of SQL Server by sending Transact-SQL statements to the server. 

Transact-SQL is an extension of the language defined in the SQL standards published by the International Standards Organization (ISO) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). For more information about Transact-SQL, see Transact-SQL Reference (Database Engine) in SQL Server Books Online. 

Microsoft SQL Azure Database supports a subset of Transact-SQL for SQL Server. 

The support for Transact-SQL reference in SQL Azure Database can be described in three main categories:

• Transact-SQL language elements that are supported as is. 
  
  
• Transact-SQL language elements that are not supported. 
  
  
• Transact-SQL language elements that provide a subset of the arguments and options in their corresponding Transact-SQL elements in SQL Server 2008. 
  
  

Note
SQL Server Database Engine features that are marked for deprecation may not be supported in SQL Azure Database. Deprecated features should not be used in new applications. Check the list of features marked for deprecation in the Transact-SQL Reference (Database Engine) in SQL Server Books Online.

For more information about the Transact-SQL support in SQL Azure Database, see Transact-SQL Reference (SQL Azure Database).

Supported and Partially Supported Transact-SQL Features

The following Transact-SQL features are supported or partially supported by SQL Azure Database:

• Constants
  
  
• Constraints
  
  
• Cursors
  
  
• Extension of spatial data types and methods through CLR
  
  
• Index management and rebuilding indexes
  
  
• Local temporary tables
  
  
• Reserved keywords
  
  
• Spatial data and indexes
  
  
• Stored procedures
  
  
• Statistics management
  
  
• Transactions
  
  
• Triggers
  
  
• Tables, joins, and table variables
  
  
• Transact-SQL language elements such as 
  
  
  • Create/drop databases
    
    
  • Create/alter/drop tables
    
    
  • Create/alter/drop users and logins
    
    
• User-defined functions
  
  
• Views
  
  

Unsupported Transact-SQL Features

The following Transact-SQL features are not supported by SQL Azure Database:

• Common Language Runtime (CLR)
  
  
• Database file placement
  
  
• Database mirroring
  
  
• Distributed queries
  
  
• Distributed transactions
  
  
• Filegroup management
  
  
• Global temporary tables
  
  
• SQL Server configuration options
  
  
• SQL Server Service Broker
  
  
• System tables
  
  
• Trace Flags