Microsoft SQL Azure Enterprise Application Development Book Review

This book starts out with an introduction to cloud computing and the Azure Services Platform. It covers the current state of the Cloud leaders and does a nice summary comparison to show the strengths of each. It compares Amazon, Google, SalesForce, and Microsoft. It continues with a nice introduction to the Microsoft Azure platform components. It covers the different types of storage, Azure AppFabric, the hosting service, and SQL Azure. It then does a good job of walking you through getting a subscription. The book then goes through a detailed introduction to the SQL Azure Services. It covers accessing SQL Azure Services, setting up the firewall, using SQL Server Management Studio, and a lite introduction to some basic administration and monitoring. There is then a chapter on Working with SQL Azure Databases from Visual Studio 2008, SQL Azure Tools, Populating SQL Azure Databases, SSIS and SSRS Applications Using SQL Azure, Working with Windows Azure Hosting, Database Applications on Windows Azure Platform Accessing SQL Server Databases, Synchronizing SQL Azure, and Recent Developments. This book does a great job of covering a ton of topics. Because it goes over so many different topics, it doesn't always go into depth, but I do feel that it goes into depth enough that you leave knowing where to go to find out more. There is no code available to download at this time. All in all this is a good book to get introduced to Microsoft SQL Azure. You can check out a sample chapter on publisher's web site here.