Tips and Tricks
Quick Tip: Switching to SQL Azure
If you're thinking about moving to the cloud, the first step might be the easiest.
It seems to be that the easiest part of your application to the cloud is your database. If that strikes you as a lot of work ... well, you're not completely wrong.
However, in terms of the changes to your application you may find, once you've migrated your data, that all you have to change in your application is your connection string. Entity Framework (and ADO. NET) have a great deal of trouble telling the difference between a local and an Azure database.
Once you've moved your data into an Azure SQL database, your data is equally accessible no matter where your application is running (and, then, of course, you will start taking advantage of the Azure team's infrastructure). If you haven't considered the cloud yet, this might be your easiest first step.
About the Author
Peter Vogel is a system architect and principal in PH&V Information Services. PH&V provides full-stack consulting from UX design through object modeling to database design. Peter tweets about his VSM columns with the hashtag #vogelarticles. His blog posts on user experience design can be found at http://blog.learningtree.com/tag/ui/.