With Windows Azure we can use Windows Azure SQL Database service (formerly known as SQL Azure) when we need a Relational Database. Microsoft offers a 99.9% monthly SLA for this service. But Microsoft doesn't provide you with the service to restore your data to a moment back in time when you (accidentally) delete of corrupt data. To have a backup in time I wrote some code to allow a Worker Role to backup my Windows Azure SQL Database every hour. Most solutions you find online are relying on the REST Endpoints but the address of the endpoint is different depending on which datacenter your database is hosted. I found a different solution where you only need the connection string to your database using the DacServices.

I am invited to speak at the Techdays 2013 in the Netherlands. The event is held on the 7th & 8th of March at the World Forum in Den Haag.

dotNed is the Dutch .NET user group and organizes several meetings each year for the .NET community. Maurice de Beijer interviewed me about my experiences using Windows Azure to build a high available and scaling platform for 3FM Serious Request.

When writing .NET code to access a SQL database we often rely on the Entity Framework (EF). The EF makes it very easy to retrieve data from the database by generating a SQL Query for us. But we should not trust it blindly, as the EF can also generate a bad query. It will return the correct data yes, but at what performance cost?