SQL Data Sync
Azure SQL Data Sync (Preview) is a service that enables you to synchronize the data you select across multiple SQL Server and SQL Database instances. To synchronize your data you create sync groups which define the databases, tables and columns to synchronize as well as the synchronization schedule. Each sync group must have at least one SQL Database instance which serves as the sync group hub in a hub-and-spoke topology.
If you have any feedback on Azure SQL Data Sync service, we’d love to hear it.
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Add support for circular foreign key dependencies
Curently if the database contains circular foreign key dependencies the Azure Data Sync will not deploy the sync group reporting the error:
Cannot deploy the sync group because there is a circular foreign key dependency288 votesWe will consider this in the future.
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Provide API’s to configure, manage and initiate sync
Allow on-premises or cloud-based applications to configure sync groups and initiate syncs.
257 votes -
Automatic propagation of schema changes to one database to all databases in a sync group
In addition to allowing Sync Group configuration to be updated to cater for schema changes, automatically propagate the schema changes to all databases in a Sync Group.
212 votesWe are more focused around data synchronization than schema synchronization at the moment. We may revisit the priority of this in the future.
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Provide monitoring API’s
Provide a REST API to allow synchronization status to be monitored programmatically. For example, current status of all Sync Groups to determine if syncs are succeeding or failing for any reason.
202 votes -
Support for tables for which primary key is different than Clustered index
In a lot of situations the Clustered index differs from the primary key in a table. At this moment, Data Sync supports only tables for which the clustered index is the primary key. It would be nice if this restriction is not needed. This will make live much easier to sync data between on-premise and SQL Azure db. We can't change current datamodel in our application. Current datamodel is made based on performance.
105 votesThanks for the suggestion! We are evaluating the priority and cost for implementing this.
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Support files and Windows Azure Blobs
Add synchronization capabilities for the Windows Azure Blob Service. Allow data to be synchronized between storage accounts and allow on-premises file data to be synchronized with the Blob Service.
103 votesThis is a very interesting idea! We would like to know what specific usage you have in mind – for example, are you continuously generating operational logs on-prem and would like an utility to easily upload these files into blob storage for further analysis, maybe using HDInsight? Please post your comments!
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Allow continuous synchronisation or intervals less than 5 minutes
Current smallest interval is 5 minutes, allow me to set this to between 1 and 4 minutes or a continuous synchronisation option. A wait of up to 5 minutes for sync is not always acceptable.
94 votesThanks for the feedback. It’s not in our planned scope yet but we’d like to see how many customers need this. – Linda Wang
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Mail notification
support team should get mail notification on failure with required action to be taken to resolve it
75 votesGood idea and it ties to the idea on monitoring APIs. We will consider this.
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Provide a roadmap for SQL Data Sync
Provide information on what Microsoft has in store for the future of Data Sync. There has been hardly any work or updates to it in years, it has been in preview for that whole time.
I really want to use this service as there is no equivalent on the market, but am hesitant to as it could be discontinued at any time.Is this product dead?
73 votesThanks for the suggestion! We are actively working on the roadmap, and will share publically when we have a concrete plan. Meanwhile, it would be great if you could share with us what scenario are you looking to use sync for. If you would like to be contacted offline, do leave a message and I’ll get back to you. — Linda Wang
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62 votes
We will consider this in the future.
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Support compression
Most of the data being passed as datasets is highly compressible. We have created methods to compress/decompress the data when batched, but it would be nice to support this option out of the box to minimize the amount of data being sent over the wire.
58 votesThanks for the suggestion! We are evaluating the priority and cost for implementing this.
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don't touch/modify my schemas
I don't want the data sync or anything else for that matter to "touch" any of my databases.
57 votesThank you for your suggestion! We would like to know what your concern is around schema modification – is it because you don’t always get granted schema modification rights? Are you concerned about administration/maintenance overhead of additional objects? Or are you concerned about additional overhead it places on the database?
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Enable SQL Azure Data Sync Agent to support / connect to multiple Subscriptions
Currently the SQL Azure Data Sync Agent can only connect to one subscription so if you are supporting multiple clients your local server can't participate in multiple sync topologies. The abilty to connect to multiple subscriptions would enable all my client databases to be synced to one management server.
49 votesWe will keep this in mind as we flesh out feature backlog.
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Where can one find SQL Data Sync options in the new portal?
Windows Azure is announcing that SQL Database will no longer be available on the new portal. What will happen to Sync Preview feature. We use it to deliver a very useful business system for our clients. Hope we can see this option in the new portal to help us deliver more
49 votes -
Provide ability to replicate to Azure non-Azure SQL Server
Allow data to be transactionally replicated to the cloud, with an alternative way (SFTP?) to provide snapshot initialization data.
46 votesIn addition to on-pre SQL Server, are folks interested in sync’ing SQL Azure to SQL Server in Azure VM or AWS? Or other non-Azure properties?
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Support syncing federated tables.
When voting for this feature we would appreciate it if you enter a comment with the specific support you require; e.g. sync on-premises SQL Server with a federated database; sync between federated databases; sync reference data between partitions; etc.
41 votesGiven that most Windows Azure SQL Database customers are now advised to use with custom sharding pattern for scale-out, we are re-evaluating when you would want to use sync for a sharded environment – is it syncing from on-prem SQL Server to multiple shards in the cloud, synchronizing between the shards in the cloud, or syncing from multiple shards down to on-prem SQL Server? We’d appreciate your input on this.
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Support Windows Azure Tables
Add synchronization capabilities for the Windows Azure Table Service. Allow data to be synchronized between storage accounts and allow on-premises data to be synchronized with the Table Service (from which on-premises stores?).
40 votesThanks for the suggestion! We are evaluating the priority and cost for implementing this.
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Support Schema
Support tables with same table name but under different scheams in one database.
36 votesWe are still waiting to see how many people might find this feature useful.
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Filtering support for master and detail tables
Allow master and detail relationship to be specified so a filter and the filter value only needs to be present on the master table.
33 votesThanks for the suggestions. We will evaluate its relative priority as we decide how to move the overall Data Sync story forward.
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Support all data types like money, bigint and varbinary.
I can't use SQL Data Sync because it doesn't support all data types yet.
If MS Azure team starts to support other data types, I'll use the SQL Data Sync service.30 votesThank you for your feedback! We will consider this request as we priority our feature backlog.
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