There are several ways to setup an environment for learning or development and testing in SQL Server – this post will outline working with Azure SQL database. The database will be created from a sample of Stack Overflow data and we will connect to it from Azure Data Studio. Being Azure-based, your hardware requirements are essentially non-existent. The Azure SQL environment comes at a cost of about $15/month – but with a setup this straight forward, you don’t have to keep your environment running longer than you need it.
The Stack Overflow data dump is an anonymized version of the information behind the popular site StackExchange.com. The real data included is a significant improvement over the many popular Microsoft samples (AdventureWorks, WorldWideImporters, ughh).
Read on for a walk-through of transferring the Stack Overflow bacpac from Azure blob storage to your Azure subscription and importing it to an Azure SQL database following these 4 steps.
- Import the 9GB bacpac file from another storage account to your storage account using AZcopy
- Select the bacpac file from your storage for an Azure SQL database import
- Wait 2-18 hours
- Connect