The default 1433 port for communication should be customizable because most hacks or attacks are attempted when creating any application or database on the default port. The solution should allow use of any custom port. 

I would like to see the cloud connectivity environment improved.

Mostly, it is the cost. Microsoft services are costly, which is the only problem we face. So, pricing is an area of improvement.

Another downside is that it's very difficult to investigate if something wrong is going on behind the scenes. If we are facing a problem that our application is doing a CPU spike and when we look at the dump of the details, the processes that our application is generating are not consuming more than 40-50% of CPU. But we don’t know where it is going, who's generating it, and who's consuming the CPU. Even Microsoft says they don’t know. They simply said we cannot give you the details. So, a bit of control over such processes or maybe analytics for it is something that needs improvement as well.

SQL Azure could improve the feature set. They are catching up to Microsoft SQL Server.

The user interface (UI) could be more flexible. It's not that the data access or storage format is bad, but the UI feels clunky and isn't up to par with other tools.

There are certain shortcomings when it comes to the stability of the product, especially if I consider the fact that there can always be some bug-related issues in the tool. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the product.

I am sure that the tool does all sorts of quality checks before releasing the product in the market, but there are thousands of different environments today where users use the solution for their own purposes and customize it to fit their business requirements. In some cases, there may be some bugs that users need to fix, and many of them might even fix it as well. As SQL Azure is available as a cloud-based tool, it helps to maintain uniformity in the environment, so the number of issues is reduced significantly.

The solution has a fully managed server, so the users have limited control over the underlying infrastructure. The customization options and flexibility are limited. The pricing structure is a bit complex because there are different pricing tiers based on database size, performance level, etc. 

Although the solution integrates well into Azure’s ecosystem, it has limited capability and is incompatible with many third-party applications or tools.

What would make SQL Azure better is users having the capability of managing the database solution from the cloud, instead of having to do it from an actual machine because currently, database management via SQL Azure is done on a virtual machine or a PC. The solution should have the data functionality of managing SQL databases inside the cloud.

One of the nice features in Microsoft SQL Server is the SQL Server CLR, which we sometimes need to protect our procedures using C# or CLR. This feature isn't available in the SQL Azure database. It's available in the Managed Instance in the Azure Database.

You can create SOAR procedures using C# and can get user-defined functions using C#. You can extend the database and the data files using CLR files. This feature isn't available on the Microsoft Azure SQL Database. I understand they can't add it because it's a managed service, and having CLR probably doesn't work for them, but it would be nice if they could add this feature.

There could be more collaboration with other tools like Data Factory and Databricks.

Some data types are not available on SQL Azure while it's available on SQL Server. It's a little bit limited in terms of functionality. The difference is not huge. You can go back and forth between them. We used to do this all the time. However, it is something to note.

Maybe they need to add the data types that exist in SQL Server, not in SQL Azure. That would make it better.

The pricing can be high in certain countries as Microsoft doesn't adjust for regional pricing. 

The solution could improve by supporting more operating systems.

In a future release, I would like to see more development on SQL servers on containers where you can manage a skill across multi-clouds.

Azure does not provide features like RDS for Oracle that AWS offers. The solution has to scale up its expertise for hosting Oracle.

If it's a transitional system, there is a lot of reporting, so the solution becomes a bit slow when it's churning out tons of data, but it's good for a mid-sized application

We're still discovering aspects of the solution. We haven't yet deployed all of the components, so I'm not sure of what additional features we'd like to see.

Scalability is an issue because we can't upgrade to new versions due to hardware limitations. 

There is probably more functionality in our on-prem SQL Server than SQL Azure. 

The product's pricing needs improvement.

There is room for improvement regarding the pricing structure. It would be beneficial if the cost is reduced.

They have some problems with the introduced features in the latest version of the server. The multiple query planning parameters have problems. The problem is the automated configuration. Even when they address the problems, there are still issues.

The second issue is to audit the real users on behalf of whom we operate secret servers. Normally in our application, we use only a single connection to leverage the pooling.

I haven't really come across any shortcomings. I also have limited experience. We need to do more training and research.

It does take some time to learn about the environment. 

I would like to the solutions scalability to be improved.

Integration needs to be improved for this solution.

The solution can be improved by reducing the cost so more users can be added.

Azure SQL can improve by adding more machine learning features like other databases, such as Cassandra or Cosmos DB.

Operational cost needs improvement. 

The solution could improve by allowing the export of the data more seamlessly. It is difficult to copy and back up data.

I want the pricing to be improved. They should try to lower it for their customers. 

There are some characteristics called "joins," like "inner join," "full join," "left join," "right join," etc. It's a little confusing for some coders. I think that could be simplified. 

I'm in the analytic space, so I would introduce a higher level of coding using artificial intelligence. SQL is quite close to English. They could add a voice interface where you speak into it, and the machine writes the code for you. My weakness in coding requires something automated, so I can be more proactive. 

They should also simplify the security in Azure. We are using the cloud as a platform, so there is no physical infrastructure. We're using Azure components like databases and servers to create an application. Integrating those components in terms of permissions and security is challenging for us. Maybe there is a lack of knowledge on our side, but it's not straightforward. 

The data modeling is not good for me. There are better tools than SQL Azure when you need to create the abstract part of the database design. It's weak. It's not user-friendly, and the notation is specific to Microsoft. I believe we use a third-party tool for data modeling because it's easier to use. Communicating with that tool is easier than SQL Azure. The model is nicer.

In terms of support, they don't give much support.

They should include more accessible functions for image tooling. Presently, we are using optional features for it.

Its automation can be improved. SQL Server Agent was a very big part of the on-prem tools. While moving from on-prem to the cloud, redoing some of such tools was very cumbersome in Azure. There was a whole new set of technologies and methodologies. It should have easier automation-type features to be able to implement such tools. It should have almost a SQL agent type of substance built into that.

It needs to improve the security features, because people still aren't confident enough to use a public cloud.

Microsoft could improve its documentation and support. Without the necessary knowledge and expertise, it can be difficult to navigate the platform and find a technical person to guide us through. There is not currently enough documentation available to make it easy to use. If I had not been certified in Azure, I would have faced a lot of difficulties.

I would like reports attached to my phone if there's an error that occurs within SQL Azure or if there are updates that need to run, I would like to receive notifications.

I think that the cost management in SQL is not clear because we may use some tax to identify products, but in some cases identifying the transactions in SQL is not easy for some financial cost centers. Perhaps if in Azure cost management we have the opportunity to monitor the SQL cost in more detail, it will be helpful.

The way it has been designed, in the on-premises deployments, the underlying Windows OS is highly scalable but has a very large resource requirement. A lot of power-related and memory-related things are there, which I have not seen in the RHEL and Oracle. I have not tried SQL on RHEL EXEC. On Windows, infrastructure-wise, a very large workload is running on the SQL. This issue is related to Windows, not SQL.

I think this product can improve its integrations with business intelligence software. The integrations are always cumbersome due to the approvals, passwords, et cetera. 

Its price could be better. It is expensive.

I am not sure if Microsoft Master Data Services is included in this. If not, Master Data Services can be integrated with Azure SQL. I have only used Master Data Services on-premises.

There are some limitations for cross-database queries and features. The migration of data from older systems should be easier.

For deployment, there are too many options, which sometimes makes it difficult to figure out the best option. There is not enough information to help you to find the best option for deployment. There should be more documentation about this.

From a user standpoint, there isn't really any need for improvement. 

We'd like the solution to be available on mobile phones. 

The product could be more competitive in terms of features, security, and scalability.

I was using a user list for connecting a program in OTF for getting information. The connection in SQL Azure can improve by being easier because at the moment I have to use private certificates for user authentication. I had to do additional configuration to have the connections.

We haven't had any major issues that have prevented us from doing stuff fundamentally. For its implementation, sometimes, it is complicated to understand what your needs are. It would be good to have a few use cases that provide different cloud variations that match on-premise installations and show how they can be moved to the cloud a bit better.

Its pricing is complicated and can be improved. We need a better offering. Making it cheaper is always a good thing for us.

I'm not really a SQL DBA, so I can't go into the depths of the areas that need to be improved. They can maybe make it a bit easier to educate people on how to develop SQL Server in Azure. They can provide some free seminars and webinars and more training in general for easier migration. I know there is some stuff on Microsoft learning, but it would be helpful and useful to have more up-to-date content.

Migrating existing application to SQL database had many problems, developing a new app for Azure Database not. 

Their support is nice but frequently their responses aren't effective. 

The documentation is always updated with the latest features but the documentation for the database features should be better. It doesn't specify when specific features will be released. The documentation needs improvement. They should improve the way they explain the information to the market.

It should have better support for UTF 8 (a feature already present on the on-premises version of SQL Database 2019) a for Hadoop integration.

Microsoft has delivered on its promise by providing a free, developer-student (community) edition of Visual Studio.

The pricing plans when using multiple Microsoft solutions are complex and have room for improvement.

The preset configuration switches we can select on SQL Azure should be made more liberal to work on. The licensing cost for the solution is very expensive and should be improved.

SQL Azure could offer a lot more services and applications. I'd also like to see some tools that we could use on the SQL Server for data virtualization. That would be an improvement. 

Its compatibility with existing applications can be improved. Its compatibility is currently a little bit imbalanced.

The solution’s visibility could be improved.

The solution can be improved by reducing the constraints available on cloud and improving support response times.

SQL Azure could improve by adding more features.

I haven't explored SQL Azure's features much, but I would like to see some better integration with Python. 

This solution would be improved with the inclusion of better self-service tools.

It needs to be easier for my technical teams to perform support tasks.

What I don't like is the personalization of an instance is difficult to deploy. Sometimes it's hard if you want to make a cluster of SQLs on Azure; it's not a good approach, but sometimes it worked out for me.

If I have to do something very specific to the instance, sometimes I am not allowed to leave those types of configurations because they need it to be broader. They are not at the level that I need to make the configurations that I want.

The configuration is the only area to be improved. Everything else is what it is and what we expected. The configuration is the area that is most cumbersome.

In terms of management, you can't really pause things. It doesn't allow for that kind of capability.

From a security perspective, although their features are decent, they can always be improved upon, updated, and refined to help protect clients better.

I would love it if that had dynamic data masking and features of that nature.

We have a very small database running on SQL Azure. We have not been able to load bigger systems on it. It is still not something that is feasible. All our heavy-duty systems are on SAP, and it should have more compatibility with other vendors such as SAP. 

Its price can definitely be lower. It is pretty pricey.

It is difficult to find any disadvantages when I can only see advantages in using SQL Azure.

When you have a subscription, the subscription itself is not secure. You have to add the user into the directory and you will be able to use it. 

I would like to see integration with Snowflake.

The solution requires familiarity with its language so can be tricky. A simplified language would be appealing to users. 

A more user-friendly format for certain modules is desired. 

The application and interface can be a bit heavy to install.

Service Broker should be added in Azure Cloud. Service Broker is currently available only in the on-premises version.

The solution could be less expensive. They need to work on their pricing model.

It would help if the solution was more secure. It's an aspect they could work on for future releases.

Price definitely may be a negative point. As for most of cloud based solution, certain cost components as CPU and IO usage may cause extremely hi costs.

SQL Azure's performance monitoring features need to be improved. It has a pricing calculator, but it would be great if we could get a rough estimate of the pricing based on fewer parameters, like the data size and the scale of the company. 

I am very happy with this solution; right now, I don't think there is anything I would change.

More power should be included between the upgrades. We started with a less costly service but we needed more power. We paid a lot and upgraded but we still needed more power. The power should increase more between each upgrade.

If you use the solution in the Microsoft environment, it's fine. But if you're using Java then it seems to be out of place. AWS has a new product called Aurora, it's a new database that can deal with both types of workloads: transactional and analytical. That's a big challenge for all the other databases including SQL, because most of the databases out there are designed for either type of workload but the Amazon AWS Aurora does both. With SQL, if they do the BI normally, you then have to replicate the production database to another database which is no longer necessary with Aurora. It's something SQL could include. 

This solution suffers from the same problems that come about in a normal SQL server. One issue is the optimization of function-heavy evaluations. If you define your own functions, the execution plan of the SQL server performs sub-passes of the execution path, which makes the process very slow. Even if there are very easy means to optimize them, it is still slow. The server should perform automatic function optimization. This is a problem in any implementation, Azure or otherwise.

The management is entirely controlled by Microsoft, so there are some restrictions.

Security can sometimes be a problem when it affects our business needs. It needs to integrate more security without stopping the service or our business. In some cases we have a lot of restriction on people who needs to use the database for whatever reason. We need more performance but in the same way we need more security - from the application and also in the Internet. The problem is therefore in the internet. 

It could have closer parity to on-premises capabilities. Introduce a graph database engine component.

Maybe the portal should have a more detailed and granular way to query data. You can use API for this purpose.

Azure is working on the query engine in order to give you the ability to analyze a query for performance with insight to improve the load or the time of a query.

If the product could support applications requiring an SQL server for installation, by using SQL Azure as a backend, that would be useful.  

I think SQL could be improved in terms of ease of use for developers when it comes to performance. For example, enabling suggestions or auto-tune performances, providing results which are higher level recommendations. I know there are tools that performance analyze, but I personally find it to be overly complicated. If they look at performance assistance, add-ons or plugins that might help the developer, focus can be on business logic rather than performance. This is an ongoing issue for me and I'd like to see developers given the flexibility to change those recommendations, it would simplify things. 

It should have better profiling capabilities. Its price could also be lower.

The availability of resources could be improved.

The solution needs to offer online training to help improve the capacity of teams to manage the SQL.

The pricing is very high.

SQL Azure only supports distributed transactions with other instances of SQL Azure. This has been an obstacle for us.

I feel that the price is high and it could be reduced.

It can have more dashboards for monitoring, which would naturally help a lot. Other than that, everything is okay.

The concurrency between the amount of the transactional replications and the logging needs to be improved. Also, the GUI, the specific management tool itself, needs some improvement as well.

It's not a feature, but the solution only offers a certain amount of memory and that's limiting. The scalability should be extended to more than two terabytes.  

I need something which is in one place so I can automate the Azure data factory, but it's a different tool. It's not easy and in one place, so I can't switch to the other tool and do something there, automate everything there in the on-prem infrastructure, and then have everything in the agent. I can just pick one packet and use it. However, I want to be able to click it and run it. 

We could definitely use something which can automate the work. For example, I know there are a lot of tips like what indexes you should use, or what security features you should look at with your current SQL server. The acquired performance is assured, so some more statistics about acquired performance would be really valuable for the developer and also the administrators who use it. That would be really valuable, but we also need something which automates the work in particular SQL agents. I'm disappointed that it is not in the simple plan and I have to buy a higher plan.

• Scalability
• Cost efficiency
• Business continuity

The solution should start covering more regions in Gulf countries and other regions. This is due to the fact that other cloud providers are not locally available. Yet this is what people require here. Their availability in the Middle East and Asia regions needs to improve.

The implementation process needs to be improved.

Support isn't that great. They need to work on this aspect of their service. It can be challenging to reach them.

The solution needs to be more flexible overall.

It would help if there were better reporting features on offer.

The product has many features that might not be explored by many end users because there isn't much technical guidance available. If I'm interested in understanding a particular feature I'd like there to be some kind of explore button that would provide technical in-depth assistance, and that's lacking for now. There is very little technical documentation. 

As already mentioned, additional features should include technical documentation on the product features. Secondly, there could also be some improvement in performance. I know they have done benchmark testing but sometimes performance is lacking. They can improve in that area too. 

I need Microsoft to allow their network to access open source technologies.

If we need to deploy data management or services with SQL Azure we need InterSecure.

The solution needs to improve its customer network, including its online support.

In the next release, I'd like to see Azure SQL improve user rights management and user rights control management.

I would like to have more tools for feedback. I find that there are a lot of things offered in other solutions that don't exist in Azure SQL. There are also tricky commercial issues. When you use Google or Amazon, you know exactly how much you will pay. With Microsoft solutions, you don't know, it's very unclear and impossible to get anyone on the phone. 

There is so much information that it becomes confusing at times. The information can be more friendly. They could also provide additional training, especially at the beginning.

It is a little bit expensive for us. They can improve the price. It would also be very helpful if they can offer some free trial.