The SQL Azure Migration Wizard (SQLAzureMW) is a CodePlex project and wizard that can be used to migrate SQL 2005 and SQL 2008 databases to SQL Azure.
After selecting an SQL 2005 or 2008 database, SQLAzureMW iterates through its tables, stored procedures, and views allowing the user to select which SQL objects are to be processed, then it offers 3 options on what to do next:
- Script to window - Choose this option to display the SQL script to a wizard window where you can modify it before telling the wizard to script to Azure.
- Script to file - Choose this option if you want to save your SQL script to a file. You can edit this file in SQL Server Management Studio and run it from there or save it and use the wizard to load and run your file.
- Script to Azure - Choose this option is you think your database is compatible with SQL Azure. It will prompt your for your Azure credentials and then run the generated script against SQL Azure.
SQLAzureMW takes care of the incompatibilities between SQL 2005/2008 and SQL Azure. For example, text columns are transformed into varchar(max) columns, image ones are turned into varbinary(max) ones, and it unbinds XML schemas since they are not supported yet by SQL Azure. These transformations and changes to the script are stored in an XML configuration file, NotSupportedByAzureFile.config. This supports changing the way the script is generated when SQL Azure is updated with new functionality.
SQLAzureMW is currently an Alpha release v.0.2, released under Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL). SQLAzureMW is a VS 2008 project and .NET 3.5 SP1 is needed to run it.