Links to the Shard's - Linking to Sharded SQL Azure Databases

SQLCAT Blogs - Linked Servers to SQL Azure

"Overview

Connecting directly to a SQL Azure database from a reporting tool (like Microsoft Excel and PowerPivot, or SQL Server Reporting Services) from your desktop or local data center is possible using a data source that looks like:

[YourAzureServr@database.windows.net].[YourDatabase].[YourSchema].[YourTable]

This is useful if you have a single database on SQL Azure that you need to query. What if you have reached the 50GB limit that is currently the top size of a SQL Azure database? The solution is to split your database into many databases containing the same schema. See this paper on database sharding with SQL Azure.

Expecting the users to always define multiple data sources to connect to multiple databases is cumbersome and may not perform well. For example, a PowerPivot user would have to open a separate link to every SQL Azure database individually. This paper describes a solution using a local SQL Server that can ease the access to all these databases and will usually give better performance. The solution is called Partitioned Views and is implemented using Linked Servers. Since customers don’t usually like to expose their databases to the internet, we are proposing a separate server that contains no actual data and only contains the views necessary for applications to get an internet link to SQL Azure databases.

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An interesting approach to linking to sharded SQL Azure databases...