Azure SQL Database vs Data Warehouse

Azure SQL Database vs Azure SQL Data Warehouse

–Azure SQL Database vs Data Warehousee–

Size	Max of 1 TB for a database	No limit
Concurrent Queries	Up to 6,400	Up to 32
Active Connections	Up to 32,000	Up to 1,024
Cross-database Queries	Supported	Not supported
Pause/Resume	Not supported	On-demand pause/resume of resources
Scalability	11 tiers	12 options that can be managed by sliding a bar up and down
Replication	Supported through secondary databases in different regions (up to 4)	Not supported
In-Memory OLTP Tables	Supported	Not supported
Polybase	Not supported	Supported
Processing	OLTP (Online Transaction Processing)	OLAP (Online Analytical Processing)

Differences between the Azure SQL Database and Data Warehouse

Azure SQL Database is optimized for doing CRUD operations (Create, Read, Update and Delete) that you typically perform from an application. This is also called OLTP (Online Transaction Processing). This is reflected by the functionality that it offers, which is typically used when you are building applications. Azure SQL Database also scales for OLTP, as different pricing tiers typically scale to give you more query throughput and not so much data (the current maximum is 1TB, and in some regions 4TB).

Azure SQL Data Warehouse is optimized for performing data analytics tasks, and working with large amounts of data. This is also called OLAP (Online Analytical Processing). Data Warehouse is optimized for OLAP because it is built on top of the MPP (Massive Parallel Processing) architecture, and because it can hold massive amounts of data (currently the maximum is around 1PB) – much more than Azure SQL Database can store in one instance.