Who said you cannot have design view of an SQL Azure table?

It is true that if you are connecting to SQL Azure from SSMS you only have recourse to T-SQL for the most part (with the Delete however you do get a user interface). Well, this has been one of the sour points as some believe that GUI is more productive than using T-SQL. T-SQL and SSMS are really the two sides of a doppelgänger and, you know who the evil one is.

But the Project 'Houston' has changed it for good. It has a lovely (if I may so call it) user interface blessed with Silverlight. You even have animation effects. It is the web based database management tool that is a nice offspring of Windows Cloud platform. Although new for Microsoft web based database management tools are in vogue quite for some time.


Houston is presently hosted on the SQL Azure developer portal.

Why wait, sign-up for Windows Live follow it up owning a Windows Azure account. You are all set and ready to roll. Roll baby roll!

Here is a screen shot of something you always wanted to do with SQL Azure. See all the (gory) details of your table in design view and make changes to it and save.












I am sure if Microsoft adds a dash of CSS and shine a bit more of Silverlight you could have syntax highlighting and intellisense in no time at all. Right now the syntax is all monochrome.