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As my old Windows 2003 RAID controller started throwing errors, I am seriously thinking about switching current Access 2003 (adp/ADO) clients to use a Windows SQL Azure solution, in place of current SQL Server 2000.

Does anybody knows if this is a feasable/painless operation?

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Migration tools support only SQL server 2005 and up :-( – Riccardo Mar 4 at 16:41

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I don't know about easy, but it's doable. I don't know of a way to automatically migrate everything, but you can set up your databases in Azure and then BCP the data up.

Access 2003 should be able to connect via ODBC to Azure. I only have 2010, so can't test it, but I know 2003 supports ODBC.

http://www.fmsinc.com/microsoftaccess/cloud/link-to-azure-sql-database.html

Make sure you plan your indexes. Azure requires you to have a clustered index on each table.

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I don't think I'm using any clustered index at the moment. What this will bring to? I hoped I could simply import tables and point my application to the Azure! – Riccardo Mar 5 at 13:23
Not quite that simple :) Azure requires a clustered index on all tables. How comfortable are you with SQL 2000? Can you look and see what indexes you have? – Cate Donoghue Mar 5 at 13:33
Counter order! They all seem to be clustered (visual diagram tool->Indexes->create as clustered) :-) – Riccardo Mar 5 at 14:21
Okay. You'd just need to make sure you create those on Azure. This should also give you some guidance on how to script the tables and get the data up to the cloud initially. blogs.msdn.com/b/cesardelatorre/archive/2010/06/04/… – Cate Donoghue Mar 5 at 14:25
Great Cate! Do I need to convert databases to SQL server version 2008 before importing into Azure? – Riccardo Mar 5 at 14:54

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