I thought i would check out how difficult it is to migrate a database to SQL Azure from my godaddy.com sql hosting. I was really disappointed how difficult it is.
The first roadblock I ran into was that I couldn't just upload a .bak file from my webhost to the SQL Azure website somehow and restore it.
Well, first problem in trying to script my database was that Godaddy does not allow you to generate scripts against their SQL server. Weee!
So i needed to get SQL server installed on my local machine.
So i installed SQL 2005 express and management studio 2005 express.
management studio 2005 couldn't connect to SQL azure so i uninstalled that and installed SQL Management Studio Express 2008.
Much to my surprise, 2008 express could not connect to SQL Azure either! (good thing i tested this right away)
So then I downloaded SQL 2008 R2 Enterprise edition CTP and installed just the management studio so that i could connect to SQL Azure.
Much to my surprise I hadn't installed Visual Studio 2008 SP1. (strange that it's required for a SQL management studio install, but whatever)
So now back to figuring out how to script the database. I did a backup to the disk, FTP'd it off godaddy.com and then restored it into my local machine (Sql2005 express)
I was just getting a TON of errors with the scripts.
I realize this is a CTP but I think it's more of an Alpha if they haven't even figured out how people can migrate from their existing SQL server to SQL Azure.