Accessing Azure: Using Cloud databases from static programming environments
R. Van der Sanden · Research Repository (Delft University of Technology) · 2009
Cloud databases generally use a data model different from relational databases. Instead of a fixed structure, the data is organized as collections of key-value pairs. The structure of entities is not enforced by the system; entities are flexible with regard to the properties they have. Many programming languages use static data models, which makes communication between these systems non-trivial. This document describes LINQ-to-Azure, a data access layer between Windows Azure Tables and .NET which enables manipulation and querying (using LINQ) of the data and supports both the flexible model of Azure Tables and the static one of .NET.