[This article was contributed by the SQL Azure team.]

SQL Azure provides an information platform that you can easily provision, configure, and use to power your cloud applications.  In this session Lev Novik explores the patterns and practices that help you develop and deploy applications that can exploit the full power of the elastic, highly available, and scalable SQL Azure Database service.  The talk will detail modern scalable application design techniques such as sharding and horizontal partitioning and dive into future enhancements to SQL Azure Databases.

• Watch The PDC 2010 session Building Scale-Out Database Solutions on SQL Azure by Lev Novik.
• Read more about SQL Azure Federation: Building Scalable Database Solution with SQL Azure – Introducing Federation in SQL Azure