Data Options in Windows Azure. What's a developer to do?

Remember the “good ‘ol days” when most developers developing data centric apps could take it for granted that they were going to use a relational database? Back then, the biggest question was, “What data access stack am I going to use?” Developers have a bewildering array of choice today – SQL, noSQL, key-value, document, and, by the way, there’s this Hadoop thing too. Windows Azure supports a variety of first and third party data storage and management options to provide the degree of choice developers expect. Rather than simply describing the various features and capabilities of these systems, this session will take an “application in” perspective. We’ll look at the data patterns and requirements of modern applications, then map these requirements to the capabilities of the various data management options offered in Azure. After this talk you will be able to make better architectural and implementation choices for your application.