design-azure-sql-schema
Installation
SKILL.md
Design a schema Azure SQL Database will not make you rebuild
These are the schema decisions Azure SQL Database punishes later, not at CREATE TABLE.
Normalisation and naming are not here: they are the same everywhere.
Everything below was measured on 2026-08-28 against a live engine where
SERVERPROPERTY('EngineEdition') returns 5 and Edition is SQL Azure.
Open the measured statements when a number
below disagrees with your engine, and before changing one.
| The DDL | succeeds, sometimes with a warning nobody reads |
| The migration | succeeds |
| The failure | arrives on a row, a plan or a failover, weeks later, in production |
A syntax error costs minutes. Each item here costs a table rebuild, a collation rebuild or a duplicated key.