Migrating a SQL Azure database from SQL Server 2008 to 2014 in the cloud

Question

I need to clarify the following information

"The database copy operation copies a Microsoft Azure SQL Database to a new database. The copy can be created on the same or a different logical server. When the copying process completes, the new database is a fully functioning database that is independent of the source database."

from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/ff951624.aspx .

Does this mean that, for example, I have a SQL Azure database which runs on SQL Server 2008 and I can copy this database to other server, where it will run on SQL Server 2014?

In general, I'm looking for a way to migrate an Azure SQL DB from 2008 to 2014 SQL server using REST API, and I can't find anything better than that.

UPDATE: I'm confused about what version of SQL server is SQL Azure.

Answer 1

The copy operation you are referring to works only across Microsoft Azure SQL Database and not with on-prem versions of SQL Server. From the perspective of Microsoft Azure SQL the versioning of the on-prem SQL Server product does not matter.

Additionally, the copy operations does not copy the data from one database to another. It creates a fully transactionally consistent copy of a stand-alone database and provides you a fresh new copy of the full database. That means, even if there was a versioning issue the target database created would be the same version of the original database.

Hope this helps.