Explore Azure Cosmos DB

In this exercise you’ll provision an Azure Cosmos DB database in your Azure subscription, and explore the various ways you can use it to store non-relational data.

This lab will take approximately 15 minutes to complete.

Before you start

You’ll need an Azure subscription in which you have administrative-level access.

Create a Cosmos DB account

To use Cosmos DB, you must provision a Cosmos DB account in your Azure subscription. In this exercise, you’ll provision a Cosmos DB account that uses Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL.

  1. In the Azure portal, select + Create a resource at the top left, and search for Azure Cosmos DB. In the results, select Azure Cosmos DB and select Create.
  2. In the Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL tile, select Create.
  3. Enter the following details, and then select Review + Create:
    • Workload Type: Learning
    • Subscription: If you’re using a sandbox, select Concierge Subscription. Otherwise, select your Azure subscription.
    • Resource group: If you’re using a sandbox, select the existing resource group (which will have a name like learn-xxxx…). Otherwise, create a new resource group with a name of your choice.
    • Account Name: Enter a unique name
    • Location: Choose any recommended location
    • Capacity mode: Provisioned throughput
    • Apply Free-Tier Discount: Select Apply if available
    • Limit total account throughput: Unselected
  4. When the configuration has been validated, select Create.
  5. Wait for deployment to complete. Then go to the deployed resource.

Create a sample database

Throughout this procedure, close any tips that are displayed in the portal.

  1. On the page for your new Cosmos DB account, in the pane on the left, select Data Explorer.
  2. In the Data Explorer page, select Launch quick start.
  3. In the New container tab, review the pre-populated settings for the sample database, and then select OK.
  4. Observe the status in the panel at the bottom of the screen until the SampleDB database and its SampleContainer container has been created (which may take a minute or so).

View and create items

  1. In the Data Explorer page, expand the SampleDB database and the SampleContainer container, and select Items to see a list of items in the container. The items represent product data, each with a unique id and other properties.
  2. Select any of the items in the list to see a JSON representation of the item data.
  3. At the top of the page, select New Item to create a new blank item.

  4. Modify the JSON for the new item as follows, and then select Save.

    {
    "name": "Road Helmet,45",
    "id": "123456789",
    "categoryID": "123456789",
    "SKU": "AB-1234-56",
    "description": "The product called \"Road Helmet,45\" ",
    "price": 48.74
}
  5. After saving the new item, notice that additional metadata properties are added automatically.

Query the database

  1. In the Data Explorer page, select the New SQL Query icon.
  2. In the SQL Query editor, review the default query (SELECT * FROM c) and use the Execute Query button to run it.
  3. Review the results, which includes the full JSON representation of all items.

  4. Modify the query as follows:

    SELECT *
FROM c
WHERE CONTAINS(c.name,"Helmet")
  5. Use the Execute Query button to run the revised query and review the results, which includes JSON entities for any items with a name field containing the text “Helmet”.

  6. Close the SQL Query editor, discarding your changes.

    You’ve seen how to create and query JSON entities in a Cosmos DB database by using the data explorer interface in the Azure portal. In a real scenario, an application developer would use one of the many programming language specific software development kits (SDKs) to call the NoSQL API and work with data in the database.

Tip: If you’ve finished exploring Azure Cosmos DB, you can delete the resource group that you created in this exercise.