SQL Azure limitations

During my talks on SQL Azure, and the session I’ve been to (only locally in Bulgaria) we always listen limitations like “excessive resource usage”, “long running transactions”, “idle time”. But it is very hard to find out officially what are the exact numbers behind these statements. Now that I prepare for my session next week at Microsoft Developer Days 2011 I am hunting for a numbers. And here they are (keep in mind that these numbers are subject to change at any time without notification):

• Excessive Memory Usage: When there is memory contention, sessions consuming greater than 16-megabyte (MB) for more than 20 seconds are terminated in the descending order of time the resource has been held, such as the oldest session is terminated first. Termination of sessions stops as soon as the required memory is available.When the connection is lost due to this reason, you will receive error code 40553.
• Idle Connections: Connections to your SQL Azure database that are idle for 30 minutes or longer will be terminated. Since there is no active request, SQL Azure does not return any error.
• Transaction Termination: SQL Azure kills all transactions after they run for 24 hours. If you lose a connection due to this reason, you will receive error code 40549.
• Lock Consumption: Sessions consuming greater than one million locks are terminated. When this happens, you will receive error code 40550. You can query the sys.dm_tran_locks dynamic management view (DMV) to obtain information about the current state of locking in SQL Azure.
• Log File Size: Transactions consuming excessive log resources are terminated. The maximum permitted log size for a single transaction is 1-gigabyte (GB). When the connection is lost due to this reason, you will receive error code 40552.

Full list of limitations and a very good reading: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/sql-azure-connection-management-in-sql-azure.aspx