Azure Cosmos DB Blog
The latest news, updates and technical insights from the Azure Cosmos DB team
Latest posts
Azure Cosmos DB vNext Emulator: Query and Observability Enhancements
The Azure Cosmos DB Linux-based vNext emulator (preview) is a local version of the Azure Cosmos DB service that runs as a Docker container on Linux, macOS, and Windows. It provides a cost-effective way to develop and test applications locally without requiring an Azure subscription or network connectivity. The latest release brings improvements in two key areas: Query Improvements This emulator release enables several query patterns that were previously unsupported. In this post, we'll focus on the following enhancements to query capabilities: Let's explore these with practical...
Azure Cosmos DB : Becoming a Search-Native Database
For years, “Database” and “Search systems" (think Elastic Search) lived in separate worlds. While both Databases and Search Systems operate in the same domain (storing, indexing and querying data), they prioritized different aspects. OLTP Databases prioritized Search Systems prioritized AI and Agents are accelerating the dissolution of the boundary between these two systems. AI solves real world problems in near-real-time that needs both of these systems. Using separate systems for these specializations not only leads to high overhead, but leads to sub-...
Long-term data retention up to 10 years: Announcing Private Preview of Azure Backup for Azure Cosmos DB
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Azure Backup for Azure Cosmos DB is a new option that lets you securely protect and recover your Azure Cosmos DB data for compliance, audit, and ransomware protection scenarios. It leverages Azure Backup’s vault isolation and Azure Cosmos DB’s native backup streams to deliver scalable, long-term data protection that meets regulatory requirements. How does it work? During the private preview, you can configure backup schedules and retention policies at the Azure Cosmos DB account or collection level, stream backups to a vaulted, isolated Azure Backup Vault, and restore data to an empty Azure Cosmos DB account in...
Tata Neu delivers personalized shopping experiences for millions of users with Azure DocumentDB
With Azure DocumentDB, Tata Neu delivers seamless authentication for millions of users, accelerates credit card onboarding across partners, unifies loyalty programs for hundreds of millions of members, and powers AI-driven support experiences across more than 60 brands. This article is coauthored by Anurag Mathur, the VP and Head of Foundational Services at Tata Digital, and Bhaskar Chellappa, the VP and Head of TechOps at Tata Digital Introducing Tata Neu: Tata Digital's unified app Tata Neu is designed to deliver an extensive yet highly personalized shopping experience. The culmination of more than t...
Announcing: Dynamic Data Masking for Azure Cosmos DB (Preview)
Today marks a big step forward with the public preview of Dynamic Data Masking (DDM) for Azure Cosmos DB. This feature helps organizations protect sensitive data without requiring changes to application logic or database interactions. What is Dynamic Data Masking? Dynamic Data Masking (DDM) is a server-side, policy-driven security feature that automatically masks sensitive information for non-privileged users. When enabled, DDM ensures that only authorized users can view unmasked data, while others see masked or redacted values. The original data remains unchanged in the database, and masking occurs in real tim...
Use Azure SRE Agent with Azure Cosmos DB: Smarter Diagnostics for Your Applications
We’re excited to announce the Azure Cosmos DB SRE Agent built on Azure SRE Agent; a new capability designed to simplify troubleshooting and improve reliability for your applications running on Azure Cosmos DB. Some key features of Azure Cosmos DB SRE Agent are: Benefits of using Azure Cosmos DB SRE Agent Managing distributed applications can be complex. The Azure Cosmos DB SRE Agent bridges the gap by: Azure Cosmos DB SRE Agent Scenario Integrating Azure SRE Agent with your Azure Cosmos DB resource can leverage diagnostics to help identify issues or areas for improvement....
Announcing Private Preview: Safe Account Key rotation using Account Key Usage Metadata
Account Key Usage Metadata is a new security and observability feature that helps Azure Cosmos DB customers avoid service disruptions during key rotations. It provides visibility when each account key was last used, allowing teams to make informed decisions before rotating or migrating to Entra ID. This feature addresses a common challenge of rotating a key that appears unused but is still actively relied upon by critical applications—leading to unexpected outages. How Does It Work? In the private preview, on your Azure Cosmos DB account, you can view the last usage timestamp for each key. This timestamp r...
General Availability: Priority-Based Execution in Azure Cosmos DB
Have you ever faced a situation where two different workloads share the same container, and one ends up slowing down the other? This is a common challenge for many of our customers running applications on Azure Cosmos DB. Imagine these scenarios: In all these cases, there’s one workload you’d prefer to prioritize, ensuring critical operations run smoothly while others can progress slowly during resource contention. Introducing Priority-Based Execution Priority-Based Execution solves this problem. It lets you assign high priority to critical workloads and low priority to less important ones using...
Announcing Preview of Online Copy Jobs in Azure Cosmos DB: Migrate Data with Minimal Downtime!
We are excited to announce the preview of Online Copy Jobs, a powerful new feature designed to make data migration between containers seamless and efficient with minimal downtime. With this feature, you can replicate data from a source to a destination container in real time without disrupting your applications. What is an online copy job? Online Copy Jobs allow you to copy data from a source container to a destination container while your applications continue to run on the source. All data including incremental updates is automatically replicated, ensuring the destination container becomes an up-to-date repli...