Today at Microsoft Ignite, Azure Cosmos DB announces new features to improve developer productivity, manage operational budgets, and run advanced analytics over real-time data.

New features announced for Azure Cosmos DB

Partial document update is the most requested feature by Azure Cosmos DB customers, and we are thrilled to be able to make it generally available for our .NET, Node.js, and Java SDKs. You can now specify changed data in the update request, and Azure Cosmos DB will update only the data that’s changed server-side. This will reduce network payload size and avoid extra read operations if concurrency checks fail. Read about partial document updates here.

Developers now have new cost-controls to help manage account spending: customizable provisioned throughput spending limits and cost savings alerts in Azure Advisor, both of which are generally available. By establishing a provisioned throughput maximum across an account, you’ll never have to worry about going over your budget. The limit can even be used to keep your service free– simply set your account’s limit to the free tier throughput amount given each month (1,000 RU/s at the time of writing). With Azure Advisor cost-saving recommendations, you’ll be alerted if a database or container could benefit from moving between autoscale and standard provisioned throughput and shown estimated cost savings. Read about our new cost control features here.

New Azure Synapse Link for Azure Cosmos DB functionality offers expanded ability to run no-ETL advanced analytics over real-time operational NoSQL data using Core (SQL) API and API for MongoDB. Custom partitioning, now in preview, allows you to partition your Azure Cosmos DB analytical store data, improving query performance with Azure Synapse Spark. You can read the details here.

A new connector for Logic Apps that enables high-throughput data processing is now in preview; and new indexing metrics to help optimize query performance are generally available. To learn more about indexing metrics, read Tim Sander’s blog post.

We’ve also introduced server-side retries for our Cassandra API, which prevents rate-limiting and 429 responses when your account’s throughput limit has been reached. Azure Cosmos DB will instead retry operations, offering a better experience, especially when ingesting large amounts of data.

You can find all Azure Cosmos DB updates announced at Microsoft Ignite on our webpage

Azure Managed Instance for Apache Cassandra now generally available

Finally, Azure has expanded its portfolio of database services with the general availability of Azure Managed Instance for Apache Cassandra, beginning November 4, 2021. This managed service enables hybrid Cassandra deployments to run across on-premises and cloud and offers transparent data replication, security, and scalability to Cassandra database workloads.

Ignite sessions featuring Azure Cosmos DB

Azure Cosmos DB is also featured in Microsoft Ignite sessions. Join our team to learn more about our announcements and see some of these features in action.

• Innovate anywhere from multi-cloud to edge with Scott Guthrie; Tuesday, November 2, 10:00am PT
• Model and partition your data in Azure Cosmos DB with Mark Brown and Gary Hope; Tuesday, November 2, 11:30am PT
• Roundtable: Future of security on Azure database platform with Thomas Weiss; Tuesday, November 2, 12:30pm PT
• Accelerate time to insight with Azure Synapse with Kim Manis; Tuesday, November 2, 12:30pm PT
• Roundtable: Reimagine cost estimation for transactional databases in Azure with Thomas Weiss; Tuesday, November 2, 1:30pm PT
• Innovate with cloud-native apps and open source on Azure with Jeff Hollan; Wednesday, November 3, 9:30am PT

Azure Cosmos DB LIVE

Join this week’s episode of Azure Cosmos DB LIVE, where we will recap our announcements and demonstrate new features.  Watch live and take part in our live Q&A on Thursday, November 4th at 1pm PT.

New to Azure Cosmos DB?

• Try Azure Cosmos DB free in production or non-production environments
• Watch our Get Started: Azure Cosmos DB for Beginners playlist on YouTube
• Visit MS Learn to build your Azure Cosmos DB skills