In this special episode of Data Exposed, Scott welcomes to the show the three individuals who own the relational database at Microsoft; Shawn Bice (Partner Director SQL Relational Assets), Nigel Ellis (Distinguished Engineer SQL Database), and Rohan Kumar (Partner Director SQL RDBMS). In this episode, Shawn, Nigel, and Rohan provide a candid and insightful behind-the-scenes look at Azure SQL Database, the new service tiers, and the process around determining the right set of capabilities at each tier. We discuss the operational hardening of Azure SQL Database and the journey that took the relational service from where it began to the only relational database service in the world with 99.99 availability SLA. We gain fantastic insight into how the SQL Server team learned through the operational hardening process how to ship SQL Server in a cloud cadence by looking at operational metrics with the magic being in the velocity of delivering quickly and efficiently. Microsoft is bullish about the new service tiers and the richer capabilities available in Azure SQL Database.