Mike it's been a while between updates on this one. Are you able to chime in with some comments?

Any updates will be greatly appreciated.

@Dennis, check out http://www.mongodb.org/ I've found it to be even better than Couch.

Support for Json would be simply grand.

It looks like many developers end up with several serialization methods for both ATOM and Json, this would definitely make the jump to Azure table storage quicker and easier.

Hi Mike,

Thankyou - the level of engagement & transparency of the Azure team is one of the most appealing features of the platform.

Below are some additional points for the storage team.

This feature would not need to function as a SELECT COUNT(*) equivalent, ie: the results don't need to be realtime or 100% accurate. Similar to SQL Server when using the sysobjects table for row counts, and sp_spaceused for sizing.

I would think this provides a solution to several problems:

1. Sub billing of the platform (As opposed to creating an entire billing solution as suggested elsewhere in the forum, if a PK used a customer ID this would solve allow for end-user based usage breakdowns)
2. Optimization of partition / row key schemes (& hence query performance)
3. An understanding of where resources are being consumed (when I look at my bill I might get a shock, it would be good to know exactly what was taking up space)

I thought it might be interesting to provide this data through a read only table, similar to SQL Server. (Although I don't really mind, as the first thing I would do is create a table to store a history of table / partition size & count so I could monitor growth over time... but others might find this a nice way of accessing the data)

Thanks
James