Understanding SQL Azure connections

Question

I have a single database deployed to SQL Azure. There are no hosted services deployed, and I have nothing running locally that can make a connection to it, but when I look at the web administration, it says there are 14 open connections.

Also, when I look at Query Performance it shows a couple dozen queries that I didn't write.

Is SQL Azure doing something in the background? Is this normal? How can I figure out where those 14 connections are coming from? I'm not really worried about anything, but I just want to learn what is going on here.

insert #t1 (object_id, object_name, object_schema, object_db, object_svr, object_type, relative_id, relative_name, relative_schema, relative_db, relative_svr, relative_type, schema_bound, rank, dep_type)
   select object_id, object_name, object_schema, object_db, object_svr, object_type, relative_id, relative_name, relative_schema, relative_db, relative_svr, relative_type, schema_bound, rank , dep_type
   from #t2 where @iter_no + 1 = rank

Answer 1

Hm,

I'm not sure where these connections are comming from. However, you know that SQL Azure is keeping 3 live copies of your database for failover and DR. These might be those connections. Well, when you connect you surely have at least one connection, and it might be the case that this SQL Azure manager uses couple of more under the hood. The query you are seeing is most probably the one that is used to show you the next tab (Performance). And if you happen to walk around through the SQL Azure manager, there could easily be 14 connections in the connections pool already (the SQL Azure manager is a Silverlight application, which uses WCF services, so I suppose there is a using(conn) for each service call.). As you see there is only one active user, which I'm sure is the user you are logged in.

What I do to check what is going on the SQL Azure is to use the sp_who3 stored procedure.