Azure SQL Database

What is Azure SQL Database?

Azure SQL Database is a fully managed relational database service provided by Microsoft Azure. It offers high availability, scalability, and built-in intelligence, making it ideal for applications requiring robust data management and security. Users benefit from reduced maintenance overhead, automatic backups, and seamless integration with other Azure services, enabling efficient data handling and analytics.

Why Connect Azure SQL Database to Monte Carlo?

Integrating Monte Carlo with your Azure SQL Database allows you to monitor your data and tables. Monte Carlo can detect anomalous volume changes out of the box. With the ability to run SQL queries on your Azure SQL database tables and views, you can create advanced monitors to analyze the data in your tables and views. For a full list of supported monitor types see Monitor Support.

After connecting Azure SQL Database here is what you can expect to see out of the box:

Volume

Our volume monitors are active out of the box. By collecting metadata on your tables each hour, Monte Carlo's machine learning algorithm can set automatic thresholds to alert when a table has gone too long without a change in size or when an abnormal amount of rows are added or deleted.

Monitor & Lineage Support

Below are the monitors & lineage for the Azure SQL Database integration today. Please reach out to your Monte Carlo representative if you have requirements for additional monitors.

*Freshness monitors are created using the volume (row count) metric based on the time since last row count change.

Connecting to Azure SQL Database

Now that we know the value connecting Azure SQL Database to Monte Carlo can bring, here are the necessary steps to set up the integration.

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Prerequisites

To create a readonly service account, you will need access to a SQL admin user.

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Authentication

The Azure SQL Database integration supports SQL authentication (login and password) only. Microsoft Entra ID authentication methods — including Service Principal (client ID and secret) and Managed Identity — are not supported.

This guide explains how to create a read-only service account for Monte Carlo in your Azure SQL Database.

To review all steps necessary to integrate your SQL database with Monte Carlo, please see here.

Create a read-only service account

Connect to the master database as the SQL admin and run:

CREATE LOGIN montecarlo WITH PASSWORD = '<password>';

Connect to the Dedicated SQL Pool database as the SQL admin and run:

CREATE USER montecarlo FROM LOGIN montecarlo;
EXEC sp_addrolemember 'db_datareader', 'montecarlo';

How can I validate Monte Carlo has access to my assets?

After completing the Azure SQL integration setup, your Azure SQL assets should appear in the Monte Carlo Assets page between a few minutes and one hour. If you don't see your assets after this time period, you can run a validation test to troubleshoot the connection:

1. Navigate to Settings → Integrations
2. Find your Azure SQL integration and click on it
3. Select the specific connection you want to test
4. Click the Test button from the connection menu

This validation test will help identify any configuration issues that might be preventing your assets from appearing.

When running the validation test, you should see all green checkmarks. If any errors are encountered, the system will provide specific steps to resolve them.

Providing credentials with the Terraform provider

The Terraform provider takes the same details as the wizard. montecarlo_azure_sql_database_credentials holds the connection details and the service account's password, and montecarlo_warehouse and montecarlo_connection put them on a deployment:

resource "montecarlo_warehouse" "azure_sql_database" {
  name            = "production-azure-sql-database"
  connection_type = "azure-sql-database"
  deployment_id   = var.deployment_id
}

resource "montecarlo_azure_sql_database_credentials" "azure_sql_database" {
  host    = "example-server.database.windows.net"
  port    = 1433
  db_name = "analytics"
  user    = "monte_carlo"

  password_wo         = var.azure_sql_database_password
  password_wo_version = 1
}

resource "montecarlo_connection" "azure_sql_database" {
  name           = "production-azure-sql-database"
  warehouse_id   = montecarlo_warehouse.azure_sql_database.id
  credentials_id = montecarlo_azure_sql_database_credentials.azure_sql_database.id
}

deployment_id is the deployment the connection runs on: your collection agent's, or the Cloud deployment under Settings > Deployments if Monte Carlo connects from its cloud. Keep the password in a variable set from an uncommitted *.tfvars file or the environment; as a write-only argument it is never stored in the Terraform state or plan, which needs Terraform 1.11 or later. See montecarlo_azure_sql_database_credentials in the registry for every argument.

Providing credentials with Claude

With the Agent Toolkit, run /monte-carlo-onboarding connect Azure SQL Database and Claude does the Monte Carlo steps through the MCP server. The password never passes through the chat: Claude gives you the command or the Terraform, and you run it on your machine. Connecting a warehouse with the onboarding skill explains each step Claude takes.

Excluded Schemas

The following system created schemas are excluded from our metadata collection:

• INFORMATION_SCHEMA
• sys
• sysdiag
• pdw
• db_owner
• db_accessadmin
• db_securityadmin
• db_ddladmin
• db_backupoperator
• db_datareader
• db_datawriter
• db_denydatareader
• db_denydatawriter
• guest

FAQs

What hosting solutions are supported?
This integration supports any instance that is reachable from one of our hosting options. Please see the networking docs for more detail.

Does the integration support Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) authentication, such as Service Principal or Managed Identity?
No. Only SQL authentication (login and password) is supported, as described in Create a read-only service account.