Azure Cosmos DB Documentation

Welcome to the official documentation for Azure Cosmos DB, Microsoft's globally distributed, multi-model database service. Cosmos DB enables you to elastically and independently scale throughput and storage across any number of geographic regions. You can turn on multi-region writes with active-active capabilities and operate your database at the pace of your business.

This documentation provides comprehensive guides, conceptual overviews, and API references to help you build and manage your applications on Cosmos DB.

Getting Started

Begin your journey with Azure Cosmos DB by following these essential steps:

  1. Create an Azure Cosmos DB account: Learn how to provision your first Cosmos DB account through the Azure portal, Azure CLI, or PowerShell.
  2. Choose an API: Select the API that best suits your application's needs, whether it's the Core (SQL) API, MongoDB API, Cassandra API, Gremlin API, or Table API.
  3. Develop your application: Use our SDKs to connect to your Cosmos DB account and start interacting with your data.
Tip: For a quick start, try the "Create a single region Azure Cosmos DB API for NoSQL account" quickstart tutorial.

Explore the official quickstarts for step-by-step guides on setting up and using Cosmos DB.

Core Concepts

Understand the fundamental building blocks of Azure Cosmos DB:

  • Resources: Accounts, Databases, Containers, Items.
  • Request Units (RUs): The unit of measure for throughput in Cosmos DB.
  • Partitioning: How data is distributed across partitions for scalability.
  • Consistency Levels: Options ranging from Strong to Eventual consistency.
  • Indexing: Automatic indexing of all data written to Cosmos DB.

Delve deeper into these concepts in the conceptual documentation.

APIs

Azure Cosmos DB supports multiple APIs, allowing you to leverage your existing knowledge and tools:

  • Core (SQL) API: A powerful JSON document database with rich querying capabilities.
  • Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB: Compatible with MongoDB applications.
  • Azure Cosmos DB for Apache Cassandra: Compatible with Apache Cassandra applications.
  • Azure Cosmos DB for Apache Gremlin: A graph database service.
  • Azure Cosmos DB for Table: Compatible with Azure Table storage applications.

Find detailed API references and SDKs here.

Tutorials

Walk through practical tutorials to learn specific features and use cases:

Troubleshooting and Support

Encountering an issue? Find solutions and resources to help you:

Note: For real-time issues or urgent support, please refer to the Azure Support documentation.