The Windows Azure Store is available as part of the Windows Azure Management Portal, a convenient resource for all of your Windows Azure needs, which can be accessed from a variety of Devices including your favorite iDevice, Surface, Windows Phone, Mac or PC.
At the time of writing, the Windows Azure Store is currently only available in the US.
Click on the + New in the Windows Azure Management Portal Taskbar, then select STORE.
The Store opens in a modal dialogue, either scroll down or filter to APP SERVICES to find ClearDB MySQL Database, then click the [next] arrow.
Select an appropriate database size (or stay with the Free plan and upgrade later once the site is live) and select the Subscription to charge. Provide a name for the Database (can be left with the default, a name will be assigned for automatically), select the region to provision the database in (whenever possible, try to provision the Web Site and database in the same region to avoid latency). Click the [next] arrow.
The following screen will provide an overview of the monthly charges of the new MySQL Database. Be sure to review the terms of use and privacy statement, then click the [purchase] checkmark.
After the Add-on has been provisioned, click on the Connection Info button in the Taskbar.
Copy the connection string for use in your application. Alternatively, a newly created database can be added as a Linked Resource to an existing Windows Azure Web Site, the credentials will be surfaced under the connection string section of the CONFIGURE tab.
Brian Swan has an interesting solution for parsing a connection string from the connection string settings found in the CONFIGURE section of a Windows Azure Web Site in his blog entry getting database connection information in Windows Azure Web Sites
Stay Cloudy my Friends…
