[olavgg]

I want to a copy of our Azure SQL database dumped to my local dev MS SQL instance very often. At the moment I do this by using SSMS, where I generate a script of the Azure SQL database and use sqlcmd to import that script. It is a really painful process, and sqlcmd sometimes just hang and becomes unresponsive.

Why is there no simple export/import functionality?

[jiggawatts]

You can export Azure SQL Databases to a "BACPAC" file, which is much faster. This can then be restored onto on-prem SQL equally fast.

It's about 20-30 lines of PowerShell to do this, and then you can just double-click the script and drink a coffee.

Alternatively, for data-only changes you can use Azure SQL Sync, but I've found that it's primitive and a bit useless for anything complicated...