Our testing or development may call for dynamic creation on the database level for Azure Cosmos DB rather than the account level. As we’ve seen with dynamically working with a Cosmos database account using PowerShell, we can create, remove, and obtain properties of the account. Identically, we can do this on the database level as well and we may use this in testing if we need the same Cosmos database account for other testing purposes. Development situations may also involve use cases where we want to test a concept and dynamically create a database within our Cosmos database account. In this tip, we’ll look at working with our Azure Cosmos database account on the database object level where we do nothing to manipulate the account itself, only add databases to the account once it’s been setup.

After we set up our Azure Cosmos DB, we may want to get, add to, or update existing properties. We may use some of the get functionality that PowerShell provides to dynamically save values to encrypted configuration files or tables that we use for application purposes and this functionality could be added to the creation of the Cosmos database account, or a separate step in addition to the creation. In secure contexts, this ensures security without the properties after passing through human eyes since they are saved directly to an encrypted location. In the same manner, we may want to regenerate the keys for the account and save the connection strings with the new keys.

When managing Azure Cosmos DB, we can use the Azure portal and create resources through the interface or use the command line in the portal and create resources. PowerShell also supports some functionality for creating and managing these resources, which can help development teams automate the creation of these databases for quick creations, unit and security tests, removals if the resources aren’t required following the tests. We can also use these scripts for creating templates that we may use in multi-scaling creations (like databases in a group designed for horizontal scale). Generally, in one-off situations, the Azure Portal will suffice for deployments if there is a cost to develop automation that is not required. In this tip, we’ll look at the process of creating a blank and removing the same Azure Cosmos DB.