Azure SQL Database: A Comprehensive Guide to Features, Scalability, Security, Integration and Pricing

In the era of digital transformation, organizations increasingly rely on scalable, secure, and flexible data management solutions to support their business operations. Azure SQL Database, a cloud-based relational database service offered by Microsoft Azure, emerges as a powerful tool for handling critical data workloads with enhanced performance, reliability, and ease of management. This article explores the features, benefits, and use cases of Azure SQL Database, highlighting its role in driving efficient data management in the modern cloud environment.

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Overview of Azure SQL Database

Azure SQL Database is a fully managed, cloud-based relational database service that offers high compatibility with Microsoft SQL Server and provides a wide range of features to meet diverse data management needs. It eliminates the need for infrastructure setup, maintenance, and patching, allowing organizations to focus on their applications and data rather than database administration tasks.

Key Features and Capabilities

Scalability and Performance

One of the key strengths of Azure SQL Database is its ability to deliver exceptional scalability and performance, allowing organizations to handle growing data workloads and ensure optimal application responsiveness. Here are some important aspects of Azure SQL Database’s scalability and performance capabilities:

1. Elastic Scaling: Azure SQL Database offers elastic scaling, allowing organizations to dynamically adjust the compute resources allocated to their databases based on workload demands. This means that during periods of high traffic or increased processing requirements, additional resources can be allocated to handle the workload effectively, ensuring optimal performance. Conversely, during periods of low activity, resources can be scaled down to save costs. This elasticity enables organizations to respond to changing demands and optimize resource utilization efficiently.
2. Hyperscale Storage: For applications dealing with rapidly growing data volumes, Azure SQL Database provides a specialized storage option called Hyperscale. Hyperscale storage architecture decouples storage and compute, allowing organizations to scale storage independently without impacting performance. It leverages the Azure Blob Storage to enable virtually limitless database growth, accommodating large datasets while maintaining fast performance. With Hyperscale, organizations can seamlessly handle data-intensive workloads and enjoy high scalability without compromising on performance.
3. Intelligent Performance Optimization: Azure SQL Database incorporates various intelligent features to optimize query execution and enhance overall performance. It includes automated performance tuning mechanisms that continuously monitor query performance and adjust database configuration settings for optimal execution. This helps improve query response times and reduces the need for manual performance tuning efforts.
   Additionally, Query Store, a built-in feature of Azure SQL Database, captures query performance history, execution plans, and statistics. It provides insights into query behavior and helps identify and resolve performance bottlenecks more effectively. By analyzing query patterns and utilizing this information, organizations can make data-driven decisions to optimize performance and improve application responsiveness.
4. In-Memory Technologies: Azure SQL Database supports in-memory technologies, such as in-memory OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) and in-memory columnstore, to accelerate query performance. In-memory OLTP utilizes memory-optimized tables and stored procedures to provide significant performance gains for transactional workloads with high concurrency. In-memory columnstore leverages columnar storage and compression techniques to enhance query performance for analytical workloads and data warehousing scenarios. These in-memory capabilities enable organizations to achieve faster data processing and gain real-time insights from their data.
5. Global Scale and Distributed Availability: Azure SQL Database offers global scale capabilities, allowing organizations to deploy databases in multiple Azure regions globally. This ensures low-latency access to data for users across different geographical locations. With read-scale replicas, organizations can also distribute read workloads across replicas to achieve better performance and minimize the impact on the primary database. Moreover, Azure SQL Database’s automatic failover and geo-replication features provide high availability and disaster recovery options, ensuring business continuity in the event of a regional outage.

Security and Compliance

Ensuring the security and compliance of data is of utmost importance for organizations across industries. Azure SQL Database offers a comprehensive set of security features and compliance certifications to protect sensitive data and meet regulatory requirements. Here are the key aspects of Azure SQL Database’s security and compliance capabilities:

1. Data Encryption: Azure SQL Database provides robust data encryption mechanisms to safeguard data both at rest and in transit. Data at rest is encrypted using Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), which automatically encrypts the database files, backups, and transaction log files. This encryption is performed with industry-standard AES-256 encryption keys, ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of the data.
   For data in transit, Azure SQL Database enforces Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption. This ensures that data sent between the application and the database is protected from interception and tampering. By leveraging encryption technologies, Azure SQL Database mitigates the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive information.
2. Firewall Rules and Virtual Network Service Endpoints: Azure SQL Database allows organizations to define firewall rules, which control the network access to their databases. These rules enable organizations to restrict access to specific IP addresses or ranges, providing an additional layer of security against unauthorized access attempts.
   Additionally, Azure SQL Database supports Virtual Network Service Endpoints, which enable secure communication between Azure resources and the database within the Azure Virtual Network. By utilizing Service Endpoints, organizations can further enhance the security posture by ensuring that the database is only accessible from authorized virtual networks or subnets, isolating it from the public internet.
3. Azure Active Directory Integration: Azure SQL Database integrates seamlessly with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), allowing organizations to enforce centralized access control and authentication mechanisms. By leveraging Azure AD, organizations can implement granular access policies, manage user identities, and enable single sign-on (SSO) for database authentication. This integration simplifies user management and enhances security by eliminating the need for separate database-level credentials.
4. Threat Detection and Advanced Security Features: Azure SQL Database includes built-in threat detection capabilities that monitor database activity and identify potential security vulnerabilities or suspicious behavior. This feature analyzes query patterns, login attempts, and access patterns to identify potential threats such as SQL injection attacks or anomalous access attempts. When a threat is detected, alerts are generated, enabling organizations to take immediate action to mitigate risks.
   Moreover, Azure SQL Database offers advanced security features, such as Advanced Threat Protection (ATP). ATP helps organizations identify and mitigate potential threats by continuously monitoring databases, performing vulnerability assessments, and providing actionable recommendations for improving security. These proactive measures enable organizations to stay ahead of emerging security threats and ensure the integrity of their data.
5. Compliance and Certifications: Azure SQL Database complies with a wide range of regulatory standards, including GDPR, HIPAA, ISO 27001, SOC, and more. Microsoft undergoes regular audits to maintain these certifications, providing organizations with assurance that their data is being handled in a secure and compliant manner. By leveraging Azure SQL Database, organizations can simplify their compliance efforts and meet the stringent requirements of various regulatory frameworks.

High Availability and Disaster Recovery

Ensuring high availability and implementing effective disaster recovery strategies are critical for organizations to minimize downtime, maintain business continuity, and protect against data loss. Azure SQL Database offers a range of features and capabilities to ensure high availability and enable efficient disaster recovery. Let’s explore the key aspects of Azure SQL Database’s high availability and disaster recovery capabilities:

1. Automatic Backups: Azure SQL Database automatically performs regular backups of databases, eliminating the need for manual backup processes. These backups capture the complete state of the database, including data, schema, and configurations. The backups are stored in Azure Blob Storage, providing redundancy and durability. Organizations can leverage these backups to restore the database to a specific point in time or recover from accidental data loss or corruption.
2. Point-in-Time Restore: Azure SQL Database supports point-in-time restore, allowing organizations to recover their databases to a specific point in time within the retention period. This feature is particularly useful in scenarios where data corruption or human errors need to be resolved by restoring the database to a previous consistent state. By leveraging point-in-time restore, organizations can minimize data loss and quickly recover from unintended changes.
3. Geo-Replication: Azure SQL Database offers built-in geo-replication capabilities to enable efficient disaster recovery. Organizations can configure geo-replication to replicate their databases asynchronously to a secondary region, providing a standby database in case of a regional outage or disaster. The secondary database remains synchronized with the primary database, ensuring data consistency. In the event of a failure in the primary region, failover can be initiated to promote the secondary database as the new primary, minimizing downtime and enabling seamless application continuity.
4. Multiple Redundancy Options: Azure SQL Database provides multiple redundancy options to ensure high availability and fault tolerance. These options include zone-redundant, geo-redundant, and read-scale replicas. Zone-redundant replicas distribute database copies across multiple availability zones within a region, offering resiliency against hardware or infrastructure failures. Geo-redundant replicas replicate databases to a secondary region, providing additional protection against regional outages. Read-scale replicas allow organizations to offload read workloads from the primary database, improving performance and scalability while ensuring availability.
5. Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Azure SQL Database offers industry-leading SLAs for high availability. The SLA guarantees a high percentage of uptime and availability for databases. Depending on the deployment option and redundancy choice, Azure SQL Database provides SLAs for both single and pooled databases, ensuring that organizations can rely on consistent performance and availability for their critical applications and data.
6. Monitoring and Alerting: Azure SQL Database integrates seamlessly with Azure Monitor, providing comprehensive monitoring, alerting, and diagnostics capabilities. Organizations can set up alerts to proactively monitor database health, performance metrics, and replication status. By leveraging these insights, organizations can promptly identify and address any issues that may impact availability or disaster recovery.

Intelligent Monitoring and Insights

Azure SQL Database provides powerful monitoring and insights capabilities that enable organizations to gain valuable visibility into the performance, health, and usage of their databases. By leveraging intelligent monitoring features, organizations can proactively identify and resolve issues, optimize performance, and make data-driven decisions. Let’s explore the key aspects of Azure SQL Database’s intelligent monitoring and insights capabilities:

1. Azure Monitor Integration: Azure SQL Database seamlessly integrates with Azure Monitor, a comprehensive monitoring solution for Azure services. Azure Monitor provides a unified view of the performance and health of Azure SQL Database instances, allowing organizations to monitor key metrics, track resource utilization, and set up alerts for proactive monitoring. This integration enables organizations to gain real-time insights into database performance and take immediate action when anomalies or issues are detected.
2. Query Performance Insights: Azure SQL Database offers Query Performance Insights, a feature that helps organizations identify and resolve performance bottlenecks in their queries. Query Performance Insights provide detailed performance data, including query execution times, CPU usage, and data input/output statistics. By analyzing this information, organizations can pinpoint problematic queries, identify slow-running queries, and optimize query performance to enhance overall database performance.
3. Automatic Tuning: Azure SQL Database incorporates automatic tuning capabilities to optimize query performance without manual intervention. Automatic tuning continuously monitors query performance and identifies opportunities for improvement. It can automatically create and drop indexes, adjust database configuration settings, and provide recommendations to optimize query execution plans. By leveraging automatic tuning, organizations can improve query performance without the need for extensive manual tuning efforts.
4. Intelligent Insights: Azure SQL Database leverages intelligent insights to provide valuable recommendations for improving performance, security, and cost-efficiency. Intelligent Insights uses machine learning algorithms to analyze database usage patterns and identify potential optimizations. It provides actionable recommendations to optimize resource utilization, enhance security configurations, and reduce costs. These insights enable organizations to make informed decisions and continuously optimize their Azure SQL Database environments.
5. Performance Metrics and Diagnostics: Azure SQL Database offers a wide range of performance metrics and diagnostics data to monitor and troubleshoot database performance issues. Organizations can access detailed performance metrics, such as CPU utilization, memory usage, and storage metrics, to gain visibility into resource consumption and identify potential performance bottlenecks. Additionally, Azure SQL Database provides query-level performance diagnostics, execution plans, and historical query statistics, enabling organizations to analyze and optimize query performance effectively.
6. Integration with Azure Advisor: Azure SQL Database integrates with Azure Advisor, a service that provides personalized recommendations for optimizing Azure resources. Azure Advisor offers specific recommendations for Azure SQL Database, such as optimizing performance, improving security configurations, and minimizing costs. By leveraging Azure Advisor, organizations can proactively address potential issues, implement best practices, and optimize their Azure SQL Database deployments.

Compatibility and Integration

Azure SQL Database offers excellent compatibility and seamless integration with a wide range of tools, platforms, and services, enabling organizations to leverage existing investments and easily integrate with their existing data ecosystem. Here are the key aspects of Azure SQL Database’s compatibility and integration capabilities:

1. Transact-SQL (T-SQL) Compatibility: Azure SQL Database provides high compatibility with the Transact-SQL (T-SQL) language, which is widely used in Microsoft SQL Server environments. This compatibility allows organizations to migrate their on-premises SQL Server databases to Azure SQL Database with minimal code changes. Existing T-SQL scripts, stored procedures, and queries can be seamlessly executed in Azure SQL Database, ensuring a smooth transition to the cloud.
2. Azure Hybrid Benefit: Azure SQL Database offers the Azure Hybrid Benefit program, which allows organizations with existing SQL Server licenses to use those licenses for discounted rates on Azure SQL Database. This program provides cost savings and enables organizations to leverage their existing investments while migrating to the cloud.
3. Azure Data Migration Services: Azure Data Migration Services simplifies the process of migrating on-premises databases to Azure SQL Database. It provides a comprehensive set of tools and resources to assess, plan, and migrate databases from various source platforms, including SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, and more. With Azure Data Migration Services, organizations can seamlessly migrate their databases to Azure SQL Database while minimizing downtime and ensuring data integrity.
4. Integration with Azure Services: Azure SQL Database integrates seamlessly with other Azure services, enabling organizations to build end-to-end solutions and leverage the broader Azure ecosystem. For example, organizations can easily integrate Azure SQL Database with Azure Logic Apps, Azure Functions, Azure Data Factory, and Azure Analysis Services to create data pipelines, automate workflows, and enable advanced analytics and reporting.
5. Business Intelligence and Analytics Integration: Azure SQL Database seamlessly integrates with Azure services designed for business intelligence and analytics, such as Azure Synapse Analytics and Power BI. Organizations can leverage Azure Synapse Analytics to perform complex data transformations, run big data analytics, and build advanced analytics solutions on top of Azure SQL Database. Additionally, Power BI allows organizations to create interactive dashboards and reports to visualize and derive insights from Azure SQL Database data.
6. Development Tools and APIs: Azure SQL Database supports a wide range of development tools and APIs, enabling organizations to work with their databases using their preferred tools and programming languages. It provides compatibility with popular development tools like SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), Azure Data Studio, and Visual Studio. Additionally, Azure SQL Database offers extensive support for programming languages such as .NET, Java, Python, and Node.js, allowing developers to build applications that interact seamlessly with the database.

Use Cases of Azure SQL Database

Line-of-Business Applications

Azure SQL Database is well-suited for hosting line-of-business (LOB) applications, providing a robust and scalable data storage solution that meets the requirements of modern enterprise applications. Here are the key benefits and considerations when using Azure SQL Database for LOB applications:

1. Scalability and Performance: Azure SQL Database offers high scalability and performance capabilities, allowing LOB applications to handle increasing workloads and user demands. With the ability to scale up or scale out the database resources, organizations can easily accommodate growing data volumes, concurrent users, and transactional loads. Azure SQL Database’s built-in intelligent performance features, such as query optimization and automatic tuning, help optimize query execution and improve application responsiveness.
2. High Availability and Disaster Recovery: LOB applications often require high availability and effective disaster recovery strategies to minimize downtime and ensure business continuity. Azure SQL Database provides features such as automatic backups, point-in-time restore, geo-replication, and multiple redundancy options to support these requirements. These features enable organizations to ensure data availability, quickly recover from failures, and maintain uninterrupted access to critical LOB applications.
3. Security and Compliance: LOB applications typically handle sensitive and confidential data, making security a top priority. Azure SQL Database offers robust security features and compliance certifications, including data encryption, firewall rules, Azure Active Directory integration, threat detection, and compliance with regulatory frameworks. By leveraging these security capabilities, organizations can protect their LOB application data and ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations.
4. Compatibility and Integration: Azure SQL Database provides compatibility with the widely-used Transact-SQL (T-SQL) language, allowing organizations to seamlessly migrate existing LOB applications without significant code changes. It also integrates well with other Azure services, enabling organizations to build end-to-end solutions and leverage additional Azure capabilities for data integration, analytics, and reporting. Integration with development tools and APIs further simplifies LOB application development and maintenance.
5. Cost Efficiency: Azure SQL Database offers flexible pricing models, including options for provisioning resources based on workload requirements. This allows organizations to optimize costs by scaling resources up or down as needed. Additionally, the Azure Hybrid Benefit program enables organizations to utilize their existing SQL Server licenses and reduce costs when migrating LOB applications to Azure SQL Database.
6. Developer Productivity: Azure SQL Database provides a familiar development experience for developers working with LOB applications. It supports popular development tools and programming languages, allowing developers to leverage their existing skills and tools. The availability of development frameworks, libraries, and APIs simplifies application development and accelerates time-to-market for LOB applications.

Web and Mobile Applications

Azure SQL Database is a powerful and reliable choice for hosting web and mobile applications, providing a scalable and feature-rich database solution that meets the requirements of modern application development. Here are the key benefits and considerations when using Azure SQL Database for web and mobile applications:

1. Scalability and Performance: Web and mobile applications often experience fluctuating workloads and user demands. Azure SQL Database offers elastic scalability, allowing organizations to easily adjust the database resources based on the application’s needs. By scaling up or out, organizations can handle increasing traffic, user concurrency, and data volumes. Azure SQL Database’s performance features, such as query optimization and intelligent tuning, ensure that web and mobile applications deliver optimal performance and responsiveness.
2. High Availability and Disaster Recovery: Ensuring high availability and effective disaster recovery is crucial for web and mobile applications to deliver uninterrupted services. Azure SQL Database provides built-in features such as automatic backups, point-in-time restore, geo-replication, and multiple redundancy options. These capabilities ensure data availability, enable quick recovery from failures, and maintain application uptime, even in the event of a regional outage or disaster.
3. Security and Compliance: Web and mobile applications handle sensitive user data, making security a top priority. Azure SQL Database offers robust security features, including data encryption at rest and in transit, firewall rules, threat detection, and Azure Active Directory integration. It also complies with various industry standards and regulatory frameworks, ensuring that organizations can meet their security and compliance requirements.
4. Integration with Web and Mobile Development Frameworks: Azure SQL Database seamlessly integrates with popular web and mobile development frameworks and platforms, enabling developers to leverage their existing skills and tools. It supports languages such as .NET, Java, Node.js, and Python, making it easy to build and deploy web and mobile applications on Azure. Integration with Azure App Service, Azure Functions, and Azure Logic Apps further simplifies application development, deployment, and integration workflows.
5. Caching and Content Delivery: Azure SQL Database can be used in conjunction with Azure Cache for Redis and Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) to improve the performance and scalability of web and mobile applications. Azure Cache for Redis provides an in-memory caching solution, reducing the load on the database, and improving response times. Azure CDN delivers static content closer to end-users, reducing latency and enhancing the overall user experience.
6. DevOps and Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): Azure SQL Database seamlessly integrates with Azure DevOps and supports CI/CD pipelines, enabling organizations to automate the application deployment process. Developers can easily deploy database schema changes, migrate data, and manage database configurations as part of the application release process. This integration streamlines development workflows, promotes collaboration, and ensures consistent deployment across development, staging, and production environments.

Business Intelligence and Analytics

Azure SQL Database is a powerful platform for hosting business intelligence (BI) and analytics solutions, providing a secure and scalable foundation for data storage, analysis, and reporting. Here are the key benefits and considerations when using Azure SQL Database for business intelligence and analytics:

1. Data Storage and Integration: Azure SQL Database serves as a central repository for storing structured and semi-structured data, making it an ideal choice for storing data used in BI and analytics solutions. It seamlessly integrates with Azure Data Factory, Azure Data Lake Storage, and Azure Databricks, enabling organizations to ingest, transform, and process large volumes of data from various sources into Azure SQL Database. This integration simplifies the data integration and preparation process for BI and analytics workloads.
2. Scalability and Performance: Azure SQL Database offers high scalability and performance capabilities, allowing organizations to handle large volumes of data and complex queries required for BI and analytics. It supports vertical and horizontal scaling, enabling organizations to allocate the right amount of compute resources to meet their workload demands. Azure SQL Database’s performance optimizations, such as columnstore indexes and in-memory OLTP, further enhance query performance and enable faster analytics processing.
3. Integration with Analytical Services: Azure SQL Database seamlessly integrates with Azure services designed for analytics, such as Azure Synapse Analytics (formerly SQL Data Warehouse) and Azure Analysis Services. Azure Synapse Analytics provides a unified analytics platform that combines big data and data warehousing capabilities, allowing organizations to perform complex analytics and build data-driven insights on top of Azure SQL Database. Azure Analysis Services enables organizations to create scalable and interactive analytical models and reports for self-service business intelligence.
4. Advanced Analytics and Machine Learning: Azure SQL Database supports advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities through integration with Azure Machine Learning and SQL Server Machine Learning Services. Organizations can leverage these services to perform advanced analytics, build predictive models, and gain valuable insights from their data stored in Azure SQL Database. This integration enables organizations to unlock the full potential of their data and drive intelligent decision-making.
5. Reporting and Visualization: Azure SQL Database integrates with Power BI, a leading business intelligence and data visualization tool. Power BI allows organizations to create interactive reports, dashboards, and visualizations to gain insights from Azure SQL Database data. By connecting Power BI to Azure SQL Database, organizations can easily explore, analyze, and share data-driven insights with stakeholders, enhancing decision-making across the organization.
6. Security and Compliance: Business intelligence and analytics solutions often involve sensitive data, making security and compliance crucial. Azure SQL Database provides robust security features, including data encryption, firewall rules, Azure Active Directory integration, and auditing capabilities. It also complies with industry standards and regulations, ensuring that organizations can meet their security and compliance requirements when working with sensitive data in BI and analytics scenarios.

Pricing and Service Tiers

Azure SQL Database offers flexible pricing options and service tiers to cater to the varying needs and budgets of organizations. Here are the key aspects of pricing and service tiers in Azure SQL Database:

Consumption-Based Pricing

Azure SQL Database follows a consumption-based pricing model, where organizations pay for the resources, they use. The pricing is based on factors such as the service tier, performance level, and storage capacity provisioned for the database. With consumption-based pricing, organizations have the flexibility to scale resources up or down based on their workload requirements, optimizing costs, and only paying for the resources they actually utilize.

Service Tiers

Azure SQL Database provides multiple service tiers to accommodate different workloads and performance requirements. Each service tier offers varying levels of performance, scalability, availability, and features. The service tiers available in Azure SQL Database are:

1. Basic Tier: The Basic tier is the most cost-effective service tier, suitable for light workloads with minimal performance requirements. It offers limited storage capacity, lower performance levels, and lacks some of the advanced features available in higher tiers.
2. Standard Tier: The Standard tier provides better performance and features compared to the Basic tier. It offers higher storage capacity, more compute resources, and additional features like built-in backups, geo-replication, and active geo-replication for disaster recovery.
3. Premium Tier: The Premium tier is designed for mission-critical workloads that require high-performance and high availability. It offers the highest performance levels, larger storage capacity, and advanced features such as in-memory OLTP, advanced threat protection, and automatic tuning. The Premium tier provides the best performance for demanding OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) and analytics workloads.
4. General Purpose Tier: The General-Purpose tier offers a balanced combination of performance and cost-efficiency. It provides better performance than the Basic and Standard tiers and is suitable for a wide range of workloads, including business applications and small-to-medium-sized databases.
5. Hyperscale Tier: The Hyperscale tier is designed for large databases that require scalability and high-performance storage. It utilizes a distributed architecture that allows for virtually unlimited database size, automatic scaling, and near-instantaneous backups and restores. The Hyperscale tier is ideal for applications with unpredictable workloads and rapidly growing data volumes.

Elastic Pool

Azure SQL Database also offers the concept of an elastic pool, which allows organizations to manage and share resources across multiple databases within the same pool. Elastic pools are beneficial for scenarios where organizations have multiple databases with varying workload patterns. By consolidating databases into an elastic pool, organizations can achieve better resource utilization and cost optimization.

Azure Hybrid Benefit

Azure SQL Database provides the Azure Hybrid Benefit program, which allows organizations to utilize their existing SQL Server licenses for discounted rates on Azure SQL Database. This program helps organizations reduce costs when migrating existing SQL Server workloads to Azure SQL Database.

Cost Estimator

Azure provides a cost estimator tool that helps organizations estimate the costs associated with using Azure SQL Database based on their anticipated workload requirements. The cost estimator considers factors such as service tier, storage, data transfer, and backup costs, providing organizations with a clearer understanding of the expected expenses.

Conclusion

Azure SQL Database offers a robust, scalable, and secure cloud-based data management solution for organizations of all sizes. It provides a wide range of features and capabilities, enabling efficient application development, enhanced performance, and simplified administration. With its seamless integration with other Azure services, Azure SQL Database becomes a powerful tool for modern data management in the cloud environment.