title: Cannot get Linked Servers to work in Sql Azure
body: <p>We are using a trial version of Azure. We are trying to perform cross server queries from our SQL Server 2012 in-house.</p>
  <p>We seem to have our local 2012 linked with Azure. When I go into <code>Server Object</code> -&gt; <code>Linked Servers</code> in management studio, I see our <code>Azure</code> database.</p>
  <p>But if I try to open the catalog and tables, I get an error message saying</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>Reference to database and/or server name in 'Perseus.sys.sp_tables_rowset2'  is not supported in this version of SQL Server</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>** <strong>Perseus</strong> is the name of our catalog in <code>Azure Sql</code>.</p>
  <p>Running a query from local connection:</p>
  <pre><code>SELECT *  FROM [azureDBServer].[Perseus].[dbo].[accounts]
  </code></pre>
  <p>Tesult is:</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>OLE DB provider &quot;SQLNCLI11&quot; for linked server &quot;azureDBServer&quot; returned message
  &quot;Unspecified error&quot;. Msg 40515, Level 16, State 2, Line 1 Reference to database and/or
  server name in 'Perseus.sys.sp_tables_info_90_rowset' is not supported in this version of
  SQL Server.</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>This same in house SQL 2012 Server is able to connect to our in-house 2008 by cross server queries and by viewing its structure through Linked Servers.</p>
  <p>I know from this article <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2012/09/19/announcing-updates-to-windows-azure-sql-database.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Azure supports Linked Servers</a>.</p>
  <p>So I'm lost about what is wrong. Our Admin thinks it may be that we have a Web-Sql account vs a business SQL account. This <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3426360/sql-azure-web-vs-business-edition">Azure Web vs Business SQL</a> outdated Stack link implies that SQL version is NOT the problem, but pre-dates when Azure offered Linked Servers.</p>
  <p>So, I'm trying to understand if</p>
  <p><strong>a)</strong> we didn't set up something right to provide SQL Linking?</p>
  <p><strong>b)</strong> we are limited by trial?</p>
  <p><strong>c)</strong> are we limited by Web SQL version?</p>
  <p><strong>d)</strong> anything else?</p>