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Security and identity ⇄ Database

Active Directory to Azure SQL Database integration — real-time, two-way sync

Keep Active Directory and Azure SQL Database in sync without custom scripts. Cut weeks of integration work, eliminate silent data drift, and give your team a single, reliable source of truth.

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Adopted by fast-scaling companies moving mission-critical data in real time

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Why teams connect Active Directory and Azure SQL Database

Close the gap between your application data and your directory: Azure SQL Database and Active Directory share users, groups, and access in real time, in both directions.

Active Directory is the system of record for who people are and what they can reach: users, the groups they belong to, and the applications assigned to them. Azure SQL Database holds the operational data those same people show up in, whether an employee or member table that decides who should have an account at all, a customers list, or the rows an application checks before it authorizes an action. The two describe overlapping users and groups, and when a nightly export or a hand-run script is all that connects them, accounts lag joiners and leavers and the application authorizes against a stale picture of who has access.

Stacksync syncs Tables, Views, Schemas, Rows and columns in Azure SQL Database with Organizational units, Organizational contacts, Users, Groups in Active Directory field by field, in real time, and in both directions. You decide which system owns which fields, with the directory holding credentials and group membership and the database holding the source list of people who should exist at all, and Stacksync keeps every copy consistent, resolving conflicts by rules you set. A person added to a table becomes an account within seconds, a departure disables one just as fast, and the directory's users and groups are always present in your tables as ordinary rows.

Common use cases

  • 01 Consolidate data from several line-of-business apps into one Azure SQL database as an integration hub.
  • 02 Feed an Azure SQL operational database with orders and inventory from an ERP in near real time.
  • 03 Read Users, Groups, and directoryRole assignments into a warehouse for periodic access reviews and SOC 2 audit evidence.
  • 04 Keep security-group memberships aligned with application entitlement tables so access reflects the right teams as they change.

Common sync patterns

Provision accounts from the source of truth

When a person is added to the employee, member, or customer table in Azure SQL Database, Stacksync creates the matching user in Active Directory with the right attributes, so access starts from live data instead of a manual ticket.

Deprovision the moment the record changes

When someone is marked inactive or removed in Azure SQL Database, the matching account in Active Directory is disabled within seconds, closing the window between a departure and a login that still works.

Read users and groups as ordinary tables

Users, groups, and their memberships from Active Directory land in Azure SQL Database as rows your application and queries can join, so authorization checks and access reporting run against the database instead of the directory API.

What you can sync between Active Directory and Azure SQL Database

Representative objects on each side — any object or custom field can map to any target. Schemas are auto-detected; types are converted between the two systems.

Active Directory objects Azure SQL Database objects How this pairing syncs
Service principals & applications App registrations and enterprise apps; read-mostly for entitlement and license inventory. Tables The primary sync target; rows map one-to-one to records in the paired system. Service principals & applications is specific to Active Directory and Tables to Azure SQL Database — each maps to any object or custom field on the other side.
Organizational units On-prem AD DS containers (LDAP organizationalUnit) used to scope which users and groups a sync includes. Views Read-only projections used when the sync should expose a curated shape rather than raw tables. Organizational units is specific to Active Directory and Views to Azure SQL Database — each maps to any object or custom field on the other side.
Organizational contacts Directory contact objects (orgContact); synced for shared address-book and CRM person records. Schemas Namespaces that organize tables and control which objects a sync user can reach. Organizational contacts is specific to Active Directory and Schemas to Azure SQL Database — each maps to any object or custom field on the other side.
Users User accounts in Entra ID and on-prem AD DS; synced two-way to create, update attributes, and enable or disable accounts. Rows and columns Standard relational records with typed columns; primary keys anchor upserts. Users is specific to Active Directory and Rows and columns to Azure SQL Database — each maps to any object or custom field on the other side.
Groups Security and Microsoft 365 groups; synced two-way including name, type, and owner, with membership tracked separately. Stored procedures Existing business logic that some teams invoke on write instead of direct table inserts. Groups is specific to Active Directory and Stored procedures to Azure SQL Database — each maps to any object or custom field on the other side.
Group memberships Member and owner links between users and groups; membership add/remove changes are surfaced by delta query. Change tracking / CDC tables System-maintained change records used to drive incremental sync. Group memberships is specific to Active Directory and Change tracking / CDC tables to Azure SQL Database — each maps to any object or custom field on the other side.

How changes propagate between Active Directory and Azure SQL Database

Each direction of the sync is driven by what the source system can signal and what the destination accepts — detection, delivery, and expected latency below.

Active Directory Azure SQL Database Sub-second propagation

DetectionActive Directory notifies Stacksync of record changes through webhook events. Microsoft Graph delta query (change tracking) for Users and Groups, plus change-notification subscriptions (webhooks) for near-real-time triggers.

DeliveryEach detected change is applied to Azure SQL Database as a row-level write, with types converted between the two schemas.

Azure SQL Database Active Directory Sub-second propagation

DetectionChanges in Azure SQL Database are captured at the source via change data capture — no polling loop against its API. Change data capture or change tracking, both supported on Azure SQL Database.

DeliveryEach detected change is written to Active Directory through its API, with automatic retries and rate-limit backoff.

Rate-limit considerations

  • Active Directory: Graph throttles by resource-unit cost per app per tenant in 10-second windows (about 3,500–8,000 units by tenant size); directory delta tokens expire after ~7 days.
What ships with Active Directory ⇄ Azure SQL Database

Connect Active Directory and Azure SQL Database for flexible, real-time data sync.

Real-time sync, workflow automation, event queues, EDI, and monitoring, for every Active Directory–Azure SQL Database connection.

Real-time

Two-way sync

Changes in Active Directory or Azure SQL Database instantly reflect in both systems. No stale data, no manual imports.

No-code + pro-code

Workflow automation

Trigger automated workflows whenever Active Directory or Azure SQL Database data changes, update records, fire webhooks, or kick off sequences without brittle API scripts.

At scale

Event queues

Handle millions of events per minute without losing a single Active Directory or Azure SQL Database record.

Observability

Monitoring

Track your Active Directory ⇄ Azure SQL Database sync health, view errors, and replay failed events in one click.

Trading partners

EDI

Transform legacy EDI complexity into simple database interactions between Active Directory and Azure SQL Database.

How the Active Directory and Azure SQL Database connectors work

Active Directory

Integration surface
Microsoft Graph REST API (Entra ID / cloud) and LDAP/LDAPS (on-premises AD DS)
Authentication
OAuth 2.0 via the Microsoft identity platform — an app registration with application or delegated permissions (e.g. User.ReadWrite.All, Group.ReadWrite.All) and admin consent; on-prem AD DS uses a bound service account over LDAPS.
Change detection
Microsoft Graph delta query (change tracking) for Users and Groups, plus change-notification subscriptions (webhooks) for near-real-time triggers; on-prem AD DS uses the DirSync control and uSNChanged polling.
Capabilities
read · write · webhooks
Rate limits
Graph throttles by resource-unit cost per app per tenant in 10-second windows (about 3,500–8,000 units by tenant size); directory delta tokens expire after ~7 days.

Azure SQL Database

Integration surface
SQL wire protocol (TDS), the same protocol as SQL Server; T-SQL over standard drivers
Authentication
SQL authentication (database credentials) or Microsoft Entra ID authentication
Change detection
Change data capture or change tracking, both supported on Azure SQL Database; polling as a fallback
Capabilities
read · write · CDC
How it works

How to connect Active Directory to Azure SQL Database — three steps, no code

Configure and sync within minutes, no code. Whether you sync 50k or 100M+ records, Stacksync handles the queues, infra, and plumbing. Integrations are non-invasive and need zero setup on your systems.

  1. 01

    Connect your apps

    Authenticate Active Directory and Azure SQL Database with each platform's native method — OAuth, API keys, or service accounts — plus secure options like SSH tunneling, IP whitelisting, and VPC peering.

    • OAuth 2.0
    • SSH tunnel
    • VPC peering
    Active Directory connected
    Azure SQL Database connected
    OAuth 2.0
    SSH tunnel
    SSL certificate
    VPC peering
  2. 02

    Choose tables

    Pick the Active Directory and Azure SQL Database objects to sync — Stacksync auto-detects both schemas, including custom fields where the platform exposes them. Sync to existing tables, or let Stacksync create new ones with ideal data types.

    • Standard objects
    • Custom objects
    • Auto-schema
    objects · Active Directory ⇄ Azure SQL Database
    Customers 12,480
    Sales Orders 8,213
    Invoices 5,902
    Items 1,344
  3. 03

    Map fields

    Fields map automatically even when names and types differ. Stacksync handles transformation and type casting for you, zero configuration required.

    • Auto-map
    • Type casting
    • Transforms
    Active Directory Azure SQL Database
    Company company_name text
    Email email text
    Amount amount numeric
    Created created_at timestamp
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FAQ

Active Directory and Azure SQL Database integration FAQ

SECURITY

Security teams trust Stacksync

As a data company, we understand the importance of keeping your data secure. Stacksync is built with security best practices to keep your data safe at every layer, and is DPF-certified for US, EU, UK and CH data transfers.

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SSO & SCIM

Let your users access Stacksync from your centralized user management systems. Works with Okta, Azure, Google SSO and more.

Alerts

Immediately get alerted about record syncing issues over email, Slack, PagerDuty and WhatsApp. Resolve issues from a centralized dashboard with retry and revert options.

Secure connection options

Securely connects to your systems with:

OAuth 2 SSH Tunnelling SSL certificates IP Whitelisting VPN gateway VPC peering and more

Related integrations

Every pair below is a real-time, two-way sync. Search all 441 integrations available for Active Directory and Azure SQL Database.

Popular · 8 of 441
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