The SQL API Java SDK supports synchronous operations. For asynchronous support, use the [SQL API Async Java SDK](sql-api-sdk-async-java.md).

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<tr><td>**Download SDK**</td><td>[NPM](https://www.npmjs.com/package/documentdb)</td></tr>

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<tr><td>**Download SDK**</td><td>[PyPI](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pydocumentdb)</td></tr>

Azure Cosmos DB provides a [SQL API for querying data](sql-api-sql-query.md), without requiring schema or secondary indexes. This article provides the following information for developers:

* High-level details on how Azure Cosmos DB's SQL query execution works

Azure Cosmos DB supports querying documents using a familiar SQL (Structured Query Language) like grammar over hierarchical JSON documents without requiring explicit schema or creation of secondary indexes. This topic provides reference documentation for the SQL query language, which is compatible with SQL API accounts.

For a walkthrough of the SQL query language, see [SQL queries for Azure Cosmos DB](sql-api-sql-query.md).

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB supports querying documents using SQL (Structured Query Language) as a JSON query language on SQL API accounts. Azure Cosmos DB is truly schema-free. By virtue of its commitment to the JSON data model directly within the database engine, it provides automatic indexing of JSON documents without requiring explicit schema or creation of secondary indexes.

While designing the query language for Cosmos DB, we had two goals in mind:

Azure Cosmos DB is Microsoft’s globally distributed multi-model database service. You can quickly create and query document, key/value, and graph databases, all of which benefit from the global distribution and horizontal scale capabilities at the core of Azure Cosmos DB.

This tutorial demonstrates how to create an Azure Cosmos DB account using the Azure portal, and then create a document database and collection with a [partition key](sql-api-partition-data.md#partition-keys) using the [SQL .NET API](sql-api-introduction.md). By defining a partition key when you create a collection, your application is prepared to scale effortlessly as your data grows.

In this article, we show how to use the Azure portal to setup Azure Cosmos DB global distribution and then connect using the SQL API.

This article covers the following tasks:

The Azure Cosmos DB [SQL API](documentdb-introduction.md) supports querying documents using SQL. This article provides a sample document and two sample SQL queries and results.

This article covers the following tasks: