Windows Azure Table has Phantom Columns

While working on my Windows Azure application this weekend, I ran into an issue that had me stumped for a few minutes until Neudesic’s Azure Storage Explorer helped me attain the moment of clarity that brought the resolution to me.

The issue I was running into was that one of my Azure tables was showing a number of columns that I wasn’t using. The answer was quite simple—I WAS using them in the past. Therefore, even if I deleted all the rows in the table, I wasn’t removing those old columns and they were showing null data.

- You can download Neudesic’s Azure Storage Explorer from www.codeplex.com.

In this case, it didn’t show my anything other than my Azure table had empty columns that I didn’t think I was adding, but that was enough for me to ‘see’ the issue.