For example, the emulator uses standard OS components such as the local file system for persistence, and the HTTPS protocol stack for connectivity. While emulation of the Azure Cosmos DB service is faithful, the emulator's implementation is different than the service. You can develop and test applications using the Azure Cosmos DB Emulator, and deploy them to Azure at global scale by updating the Azure Cosmos DB connection endpoint. It supports equivalent functionality as the Azure Cosmos DB, which includes creating data, querying data, provisioning and scaling containers, and executing stored procedures and triggers. The Azure Cosmos DB Emulator provides a high-fidelity emulation of the Azure Cosmos DB service. To learn more, see how to connect to the emulator endpoint from different APIs. Currently the data explorer in the emulator fully supports viewing SQL data only the data created using MongoDB, Gremlin/Graph and Cassandra client applications it is not viewable at this time. You can develop applications using Azure Cosmos DB Emulator with the account using the APIs for NoSQL, Apache Cassandra, MongoDB, Apache Gremlin, and Table. The emulator release notes article lists all the available versions and the feature updates that were made in each release.

To get started, download and install the latest version of Azure Cosmos DB Emulator on your local computer. This article describes how to install and use the emulator on Windows, Linux, macOS, and Windows docker environments. When you're satisfied with how your application is working in the Azure Cosmos DB Emulator, you can switch to using an Azure Cosmos DB account in the cloud. Using the Azure Cosmos DB Emulator, you can develop and test your application locally, without creating an Azure subscription or incurring any costs. The Azure Cosmos DB Emulator provides a local environment that emulates the Azure Cosmos DB service for development purposes.

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