Microsoft Windows Azure CTP review

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Microsoft's Community Technology Preview reveals in the Windows Azure Services Platform a thoughtfully designed cloud-computing architecture where seasoned .Net developers will feel at home.

Microsoft Windows Azure: development

Currently, Microsoft Windows Azure development is done on Windows Vista SP1 or Windows Server 2008, using the various Azure SDKs and tools plus Visual Studio 2008 SP1. Getting started is a multistep process: you need to apply for the preview, then download and install the prerequisites, SDKs, and tools. If you're accepted for the preview, you'll receive tokens via email that you can redeem to create instances of the various services.

Once you've installed everything you need and started SQL Server and IIS, you can test out the Microsoft Windows Azure development environment by building and running applications supplied with the Azure SDK locally. If everything is working correctly, a local fabric is created along with local blob, table, and queue storage.

From the supplied templates, you can create a new Visual Studio project for a cloud service with Web and/or Worker roles, a cloud sequential-workflow service, and Live Framework mesh-enabled web applications with or without Silverlight support. We would say that getting to "Hello, World!" with an Azure Web role might be the second most complicated "Hello, World!" application we've seen, after Microsoft's own Workflow version, but it really only requires adding one line of code or HTML to the project generated by the Visual Studio template.

This snapshot of the developer portal for Microsoft Windows Azure hosting, storage, and Live Services shows where we uploaded, tested, and promoted our iwhello1 application from staging to production.

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If you use Microsoft Windows Azure storage, you need to be aware that the URIs are different for addressing storage services in the cloud and in the local fabric. Consequently, development proceeds in steps. You start by running locally, then you change the storage URIs to move to mixed mode, running the application in the local fabric against cloud storage. Next, you publish your application to the cloud, test it at a staging URL that includes a GUID (globally unique identifier) as part of the address, and finally promote it to a production URL.

One thing Microsoft has always been good at is providing sample code for developers, and Microsoft Windows Azure is no exception. The Azure SDK has nine samples, although two of them are basically "Hello" apps; the Microsoft .Net Services SDK has samples that cover every service it offers both in C# and VB; the Live Framework SDK has samples for a variety of scenarios and libraries for .Net, JavaScript, and Silverlight; and the Azure Services Kit has 11 hands-on labs with setup instructions, a lab manual, and lab files.

We would advise most new Microsoft Windows Azure developers to work through all the labs, if time permits, then dip into any relevant samples.

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• www.microsoft.co.uk
• 0870 60 10 100
• Microsoft
• Community Technology Preview is free
• Final pricing not yet available

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