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In my search of better understanding the scalability options of SQL Azure I stumbled on an interesting aspect: Query Hints in SQL Azure. More specifically, the MAXDOP hint. A few years ago I did a lot of analysis on this query hint (see article on SQL Server Central: http://www.sqlservercentral... Here is a quick synopsis of MAXDOP: It is a query hint you use when issuing a SQL statement that provides you control with how many processors ...

Supongamos que tenemos una aplicación Web utilizando una colección in-memory que cambia ocasionalmente pero que se utiliza muy a menudo. La colección se cargaría desde tablas Azure en el arranque de la aplicación, utilizando el evento Application_Start de global.asax, y se actualizaría cuando la aplicación actualizara la tabla, de forma que las consultas podrían realizarse sobre la colección en memoria. Si vamos a desplegar la en Azure habrá que tener presente que se ejecutará más de una instancia ...

Yesterday at the .NET user group meeting in Kampala Uganda I gave a talk on cloud computing with Windows Azure (details will be in my next blog post). The guys were excited. Without owning they own inftrastucture and at low cost they can build scalable , highly available applications. Not quite. Azure accounts are only available to people in particular countries - none from Africa. I attended PDC in 2008 when Microsoft unleashed Windows Azure. One of the case studies to show the benefits ofr cloud ...

I presented at VBUG last year and can confirm that they put on a really good event. This year I stood aside for my “replacement” Steve Plank to work his magic. Worth checking out… VBUG SPRING CONFERENCE 28/29 March 2011 Wokefield Park, Mortimer, Reading RG7 3AH Day One (Mon 28 March): Developing SharePoint 2010 with Visual Studio 2010 - Dave McMahon Cache Out with Windows Server AppFabric – Phil Pursglove Extending your Corporate Network in to the Windows Azure Data Centre with Windows Azure Connect ...

I know a lot of technical people who work in partners (ISVs, System Integrators etc). I know that virtually none of them would think of going to the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) learning portal to find some deep and high quality technical content. Instead they would head to MSDN, Channel 9, msdev.com etc. I am one of those people :-) Hence imagine my surprise when i stumbled upon this little gem Architectural Guidance for Migrating Applications to Windows Azure Platform (your company and hence ...

As mentioned in some earlier posts, I’ve been hacking on Shopify for the past six months for an e-commerce project. My work with Shopify introduced me to Heroku, which is a simple “cloud-based” service for hosting and running Ruby applications. It’s dead simple to get started and, for the most part, seems to “just work”. While I enjoy playing with new languages and platforms, I’m by no means a Ruby developer. Heroku is a great service, but seemed somewhat inaccessible to me given that I’d have to ...

So what happens when you need to build an application that works on a variety of mobile platforms that need to work offline from a backend database? This is the situation I’ve found myself working on a proof of concept application, that needs to use a common data store on SQL Azure. The mobile application, needs to periodically synchronise to this data store but importantly work offline. Microsoft have done just this with Microsoft Sync. Services 4.0 CTP. Just watch this http://player.microsoftpdc.... ...

The code samples in Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework are updated on 2011-1-23. Download address: http://1code.codeplex.com/r... You can download individual code samples or browse code samples grouped by technology inthe updated code sample index. If it’s the first time that you hear about Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, please read this Microsoft News Center article http://www.microsoft.com/pr... or watch the ...

If you are developer, software architect or chief technology officer in the UK and work for a company that develops software products (which we often call ISVs) and use Microsoft technologies in your products and would like to be better connected with your peers and the Microsoft UK ISV technical team then please pop over to LinkedIn and check out the new group we have created. (NB: You will need to register on LinkedIn if you haven’t already done so). You can go direct to the group or just type ...

In brief…. take 1 minute to register today if you are UK based and work for a company that creates software products and want to dig into SharePoint 2010 development for FREE with a great UK based SME (subject matter expert). And… if you want to understand the background, read on :-) Microsoft Platform Ready is where we are aggregating resources to help companies who develop software products explore and adopt the latest technologies from Microsoft. There are many benefits to signing up (e.g. the ...

Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced the beta release of its “Elastic Beanstalk” Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. The platform Initially is available to Java developers only, but it sounds pretty snazzy: you wrap your code up as a Java WAR file (a Web Application Archive), upload it and deploy it. There are tools developers can integrate into Eclipse to do the upload or you can use the AWS Management Console. Wait a few minutes and then visit your app at http://myapp.elasticbeansta... ...

I’m trying to find time to update the Prairie Developer Conference 2011 website, and the sessions and speaker information will be up by this weekend including the registration page. For those that are wondering what the session and speaker list looks like, I wanted to give a sneak peak. We have a fantastic set of sessions by world class technologists! We’re covering .NET, Java, Ruby, SQL Server, Agile, User Experience, Mobile, Security, Azure, Office, SharePoint, and others. In fact, this year I’ve ...

Para desarrollar y probar un servicio WCF suelo incluir una prueba unitaria en el proyecto con una referencia al servicio a probar, añadida utilizando el botón "Discover". b Recientemente tenía que escribir un servicio WCF en Azure y añadí el proyecto de test que comentaba. Pero al ejecutar la prueba se producía un error accediendo al RoleEnvironment desde el servicio: role discovery data is unavailable. Al final resultó que el problema era que el emulador de computación también emula al balanceador ...

Over on “The autistic coder” blog there is a new post entitled: Limits on message size and why it might be a problem for you “Message queuing technologies always have an upper limit set for the message size they are able to transport. The size limit is usually related to some constraint imposed by the underlying technologies used to implement the queuing system. Usually this is not a problem since the limit for the common enterprise messaging systems are quite large. MSMQ for example has a limit ...

It can be difficult to find something to look forward to in January – but this year it was a little easier as a) I got lots of great Xbox 360 games and b) the Windows Azure Platform element of the Cloud Essentials Pack for Microsoft Partner Network partners went live. I have previously explained what the Cloud Essentials Pack is and how you can access – but at the time I couldn’t share the details of the Windows Azure Platform element. The Windows Azure Platform element is now available. It gives ...

In this Issue: Amyo Kabir, Rob Eisenberg, Doug Rathbone, John Papa, Jeff Blankenburg(-2-), Mike Taulty, Peter Kuhn, Laurent Bugnion, Vangos Pterneas, and Senthil Kumar. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight Popup sample" Amyo Kabir WP7: "Navigation in a #WP7 application with MVVM Light" Laurent Bugnion XNA: "XNA for Silverlight developers: Part 0 - Why should I care?" Peter Kuhn Shoutouts: Mohamed Mosallem posted a video of an Expression Blend demo he gave recently: Expression Blend Demo Rob ...

I just found that David Aiken, a windows azure developer and evangelist, wrote a cool article about how to use Memcached in Windows Azure through the new feature Azure Plugin. http://www.davidaiken.com/2... I think the best solution for distributed cache in Azure would be the Windows Azure AppFabric Caching but since it’s only in CTP and avaiable in the US data center David’s solution would be the best. Only one thing I’m concerning about, is the stability of ...

Hello folks, If you are implementing a service oriented architecture, and are unsure of the best governance approach to follow, then this webinar is a must-attend event for you. We will discuss why SO-Aware is the more efficient and interoperable alternative to traditional UDDI-based SOA-governance. Specifically, we will address the differences between UDDI and SO-Aware in terms of service discovery, configuration, and policy resolution. Finally, we will address why the REST/Odata based model implemented ...

I've been writing software for a while and recently had an opportunity to broaden my horizons and start developing for iOS. We decided to leverage, as much as possible, our existing skills and use MonoTouch and MonoDevelop by Novell. For those of you who do not know, Mono is a .NET port originally designed for Linux but adapted for other platforms as well. MonoTouch is a port specifically for building iOS applications using the .NET framework. MonoDroid is a port (in CTP-esque release) for Android. ...

I have been spending the last 2 weeks immersing myself in a number of Windows Azure and SQL Azure technologies. And in setting up a new business (I’ll speak more about that in the future), I have also become a customer of Microsoft’s BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services). In short, it has been a fortnight of Microsoft cloud computing. On the Azure side, I’ve looked, of course, at Web Roles and Worker Roles. But I’ve also looked at Azure Storage’s REST API (including coding to it directly), ...

Introduction The way I previously created messages to send to the GovTalk service I used the XMLDocument to create the request. While this worked it left a number of problems; not least that for every message a special function would need to created. This is OK for the short term but the biggest cost in any software project is maintenance and this would be a headache to maintain. So the following is a somewhat better way of achieving the same thing. For the purposes of this article I am going to ...

I have heard some service providers (or cloud providers), hosting companies and such complain, criticize or even venture to call foul on Microsoft’s Azure VM Role. The problem: None of them have gone through the effort of truly understanding (or perhaps not wanting to know) what is going on there. Many have jumped right into the “purist” definition of IaaS, or PaaS for that matter. Ok, Buck’s post is a true gem (my opinion) in the sense it gives you parallels of what the VM Role is and is not. And ...

Herve Roggero has just published a paper that outlines patterns for scaling using SQL Azure and the Blue Syntax (he and Scott Klein’s company) sharding api. You can find the paper at: http://www.bluesyntax.net/f... Herve and Scott have also just released an Apress book Pro SQL Azure. The idea of being able to split (shard) database operations automatically and control them from a web based management console is very appealing. These ideas have been talked about for a long time ...

In this 4-days loss to a sinus infection and all-submittal Issue.... and this only catches me up on submittals through last Sunday: Mark Monster, Sacha Barber, Rénald Nollet, Georgi Atanasov, and András Velvárt. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight with Facebook - a practical guide to integration" András Velvárt WP7: "RadDateSelector for Windows Phone 7 – Loaded within a standard in-browser Silverlight application" Georgi Atanasov MVVM: "Cinch - A Rich Full Featured WPF/SL MVVM Framework" Sacha ...

Cloud computing is about scaling out all your application tiers, from web application to the database layer. In fact, the whole promise of Azure is to pay for just what you need. You need more IIS servers? No problemo... just spin another web server. You expect to double your storage needs for Azure Tables? No problemo; you are covered there too... just pay for your storage needs. But what about the database tier, SQL Azure? How do you add new databases easily, and transparently, so that your application ...

I was taking the Windows Azure CmdLets project and getting it into an MSI just to make it easier to deploy in a nice package. I ran into problems with the Setup project not being able to properly establish the right registry settings for an x64 environment. Even though you set the target platform on the Setup project to x64 the InstallUtil.lib that get’s run is still x86. In order to have it work property, you need to follow the steps identified here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/e... ...

Several partners have been asking about guidance on combining Windows Phone 7 applications with Windows Azure. The patterns and practices team recently released new guidance on Windows Phone 7. This is a continuation of the Windows Azure Guidance. It takes the survey application and makes a version for Windows Phone 7. The guide includes the following topics: Prism for Windows Phone 7 Reactive Extensions WCF Services on top of Windows Azure Push Notifications Camera & Voice Panorama Much more... ...

In the UK we have seen some fantastic take up around the Windows Azure Platform and we have lined up some great stuff in 2011 to help companies fully exploit the Cloud – but we need you to tell us what you are up to! Once you tell us about your plans around Windows Azure, you will get access to FREE benefits including email based developer support and free monthly allowance of Windows Azure, SQL Azure and AppFabric from Jan 2011 – and more! (This offer is referred to as Cloud Essentials and is explained ...

In this Issue: Mark Monster, Kevin Dockx, Jeremy Likness(-2-,-3-), Timmy Kokke, Den Delimarsky, Mike Snow, Samuel Jack(-2-), and Renuka Prasad(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Trigger a Storyboard on ViewModel changes" Mark Monster WP7: "Microsoft Push Notification in Windows Phone 7" Renuka Prasad Shoutouts: SilverlightGal sent me the link to The Silverlight Dossier ... I think it's a pretty good start... additions I'd like to see are ways to submit to the various areas. Michael Crump put up ...

With the new release of the Windows Azure platform there are a lot of new features available. In my previous post I introduced a little bit about one of them, the remote desktop access to azure virtual machine. Now I would like to talk about another cool stuff – Windows Azure Connect. What’s Windows Azure Connect I would like to quote the definition of the Windows Azure Connect in MSDN With Windows Azure Connect, you can use a simple user interface to configure IP-sec protected connections between ...

A big thank you to everyone who attended yesterdays “informal” briefing on the Windows Azure Platform. There were lots of great discussions during the day and I know we al certainly enjoyed it. This post contains (ultimately) the slides and links from yesterday. Slides: Davids on Windows Azure all up Eric on SQL Azure (which fyi is hosted on Windows Azure Blob Storage) Links and Notes Start following the UK ISV technical team (our blog and twitter accounts) http://bit.ly/firststopuk Sign up to Microsoft ...

In this Issue: Rénald Nollet, Benjamin Gavin, Dennis Doomen, Tim Greenfield, Mike Taulty, Jeff Blankenburg, Michael Crump, Laurent Duveau, Dragos Manolescu, KeyboardP, Yochay Kiriaty. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight RIA Services and Basic, Anonymous Authentication" Benjamin Gavin WP7: "lving Circular Navigation in Windows Phone Silverlight Applications" Yochay Kiriaty SQL Azure: "SQL Azure Database Manager – Part 1 : How to connect to your SQL Azure DB" Rénald Nollet Shoutouts: Yochay Kiriaty ...

At the DreamForce 2010 event in San Francisco Force.com unveiled their next big thing in the Fat SaaS portfolio "Database.com". I am still wondering how would they would've shelled out for that domain name. Now why would a already established SaaS player foray into a key building block like Database? Potentially allowing enterprises to build apps that do not utilize the Force.com stack! One key reason is being seen as the Fat SaaS player with evey trick in the SaaS space under his belt. You want ...

In this Issue: Michael Washington, Samuel Jack, Alfred Astort(-2-), Nokola(-2-), Avi Pilosof, Chris Klug, Pete Brown, Laurent Bugnion(-2-), and Jaime Rodriguez(-2-, -3-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Sharing resources and styles between projects in Silverlight" Chris Klug WP7: "Windows Phone Application Performance at Silverlight Firestarter" Jaime Rodriguez Training: "Silverlight View Model (MVVM) - A Play In One Act" Michael Washington Shoutouts: Koen Zwikstra announced the availability of the ...

.NETTER Code Starter Pack contains a gallery of Visual Studio 2010 solutions leveraging latest and new technologies released by Microsoft. Each Visual Studio solution included here is focused to provide a very simple starting point for cutting edge development technologies and framework, using well known Northwind database. The current release of this project includes starter samples for the following technologies: ASP.NET Dynamic Data QuickStart (TBD) Azure Service Platform Windows Azure Hello World ...

Actually, for snacks too, and it is nearly everywhere I turn. If I do Microsoft Exchange work, I know I will run into it. Active Directory, SQL Server, TFS, SharePoint, Azure and most recently Lync. All have provided a way to work with PowerShell and it has taken off (as it should). The question many will have is, How do I get started? A couple of ways are available. There are books, sites and blogs that will help you along the way. This will be the start of a series of posts that, my intention at ...

On Thursday the 8th of December I attended the "Architecture Forum in the North 2010" hosted by Black Marble. The third time this annual event has been held, it was pitched as featuring Black Marble and Microsoft UK architecture experts focusing on “Tools and Methods for Architects.... a unique opportunity to provide IT Managers, IT and software architects from Northern businesses the chance to learn about the latest technologies and best practices from Microsoft in the field of Architecture....insightful ...

Below is the approach that can be implemented whenever there is a requirement of creating an Azure Table having entities with different schema definitions. We can have a Parent Entity defined which will hold the data common in all the entity types and then rest all entities should inherit from this parent class. There will be only on DataServiceContext class which will accept the object of the Parent class and this can be used for CRUD operations of all the entities. Hope this approach helps! Thanks. ...

At PDC 2010 in October Microsoft announced a number of new enhancements/features for Windows Azure. In case you missed it, these new enhancements/features have been released in the new Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio November release (v1.3). The Windows Azure team blog is an excellent resource for information about the new release. Along with the new release the Azure team has also updated the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit. What is the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit you ask? It is ...

Ok it doesn’t really but the Microsoft Partner Network folks have hit gold with this rather addictive chrimbo game. It is great fun to play yet has a little serious side as it “rewards” you with a Windows Azure related link after each level. Try it now! http://bit.ly/festivegame It is a Silverlight app which is: Related In the UK we are helping partners build applications for the Windows Azure Platform (and other technologies such as SQL Server 2008 R2) through Microsoft Platform Ready. Sign up for ...

At the end of November 2010 we released a new version of the Windows Azure SDK which contains many new features driven by the great feedback of early adopters plus a shiny new portal. New Portal implemented in Silverlight: The new portal is implemented using Silverlight and replaces the (IMHO rather clunky) original HTML + JavaScript portal. It is 100% better although does still have a few bugs. Enjoy! P.S. You can if you wish still use the old portal: New runtime functionality: The following functionality ...

Silverlight 5 is coming next year (2011) and this blog post will tell you what you need to know before the beta ships. First, let me address people saying that it is dead after PDC 2010. I believe that it’s best to see what the market is doing, not the vendor. Below is a list of companies that are developing Silverlight 4 applications shown during the Silverlight Firestarter. Some of the companies have shipped and some haven’t. It’s just great to see the actual company names that are working on Silverlight ...

Thanks for all people who attended my session at the TechED 2010 on the 2nd of Dec in Beijing. I had uploaded my presentation (in Chinese) and the demos codes here. As I said in my session please feel free to email me (shaun@ethos.com.cn) if you have any questions about the Windows Azure platform. And please have a look on my company’s website (www.ethos.com.cn) if you are interested. Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. ...

The Windows Azure Team had just published their new development portal this week and the SDK 1.3. Within this new release there are a lot of cool feature available. The one I’m looking forward to is Remote Desktop Access to your running Windows Azure Virtual Machine. Configuration Remote Desktop Access It would be very simple to make the azure service enable the remote desktop access. First of all let’s create a new windows azure project from the Visual Studio. In this example I just created a normal ...

As we have transitioned into a new release of the Azure Platform with added features, like the VM Role among other great things, it is time to get some additional functionality into Visual Studio as well. Below you will find links to the tools refresh and also the new training kit for November. Tools http://www.microsoft.com/do... Training Kit http://www.microsoft.com/do... ...

Please use the links on the following page to find code samples and solution information for developers of Windows Azure applications.

Windows Azure Code Samples Index

Well now I’m busy with preparing my session about the Windows Azure AppFabric on TechED 2010 China, one of my colleagues Chen Pu told me that the new Azure Developer Portal was released last midnight. Then I just closed my session presentation and have a look on this new webiste. I had seen it before in the PDC10 videos and knew that it will be more quickly and user-friendly. Now let’s take a look on what it is. When you log on the development portal of Windows Azure, SQL azure or AppFabric, there ...

Not sure when it changed or how long it has been available. The thing is, tonight I logged on to my Azure account to work on a couple of projects, and there it was, a new way to manage and service my Azure environment. So, here is a quick preview as I plan on diving deeper into the new features and the beta components. Look pretty interesting … ...

MSDN Events Present: Azure 2 Day Bootcamp Event ID: 1032468997 Best Western Dallas Hotel and Conference Center Ballroom A 8051 Lyndon B Johnson Frwy Event Overview This is a 2-day deep dive program to help prepare you to deliver solutions on the Windows Azure Platform. We have worked to bring the region’s best Azure experts together to teach you how to work in the cloud. Each day will be filled with training, discussion, reviewing real scenarios, and hands on labs. Snacks and drinks will be provided, ...

With all the noise (not to mention the funk) around HTML 5 and Silverlight at PDC 2010, we could be forgiven for missing the numerous keynote announcements about Windows Azure and SQL Azure. And with all those announcements, we could be forgiven for missing the ostensibly more arcane stuff in the breakout sessions. But one of those sessions covered material that was very important. That session was Lev Novik’s “Building Scale-out Database Applications with SQL Azure,” and given the generic title, ...