Category Archives: Windows Azure

Windows Azure Platform Training Kit – October Release

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Today we published the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit – October Release. The Windows Azure Platform Training Kit includes hands-on labs, presentations, and samples to help you understand how to build applications that utilize Windows Azure, SQL Azure, and the Windows Azure AppFabric.

  • Download Now: You can download the full training kit including the hands-on labs, demo scripts, and presentations from the Microsoft download center here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=130354.
  • Browse the hands-on labs: Alternatively, you can browse through the individual hands-on labs on the MSDN site here: http://bit.ly/WAPCourse

WAPTK

The October 2011 update of the training kit includes the following updates:

  • [New Hands-On Lab] SQL Azure Data-tier Applications
  • [New Hands-On Lab] SQL Azure Data Sync
  • [New Hands-On Lab] SQL Azure Federations
  • [New Demo] Provisioning Logical Servers using Cmdlets Demo
  • [New Demo] Parallel Computing on Azure – Travelling Salesman Demo
  • [Updated] SQL Azure Labs and Demos with the new portal and tooling experience
  • Applied several minor fixes in content

As with the September release, we have shipped an (updated) preview of our web installer. The training kit web installer is a very small application weighing in at 2MB. The web installer enables you to select and download just the hands-on labs, demos, and presentations that you want instead of downloading the entire training kit. As new or updated hands-on labs, presentations, and demos are available they will automatically show up in the web installer – so you won’t have to download it again.

WebInstallerPreview2

You can now download the training kit web installer preview release from here.

We really try to make these training resources valuable to you, so please be sure to provide feedback if you find a bug, mistake, or feel as if we should including something else in the kit.

Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone v1.3.1

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Yesterday I released an update to the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone. There are a few important updates in this release, so I encourage you to go and download the new tools. We have a number of significant updates:

  • Upgraded Windows Azure projects to Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 1.5 – September 2011
  • Upgraded the tools tools to support the Windows Phone Developer Tools RTW
  • Update SQL Azure only scenarios to use ASP.NET Universal Providers (through the System.Web.Providers v1.0.1 NuGet package)
  • Changed Shared Access Signature service interface to support more operations
  • Refactored Blobs API to have a similar interface and usage to that provided by the Windows Azure SDK StorageClient library
  • Added two new samples: Tweet Your Blobs and CRUD SQL Azure

In addition to the core updates listed above, we’ve also enhanced the setup and dependency checking experience. The experience is more tightly integrated with the Web Platform Installer, making it easier for you to use the toolkit.

image

Of all the updates, I’m most excited about the work we did to bring forward our blobs API to have parity with the primary Windows Azure StorageClient library. Now, regardless of whether you’re using the a web application or phone application, you’ll have a consistent API with which to use Windows Azure storage.

Windows Azure Platform Training Kit, September 2011 Release

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Windows Azure Platform Training Kit - September 2011 ReleaseYesterday we released the Window Azure Platform Training Kit – September 2011 Release. You can get the content here:

The September 2011 release of the training kit includes the following updates:

  • [New Hands-On Lab] Service Bus Messaging
  • [Updated] Labs and Demos to leverage the new Window Azure SDK & Tools 1.5
  • [Updated] Labs and Demos to leverage the new Windows Azure AppFabric SDK 1.5
  • [Updated] Introduction to Windows Azure Marketplace for Data
  • Applied several minor fixes in content

The updates for the Windows Azure SDK & Tools 1.5 and the Windows Azure AppFabric SDK 1.5 are really quite significant – it takes a lot of work to pull this off. To give you an idea, take a look at everything we did:

  • 25 of the 30 hands-on labs were updated to use the Windows Azure SDK 1.5 and/or Windows Azure AppFabric SDK 1.5.
  • 15 of the 25 demos were updated to use the Windows Azure SDK 1.5 and/or Windows Azure AppFabric SDK 1.5.
  • Approximately 145 projects updated.
  • 86 dependency checker files updated for 25 hands-on labs and 18 demos.
  • 22 hands-on labs and 7 demos updated for changes to the Windows Azure Portal experience.

We really try to make these training resources valuable to you, so please be sure to provide feedback if you find a bug, mistake, or feel as if we should including something else in the kit.

Running the Windows Azure Tools & SDK on the Windows Developer Preview

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Now that we can get our hands on the Windows Developer Preview of Windows 8, I’m sure everyone is excited to start building applications! For many of us, this means that we’ll want to install all of the great Windows Azure tools on our Windows Developer Preview machine – especially if we plan to take advantage of the new Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8. However, there are a few things we’ll need to do in order to get things to work.

Quickly let me explain the three challenges you’ll run into:

  1. The current Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio do not yet support Dev11 – you’ll have to install Visual Studio 2010.
  2. There are a few quirks getting dependencies for IIS installed on Windows 8 using the Web Platform Installer.
  3. After Visual Studio 2010 and the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio are installed on a machine with Dev11, the Windows Azure tools will grab an environmental path variable that points to 11.0 instead of 10.0.

Fortunately, these things are pretty easy to resolve and will certainly get addressed in later builds.

Here’s what you’ll have to do to get the tools and SDK working with the Windows Developer Preview:

  1. Install Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.1. Easiest way is to type “Windows Features”, select Settings, and select Turn Windows features on or off. Then simply check the checkbox. Click OK to install.
    Step 1 - .NET 3.5.1
  2. Next we need to correctly configure IIS. Typically we’d do this through the Web Platform Installer, but this doesn’t work correctly on Windows 8. From Turn Windows features on or off you’ll need to do the following, then click OK to install.
    • Check Internet Information Services.
    • Expand Internet Information Services and World Wide Web Services.
    • Expand Application Development Features and check ASP.NET 2.0, ASP.NET 4.5, and CGI.
    • Expand Common HTTP Features and check HTTP Redirection.
    • Expand Health and Diagnostics and check Logging Tools, Request Monitor, and Tracing.
  3. Install the Web Platform Installer (WebPI).
  4. Install Visual Web Developer 2010 Express through WebPI. (You can use a different version of Visual Studio 2010, so long as it’s supported by the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio.)
  5. Install Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 – September 2011 through WebPI.

Okay, now you have everything installed. However, before you trying running Visual Studio, you have to create a script to launch Visual Studio 2010. This is because the Windows Azure tools use an environmental variable that’s incorrectly pointing to version 11.0, and we’ll need to change it right before we launch to version 10.0 (for Visual Studio 2010).

@ECHO OFF

SET VisualStudioVersion=10.0

SET VisualStudioPath="%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE"
IF NOT EXIST %WINDIR%\SysWow64 SET VisualStudioPath="%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE"

CD /D %VisualStudioPath%

VWDExpress.exe

As you can see, the script changes the VisualStudioVersion to 10.0 then launches Visual Web Developer Express (there’s a little extra code to set the path correctly regardless of 32- or 64-bit versions of Windows).

Save the above script as a CMD file (i.e. OpenVisualStudio2010.cmd) and then make sure to right-click and Run as administrator! If you forget to run the script as administrator then Visual Studio won’t have the permissions needed to run the Windows Azure tools correctly.

Running Instance

Look, it’s working!

NOTE: I found myself having to reboot Windows 8 in order to resolve a problem where the debugger wouldn’t attach. Not sure if this occurs every time, but in case you have a similar issue just try rebooting.

I hope this helps!

Metro Style Apps with Windows Azure

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I love building keynote applications! I had the great fortune to work with John Shewchuk – Technical Fellow at Microsoft – as he demonstrated a vision for how identity in Windows Azure can enable great experiences in Windows 8. I wanted to quickly provide some background on the components of the sample application he showed called Margie’s Travel.

Margie’s Travel is a sample travel application that demonstrates how you can track and manage your trips across multiple Windows 8 machines using a combination of technologies in Windows Azure and Windows 8.

The application is a Metro styled app built on HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. Additionally, this application was rapidly built by using the templates and samples found in the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8.

When the application is launched, the user needs to login. Rather than creating yet another identity store, or mapping directly to a specific identity provider, Margie’s Travel uses the Windows Azure Access Control Service.

Margie's Travel

When you click the login button, the application first checks the Windows PasswordVault to see if the credential (which includes the token) exists:

var vault = new Windows.Security.Credentials.PasswordVault();
var cred = vault.retrieve(url, username);

If this exists, the application will login.  If not, the the application calls out to the Access Control Service to get a list of identity providers from which the user can select.

Windows Azure Access Control Service

This code is also very simple to write in JavaScript:

var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
request.open("GET", IPSFeedURL("https://ACSNAMESPACE.accesscontrol.windows.net"), false);
request.send(null);
var jsonString = request.responseText;
var jsonlist = ParseIPList(jsonString);

BindJsonToList(jsonlist);

Once the users makes the selection, the Windows Web Authentication Broker invoked. This allows us to use a consistent and secure method for handling authentication. The login page for the selected identity provider is rendered in the broker.

Windows Web Auth Broker

Once the user logs in, the Access Control Service token is return to the Web Auth Broker. The application is able to take the credential and store it into the Windows Web Vault. This gives us a consistent SSO experience so that upon subsequent launches thee user does not need to log in again.

To store the credential, we simply take the various components, create a new PasswordCredential, and add it to the vault.

var cred = new Windows.Security.Credentials.PasswordCredential(
    url,
    username,
    token);
vault.add(cred);

Furthermore, since the Web Broker can synchronize across trusted devices using Windows Live, the token is automatically synchronized to any trusted device so that you can get SSO across multiple devices.

Rich Data in Margie's Travel

Once logged in, the application will call out to additional Web services in Windows Azure (like the GetTravelerInfo() method) so that we can validate the users credentials before returning the results.

In addition, this token can be used to call out to additional services in Windows Azure, to get rich pictures from Bing, specific data from the Windows Azure DataMarket and Wolfram Alpha, and even weather information.

Data from Windows Azure DataMarket and Bing

All of this is made possible by unique features and capabilities provided by Windows Azure and Windows 8.

If you want to give this a try, and learn more about how all this works, download the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8. Additionally, take a look at posts by Nick Harris and Vittorio Bertocci.

I hope this helps!