Bruno Terkaly - Developer Evangelist - bterkaly@microsoft.com

Essential Windows Azure (Microsoft Cloud) Knowledge : Part 1: Web roles, Worker Roles

BrunoTerkaly — Sun, 13 May 2012 22:24:17 GMT

Globally distributed data centers
The Windows Azure Platform is big, very big. It is comprehensive and perhaps you could argue it is complex, as all large systems invariably become. I want to use a series of posts to remind me what I “must” bring up during my Azure one-day, in person workshops.

In all seriousness, this post is directed to developers, architects and technical decision makers. Maybe in a future post I'll lower the technical barriers and explain things even more simply. I would argue this post covers the spectrum - from basic to fairly sophisticated.

I assume that you understand the Windows Azure Platform is a cloud-based computing technology from Microsoft, built upon a highly evolved programming environment and hosted in mega-data centers throughout the world.

This post is very visual. I want to convey as much as I can with as many diagrams as possible. You obviously can't pull up PowerPoint during Thanksgiving, but if someone asks you for an explanation, having a visual in your head really helps.

I've been doing lectures about cloud computing for a few years now. Along the way I have constructed 100's of slides that explain the Microsoft cloud, the Windows Azure platform. I want to present some of them to you here. It should help you understanding the massive capabilities of the platform as well as explain how some things work.

The basics - hosting web sites and web services

The point of the diagram below is to think about hosting your web-based content and services. It also addresses running background processes.

You can think of Compute as being a container for web roles and worker roles.
Compute enables you to run application code in the cloud and allows you to quickly scale your applications. Each Compute instance is a virtual machine that isolates you from other customers
- Compute runs a Virtual Machine (VM) role
- Compute automatically includes network load balancing and failover to provide continuous availability.
  - Windows Azure provides a 99.95% monthly SLA for Compute services
Web roles are simply front-end web applications and content hosted inside of IIS in a Microsoft data center.
- What is IIS?
  - Internet Information Services (IIS) is a web server application and set of feature extension modules that support HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SMTP and NNTP.
  - IIS can host ASP.NET, PHP, HTML5, and Node.js.
    
    Note that you are not limited to ASP.NET, or MVC. You can also use PHP, Node.js, and HTML5.
- You can quickly and easily deploy web applications to Web Roles and then scale your Compute capabilities up or down to meet demand.
Web roles can host WCF Services.
- The Windows Communication Foundation (or WCF), is an application programming interface (API) in the .NET Framework for building connected, service-oriented applications.
- WCF unifies most distributed systems technologies that developers have successfully used to build distributed applications on the Windows platform over the past decade.
- WCF supports sending messages using not only HTTP, but also TCP and other network protocols.
- WCF has built-in support for the latest Web services standards (SOAP 1.2 and WS-*) and the ability to easily support new ones.
- WCF supports security, transactions and reliability.
- WCF supports sending messages using formats other than SOAP, such as Representational State Transfer (REST).

ASP.NET Web Forms versus MVC

ASP.NET Web Forms has been around for a while and is a mature technology that runs small and large scale websites alike. MVC is the newer technology that promises many advantages.

Web Forms is built around the Windows Form construction model
- Web Forms have a declarative syntax with an event driven model.
- Web Forms allow visual designers can use a drag and drop, WYSIWYG, interface.
- Web Forms make it possible for you drop controls onto the ASP.NET page and then wire up the events
  - Microsoft basically extended the Visual Basic programming model to the Web
Web Form disadvantages include:
- Display logic coupled with code, through code-behind files
- Difficult unit testing because of coupling
- ViewState and PostBack model
- State management of controls leads to very large and often unnecessary page sizes

MVC
The ASP.NET MVC Framework is a web application framework that implements the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern.

At the expense of drag and drop, MVC gives you a very granular control over the output of the HTML that is generated.
MVC supports a ‘closer to the metal’ experience to the developers that program with it, by providing full control and testability over the output that is returned to the browser
Clear separation of concerns
- Results in strong support for unit testing
MVC easily integrates with JavaScript frameworks like jQuery or Yahoo UI frameworks
MVC allows you to map URLs logically and dynamically, depending on your use
MVC provides RESTful interfaces are used by default (this helps out with SEO)

Worker roles are part of compute but are not hosted in IIS.

Applications hosted within Worker roles can run asynchronous, long-running or perpetual tasks independent of user interaction or input.

Worker roles let you host any type of application, including Apache Tomcat and Java Virtual Machines (JVM).
Applications are commonly composed of both Web and Worker roles.
- A common implementation in Windows Azure takes input from a Web role, sends those requests through a Queue to a Worker role, then processes the requests and stores the output.

Sample Implementation
Imagine that you are Microsoft and that you want to offer video encoding services to customers. That means that someone like me can take my home videos, upload them to the Microsoft Cloud, specifically Windows Azure Media Services. Next, I can use a management API that Microsoft provides, and programmatically encode my videos so they can run well on other devices. This simply means I want to take my vacation.mpg video and convert it to a native QuickTime format, like .mov files. Many of you blog readers know that there are many video formats, such as WMV, AVI, MP4, MOV - just to name a few.

The diagram below illustrates how such an offering might exist. Let's walk through it.

A sample scenario

Imagine the user wants to upload their video so they can get it encoded in multiple formats, so the video will look good across a spectrum of devices.

Let's walk through a scenario.

Step 1	The user would visit http://azureinjestmedia.com.
Step 2	The user would upload their videos (vacation1.mov, and vacation2.mov). The user wants to get vacation1.wmv and vacation2.wmv.
Step 3	The user uses the portal to indicate how they wish to process the video. The user indicates they want wmv files. The user kicks the encoding process off and waits a few minutes.
Step 4	The user now wants to get the wmv files. So the user simply downloads them, courtesy of the portal interface.

The portal that user's interact with is a web role

Note that the web role is the portal. It interacts with the user who wants to user Microsoft's video services.
- Microsoft could have built the portal using ASP.NET Web Forms, MVC, PHP, HTML5, Node.js. Microsoft probably would choose MVC because of it's testability, and fine-grained control over the rendered HTML to the user.
The portal runs inside of IIS and inside a VM that is running Windows Server 2008 R2.
- You may have multiple instances running that Azure will automatically load balance requests for.
The web role can interact with the worker role using queues.
The web role takes the user's video and stores inside of Azure Storage, it sends the worker role some instructions about where the .mov files are and what the desired
- It does so using the Windows Azure Queues.

Background Process - Worker Role

Like a Windows Service
- The Worker Role is similar to a windows service.
Long Running
- It starts up and is running all the time.
No timer
- Instead of a timer, it uses a simple while(true) loop and a sleep statement.
Background processing
- This is great for background processing.
Data Required
- Worker roles usually need some data to work with.
The Queue is the data bridge
- You can communicate between a worker and a web role via the use of a queue.
Worker role simple reads from queue
- The worker role doesn’t care how stuff got into the queue
First in First out
- The worker role processes items in the queue using FIFO.
The user interacts with the web role, not the worker role
- Generally speaking it is the web role that is user driven and causes data to go into the queue.
The worker role interacts with storage.
The worker role knows there is two types of storage containers
- There are 3 main categories of storage - 2 Azure Blob Containers and one Azure Table
  - BlobContainer = Movies to Encode
    - Movies that still need to be processed and encoded.
  - BlobContainer = Encoded movies
    - The finished product, multiple movie formats, one for each device type
  - Azure Tables
    - Stores the meta data about the Azure blobs.
    - It records the location of the Azure blobs so the worker role knows where to read and write video content
      - It knows because of the two types of Azure blob containers

Notes for the diagram above

Here is some details about he diagram above.

The web role interacts with the user
The user may download or upload files.
The user may upload a video because they want it encoded
- The web role would be the portal where the user does that
- But the user may also wish to download the finished product (the encoded video performed by the worker role)
  - The portal must allow downloads from BlobContainer = EncodedMovies
The web role could read/write Azure Tables. But we may choose to let the worker role do that.
- The web role writes Azure blob locations as text strings to queues and forgets about them.

Notes for the diagram above.

Notice many worker and web roles in many racks.
There are several instances of Fabric Controller instances running in various racks in data centers.

One is elected to act as the primary controller.
- If it fails, another picks up the slack.
- There fabric controllers are redundant.
- If you start a service on Azure, the FC can fall over entirely and your service is not shut down.
The Fabric Controller uses the Preboot eXecution Environment
- PXE, also known as Pre-Execution Environment; sometimes pronounced "pixie"
  - PXE is an environment to boot computers using a network interface independently of data storage devices (like hard disks) or installed operating systems
  - PXE leverages the Internet Protocol (IP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP), Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) to support boostrapping a computer
The Fabric Controller runs Sysprep, the system is rebooted as a unique machine

Understanding the Fabric Controller

Modified Windows Server 2008	The Fabric Controller is a modified Windows Server 2008 OS, as are the host OS and the standard pre-configured Web and Worker Role instances.
The search for free nodes	The fabric controller looks for available nodes and looks for (in the standard case) two nodes that do not share a Fault Domain. This provides yet another degree of fault-tolerance.
A VM and various Virtual Hard Drives	A virtual machine is created and multiple hard drives are mounted, one for your role type, one for temp files, and others.
Hyper-V in the house	A complex series of steps allow for upgrades, leveraging a differencing VHD and a Microsoft-customized Hyper-V instance, built specifically for the data center hardware.

Networking in the Cloud–Understanding Windows Azure Traffic Manager

BrunoTerkaly — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:24:50 GMT

Exercise 1: Windows Azure Traffic Manager
It manages traffic. What kind of traffic? The Traffic Manager manages incoming traffic to your web roles that are hosted in Windows Azure Data Centers.

Exercise 1: Task 1 - Understanding High Level Concepts

Before diving into any How-to's, lets get discuss the basics.

You may have Azure instances of your application in multiple data centers throughout the world and you want to manage traffic among all your running instances
Traffic Manager works by applying an intelligent policy engine to the Domain Name Service (DNS) queries on your domain name(s).
Traffic Manager relies on the concept of "Policies"
You will typically define multiple policies to manage your incoming traffic to your running instances of your applications
These policies dictate which hosted service receives the request
Traffic Manager provides many capabilities.
- It provides a responsive customer experience
- It ensures higher availability
  - You can define how failover takes place.
  - If traffic is sent to a primary service and, if this service goes offline, traffic is routed to the next available service in a list
Each Policy gets:

A "DNS" name
A list of your Azure hosted instances
A user defined criteria (the criteria determine how incoming traffic is routed and managed)

Exercise 1: Task 2 - How Traffic Manager Works

The following is a quick walkthrough about what happens when an incoming request hits your company URL (company domain w/IP address)

Customers will got to your company domain.
You will use Traffic Manager to capture any traffic to your company domain.
This traffic will be re-directed to Traffic Manager, which is hosted in MS data centers.
- Specifically, the traffic will travel to the Traffic Manager Domain.
The policy engine now takes over to re-route traffic.
You will specify some load balancing rules in your policies that dictate how traffic is routed
The user's DNS resolver will use the IP address provided by Traffic Manager.
The user will now use the returned IP address to access your hosted services
- The user may be re-directed to a running instance in another data center

Exercise 1: Task 3 - How Traffic Manager will route a request

Traffic Manager maintains a network performance table.

You may have a global application that could scale across multiple data centers and traffic manager understands the best performing endpoints in terms of response time.

Traffic Manager monitors your Azure application instances
- It executes periodic HTTP GET requests to the endpoint you include in the policies that you define
  - IT considers the service to be available if its monitoring endpoint responds with an HTTP status code of 200 OK within 5 seconds
Traffic Manager maintains a network performance table that it updates periodically and contains the round trip time between various IP addresses around the world and each Windows Azure data center
- It forwards requests to the closest hosted service in terms of its network latency

Exercise 2: Getting started – How to implement Traffic Manager
Traffic Manager policy that maximizes performance by forwarding traffic to the hosted service that offers the best performance for any given client. But there is more to it. There are issues of failover and of routing with a round-robin approach.

Exercise 2: Task 1 - Lab = Windows Azure Traffic Manager

The best way to learn about Traffic Manager is to work through the lab in the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit. I’m not going to do the lab for you here. I will just point out some key points to prepare you.

The Windows Azure Portal is a great place to start implementing Traffic Manager

You will be allowed to choose a load balancing method. There are 3 options at the portal.

Performance – fastest response time
Failover
- When using a failover policy, if the primary hosted service is offline, traffic is sent to the next one in a sequence defined by the policy.
Round Robin
- The round robin load balancing method distributes load evenly among each of the hosted services assigned to the policy. It keeps track of the last hosted service that received traffic and sends traffic to the next one in the list of hosted services.
- Please note the various parameters specified in a Traffic Manager Policy

At the command line, you can use nslookup [domain name] to lookup the address chosen by Traffic Manager in response to an incoming service request

Conclusion

Windows Azure Traffic Manager is a load balancing solution that enables the distribution of incoming traffic among different hosted services in your Windows Azure subscription, regardless of their physical location. Traffic routing occurs as a the result of policies that you define and that are based on one of the following criteria:

In a nutshell, understanding the way Traffic Manager routes request is the key. We learned about how Traffic Managers addresses, network load balancing in terms of:

Performance
- Traffic is forwarded to the closest hosted service in terms of network latency
Round Robin
- Traffic is distributed equally across all hosted services
Failover
- Traffic is sent to a primary service and, if this service goes offline, to the next available service in a list

MSDN - Windows Azure Traffic Manager	http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/gg197529
Overview of Windows Azure Traffic Manager	http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/hh744833.aspx
Features at the Windows Azure Web Site	http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/features/virtual-network/

Windows Azure Access Control Service-Understanding the Security Buzzwords

BrunoTerkaly — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:44:28 GMT

Exercise 1: Overcoming Acronym Overload

This post is here because I got acronym overload. I am reading about the Windows Azure Access Control Service and there is support for all these industry standards, such as OAuth, ws-trust, ws-federation, and so on.

I’m doing the Windows Azure Cloud camp tomorrow, so this should help supplement my discussion of the ACS and what it means.

If you are in Redmond on 4/27, then come see me. https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032507378&Culture=en-US

What do these fancy terms really mean?

Exercise 1: Task 1 - First, what is the Windows Azure Access Control Service (ACS)?

Here is a quick outline that describes (at a high level) what is the ACS

ACS makes it easy to authenticate and authorize users.
- You don't need to spend much time worrying about the vast landscape of changing security standards.
ACS is a cloud-based service that provides an easy way of authenticating and authorizing users to gain access to your web applications and services while allowing the features of authentication and authorization to be factored out of your code.
- Because it is a service, all that security plumbing code is something you DO NOT NEED to worry about.
ACS supports integrated Single Sign On and centralized authorization into your web applications
- Users hate having to log on mutliple times. If you want to retain your users, you need to allow them to just login once.
ACS provides out-of-the-box support for Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.0
- Great integration story with on-premise corporate users.
ACS relies on Standards-based identity providers
- Web identities include Windows Live ID, Google, Yahoo! and Facebook
Integrates with Windows Identity Foundation and tooling
- The Windows Identity Foundation helps simplify user access for developers by externalizing user access from applications via claims and reducing development effort with pre-built security logic and integrated .NET tools.
- This is a powerful toolkit available from MS
- http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=17331
The modern way to manage security
- Claims-based access control
Support for OAuth WRAP, WS-Trust, and WS-Federation protocols
- Details below. This is the point of this quick post.

Exercise 1: Task 2 - What is OAUTH WRAP?

OAuth is an open standard for authorization.
OAuth provides a method for clients to access server resources on behalf of a resource owner (such as a different client or an end- user).
It allows end-users to authorize third- party access to their server resources without sharing their credentials

Typically accomplished with, a username and password pair, using user- agent redirections.

It started with Twitter during the OpenID implementation.
It allows users to share their private resources (e.g. photos, videos, contact lists) stored on one site with another site without having to hand out their credentials, typically supplying username and password.

Instead, tokens are used.

Each token grants access to a specific site (e.g., a video editing site) for specific resources (e.g., just videos from a specific album) and for a defined duration (e.g., the next 2 hours).
This allows a user to grant a third party site access to their information stored with another service provider, without sharing their access permissions or the full extent of their data.
DeWitt Clinton from Google joined OAuth project, supporting the effort. In July 2007 the team drafted an initial specification.
Facebook's new Graph API only supports OAuth 2.0 and is the largest implementation of the emerging standard

Exercise 1: Task 3 - What is OASIS?

It is more than a small fertile or green area in a desert region, usually having a spring or well. Actually it is a global consortium.

OASIS stands for Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS)
It was started in 1993
OASIS is a global consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business and web service standards.
- Headquarters in the United States
- Members of the consortium decide how and what work is undertaken through an open, democratic process
- Focused on Web Services, e-Commerce, Security, Law & Government, Supply Chain, Computing Management, Application Focus, Document-Centric, XML Processing, Conformance/Interop, and Industry Domains

Exercise 1: Task 4 - What is WS-Trust?

WS-Trust is a WS-* specification and OASIS standard

WS-Trust is a WS-* specification and OASIS standard
It has defined some important industry terms
- WS-Trust spawned concept of a Security Token Service (STS)
  - An STS web service that issues security tokens as defined in the WS-Security specification.
It provides extensions to WS-Security, specifically dealing with the issuing, renewing, and validating of security tokens
- It addresses the formats of the messages used to request security tokens
- It defines the responses from the server to such messages
- It also addresses mechanisms for key exchange
WS-Trust also deals with ways to establish, assess the presence of, and broker trust relationships between participants in a secure message exchange
WS-Trust is supported by Microsoft's Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Identity Foundation (WIF), Sun's WSIT framework, Apache's Rampart (part of axis2), and others.
WS-Trust is a specification developed by nal Corporation, BEA Systems, Inc., Computer Associates International, Inc., International Business Machines Corporation, Layer 7 Technologies, Microsoft Corporation, Oblix Inc., OpenNetwork Technologies Inc., Ping Identity Corporation, Reactivity Inc., RSA Security Inc., and VeriSign Inc.

Exercise 1: Task 5 - What is WS-Federation?

WS-Federation is a WS-* specification and OASIS standard

Tries to tackle the security challenges in web applications and web services in a variety of trust relationships.
WS-Federation supports SOAP clients and web services.
- REST is not supported.
WS-Federation provides a common model for performing Federated Identity operations for both web services and browser-based applications.
WS-Federation builds upon the Security Token Service model
WS-Security, WS-Trust, and WS-SecurityPolicy provide a basic model for federation between Identity Providers and Relying Parties
- WS-Federation are claims-based.
  - Claims are just dictionaries inside of a SAML token where key value pairs represent the attributes of a user
  - Developers can iterate through dictionary to see attributes of a user’s identity to determine what kind of claims we want to authorize
  - These claims are also called assertions.
WS-Federation strives for richer trust relationships
It wants to join together HTTP with STS and WS-Trust to allow resources in one realm get identities (and related attributes) that are managed and maintained in another realm.
You can imagine scenarios where WS-Federation is needed, such as protecting patient records from unauthorized users when these patient records are traveling among multiple health providers. Federation makes sense in a supply chain scenario where a factory needs just-in-time inventory levels from distributors or retailers (and in reverse).
You can read more here
- http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb498017.aspx

Exercise 1: Task 6 - Key Value Proposition for ACS is Single Sign On

The diagram below illustrates how the ACS supports Single Sign On.

Single Sign on is made possible by the STS (Security Token Service) in conjunction with other pieces.
The goal is to create a token, an ACS token, which is a token that conforms to industry standards SAML based tokens.
It starts with the end user starting an application or a browser instance.
The user typically will get redirected to an identity provider, providing their credentials, getting back an identity provider token.
This token, specific to an identity providers, gets forwarded automatically to ACS.
The ACS will transform this token into a standard SAML token.
- It will use rules specified by a developer
- Claims will be embedded into the token
  - These claims will allow client applications to authorize restricted operations
  - Various applications can be forwarded this token, thus supporting the Single Sign On Scenario
There are several challenges associated with the scenario that the ACS solves. This means, you, the developer, do not need to deal with these headaches.

How to redirect unauthenticated requests to the required identity provider?
How to validate the incoming token issued by the identity provider?
How to parse the incoming token?
How to implement authorization checks?
How to transform tokens by adding, removing, or changing the claims types and values?
How to do all of the above using configuration rather than coding?

You can read more here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg185915.aspx

Easiest Way to Get Started in Windows Azure Cloud Development

BrunoTerkaly — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:30:47 GMT

Exercise 1: Easiest Way to Get Started in Windows Azure Cloud Development

I do a lot of cloud boot camps and presentations throughout the US and elsewhere. I want to give you my elevator pitch on the fastest way to get knowledge.

What I show you here is the getting started through code.

You don't need to see PowerPoints first – Let’s learn through code

Code is the best teacher for some. We will focus on code with some graphics interspersed.

But the Guest Book is hard because it uses everything (web roles, queues, blobs, tables, ASP.NET) and then some.

We will build up incrementally. We’ll do Guestbook later.

I want to run through some walkthroughs (pun intended) and get you up and running.

ASP.NET and MVC Developers will be right at home

This demo is the simple scenario - static content to support browsers. You could have chosen an MVC approach.

A hosted service allows you to reserve a VM and host IIS as well as installing and running your web application.
- You are essentially hosting your web site in a Microsoft Data Center.
We are NOT using Azure Table storage in this example. We will in a future exercise.

The hello world is important because it validates everything is working before you to to the more complex labs. It is very important to get things working early on and not stampede directly to the complex labs.

In this section we will:
- Make sure you're tooling and SDKs are installed
- Download the Windows Azure Training Kit
- Understand the Hello World Demo

Exercise 2: Installing Tooling, Downloading the Windows Azure Training Kit
There are 2 goals here: (1) make sure your dev tooling is good to go; (2) download and start using the almighty Windows Azure Platform Training Kit.

Exercise 2: Task 1 - Install Visual Studio 2010 and related tooling

Make sure you have Visual Studio 2010, Azure SDK and related-tooling installed

I've covered this extensively in the past. It is covered here.
- http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brunoterkaly/archive/2012/04/23/developing-windows-azure-cloud-based-applications-with-windows-8-what-you-need-and-how-to-get-there.aspx
My post on getting setup

Exercise 2: Task 2 - Installing Windows Azure Training Kit

Let's get started by downloading the kit. I give very detailed instructions on how to setup your Windows Azure SDK and tooling here.

Downloading the Windows Azure Platform Training Toolkit

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=8396

Important Note
There is no faster way or better way to learn Windows Azure. The Windows Azure Platform Training Kit is comprehensive and up to date.

Download the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit

Exercise 2: Task 3 - Accessing the Demos Page

This is the first part of the tutorial where we can find the Hello World application. This is an excellent first demo. It really is.

Open the folder c:\watk

This is the default installation location

The full path is C:\WATK\Demos.htm

Important Note
The demos section of the kit is a great place to start. From Hello World to blobs, queues, tables, web roles, worker roles - it is a great starting point.

Navigate to the folder
- C:\WATK\Demos\HelloWindowsAzureVS2010
Open the following document
- Document Name = Demo Script - Hello Windows Azure.docx
The purpose of this document
- Setup documentation to run your ASP.NET Application
- Step-by-step instructions
Build, Debug, and Deploy simple Hello World
- This document will highlight the important points

Exercise 2: Task 4 - Getting ready for the main event - the first tutorial

Are you ready? This is where we are finally ready to write some code. The preparation work is now done.

Prepare to do all this:
- Create a new project
- Add a label to it
- Set the label text
- Change the instance count
- Run in emulator
- Set a breakpoint
- Hit breakpoint while running in emulators

Important Note
Instance Count is what let's you scale. You can change the quantity of deployments of your cloud application just by changing this one number.

To programmatically find out number of instances running under a specific Role, you want to use Azure Service Management API, provide your certificate and call this REST API method:
- Windows Azure Service Management REST API Reference
- http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee460799.aspx
You can change your storage accounts and hosted services, your service deployments, and your affinity groups
1. All API operations are performed over SSL and mutually authenticated using X.509 v3 certificates
This is way beyond the scope of this Hello World blog post.

Exercise 3: Running and Explaining Hello World - The best bits
This next section is about understanding the Hello World Step-by-step Walkthrough .

Exercise 3: Task 1 - Creating the Hello Windows Azure Application

Here are the key skills that you will learn.

How to create a new cloud project
What is an ASP.NET Web Role?
- Understanding an ASP.NET Web Role is crucial.
- It provides the Web Service or Web Application hosting.
- Web Roles are hosted inside of Internet Information Server.
One Windows Azure Cloud Solution has two projects

** Important Note **

Configuration is completely separate from your application code
- Configuration Project
- ASP.NET Web Project
How to use the toolbox
- To drag a control
Understanding the Page_Load event
- Writing code behind
Understanding the configuration files
- It represents the location where we can change the instance count
- Changing the Instance Count

Important Note
Configuration is completely separate from your application code

Exercise 3: Task 2 - The debugger and emulators

Being able to use a debugger while developing cloud applications is essential. This section will illustrate some basic debugging techniques, such as setting and hitting breakpoints. You will also learn about the storage and compute emulators.

Knowing the callback address (http://127.0.0.1:81/)
Understanding the Compute and Storage Emulators
How to set a breakpoint
How to hit a breakpoint

Exercise 4: Deploying your application to a MS data center
Now that you’ve created, edited and debugged your application locally, you’re ready to deploy it to the cloud.

Important Note
A hosted service allows you to reserve a VM and host IIS as well as installing and running your web application. All this happens in a Microsoft Data Center.

Exercise 4: Task 1 - Packaging your application - Working with the Windows Azure Portal

The skills in this section are about getting your application up and running in a MS data center.

Creating a package
- Your application assemblies in one file
- The configuration settings in the other file
Remembering the folder (output folder)
- You'll need it later when using the portal
Creating a New Hosted Service
- Name of service
- URL of service
- Region
  - Choose from numerous data centers throughout the world
Viewing your application status at the portal
Understanding the DNS name

You will click on DNS Name when the deployment is complete.

** Important Note **

You can have custom DNS name in your hosted service.

You may not want what Azure provides	When you deploy your application to Windows Azure and move it to the production environment, Windows Azure provides a friendly DNS name so can access your application at a URL like http://aexpense.cloudapp.net.
Your own custom URL	You will probably want to use your own custom URL like https://aexpense.adatumapps.com.
You may need certificates	You'll also notice that if you want to use HTTPS, you must install a certificate that matches the custom DNS name in your hosted service.

Conclusion
Here is what the big picture goals are:

1.	Use the Windows Azure Management Portal to create storage accounts and hosted service components
2.	Deploy service component packages using the Windows Azure Management Portal user interface
3.	Change configuration settings for a deployed application
4.	Test deployments in a separate staging environment before deployment to final production
5.	Secure your Windows Azure application with SSL

Automating Deployment with PowerShell

There may come a time where you want to automate deployment. This section gives a brief overview on doing so.

Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets

http://wappowershell.codeplex.com/
The Windows Azure Service Management PowerShell Cmdlets wrap the Windows Azure Service Management API.
These cmdlets make it simple to automate the deployment, upgrade, and scaling of your Windows Azure application.
By pipelining commands, you compose complex scripts that use the output of one command as the input to another.

You can programmatically perform the deployment and upgrade of Windows Azure applications, change the configuration for a role, and set and manage your diagnostic configuration and diagnostic data

You will need to generate a self-signed certificate
To ensure that access to the Service Management API is secure, you must first associate a certificate with your subscription. The management service uses the certificate to authenticate requests. You can use a self-signed certificate or one signed by a certification authority. Any valid X.509 v3 is suitable as long as its key length is at least 2048 bits.
- Command to make certificate
  - makecert -r -pe -n "CN=AzureMgmt" -a sha1 -len 2048 -ss My "AzureMgmt.cer"
- Deployment with PowerShell
  - New-Deployment -serviceName <YOUR_SERVICE_NAME_LOWER_CASE> -subscriptionId <YOUR_SUBSCRIPTION_ID> -certificate (get-item cert:\CurrentUser\MY\<YOUR_CERTIFICATE_THUMBPRINT>) -slot staging –package <PACKAGE_LOCATION> -configuration <CONFIGURATION_LOCATION> -label "v2.0" –storageServiceName <YOUR_STORAGE_SERVICE_NAME_LOWER_CASE>

Developing Windows Azure, Cloud-Based Applications With Windows 8-What you need and how to get there

BrunoTerkaly — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 04:28:18 GMT

Introduction – Cloud Development on Windows 8
I am now doing most, if not all my development on Windows 8. Don’t get me wrong I am a die-hard fan of Windows 7. I go weeks without rebooting – through airports, the back of a motorcycle. But now that Windows 8 is working so well, I’m just spending all my time there. Windows 8 feels like a brave new, re-imagined world, yet with some familiar, feel-at-home features that make the upgrade feel really smooth. Because I do a lot of presenting, I am hesitant to adopt Consumer Preview software. But I am perfectly at home in Windows 8 – even as I write this post.

The convincing argument was that I could easily run Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 2011 at the same time, on the same machine. I've also got all my familiar databases and tooling as well.
Windows 8 Metro and Windows Azure Developer Tooling on the same machine - delightful

Yes, you heard me right. It works great to run both Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 2011 at the same time. I use Visual Studio 2010 to do the back-end Azure http servers. And I use Visual Studio 2011 to do the Windows 8 Metro client application.

You can go back and forth between both environments, client and server. You can hit breakpoints in the server when a Windows 8 Metro Client makes a service request.

Can you do it? Can Windows 8 be your only machine?

For me it is working out well. I haven't been hit with any obstacles that prevent me not to be a 100% on Windows 8. Some of my friends are running Macs with Windows 8 and simultaneously dual booting into MacOS. I am about to show you a cloud project on Windows Azure that runs on Windows 8. I've even had multiple debugging sessions with both Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 2011 running at the exact same time.

Regarding the needed database support, SQL Server 2008 R2 installed just fine.

My custom, hand-built utilities that I use every day came to the Windows 8 world without a single hitch. I am not going to bore you with the long list of things are that are going well.

Task 1 - Migration Underway

My old projects have all opened, compiled, with little or no hassle. I have some low level API code in C++, even like keyboard hooks that ported right over. I also have some LiveWriter plugins. I've written that work great with LiveWriter on Windows 8. I am delighted at the level of compatibility. I personally see no reason to just be 100% on Windows 8.

I focus on the cloud quite a bit so I obviously want to run my previous cloud projects on Windows 8. It turns out this is working great for me. My samples just work.

Task 2 - Installing Visual Studio 2010/2011 and Windows 8 You can develop Windows Azure applications on Windows 8. But you will need to manually install and configure your development environment. This means you cannot use the Web Platform installer to install all the Azure-related tooling.

First off, you will need to add Visual Studio 2010. This is quite easy. I haven’t tried the Express versions, but my Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate works and I expect most, if not all, versions of Visual Studio should work.

Visual Studio 2011 does not yet support the Azure SDK and tooling. But Visual Studio 2010 works great, luckily. No learning curve there, things work just as you'd expect. Here is how to get things started. First, there is the OS, which is Windows 8 and is the point of this post. Second,

Install Windows 8
- http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/download
Make sure Visual Studio 2011 is downloaded and installed. You won’t use Visual Studio 2011 for cloud development. You will use Visual Studio 2011 for Windows 8 Metro application development.
- http://www.microsoft.com/click/services/Redirect2.ashx?CR_CC=200090703
Press the Windows logo key to show the Start area in the Windows shell.
The Start Menu will appear.
Type in Control Panel
Type in Windows Features
- Follow the directions in Task 4 to install the needed features
Install Visual Studio 2010 ( Express versions available ). This is what you’ll use for cloud development.
Install the Windows Azure SDK and Tooling. It is CRITICAL you install in the order below.
- 32-bit:
  - WindowsAzureEmulator-x86.exe
  - WindowsAzureSDK-x86.exe
  - WindowsAzureLibsForNet-x86.msi
  - WindowsAzureTools.VS100.exe
- 64-bit:
  - WindowsAzureEmulator-x64.exe
  - WindowsAzureSDK-x64.exe
  - WindowsAzureLibsForNet-x64.msi
  - WindowsAzureTools.VS100.exe

Task 3 - Activating the Appropriate IIS Features

The next task is to configure IIS to run cloud applications. These are the settings that are required. Task 4 will give you a visual representation.

.NET Framework 3.5 (includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0)
- Windows Communication Foundation HTTP Activation
.NET Framework 4.5 Advanced Services
- ASP.NET 4.5
- WCF Services ->
  - HTTP Activation
  - TCP Port Sharing
Internet Information Services
- Web Management Tools -> IIS Management Console
- World Wide Web Services ->
  - Application Development Features ->
    - .NET Extensibility 3.5
    - NET Extensibility 4.5
    - ASP.NET 3.5
    - ASP.NET 4.5
    - ISAPI Extensions
    - ISAPT Filters
  - Common HTTP Features ->
    - Default Document
    - Directory Browsing
    - Tracing
  - Security -> Request Filtering

Task 4- Visual Representation of Windows Features

The previous steps in Task 3 can be seen below.

Additional Resources

Window Azure Toolkit for Windows 8

It is focused on leveraging push notifications for Windows 8 Metro applications. This means it doesn’t yet support all the typical features of the Azure SDK and related tooling. As stated previously, you need to use Visual Studio 2010 for the traditional Azure cloud projects.

It can be found here at CodePlex.
- http://watwindows8.codeplex.com/
It is focused on building a cloud service to support rich Windows Metro style apps.
The toolkit includes Visual Studio project templates for a sample Metro style app and a Windows Azure cloud project.
It is designed to accelerate development so that developers can start enabling Windows 8 features, such as push notifications, for their app with minimal time and experience.

The following links should help you find what you need.

Download center page for Windows Azure SDK - November 2011 (follow the exact order as discussed above)	http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=28045#
SQL Server 2008 R2 Express with SP1	http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26729#
Windows Azure online forums	http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/forums/#
Windows 8 download	http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/download
Visual Studio 2011	http://www.microsoft.com/click/services/Redirect2.ashx?CR_CC=200090703
More detailed directions	http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/other-resources/windows-azure-on-windows-8/

Windows 8 Developer Event–April 23rd, Los Angeles

BrunoTerkaly — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 01:26:56 GMT

Windows 8 Developer Event
This is Windows re-imagined. This event is targeted for developers.

It is about Metro	Learn everything you need to start building Metro-style apps for Windows today at our free, full-day Windows Developer Event.
Visual Studio (HTML5, JavaScript XAML, C#, C/C++)	We’ll show you how to use Visual Studio to code fast, fluid, immersive and beautiful Metro-style applications in HTML5/JavaScript, XAML/C# and C/C++. Your investments in these languages carry forward, making Windows a no-compromise platform for developers.
Live tiles, deep links, contract	Whatever language you choose, your app gets deep integration with the Windows shell, including notifications, live tiles, deep links, and contracts with other apps. And now you can build once and support all Windows customers, no matter what type of PC they have—from tablets to laptops to convertibles to desktops.

Registration – 4/23 – Los Angeles

Downtown LA.

Registration Link

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032508898&Culture=en-US

Make the World a Better Place and Help Young Entrepreneurs - Vote in Imagine Cup

BrunoTerkaly — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 21:02:37 GMT

Vote Today, Help a student make a difference
Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems.

We asked students from all over the world to come up with innovative uses of technology that would make the world a better place. They stepped up to the challenge, and the Imagine Cup US 2012 competition was on!

Imagine Cup 2012

Vote Now

A Global Competition that needs your vote

Imagine Cup is a global technology competition, enabling students worldwide to use technology to transform the world we live in.

Every year, Imagine Cup inspires eager students to shine, developing skills that will power their futures, and applying what they have learned to make a positive impact in the world and build a brighter future.

Last year, over 325,000 students participated in Imagine Cup. Today, 22 teams from across the country have made it to the Imagine Cup US finals, developing solutions and providing awareness to issues that address environmental stewardship, the worldwide obesity epidemic, and the plight of children in war-torn Africa.

Now it’s up to you

These teams need your votes to win the Imagine Cup People’s Choice award. The team with the most votes by May 19, 2012 will travel to the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals in Sydney, Australia this July. Vote now!

Your vote is powerful. By helping select the Imagine Cup People’s Choice winner, you’ll not only be raising awareness for critical social issues, you’ll also be supporting the future of technology innovation here in the US.

And of course there’s something in it for you, too. Every time you vote, you qualify to win prizes like a laptop, an Xbox, or a Windows Phone!

Visit the Imagine Cup US Facebook page to check out our US finalists and vote for your favorite—it’s fast and easy. And remember, the more often you vote, the more often you can win, so stop by every day!

Visit on Facebook

How To Build Cloud-Based, Asynchronous, Scalable Web Applications With Near Real-Time Persistent Long-Running Connections With SignalR

BrunoTerkaly — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 19:09:51 GMT

Introducing SignalR
First of all, thank you to David Fowler and Damian Edwards for creating SignalR and providing a demo here: http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Web+Camps+TV/Damian-Edwards-and-David-Fowler-Demonstrate-SignalR. SignalR is a new technology from Microsoft that makes long-running interactions between web client and web server practical and scalable. SignalR is a framework available on GitHub (https://github.com/SignalR/SignalR) that makes it easy to build asynchronous scalable web applications with real-time persistent long-running connections. A number of technical innovations in recent years has paved the way to create SignalR. If you talk to its creators, David Fowler and Damian Edwards, they will tell you that SignalR would have been too challenging a few years ago.

Click on the link twice
- This will open up two instances
- You can even use different browsers
Move the grey rectangle with the mouse
- You should see both rectangles move

Try it out (click twice)

http://signalrincloud.cloudapp.net/Moveshape.htm

Writing multi-threaded programs was just too difficult until the Task Parallel Library in the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 was introduced. Also, the development of jQuery makes it possible to write JavaScript once and deploy it on Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, and Chrome. The convergence of various technologies has opened the door for the technical feasibility of creating and using SignalR.

Building and Deploying to the cloud
Even if SignalR can support 100,000’s of connections on a single server, there may come a time where additional scale is needed. Windows Azure is a cloud offering from Microsoft that makes hosting a SignalR application easy to deploy and scale. I will demonstrate how easy it is to build a SignalR application and deploy it to the cloud. I am assuming you’ve installed all the necessary Azure-related tooling and SDKs. I discuss this here:

Configuring your environment

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brunoterkaly/archive/2012/03/27/microsoft-azure-cloud-devcamps-if-you-can-t-make-it-in-person.aspx.

Let’s discuss how we’d implement the application in Figure 1, which allows one browser to broadcast a drag operation to other browsers. This means that if a user drags a shape in one browser, all other browsers will see the shape move on their own browser. If Browser #1 moves the grey shape, the shape will automatically move in Browser #2.

Exercise 1: The high level steps to create a SignalR application and hosting it in the cloud include:

1.	Use Visual Studio 2010 to create a new Cloud project.
2.	Add an Asp.Net Web Role to the project. This will be the container for our web application.
3.	Use NuGet to add the needed SignalR assemblies and references. You will also add some jQuery JavaScript modules with NuGet.
4.	Create a server-side class the inherits from the SignalR intrinsic Hub. This is the server-side code that listens to Browser #1 and transmits the event to Browser #2.
5.	Create the client-side code, which is effectively some JavaScript and a web page.
6.	Go to the Windows Azure Management Portal and create a hosted service and a storage account.
7.	Package up our project (Steps 1 – 4) and deploy to Windows Azure.
8.	Tell Windows Azure how many running instances you need (this is the elastic scale part). It is also adjustable after deployment.
9.	Done!

Here is what the Visual Studio 2010 solution looks like when it is complete.

I will demonstrate how easy it is to build a SignalR application and deploy it to the cloud. I am assuming you’ve installed all the necessary Azure-related tooling and SDKs. I discuss this here: How to Install the Needed Tooling.

The 3 Key files that you will add to the Visual Studio Solution are:

Module	Description
MoveShape.cs	The server side SignalR file that acts as a hub or central gateway to broadcast jQuery calls. This code is what listens to one browser and forwards user actions to other browsers.
MoveShape.js	The JavaScript in the browser that gets called through the SignalR back-end server
MoveShape.htm	The web page where all the action happens. This is where the user drags a shape and the other users see the shape move on their own browsers.

Exercise 1: Task 1 - Create a new cloud project.

Create a new cloud project.
- Start Visual Studio as administrator and select File, New Project.
- In the left template pane in the New Project dialog, select Cloud, then provide a Name and Location.
Double-click ASP.NET Web Role.
- You can also hit the “>” button between the two panes.
Rename web role to CloudSignalRSample_WebRole.
- This is not required but keeps the code better organized.

Exercise 1: Task 2 - Use NuGet to Install SignalR

NuGet is probably the easiest way to work with SignalR. It allows you to easily download the SignalR assemblies, and add some SignalR sample source code to your project. It also adds the needed references.

If you haven’t done this previously, enabling NuGet is the first step and can be done from the Tools menu.
- Select Extension Manager. NuGet is useful for a variety of technologies, not just SignalR.
Selet NuGetPackage Manager and choose Download.
Once NuGet is installed, we can begin to install SignalR.
Selecting the first of two SignalR packages. Be sure to install these two:
- SignalR.Js
- SignalR.Hosting.AspNet
Install the package SignalR.Hosting.AspNet
Note that various references have been added to reflect the SignalR packages just installed.

Exercise 1: Task 3 – Adding the server and client side code

It is now time to add the 3 files discussed previously: (1) MoveShape.cs; (2) MoveShape.js; (3) MoveShape.htm. The first of these three files is the server side. It will broadcast drag events sent by the client browser and forward to other browser clients.

The last 2 of the 3 files are the client implementations. The JavaScript is written to send drag events to the server. The JavaScript will also move shape objects in the htm page for drag events sent by the server.

Right click on the web role and select Add, New Item.
Select Class and name the file MoveShape.cs.

MoveShape.cs

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;

// Add reference
using SignalR.Hubs;
namespace CloudSignalRSample_WebRole
{
    // Derive from Hub, which is a server-side class
    // and a client side proxy.
    [HubName("moveShape")]  // moveShape is the name used in the Javascript
    public class MoveShapeHub : Hub
    {
        public void MoveShape(int x, int y)
        {

            // Broadcast drag event to other browsers

            Clients.shapeMoved(Context.ConnectionId, x, y);

            // Simple diagnostics for debugging
            System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine("x = " + x + ", y = " + y);
        }
    }
}

Use NuGet to add some jQuery code to the project.
- Right click on References and choose Manage NuGet Packages.
Select the NuGet Package called jQuery UI (Combined Library).

Note that the following scripts that have been added.
Right click on the web role and select Add, New Item.
- We will add MoveShape.js.
- This represents the jQuery written to send drag events to the server.
- MoveShape.js will also move shape objects in the web page for drag events sent by the SignalR server.
Select Web in the Templates pane and the Jscript File for the file type.
- Provide the name MoveShape.js

Paste in the following code into MoveShape.js.

MoveShape.js

/// <reference path="Scripts/jquery-1.6.4.js" />
/// <reference path="Scripts/jquery.signalR.js" />
/// <reference path="Scripts/jquery-ui-1.8.18.js" />

$(function () {
    // Get a refeerence to the server-side moveShape() class.
    var hub = $.connection.moveShape,
    // Get a reference to the shape div in the html
    $shape = $("#shape");
    // Use extend to move the shape object (if we are not the sender)
    $.extend(hub, {

        // Use css to move the shape object

        shapeMoved: function (cid, x, y) {
            if ($.connection.hub.id !== cid) {
                $shape.css({ left: x, top: y });
                $("p:last").text("left: " + x + ", top: " + y);
            }
        }
    });
    // Wire up the draggable behavior (when hub is done starting)
    // "done" is a jquery deferred method
    $.connection.hub.start().done(function () {
        $shape.draggable({
            // Implement draggable effect for jquery
            drag: function () {
                // Tell the server that the shape was just dragged
                hub.moveShape(this.offsetLeft, this.offsetTop);
            }
        });
    })
});

Right click on the web role and select Add, New Item.
- We will add MoveShape.htm.
- This represents the primary web page the user will interact with.
- It contains the shape that the user will drag.
- It leverages MoveShape.js, which we just wrote.
Select Web in the Templates pane and the HTML Page for the file type.
- Provide the name MoveShape.htm

MoveShape.htm

<!DOCTYPE html >
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
    <title></title>
    <style type="text/css">
        #shape
        {   
            width: 200px;
            height: 200px;
            background: #ccc;
            border: 2px solid #333;
            
        }
        p { margin-left:10px; }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <div id="shape"></div>
    <script src="../Scripts/jquery-1.6.4.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script src="../Scripts/jquery-ui-1.8.18.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script src="../Scripts/jquery.signalR.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script src="/signalr/hubs" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script src="MoveShape.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <div>  <p>Hello</p></div><p></p>
</body>
</html>

Exercise 1: Task 4 – Testing the application

This project will run in the Compute emulator (because this is a cloud project). Before we run this project,let’s set the startup page to be MoveShape.htm.

Select the Debug, Start Debugging menu.
- This will start the Compute and Storage Emulators (the come when you install the Azure SDK and related tooling).

Start another browser instance. Start IE (or any browser) and paste in the url: http://127.0.0.1:81/MoveShape.htm.
- Move the shape in either of the two browsers.
- Note the two instances communicating.
We are done. Prepare for the next step.
- At a high level we will go to the Windows Azure Management Portal and provision a hosted service and a storage account.
- The hosted service will act as our container for our server and client code code.
- Although we are not using storage, we will need a storage account for diagnostics.

Exercise 2: Provisioning an Windows Azure Account and Deploying to the Cloud
The next step will involve taking our project and deploying it to the cloud. There will be a few things we need to get done before we can actually move the bits of our SignalR application to a MS data center.

There is an assumption that you are already have an account. More information is available here:

Exercise 2: Task 1 - Configuring a hosted service and storage account

After you’ve signed up for a Windows Azure account, you are ready to start setting up your hosted service and storage account. This is the preliminary step to deploying your application to the cloud.

Sign in to the Windows Azure Portal.
- Click in the left pane on Hosted Services.
- Go to the middle pane to the relevant account, right-mouse click and select New Hosted Service.
Specify the details of your Hosted Service.
- Enter a name for your service.
- Enter a URL (this has to be globally unique)
- Choose a region (this is the location of the data center)
- Select Do Not Deploy (we will deploy later)
Notice that the portal indicates the hosted service is being provisioned.
- It takes about 10 minutes for this process to complete.
Provision a storage account.
- A storage account is needed for the built-in diagnostics.
Provide a Name for your Storage Account.
- Provide a URL that is globally unique.
- Specify a Region or Data Center (should be in the same data center as your hosted service for performance reasons).
Wait for the storage account to complete.
Once your storage account is complete, you will need the Access Keys.
- The Access Key is needed for diagnostics.
- You will enter the Access Key into your Visual Studio Project.
- Click on the View Access Key toolbar button
Copy the Primary Access Key to the clipboard.
- Click on the icon to the right as seen below.
You will now enter your Access Key into Visual Studio.
- Right mouse click and choose Properties.
In the left pane click on Settings.
- The Storage Account Connection String Dialog box will appear.
Click on Enter storage account credentials.
- Enter the Account name that you specified at the portal.
- Paste in the Account Key that you copied from the portal.
Click on Configuration.
- Note that the Instance count is 1 (this means there is one running instance of your SignalR server application)
- You can increase the instance count number to increase scale.
We are now ready to package up our SignalR Cloud Application.
- Right mouse click on CloudSignalRSample.
Click the Package Button.
- We will leave everything else to the default values.
When the packaging process is complete, Visual Studio will launch an explorer window so you can see your two package files.
- The first file is the web application itself, complete with all the needed assemblies (Including SignalR).
- The second file is the configuration file (stores the instance count, the access keys,etc).
Return back to the Windows Azure Portal.
- Click on Hosted Services.
- Right mouse click on your previously created Hosted Service.
- Select New Production Deployment.
You will now upload your packaged files from the previous step.
- The path used by Visual Studio is C:\temp\signalr\CloudSignalRSample\CloudSignalRSample\bin\Release\app.publish.
- You will upload both the cspkg file as well as the cscfg file.
You are getting this warning because your instance count was only 1.
- If you want to utilize the SLA of Windows Azure, you need an instance count of at least 2.
- You can ignore and click Yes.
10 minutes later, the web application is ready to use.
- Note the DNS Name (http://signalrInCloud.cloudapp.net).
10 minutes later, the web application is ready to use.
- Note the DNS Name (http://signalrInCloud.cloudapp.net).
- You will have your own DNS name based on the URL you provided in an earlier step.
- In my case, I am navigating to http://signalrincloud.cloudapp.net/Moveshape.htm

Try it out (click twice)

http://signalrincloud.cloudapp.net/Moveshape.htm

Navigate to http://signalrincloud.cloudapp.net/Moveshape.htm
- Start another browser instance. Start IE and paste in the url: http://signalrincloud.cloudapp.net/Moveshape.htm
- Move the shape in either of the two browsers.
- Note the two instances communicating.

Download Project

https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=98b7747cd2e738fb&resid=98B7747CD2E738FB!2291&parid=98B7747CD2E738FB!172

Conclusion
SignalR is a major leap forward in lowering the technical barriers to creating asynchronous and scalable web applications across all of today’s popular browsers. Combined with Windows Azure, SignalR opens the door to many more types of applications. Let me also mention that SignalR works with non-browser clients, such as traditional desktop applications. Finally, SignalR is designed to leverage other high-level transports that are not based on long-polling, such as Web Sockets, Server Sent Events, and the Forever Frame on Internet Explorer. You can expect its creators, Damian Edwards and David Fowler, to continue to develop and improve SignalR with the help of the community on CodePlex and Github.

Simplifying Synchronization-Challenges of a multi-device, highly-connected world

BrunoTerkaly — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 22:05:52 GMT

Simplifying Synchronization Complexities

Synchronizing data is more important than ever. Never has there been more device types and never has the world of distributed systems been more common. I’m getting a lot of questions about keeping phones, browsers, and databases synchronized.

Things get difficult right away.

Mobile Applications	How do you send data to a mobile application if that mobile application isn't running the application that needs the data?
Web Browsers	What about a web browser that needs to get realtime updates? How do you avoid really chatty Javascript that constantly makes asynchronous calls the the server? After all, http is stateless.
Relational data in the cloud	What about your relational data? What if you have SQL Azure hosted in a Microsoft data center and what if you want to keep that data synchronized with some SQL Server data that is hosted on-premise?

There a many scenarios the modern developer faces. Moving forward, as the lines separating between desktop, tablet, and mobile become increasingly blurred, the synchronizing challenge will increase. Consumers will switch between devices and expect to be able to continue where they left off. They also expect to get the latest information from applications.

Developers must support cloud, on-premise and mobile. I present you three challenges and three solutions.

How do you send data from a web server to a mobile device?

How do you send near real-time updates to browsers from web servers?

How do you synchronize events between cloud-hosted sites and on-premise sites?

The Big Picture

Figure 1: A Visual Picture of Synchronization Challenges The various players in the world of synch.

How do you keep this stuff synchronized?

The 3 challenges I will address here are:
(1)Synchronizing Mobile and Web
(2)Relational data base in the cloud and hosted on-premise
(3)Browser and Web

Challenge #1: Web user needing latest information from an on-premise web site

This situation is very common. The goal is to have real-time persistent long-running connections between the on-premise web site and the remotely connected web user.

Imagine the web user wants real time stock price information.

There are many situations where you want as near real time as possible to synchronize the web server and the browser.

Figure 2: A user of a web browser needs the latest from the ASP.NET Web Site (doesn’t have to be a browser, could be a .NET Client as well)
Keeping the web user synchronized with up to the second weather, travel or financial information. Note that the web site/service could be hosted on-premise or in the cloud.

Solution to Challenge #1 - SignalR

Scott Hanselman describes SignalR succinctly as "Asynchronous scalable web applications with real-time persistent long-running connections."

There are two pieces to SignalR, a client piece and a server piece. The client piece comes in two forms: (1) Javascript for browsers; (2) .NET for web apps or for thick client (WPF, WinForms, etc).

1 Server and 2 clients	Library Name	Description
Server	SignalR.Server	Server side components needed to build SignalR endpoints
Client #1	SignalR.Js	Javascript client for SignalR
Client #2	SignalR.Client	.NET client for SignalR

Where to get SignalR

https://github.com/SignalR/SignalR

Challenge #2: Synchronizing databases (SQL Azure and On-Premise SQL Server)

The challenge is having multiple copies of databases in different locations. There is a need to synchronize multiple copies of a database globally dispersed. You can even think of the scenario as needing to sync two different web sites. Often times and efficient way to pass messages from the cloud to an on-premise web site/service is to have some type of an Messages table that is kept in synch between op-premise and cloud-hosted databases.

Figure 3: Synchronizing geographically dispersed databases.
Using SQL Azure Data Sync to keep databases properly synchronized
Image here

Solution to Challenge #2: Microsoft SQL Azure Data Sync

Microsoft SQL Azure Data Sync is a cloud-hosted data synchronization service which provides uni-directional and bi-directional data sync. Data Sync allows data to be easily shared between SQL Azure and on-premises SQL Server databases, as well as between multiple SQL Azure databases.

Benefits of Microsoft SQL Azure Data Sync

No holes in corp firewall

No web services

SQL Data Sync Service Agent Process & WCF

Where to get Microsoft SQL Azure Data Sync

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh667316.aspx

Challenge #3: Sending data to mobile devices from the cloud for from on-premise web sites

The challenge is not having mobile devices “poll” for new data. This is also known as the “pull” model, where by the mobile application needs to constantly ask the web server if there is newer data. This is considered too chatty, meaning that it wastes bandwidth, doesn’t scale well, and drains battery life.

In a practical sense, it doesn’t work well, since most mobile frameworks don’t allow applications to constantly poll web services, because of the limited power of batteries.

Figure 4: Sending data to mobile devices

From on-premise or cloud-hosted web sites

Solution to Challenge #3: Push Notifications services

The solution is to leverage the native notification frameworks available in today’s modern devices. There are third party vendors, such as Urban Airship, as well as implementations by Apple and Microsoft.

Microsoft offers a powerful service hosted in Windows Azure. The diagram illustrates the major pieces. As you can see, the Microsoft Push Notification Service brokers or proxies the messaging interactions. Notice that there is a push client service built into the Windows Phone 7 frameworks and operating systems.

Figure 5: Windows Push Notification Services Diagram

How the pieces fit together

Two Types of Notification

(1)	Toast
(2)	Tile

Here is an example relevant for Windows Phone 7 developers.

Figure 6: A Cloud Hosted Notification Server sending messages to a Windows Phone 7 Device
Developers can easily create scalable, cloud-hosted push notifications services with the Windows Azure SDK and Visual Studio web sites

Benefits to Solution #3

The definitive way to send data from a web server/service to a mobile device. The primary driver is enabling updates to the mobile device but not requiring the an application to always be running. This approach saves on battery life.

Where to get more information on Push Notification Services

How it works can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff402558%28v=VS.92%29.aspx

There is also an extensive lab in the Windows Phone Training Kit

Conclusion

I presented 3 technologies that will help you stay synchronized. There is more to discuss in a future post. Here are some additional synchronization technologies that offer additional capabilities.

Technology	Features
Windows Azure Service Bus	Integrate on-premise and the cloud Event notifications to occasionally connected clients Store messages with connectivity failure Integrate across NATs, firewalls Multiple web service standards - REST, WS-*, SOAP More secure than a VPN Asynchronous Cloud Event Support
Azure Traffic Manager	Geo-load balancing. Manage and distribute incoming traffic to your Windows Azure hosted services whether they are deployed in the same data center or in different centers across the world

Technology

Features

Windows Azure Service Bus

Integrate on-premise and the cloud

Event notifications to occasionally connected clients

Store messages with connectivity failure

Integrate across NATs, firewalls

Multiple web service standards - REST, WS-*, SOAP

More secure than a VPN

Asynchronous Cloud Event Support

Azure Traffic Manager

Geo-load balancing.

Manage and distribute incoming traffic to your Windows Azure hosted services whether they are deployed in the same data center or in different centers across the world

Microsoft Azure (Cloud) DevCamps–If you can’t make it in person..

BrunoTerkaly — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:16:04 GMT

Introduction

The purpose of this post is to bring you up to speed writing Windows Azure cloud-based applications from scratch. I assume you just have the hardware and the willingness to get started by installing the software.

Not everybody can afford the time to attend a DevCamp.

So what this post is about is getting you installed and executing even though you were not able to make it in person.

This first section is about getting setup and configured. You will need to download a number of things and you will create a test project to validate the setup.

Exercise 1: Getting the correct hardware and software

What you will need.
Task 1 – Validating your current hardware
Task 2 – Installing your software
Task 3 – Download the lab exercises

Exercise 2: Validating that your cloud project will run

Creating your first test project with Windows Azure and making sure it runs.
Task 1 – File / New Project
Task 2 – Adding basic code
Task 3 – Starting the emulator

Summary

The core lessons in this post are:
1.   Understanding the hardware needed to write cloud applications.
2.   Where to download needed software.
3. Working with Visual Studio to create and run your first cloud project.
4.   Understanding the emulation environment.
5.   Next steps.

Exercise 1: Getting the correct hardware and software
This exercise is about figuring out what you have and where you need to be. Currently, from a hardware point of view, I'm using VS 2010. So please try to get to Visual Studio version 2010. Shouldn't be a problem because you can use the Express version of VS for free. Does your hardware measure up to at least these standards?

Exercise 1: Task 1 - Validating your current hardware

This task is about figuring your current available hardware that will be your developer machine. I recommend a little more than what you see here. The best environment I've ever had is a Lenovo w520, 16GB RAM, solid state drive. Everything loads in seconds. If you can afford solid state, I highly recommend it if you are an impatient developer type.

Click on the Start Menu and get the properties for your computer
- Right mouse click on the Computer Icon
- Select "Properties"
Figure 1
Computer Properties
Check on the amount of available RAM, CPU type
- Is your hardware ready?
- Can you continue with the installation process?

Exercise 1: Task 2 – Installing the software

You will need a combination of Visual Studio, SQL Server 2008 R2 Management Studio Express with SP1, SDKs, and operating system settings.

Download and install Visual Studio 2010 Express (or higher)
- Web Site = http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/visual-csharp-express
Download and install Windows Azure SDK for .NET – November 2011 (or higher)
- Web Site = http://www.microsoft.com/click/services/Redirect2.ashx?CR_CC=200060656
Configure IIS: Tracing
- Choose Turn Windows Features On or Off. Type in “turn features” into the search box.
Figure 2
Turn features on/off
- Under Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, select Windows Communication Foundation HTTP Activation.
Figure 3
Changing Windows Features
- Under Internet Information Services, expand World Wide Web Services, then Application Development Features, then select .NET Extensibility, ASP.NET, ISAPI Extensions and ISAPI Filters.
- Under Internet Information Services, expand World Wide Web Services, then Common HTTP Features, then select Directory Browsing, HTTP Errors, HTTP Redirection, Static Content.
- Under Internet Information Services, expand World Wide Web Services, then Health and Diagnostics, then select Logging Tools, Request Monitor and Tracing.
- Under Internet Information Services, expand World Wide Web Services, then Security, then select Request Filtering.
- Under Internet Information Services, expand Web Management Tools, then select IIS Management Console.
- Install the selected features.
Download and install SQL Server 2008 R2 Management Studio Express with SP1
- Web Site = http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=22985

Exercise 1: Task 3 - Exploring the labs

A subset of labs are provided. The next section will guide you through the process of installing the content and testing the labs to make sure they can run.

Note

The Windows Azure Camps Training Kit uses the new Content Installer to install all prerequisites, hands-on labs and presentations that are used for the Windows Azure Camp events.

Navigate to http://www.contentinstaller.net/Install/ContentGroup/WAPCamps and allow the content installer to work.
During installation you will specify a download folder for the content.
- Labs and Presentations will be 2 folders you can work with.
You should also download the Windows Azure Training Kit at http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=8396

It will install into c:\watk

Note – The two kits to install

Windows Azure Devcamps
http://www.contentinstaller.net/Install/ContentGroup/WAPCamps

Figure Content Installer
For the Windows Azure Devcamp

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=8396

Figure Windows Azure Platform Training Kit
This is an additional download

Exercise 2: Validating that your cloud project will run
The purpose of this section is to validate that we can create and run a Windows Azure project.
We will create a new project and run it in the local emulators. We will then start opening the projects from: (1) Azure Dev Camp Kit; (2) Windows Azure Platform Kit.

Exercise 2: Task 1 - File / New Project

We will create a new project from scratch to build a "hello world" application.

Start Visual Studio 2010 as administrator. You need those administrator privileges.
- You will add an ASP.NET Web role

Figure Starting Visual Studio as administrator
How to start Visual Studio as administrator

Select File/New Project from the Visual Studio menu.
- Provide a name of Hello World
Figure Creating a new project
How to create a cloud project
Select ASP.NET Web Role and click the right arrow.
- Click OK
Figure Adding an ASP.NET Web Role
How to add a web role
Your solution has now been created.

Figure Validating our project

How to create a cloud based solution

Exercise 2: Task 2 - Adding basic code

We will add some very basic code to validate our project. We will not be using storage for the demo.

Navigate to default.aspx. Add your name to the h2 section as follows.

<%@ Page Title="Home Page" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Site.master" AutoEventWireup="true"
    CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebRole1._Default" %>

<asp:Content ID="HeaderContent" runat="server" ContentPlaceHolderID="HeadContent">
</asp:Content>
<asp:Content ID="BodyContent" runat="server" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent">
    <h2>
        Welcome to ASP.NET! to you, Bruno Terkaly
    </h2>
    <p>
        To learn more about ASP.NET visit <a href="http://www.asp.net" title="ASP.NET Website">www.asp.net</a>.
    </p>
    <p>
        You can also find <a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=152368&amp;clcid=0x409"
            title="MSDN ASP.NET Docs">documentation on ASP.NET at MSDN</a>.
    </p>
</asp:Content>

Exercise 2: Task 3 - Running your project

This next section will test if your Compute Emulator works.

It will not test the storage emulator. We will cover that in another post.

Navigate to the Debug menu. Choose Start debugging.
- Validate you see the following window.

Figure Verifying your cloud project runs.
How to verify your cloud project can run in the compute emulator.

Silicon Valley Event - Reimagining App Development: Introducing Windows 8

BrunoTerkaly — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 04:23:18 GMT

The LAUNCH you’ve been waiting for!

Are you interested in learning more about Windows 8? Do you want to see some awesome demos of the tech industry’s newest and most exciting platform? Clearly, this release of Windows is destined to change the way consumers view portable devices. Despite their incredibly small size, these devices will have the full ability to run today’s most powerful software applications with long-lasting battery life.

Now is the time to jump in – early

You are invited to a full-day, knockout, blow-your-socks off event taking place on Microsoft’s Silicon Valley Campus. Design experts will take the stage to discuss the overwhelming aesthetics and breathtaking Windows 8 UI.

Well-known and respected startups will demo their brand new apps, while the Microsoft team provides you with the tools you need to get started in building your own app.

Microsoft executives will be on hand to discuss the marketplace opportunity for developers.

Robert Youngjohns	Microsoft’s President of North America
Dan'l Lewin	Corporate Vice President - Strategic and Emerging Business Development

Join us and make sure to register here: http://introducingwindows8.eventbrite.com/

Time	Wednesday, April 4, 2012 from 12:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Place	Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus 1065 La Avenida, Building 1 Mountain View, CA, 94043
Registration Link	http://introducingwindows8.eventbrite.com/

Tickets for this will go quickly, make sure to get your free ticket soon!

Node.js–How to use Node Package Manager (npm) and Underscore

BrunoTerkaly — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 16:38:48 GMT

Starting with the Node Package Manager

I start this post by installing Node Package Manager. This is your gateway to Node nirvana. NPM will allow you to leverage 1000’s of lines of others code to make your node development efficient.

After installing NPM, we will download the library called underscore. This library has dozens of utility functions. I will walk you through about 12 of them. It will provide a quick background and allow you to start using underscore almost immediately in your code.

In a nutshell, you will learn:

How to install NPM	This is the first, mandatory step to Node Nirvana
How to install underscore	underscore is the hugely popular library for node to provide functional programming capabilities to your code
How to use underscore	I provide 12 detailed examples with copy and pastable code to show how they work.

Helps you install all modules from GitHub.

Windows or Mac – It is easy to install npm.exe (Node Package Manager)

Step 1	Navigate to http://npmjs.org/dist/
Step 2	Download npm-1.1.9.zip to a folder that has access to node.exe
Step 3	Unzip npm-1.1.9.zip files to download folder

Easy Install for the Node Package Manager

http://npmjs.org/dist/

Let’s run through the most popular packages

Here are the “most used” packages in Node

underscore

The command to install using the node package manager is:

npm install underscore

Purpose of underscore

To bring functional language capabilities to Node.js. There is tons of wrapper code to help you.

What is a functional language anyway?

Functional languages treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions

Avoids state and mutable data

Emphasizes the application of functions, in contrast to the imperative programming style, which emphasizes changes in state

underscore01.js

Note the code below loops through the array of numbers (1, 2, 3), calculating an average

It then increments the module level variable tot. Finally, it prints the result.

// Include underscore library
var _ = require('underscore')._;

// Needs module scope to work
var tot = 0;
var count = 0;
_.each([1, 2, 3], function (num) {
    // increment tot
    tot += num;
    count++;
});
console.log('The average is ' + tot / count);

underscore02.js

Uses map functions to build associative arrays. Notice the callback parameters:

val	either 1 or 2
key	either 0 or 1. Just starts with 0 and auto-increments
list	The associative array itself

Note you can look values in the map using syntax like this:

list[key]

// Include underscore library
var _ = require('underscore')._;

_.map([1, 2], function (val, key, list) {
    console.log('key is ' + key + ', ' + 'value is ' + val);
    console.log('list[' + key + '] =  ' + list[key]);
});

underscore03.js

Notice we provide the keys in this example. So if we say something like list[one] we get the value of 1.

// Include underscore library
var _ = require('underscore')._;

// Using a map with keys declared. Notice the {} instead
// of []
_.map({ one: 1, two: 2 }, function (val, key, list) {
    console.log('key is ' + key + ', ' + 'value is ' + val);
    console.log('list[' + key + '] =  ' + list[key]);

});

underscore04.js – recursive techniques

I show two versions here. The first version uses the underscore library. The second version is hand written.

// Include underscore library
var _ = require('underscore')._;

var sum = _.reduce([1, 2, 3, 4], function (memo, num) {
    console.log('memo is ' + memo + ' and num is ' +
                 num + ' and total is ' + (memo + num));

    // Simple compounding function
    return memo + num;

}, 0);
console.log('sum is ' + sum);

// You could build it by hand also
var result = compound(4);

console.log('hand written result is ' + result);

// My handwritten version that is recursive
function compound(aNumber) {
    if (aNumber < 0) {
        return 0;
    }
    else if (aNumber == 0) {
        return 0;
    }
    else {
        return (aNumber + compound(aNumber - 1));
    }
}

underscore05.js – using reject

Have you ever been rejected? Well this code shows you how to reject a genre of music

// Include underscore library
var _ = require('underscore')._;

var odds = _.reject(['80s music', '50s music', '90s music'], function (list, iterator) {
    console.log('list is ' + list + ', iterator is ' + iterator);
    return list == '80s music';
});

for (var i = 0; i < odds.length; i++) {
    console.log('odds[' + i + ']=' + odds[i]);
}

underscore06.js

The function determines where in the list 35 fits in. It is the

// Include underscore library
var _ = require('underscore')._;

var lookupnumber = 35;
var listOfNumbers = [10, 20, 30, 40, 50];

var answer = _.sortedIndex(listOfNumbers, lookupnumber);

for (var i = 0; i < listOfNumbers.length; i++) {
    console.log('listOfNumbers    [' + i + ']=' + listOfNumbers[i]);
}
console.log('lookupnumber is ' + lookupnumber + ', answer is ' + answer);

Javascript itself has a lot of built in power, but not as much

From ScriptPlanet.com you see some examples of Javascript primitives. These are awesome but there’s just a few.

Array Functions

Underscore07.js – lets you blend arrays together

Let’s you grab the first column out of 3 arrays and glue together.

// Include underscore library
var _ = require('underscore')._;

var stooges = ['moe', 'larry', 'curly'];
var verb = ['has a violence level of ', 'is not violent', 'can be violent'];
var violencelevel = ['very', 'not really', 'kind of'];

var result = _.zip(stooges, verb, violencelevel);

showArray(result);

function showArray(myarray) {
    for (var i = 0; i < myarray.length; i++) {
        console.log('result    [' + i + ']=' + myarray[i]);
    }
}

Function Functions

These are helper functions. They can enhance ‘this’ pointers or can help with timeouts when call functions.

Underscore07.js – lets you blend arrays together

_bind()

// Include underscore library
var _ = require('underscore')._;

var stooges = ['moe', 'larry', 'curly'];
var verb = ['has a violence level of ', 'is not violent', 'can be violent'];
var violencelevel = ['very', 'not really', 'kind of'];

var result = _.zip(stooges, verb, violencelevel);

var func = function showArray(myarray) {
    for (var i = 0; i < myarray.length; i++) {
        console.log(this.name + '[' + i + ']=' + myarray[i]);
    }
}

// This means that there will be a this.name property in the function
// with the value of 'result'
func = _.bind(func, { name: 'result' }, result);

// Now call showArray()
func();

underscore09.js

Let’s you run a function after the call stack is free. Noice that ‘calling bigJob’ shows up immediately.That is because we differed callking ‘bigJob.’

// Include underscore library
var _ = require('underscore')._;

_.defer(function () { bigJob(); });
console.log('calling bigJob');


function bigJob() {
    for (i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) {
        for (j = 0; j < 1000; j++) {
        }
    }
    console.log('bigJob has ended');
}

underscore10.js – using the throttle function

Can’t get it to run less than twice.

// Include underscore library
var _ = require('underscore')._;

var throttled = _.throttle(bigJob, 1000);

// Will execute only twice
// Can't get it to run once only.
throttled();
throttled();
throttled();
throttled();
throttled();

function bigJob() {
    for (i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) {
        for (j = 0; j < 1000; j++) {
        }
    }
    console.log('bigJob has ended');
}

underscore11.js

Will execute only once.

// Include underscore library
var _ = require('underscore')._;

var justonce = _.once(bigJob);

// Will execute only once
justonce();
justonce();
justonce();
justonce();
justonce();

function bigJob() {
    for (i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) {
        for (j = 0; j < 10; j++) {
        }
    }
    console.log('bigJob has ended');
}

underscore12.js

Enumerating properties and values.

// Include underscore library
var _ = require('underscore')._;

var customobject = { hottest_pepper: 'habanero', best_sauce: 'putanesca',
    least_healthy: 'alfredo'
}

var properties = _.keys(customobject);
var values = _.values(customobject);

console.log('');
console.log('Displaying properties');
showArray(properties);
console.log('Displaying values');
showArray(values);


function showArray(myarray) {
    for (var i = 0; i < myarray.length; i++) {
        console.log(myarray[i]);
    }
    console.log('');
}

Wrap up for now

The next post will continue with some new modules. I recommend doing what I did. I tweaked and combined different examples to learn better how they work together. I plan to post a few more samples on the other modules soon. As always, life is busy. Hope this gets you one step closer to using Node effectively.

Occasionally Connected Scenarios-How much power is too much power for the client?

BrunoTerkaly — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 18:43:17 GMT

Introduction

I am on a Microsoft Patterns and Practices advisory board to explore and provide guidance on the well-known and popular CQRS Design Pattern. We are exploring occasionally disconnected scenarios as part of the project.

As new versions of Windows role out and more mobile platforms are practical, managing disconnected scenarios will increase in importance.

Team Lead - Grigori
Melnik

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/agile/archive/2012/02/24/microsoft-s-cqrs-journey-project-to-take-community-contributions.aspx

CQRS Journey

http://cqrsjourney.github.com/

Advisory board	http://cqrsjourney.github.com/advisors/members/#
Apache 2.0	http://opensource.org/licenses/Apache-2.0#

The Biggest Challenge for the client – Defining the decision-making power available to the client if disconnected

The biggest challenge in occasionally connected scenarios is empowering the client when they are not connected. Just because the network is down, doesn’t mean the client still has to do serious work.

This means the client application will occasionally make mistakes because it doesn’t have the most up to date information. Let’s face it – that is just a fact of life – sometimes you make decisions with limited information. The question ultimately becomes, how bold are your decisions and how long has it been since you get the latest information.

Concrete Example-Conference Software

Imagine that you create software run conferences. This software handles all aspects of running a variety of conference types, handling such things as registration, badge printing, scheduling, calendars, and so on.

For example, how would you handle the situation where the network is down an conference registrant wants to upgrade their registration and attend the panel discussion?

The client software will need to update the badge to allow entry into the event.

But because the network is down you inadvertently sell an extra ticket when the event was already sold out.

You can also call it occasionally connected scenarios

Questions that you’ll have to answer along the way of developing a solution.

Question 1	What are issues when the client is disconnected?
Question 2	How does the client manage events that are pending?
Question 3	When the client reconnects, what is important to do?

Power to the client !

Assuming the client is disconnected, are you going to allow seat purchases? Isn’t that risky since the event may have sold out? Maybe you decide that if the client connected within the last hour and there was 10% seats left at that time, then it would be ok to sell additional seats when disconnected from the registration databases.

The client will need to queue outgoing events when disconnected

The client will need to update the server after re-connecting. Changes to local data will need to be persisted up to the cloud.

Interestingly, there are some challenging decisions here. There are at least 2 choices like this:

Choice 1 [preferred by me]	The client makes all changes to the local database. It also records changes as events. Those events get queued. Once the client re-connects, all the queued events get sent to the server.
Choice 2	The client does not change the local data. The client records everything as an event. Events get propagated up to the server once re-connection happens. Once the server receives the events from the clients, it re-sends these events to all other clients. But this approach suffers from local data staleness.

The client may not be able to send outgoing events

A local, persistent database is clearly needed to store event-related .

What the client needs	Why it needs it
Client Needs a local store	Needs local access to registrants, schedules, room locations, etc
When connected the client receives seat availability events	These events either increase or decrease available seats at events. The client needs to be kept up-to-date about available seats.
These events get queued up at the server when the client is not connected	Upon reconnection the client will need to process incoming events. The client may not be able to see this events when the network is down.

The client will adjust it's local store based on incoming events

Two types of Queues - Incoming and Outgoing

But this is only possible when there is a connection. Notice there are queues to support incoming and outgoing events. This event mechanism is used to synchronize clients and servers. You can leverage the Windows Azure Service Bus to implement this pattern. I will do this in a future post.

Sequence Diagram Exploration

How does the client manage event processing when occasionally disconnected? Get ready to view this in detail in a little while.

We will allow clients to oversell seats at events

The caveat is that it has only a one hour window where an oversell can take place. We could even add more rules. For example, we could say that client workstations can sell tickets assuming they have connected within the hour, plus there were at least 10% of seats left last time we checked.

Two type of events

Seat Sold and Seat Available Events.These events could be sent by the client or could be received by the client from the server.

Here is a workflow that demonstrates how seats are sold

Service interruption may occur anywhere in the timeline.Notice that we have a Client A and and a Client B.

The sequence diagram is fairly basic:

Occasionally, the client gets the most up to date events around event and seat availability.

Assume the client is up to date. It thinks it has one seat left.

After the client loses a connection, the last seat is sold by another client.

But the client doesn't know better and sells that last seat anyway.

Client A reconnects and needs to merge events

The key question to ask “What will the client do once it realizes it oversold seats to an event?”

The client is allowed one hour to override oversold scenarios

The client may need to notify onsite staff for oversold scenarios.

Lingering Questions

Overselling an event is not an easy problem to resolve. If a mistake is made, it may not be resolvable at all.

Pick your poison – some decisions aren’t easy

There is a discrete number of behaviors the occasionally connected client can pursue once it discovers and event is oversold:

It can phone call the person and reverse the seat sale, canceling the scan-able badge. That would probably not be wise from a customer satisfaction point of view.

It can let the oversold ticket work anyway and notify local staff about an extra seat

It could refuse service to a registrant in a disconnected state.

In closing, you can see that the biggest challenge in a disconnected scenario is defining what the client should be allowed to do if in a disconnected state.The things a client can accomplish could also be fine-tuned based on other factors, such as:

What percent full was the event at last count?
What is the ticket sales rate overtime? Statistics could be used to predict if an event is selling out quickly.

Implementing this software is the next goal. Stay tuned.

Dependency Injection / Inversion of Control–A Concrete Example-Roll your own

BrunoTerkaly — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:43:04 GMT

Who’s the wizard behind the curtain?

I’ve been reading Martin Fowler’s post about Inversion of Control / Dependency Injection at http://www.martinfowler.com. I looked long and hard for very simple examples that were easy to follow. I wanted to explore how they work, not just how to use an existing library.

How exactly does Dependency Injection work? It seemed rather mysterious to me from the implementation point of view. Some people look at a compiler and think, “Wow, that’s cool how it could translate source code into machine code.”

I’m the type of person that wants to know how exactly it works.

So in this post I show you how you might start to think about building a Dependency Injection container.

I focus on code here. If you want to read all the friendly narrative, here is Martin’s post:

Inversion of Control Containers and the Dependency Injection pattern

http://martinfowler.com/articles/injection.html

The difficult way to learn how things work – using pre-built libraries

But the basic guidance is to use pre-built libraries. Microsoft historically supported the enterprise library, Unity. There is also Castle Windsor as an available library.

The Unity Application Block

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff648512.aspx

Castle Windsor

http://www.castleproject.org/castle/download.html

Roll your own

But I was curious. What could I create in C# that mimicked the basic principles using some of features of C# just to illustrate the basic point with a simple, concrete example?

I’m borrowing heavily from Martin Fowler here, since he is highly regarded in software architecture space.

The definition in 2 sentences

In the Dependency Injection pattern, this decision is delegated to the "injector" which can choose to substitute different concrete class implementations of a dependency contract interface at run-time rather than at compile time. Being able to make this decision at run-time rather than compile time is the key advantage of dependency injection.

Conventional OO – The dependent object is in control

With conventional software development the dependent object decides for itself what concrete classes it will use.

Referring to Figure 1, this means the constructor for TextFileLister decides what concrete classes it will use.

The dependent object will typically choose from among the two classes in Figure 2

Figure 2 demonstrates that TextFileLister could choose either CommaTextFileReader or TabTextFileReader to process and read text files.

This is where the term Dependency Injection comes into play.

Figure 1 – The Dependency Injection Diagram

Figure 2 – The interface and the corresponding implementation

Let the assembler (MutableContainer) make the decision

The basic idea of the Dependency Injection sample we are writing is to have a separate object, an assembler, that populates a field in the TextFileLister class with an appropriate implementation for the IFileReader interface, resulting in a dependency diagram along the lines of Figure 1.

In a nutshell, the assembler makes the call. It chooses either CommaTextFileReader or TabTextFileReader. The key point is that TextFileLister doesn’t make the decision.

Figure 3 illustrates the Visual Studio project I created to demonstrate the points.

Figure 3 – Visual Studio

CommaDelimitedData.txt	Contains a comma-delimited list of strings
CommaTextFileReader.cs	Reads and parses CommaDelimitedData.txt, using commas as the delimeter.
IFileReader.cs	The interface to CommaTextFileReader and TabTextFileReader
MutableContainer.cs	The assembler which will build and configure objects at runtime. In a nutshell, it can be used to use either CommaTextFileReader or TabTextFileReader. This is the secret sauce to dependency injection.
Program.cs	The main driver program containing main()
TabDelimitedData.txt	Contains a tab-delimited list of strings
TabTextFileReader.cs	Reads and parses TabDelimitedData.txt, using tabs as the delimeter
TextFileLister.cs	The dependent object that uses the interface IFileReader. The TextFileLister will rely on CommaTextFileReader or TabTextFileReader, depending what the assembler decides (MutableContainer)

The code

Let’s start to explore the code. We’ll start with the basic objects and work our way up to the assembler.

Figure 4 is pretty straightforward and shows us the interface used by the two implementing classes in Figures 5 and 6. This is critical that we have an interface. Interfaces allow us to swap out the implementations without runtime or compile time errors.

Figure 4: IFileReader.cs - The interface to CommaTextFileReader and TabTextFileReader

using System;
namespace IocForDummies
{
    interface IFileReader
    {
        void Close();
        int CountColumns();
        int CountLines();
        void FillData(string[,] data);
        bool HasData();
        void ReadLine(string s);
    }
}

This is one of the two implementation files that use IFileReader. The code is self-explanatory. It opens a text file and parses it out. In this case it is simply parsing a comma-delimited text file.

Figure 5: CommaTextFileReader.cs - Reads and parses CommaDelimitedData.txt, using commas as the delimeter

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;

namespace IocForDummies
{
    public class CommaTextFileReader : IocForDummies.IFileReader
    {
        FileStream fsReader = null;
        StreamReader streamReader = null;

        public CommaTextFileReader(string path)
        {
            fsReader = File.Open(path, FileMode.Open);
            streamReader = new StreamReader(fsReader, System.Text.Encoding.ASCII);

        }
        public void ReadLine(string s)
        {
            s = streamReader.ReadLine();
        }
        public bool HasData()
        {
            return (streamReader.EndOfStream == false);
        }
        public void FillData(string[,] data)
        {
            string[] s = null;
            for (int i = 0; i < data.GetLength(0); i++)
            {
                s = streamReader.ReadLine().Split(',');
                for (int j = 0; j < data.GetLength(1); j++)
                {
                    if (s[j] != "")
                        data[i, j] = s[j];
                }
            }
        }
        public int CountLines()
        {
            int i = 0;
            string s = null;
            while ((s = streamReader.ReadLine()) != null)
            {
                i++;
            }
            fsReader.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
            streamReader.DiscardBufferedData();
            return i;
        }
        public int CountColumns()
        {
            string s = streamReader.ReadLine();
            string[] columns = s.Split(',');
            fsReader.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
            streamReader.DiscardBufferedData();
            return columns.Length;
        }
        public void Close()
        {
            streamReader.Close();
            fsReader.Close();
        }
    }
}

TabTextFileReader

This is the second of the two implementation files that use IFileReader. The code is self-explanatory. It opens a text file and parses it out. In this case it is simply parsing a tab-delimited text file.

Figure 6: TabTextFileReader.cs - Reads and parses TabDelimitedData.txt, using tabs as the delimeter

public class TabTextFileReader : IocForDummies.IFileReader
{
    FileStream fsReader = null;
    StreamReader streamReader = null;

    public TabTextFileReader(string path)
    {
        fsReader = File.Open(path, FileMode.Open);
        streamReader = new StreamReader(fsReader);

    }
    public void ReadLine(string s)
    {
        s = streamReader.ReadLine();
    }
    public bool HasData()
    {
        return (streamReader.EndOfStream == false);
    }
    public void FillData(string[,] data)
    {
        string[] s = null;
        for (int i = 0; i < data.GetLength(0); i++)
        {
            s = streamReader.ReadLine().Split(',');
            for (int j = 0; j < data.GetLength(1); j++)
            {
                if (s[j] != "")
                    data[i, j] = s[j];
            }
        }
    }
    public int CountLines()
    {
        int i = 0;
        string s = null;
        while ((s = streamReader.ReadLine()) != null)
        {
            i++;
        }
        fsReader.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
        streamReader.DiscardBufferedData();
        return i;
    }
    public int CountColumns()
    {
        string s = streamReader.ReadLine();
        string[] columns = s.Split(',');
        fsReader.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
        streamReader.DiscardBufferedData();
        return columns.Length;

    }
    public void Close()
    {
        streamReader.Close();
        fsReader.Close();
    }
}

The class in Figure 7 (TextFileLister) simply calls the code in the implementation files in Figures 5 and 6. The key point is IFileReader can contain either CommaTextFileReader or TabTextFileReader, depending on the assembler’s wishes. This is the key point in this post – that TextFileLister doesn’t determine the classes it will use.

Figure 7: TextFileLister.cs - The dependent object that uses the interface IFileReader. The TextFileLister will rely on CommaTextFileReader or TabTextFileReader, depending what the assembler (MutableContainer) decides

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace IocForDummies
{
    class TextFileLister
    {
        IFileReader reader = null;
        string[,] data = null;

        public TextFileLister(IFileReader fileReader)
        {
            reader = fileReader;
        }
        public void ReadData()
        {
            int lines = reader.CountLines();
            int columns = reader.CountColumns();
            data = new string[lines, columns];
            reader.FillData(data);
        }
        public void ShowData()
        {
            for (int i = 0; i < data.GetLength(0); i++) 
            {
                for (int j = 0; j < data.GetLength(1); j++)
                    Console.Write(string.Format("[{0}]", data[i, j]));
                Console.WriteLine("");
            }
        }
        ~TextFileLister()
        {
            reader.Close();

        }
    }
}

The Assembler – Where the magic happens

Figure 8 has some tricky code. The _typeToCreateCode field is a dictionary. The dictionary contains object creation code that is mapped to an object type. For example, we can ask the MutableContainer code to go and retrieve the previously added constructor code for any type. Figure 9 illustrates how we add entries to the Dictionary _typeToCreateCode field.

Using lamdas, it is very easy to pass in a type and a delegate. For example, the AddComponent(CreateCode createCode) gets called in Program.cs, where a type and some object construction code gets passed in.

The code in Figure 8 allows you to later retrieve an object type and it’s creation code at runtime, supporting the whole Dependency Injection paradigm. The MutableContainer code below is at the heart of the dependency injection capabilities.

Notice that AddComponent() will replace an existing object, not necessarily always add one. This is important because mutableContainer.AddComponent could either pass in CommaTextFileReader or TabTextFileReader, but not both.

Figure 8: MutableContainer.cs - The assembler which will build construct objects at runtime. In a nutshell, it can be used to use either CommaTextFileReader or TabTextFileReader

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace IocForDummies
{
    public class MutableContainer
    {
        public delegate object CreateCode();

        private readonly Dictionary<Type, CreateCode> _typeToCreateCode
                        = new Dictionary<Type, CreateCode>();

        public T Create<T>()
        {
            // Do a look up in the dictionary. Use the object type to do the lookup "typeof(T)".
            // The lookup will yield the object creation code.
            // Execute the object creation code.
            return (T)_typeToCreateCode[typeof(T)]();
        }
        internal void AddComponent<T>(CreateCode CreateCode)
        {
            // Remove previous entry, if it exists
            if (_typeToCreateCode.ContainsKey(typeof(T)))
                _typeToCreateCode.Remove(typeof(T));
            // Add the new entry
            _typeToCreateCode.Add(typeof(T), CreateCode);
        }
    }
}

Using MutableContainer

This is the code where the assembler is called to perform its work.

The key point of Dependency Injection is that the assembler determines how the TextFileLister gets constucted, whether TextFileLister uses CommaTextFileReader or TabTextFileReader. TextFileLister does not determine how it reads text files.

Figure 9: Program.cs – The main driver loop which illustrates our points

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace IocForDummies
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string commaFileName = Environment.CurrentDirectory +
                                        @"..\..\..\" + @"CommaDelimitedData.txt";

            string tabFileName = Environment.CurrentDirectory +
                                        @"..\..\..\" + @"TabDelimitedData.txt";


            MutableContainer mutableContainer = new MutableContainer();
            
            mutableContainer.AddComponent<IFileReader>(() =>
            {
                // Embeded object is of type CommaTextFileReader
                IFileReader fileReader= new CommaTextFileReader(commaFileName);
                return fileReader;
            });

            mutableContainer.AddComponent<TextFileLister>(() =>
            {
                IFileReader fileReader = mutableContainer.Create<IFileReader>();
                return new TextFileLister(fileReader);
                
            });

            TextFileLister customCommaDataReader = mutableContainer.Create<TextFileLister>();
            customCommaDataReader.ReadData();
            customCommaDataReader.ShowData();

            // Now read a tab delimited file
            mutableContainer.AddComponent<IFileReader>(() =>
            {
                // Embeded object is of type TabTextFileReader
                IFileReader fileReader = new TabTextFileReader(tabFileName);
                return fileReader;
            });

            TextFileLister customTabDataReader = mutableContainer.Create<TextFileLister>();
            customTabDataReader.ReadData();
            customTabDataReader.ShowData();
        }
        }
}

Figure 10 – The text files

CommaDelimitedData.txt

row1col1,row1col2,row1col3

row2col1,row2col2,row2col3

row3col1,row3col2,row3col3

TabDelimitedData.txt

row1col1[tab]row1col2[tab]row1col3

row2col1[tab]row2col2[tab]row2col3

row3col1[tab]row3col2[tab]row3col3

* Note that [tab] is there instead of real tabs because they are invisible.

Conclusion

What I just described is Constructor Injection. There are 2 other types of injection, Setter Injection and Interface Injection. Martin Fowler describes the other forms of DI in at his blog.

C# Delegates, Actions, Funcs, Lambdas–Keeping it super simple

BrunoTerkaly — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 00:46:10 GMT

Syntactic Sugar? Maybe.

[ Updated to reflect a reader’s observation – missing Func<> coverage. Now included ]

I was speaking with a colleague of mine today, Bret Stateham (http://bretstateham.com) and I was explaining my ignorance to some well established C# language constructs. I’ve always avoided language constructs that translate into “less typing.” What I mean is, delegates, actions, and lambdas can be totally avoided and you can still build the most sophisticated software. The compiler steps in at compile time and generates the IL for you (intermediate language), that language that gets translated into CPU-specific machine language at runtime by the CLR (Common language runtime).

Conceptually, and for the most part, it looks like Figure 1 below. The “Regular C# code” is probably skipped, meaning the fancy C# code ends up directly as IL. Anders Hejlsberg, the creator of C# (and the former creator of Borland’s Turbo Pascal) has spoken in detail about the inter-workings of the C# compiler in the past.

Figure 1

[ BTW, one day I’ll talk about what an amazing human being Anders is. He is the most humble, approachable, computer science genius I’ve ever met ].

Anders Hejlsberg Interview

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=B202A125-DC9C-495A-8A5A-7BF98BECACE2&displaylang=e&displaylang=en

Let’s start with a simple delegate example

A delegate is a type that safely encapsulates a method, similar to a function pointer in C and C++. Unlike C function pointers, delegates are object-oriented, type safe, and secure. The type of a delegate is defined by the name of the delegate.

Code is the best teacher.

Part 1	Helps the compiler with type safety
Part 2	One of the methods associated with the delegate
Part 3	The other method associated with the delegate
Part 4	Our object used to demo delegates with
Part 5	Declare a delegate and attach a method from the demo object
Part 6	Declare a delegate and attach the other method from the demo object
Part 7	Exercise the first delegate. In other words, use it to do work.
Part 8	Exercise the second delegate. In other words, use it to do work.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace ModernLanguageConstructs
{
    class Program
    {
        // Part 1 - Explicit declaration of a delegate (helps a compiler ensure type safety)
        public delegate double delegateConvertTemperature(double sourceTemp);

        // A sample class to play with
        class TemperatureConverterImp
        {
            // Part 2 - Will be attached to a delegate later in the code
            public double ConvertToFahrenheit(double celsius)
            {
                return (celsius * 9.0/5.0) + 32.0;
            }

            //  Part 3 - Will be attached to a delegate later in the code
            public double ConvertToCelsius(double fahrenheit)
            {
                return (fahrenheit - 32.0) * 5.0 / 9.0;
            }
        }


        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            //  Part 4 - Instantiate the main object
            TemperatureConverterImp obj = new TemperatureConverterImp();

            //  Part 5 - Intantiate delegate #1
            delegateConvertTemperature delConvertToFahrenheit =
                         new delegateConvertTemperature(obj.ConvertToFahrenheit);

            //  Part 6 - Intantiate delegate #2
            delegateConvertTemperature delConvertToCelsius =
                         new delegateConvertTemperature(obj.ConvertToCelsius);

            // Use delegates to accomplish work

            //  Part 7 - delegate #1
            double celsius = 0.0;
            double fahrenheit = delConvertToFahrenheit(celsius);
            string msg1 = string.Format("Celsius = {0}, Fahrenheit = {1}",
                                         celsius, fahrenheit);
            Console.WriteLine(msg1);

            //  Part 8 - delegate #2
            fahrenheit = 212.0;
            celsius = delConvertToCelsius(fahrenheit);
            string msg2 = string.Format("Celsius = {0}, Fahrenheit = {1}",
                                         celsius, fahrenheit);
            Console.WriteLine(msg2);
        }
    }
}

C# Actions – More sugar, please

You can use the Action(Of T) delegate to pass a method as a parameter without explicitly declaring a custom delegate. The sugar here is you don’t have to declare a delegate. The compiler is smart enough to figure out the proper types.

But you pay a price in terms of a limitation. The corresponding method action must not return a value. (In C#, the method must return void.)

Part 1	The Action syntax avoids the use of a declared delegate. Everything is inline.
Part 2	The Action syntax avoids the use of a declared delegate. Everything is inline.
Part 3	Execute the corresponding Action code

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace ModernLanguageConstructs
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // Part 1 - First action that takes an int and converts it to hex
            Action<int> displayHex = delegate(int intValue)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(intValue.ToString("X"));
            };

            // Part 2 - Second action that takes a hex string and 
            // converts it to an int
            Action<string> displayInteger = delegate(string hexValue)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(int.Parse(hexValue,
                    System.Globalization.NumberStyles.HexNumber));
            };
            
            // Part 3 - exercise Action methods
            displayHex(16);
            displayInteger("10");
        }
    }
}

Func<> Delegates

This differs from Action<> in the sense that it supports parameters AND return values.

You can use this delegate to represent a method that can be passed as a parameter without explicitly declaring a custom delegate. The encapsulated method must correspond to the method signature that is defined by this delegate.

This means that the encapsulated method must have one parameter that is passed to it by value, and that it must return a value.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace ModernLanguageConstructs
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // Part 1 - First Func<> that takes an int and returns a string
            Func<int, string> displayHex = delegate(int intValue)
            {
                return (intValue.ToString("X"));
            };

            // Part 2 - Second Func<> that takes a hex string and 
            // returns an int
            Func<string, int> displayInteger = delegate(string hexValue)
            {
                return (int.Parse(hexValue,
                    System.Globalization.NumberStyles.HexNumber));
            };

            // Part 3 - exercise Func<> delegates
            Console.WriteLine(displayHex(16));
            Console.WriteLine(displayInteger("10"));
        }
    }
}

Lambdas – Syntactic Sugar Squared

I’ve been staring at Lambdas for years and for whatever reason they don’t come natural to me. Maybe I need to spend more time in a functional language like F# to make them a natural construct.

A lambda expression is an anonymous function that can contain expressions and statements, and can be used to create delegates or expression tree types.

All lambda expressions use the lambda operator =>, which is read as "goes to". The left side of the lambda operator specifies the input parameters (if any) and the right side holds the expression or statement block.

The lambda expression x => x * x is read "x goes to x times x."

Part 1	Declare 2 lambda expressions
Part 2	Run them.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace ModernLanguageConstructs
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // Part 1 - An action and a lambda
            Action<int> displayHex = intValue =>
            {
                Console.WriteLine(intValue.ToString("X"));
            };

            Action<string> displayInteger = hexValue =>
            {
                Console.WriteLine(int.Parse(hexValue,
                    System.Globalization.NumberStyles.HexNumber));
            };

            // Part 2 - Use the lambda expressions
            displayHex(16);
            displayInteger("10");

        }
    }
}

Lambdas and Queries

Lambda expressions can also be used to simplify queries.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace ModernLanguageConstructs
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // Part 1 - ordinary list object
            List<string> listPets = new List<string>();

            // Part 2 - Queryable list object

            IQueryable<string> queryPets = listPets.AsQueryable();
            listPets.Add("dog");
            listPets.Add("cat");
            listPets.Add("iguana");

            // Part 3 - Lambda Expression (does not use curly braces)
            string result1 = listPets.First(x => x.StartsWith("d"));
            Console.WriteLine(result1);  // Prints "dog"

            // Part 4 - Lambda expressions using iQueryable interface
            string result2 = queryPets.First(x => x.StartsWith("ig"));
            Console.WriteLine(result2);  // Prints "iguana"

            // Part 5 - Lambda Statement (uses curly braces)
            //          Supports the return statement
            result1 = listPets.First(x => { return x.EndsWith("a"); });
            Console.WriteLine(result1);  // Prints "iguana"

            // Part 6 - Does not compile
            // A lambda expression with a statement body 
            // cannot be converted to an expression tree    
            // result2 = queryPets.First(x => { return x.EndsWith("e"); }); 

            // Part 7 - Does compile using the Func<T> syntax
            //          You can pass in a lambda expression and it 
            //          will be compiled to an Expression(Of TDelegate).
            string result3 = queryPets.First((Func<string, bool>)
                                         (x => { return x.EndsWith("g"); }));
            Console.WriteLine(result3);  // Prints "dog"


            // Part 8 - Convert to IQueryable
            IEnumerable<string> result4 =
                listPets.AsQueryable().Where(pet => pet.Length == 3);

            foreach (string pet in result4)
                Console.WriteLine(pet);  // Prints "dog" then "cat"


        }

    }
}

Want to help?

If you’ve got some super simple examples to demonstrate advance language features, please forward them to bterkaly@microsoft.com.

The next dragon I want to slay is Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control. I want to explain these two concepts in as little code as possible. Hope you got some value out of this post.

Azure/Cloud, HTML5, Windows Phone Free Training Events Coming To Your City

BrunoTerkaly — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 05:54:52 GMT

5 Cities in the west (March 30 to May 25)

Developer Camps (DevCamps for short) are free, fun, no-fluff events for developers, by developers. You learn from experts in a low-key, interactive way and then get hands-on time to apply what you’ve learned. Where else can you get so much good stuff all in a day?

CityDate	Cloud RegLink	HTML5 Reglink	Windows Phone RegLink
Los Angeles - March 30	Click Here	Click Here	Click Here
Irvine - April 20	Click Here	Click Here	Click Here
Redmond - April 27	Click Here	Click Here	Click Here
Denver - May 18	Click Here	Click Here	Click Here
Phoenix - May 25	Click Here	Click Here	Click Here

Come prepared

We want you to hit the ground running.

Please come prepared.

You don’t want to waste your time at an Azure DevCamp downloading and installing files. Setting up can take quite some time and will interfere with productivity.   I will also provide some posts for those that could not attend.

This post includes:

1.	Hardware	Minimum Hardware configurations.
2.	Software	Windows, Visual Studio
3.	SDKs	Azure SDK
4.	Labs	Labs and Powerpoint downloads
5.	Video Verification	The video you should watch to verify you are setup (less than 2 minutes)

Azure DevCamp - Hardware - minimum

The following hardware is needed to install the needed software:

CPU	1.6 GHz or faster non-Mac CPU
Memory	2+ GB RAM
Storage	20 GB Hard Disk

Important Note
Running Macintosh computers is not recommended. Storage and Compute emulators do not always work properly.

Azure DevCamp - Software

Supported Operating Systems

Don’t expect Windows XP to work. Here are the supported OS’s.

1.	Windows Server 2008
2.	Windows Server 2008 R2
3.	Windows Vista
4.	Windows 7

Visual Studio and SQL Server Express

Various versions of Visual Studio will work. Please be sure you have one of the following:

Visual Studio 2010 Professional

Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate

Visual Studio 2010 Test Professional

Visual Studio Express

SQL Server Express (this is required)

Free Trial Account / Azure SDK

Free Trial

Labs and PowerPoints

You are about to install Windows Azure Camps Kit.

The Windows Azure Camps Training Kit includes the hands-on labs and presentations that are used for the Windows Azure Camp events.

Installer for Azure Web Camps

http://www.contentinstaller.net/Install/ContentGroup/WAPCamps

Video – to prepare you are ready

The main thing to remember is that most of the labs can be done with emulators. This means you don’t necessarily need to deploy your app to the cloud (Microsoft Data Center). You can run most of these labs all on your local computer. This is important as there is not often enough network bandwidth at large events.

Currently, there is no audio. But it should be easy to follow.

Video to verify setup

http://brunoblogfiles.com/videos/PrepareForAzureDevCamp.wmv

Conclusion

Please verify you can run the sample demonstrated in the video above. This will give you a huge headstart once you attend the boot camp.

People only see what they are prepared to see.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Node.js–Table of Contents to some posts

BrunoTerkaly — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 21:55:40 GMT

Topic	Link
Node.js - A chat server written in Node and a client app written in C#	http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brunoterkaly/archive/2012/02/28/node-js-a-chat-server-written-in-node-and-a-client-app-written-in-c.aspx#
Node.js - Serving Up Web Pages with Dynamic Content	http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brunoterkaly/archive/2012/02/27/node-js-serving-up-web-pages-with-dynamic-content.aspx#
Node.js - Socket Programming with C# and Javascript	http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brunoterkaly/archive/2012/02/22/node-js-socket-programming-with-c-and-javascript.aspx#
Node.js–How to use Node Package Manager (npm) and Underscore	http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brunoterkaly/archive/2012/03/17/node-js-the-most-popular-modules-and-how-they-work-part-1-a-bakers-dozen.aspx

Node.js– A chat server written in Node and a client app written in C#

BrunoTerkaly — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 21:39:58 GMT

A new twist to a boring Chat application

Most demos on Node.js illustrate how to create a chat server, but rarely provide the client side of the chat service.

That is what this post is about – creating both the server and client side of the equation.

Server	Node.js	Javascript
Client	.NET	C#

Node.js – Chat Application – Server Side

This is your traditional Node.js chat application. I’ve commented it pretty heavily. Note the following:

Create a TCP socket listener	var s = net.Server(function(socket)....
Saving the socket connection so we can send message back to the client	sockets.push(socket)....
An event that represents a client sending a text msg to server. 'data' represents the event and msg_sent is the data sent by chat client application.	socket.on('data', function(msg_sent) {....
Don't echo back the message to the sender	if(sockets[i] == socket) continue;
Write message back to listeners (except original sender)	sockets[i].write(msg_sent);
An event when a client disconnects. We need to remove dead sockets from our array.	socket.on('end', function() {
Listening on http://localhost:8000	s.listen(8000);

Filename = lamechat.js

net = require('net')

// Supports multiple client chat application

// Keep a pool of sockets ready for everyone
// Avoid dead sockets by responding to the 'end' event
var sockets = [];

// Create a TCP socket listener
var s = net.Server(function (socket) {

    // Add the new client socket connection to the array of
    // sockets
    sockets.push(socket);

    // 'data' is an event that means that a message was just sent by the 
    // client application
    socket.on('data', function (msg_sent) {
        // Loop through all of our sockets and send the data
        for (var i = 0; i < sockets.length; i++) {
            // Don't send the data back to the original sender
            if (sockets[i] == socket) // don't send the message to yourself
                continue;
            // Write the msg sent by chat client
            sockets[i].write(msg_sent);
        }
    });
    // Use splice to get rid of the socket that is ending.
    // The 'end' event means tcp client has disconnected.
    socket.on('end', function () {
        var i = sockets.indexOf(socket);
        sockets.splice(i, 1);
    });


});

s.listen(8000);
console.log('System waiting at http://localhost:8000');

Creating Chat Applications in .NET and C#

This next section will demonstrate the building of a chat client for the Node.js server.

Create a new Visual Studio Project

Project type = Windows Presentation Foundation Application

Editing MainWindow.xaml

Right mouse click on MainWindow.xaml

Where to add the various controls

We are adding textboxes, command buttons.

The graphical interface – MainWindow.xaml

MainWindow.xaml is where we define our user interface. We have 3 text boxes and 2 buttons.

txtChatName	Allows you to login with an id
txtConversation	Where the conversation between chat clients can be seen
txtOutMsg	The text message a given chat client wants to send to others
cmdConnect	Allows you to login and connect using txtChatName
cmdSendMessage	Sends your text message that was typed into txtOutMsg

Filename = MainWindow.xaml

<Window
  x:Class="NodeJsChatClient.MainWindow"
  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
  xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
  Title="Chat Client"
  Height="350"
  Width="525">
    <Grid>

 
      <Button
      Content="Connect"
      Height="29"
      HorizontalAlignment="Left"
      Margin="12,12,0,0"
      Name="cmdConnect"
      VerticalAlignment="Top"
      Width="144"
      Click="cmdConnect_Click"/>

      <TextBox
      AcceptsReturn="True"
      Margin="14,51,12,93"
      Name="txtConversation"
      Text=""
      TextWrapping="Wrap"
      VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Visible"/>

      <TextBox
      Height="33"
      HorizontalAlignment="Left"
      Margin="182,12,0,0"
      Name="txtChatName"
      VerticalAlignment="Top"
      Width="148"
      Text="Bruno"/>

        
      <TextBox
      Height="36"
      HorizontalAlignment="Left"
      Margin="14,229,0,0"
      Name="txtOutMsg"
      VerticalAlignment="Top"
      Width="477"/>

        
      <Button
      Content="Send Message"
      Height="28"
      HorizontalAlignment="Left"
      Margin="12,271,0,0"
      Name="cmdSendMessage"
      VerticalAlignment="Top"
      Width="479"
      Click="cmdSendMessage_Click"/>

    </Grid>
</Window>

What the finished interface looks like

All the controls have been added.

The code behind – C# – chat client application logic

The next section is about writing the client code that connects, sends, and receives text/chat messages.

Proper Using Statements

“using” statements are needed to minimize typing in large amounts of code.

using System.Net.Sockets;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Threading;
using System.Windows.Threading;

The final code in MainWindow.xaml.cs

This represents all the code needed to complete the C#-based client application.

Adding the code behind.

MainWindow.xaml.cs

Here is the entire code-behind module. No extra references are needed.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Data;
using System.Windows.Documents;
using System.Windows.Input;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows.Media.Imaging;
using System.Windows.Navigation;
using System.Windows.Shapes;

using System.Net.Sockets;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Threading;
using System.Windows.Threading;

namespace NodeJsChatClient
{
    public partial class MainWindow : Window
    {
        // Declare member objects
        // Client for tcp, network stream to read bytes in socket
        TcpClient tcpClient = new TcpClient();
        NetworkStream serverStream = default(NetworkStream);
        string readData = string.Empty;
        string msg = "Conected to Chat Server ...";

        public MainWindow()
        {
            InitializeComponent();

        }

        // Purpose:     Connect to node.js application (lamechat.js)
        // End Result:  node.js app now has a socket open that can send
        //              messages back to this tcp client application
        private void cmdConnect_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            AddPrompt();
            tcpClient.Connect("127.0.0.1", 8000);
            serverStream = tcpClient.GetStream();

            byte[] outStream = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(txtChatName.Text.Trim()
                                  + " is joining");
            serverStream.Write(outStream, 0, outStream.Length);
            serverStream.Flush();

            // upload as javascript blob
            Task taskOpenEndpoint = Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>
            {
                while (true)
                {
                    // Read bytes
                    serverStream = tcpClient.GetStream();
                    byte[] message = new byte[4096];
                    int bytesRead;
                    bytesRead = 0;

                    try
                    {
                        // Read up to 4096 bytes
                        bytesRead = serverStream.Read(message, 0, 4096);
                    }
                    catch
                    {
                        /*a socket error has occured*/
                    }

                    //We have rad the message.
                    ASCIIEncoding encoder = new ASCIIEncoding();
                    // Update main window
                    AddMessage(encoder.GetString(message, 0, bytesRead));
                    Thread.Sleep(500);
                }
            });
        }

        // Purpose:     Updates the window with the newest message received
        // End Result:  Will display the message received to this tcp based client
        private void AddMessage(string msg)
        {
            Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(DispatcherPriority.Input, (ThreadStart)(
             () =>
             {
                 this.txtConversation.Text += string.Format(
                          Environment.NewLine + Environment.NewLine +
                          " >> {0}", msg);

             }));
        }

        // Purpose:     Adds the " >> " prompt in the text box
        // End Result:  Shows prompt to user
        private void AddPrompt()
        {
            txtConversation.Text = txtConversation.Text + 
                Environment.NewLine + " >> " + msg;
        }

        // Purpose:     Send the text in typed by the user (stored in
        //              txtOutMsg)
        // End Result:  Sends text message to node.js (lamechat.js)
        private void cmdSendMessage_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            byte[] outStream = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(txtOutMsg.Text);
            serverStream.Write(outStream, 0, outStream.Length);
            serverStream.Flush();
        }
    }

}

Let’s build the project

Right mouse click to see the “rebuild” command.

Should be a clean “recompile”

“0” errors.

Testing NodeJsChat

It is time to test the applications.

Start by running lamechat.js

Done at a command prompt.

Run the executables

Start by opening the project folder and navigating to the “bin\debug” folder.

We need at least two client chat applications to test

You will simply run NodeJsChatClient.exe twice.

The final test

This represents the final step

Now just improve what I did and send it back to me

Node.js–Serving Up Web Pages with Dynamic Content

BrunoTerkaly — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 16:23:59 GMT

Building a prime number calculator - dynamic content

I’ve been fixing my algorithm below because a blog reader has given me advice. I like this.Getting things right is a great thing.

In this next section we will build a Node.js application that demonstrates the ability to send web content to clients. In this case, the Node.js application will calculate Prime Numbers and send the web content to an http client.

The code is very simple – you just build up the string of html content and output the string.

response.write('<html><body><p>Text or HTML sent to browser..</p></body></html>');

Here is some documentation for my code.

Code	Explanation
http = require('http');	Because this is a web server
request.addListener('end', function () { [ your code ] });	An event triggered when there is an http request
response.write('<html><body><p>' + buf + '</p></body></html>');	Sends html back to the browser (based on original request)
response.end();	Concludes the HTML request
listen(8000, 'localhost');	Indicates to wait on Port 8000 of localhost

The code

Here is the code listing for ‘pageCreate.js’.

http = require('http');
http.createServer(function (request, response) {
    request.addListener('end', function () {
        var buf = '<div style=\"color:green;\">' + '2' + ' is prime.  </div>';
        for (var i = 2; i < 500; i++) 
        {
            for (var j = 2; j < i; j++) 
            {
                if (i % j == 0) 
                {
                    var prime = 0;
                    var tmp = '<div style=\"color:red;\">' + i + 
                                ' is not prime.  It is divisible by ' + j + '</div>';
                    buf += tmp;
                    break;
                }
                else
                    var prime = 1;
            }
            if (prime == 1) 
            {
                var tmp = '<div style=\"color:green;\">' + i + ' is prime.  </div>';
                buf += tmp;
            }
        }
        response.write('<html><body><p>' + buf + '</p></body></html>');
        response.end();
    });
}).listen(8000, 'localhost');
console.log('system waiting at http://localhost:8000');

The output

Here is what the browser displays as a result of the request, http://localhost:8000

Node.js sucks at CPU bound operations – it is about I/O

Node.js is terrible for CPU bound tasks because it is inherently single threaded. That means that if you are wanting to use multiple cores to perform some complex mathematical analysis, Node.js is not the best fit. Node.js has a single threaded event loop which takes only a single task/event at a time and processes it.

Where Node.js really shines is I/O bound tasks. Node.js allows you to simply define a callback that will get added to the event queue. Node.js will kick off a thread or process (some OS's don't do threads) for that I/O operation. And when that I/O operation is complete, the callback is invoked and the code continues. The great news here is that Node.js will process other I/O bound requests while others are still pending a return.

If you do have long running computations or similar needs, then you consider interleaving CPU intensive tasks with other events.

This post could get you started.

Faking threads

http://howtonode.org/understanding-process-next-tick

Before I forget – the docs

Note below that Node.js does indeed have official documentation.

Node.js docs

http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.4.7/api/all.html#util

Node.js– Socket Programming with C# and Javascript

BrunoTerkaly — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:16:02 GMT

Installing Node.js on Windows, Mac

Thanks to Ryan Dahl’s presentations and materials, I have been able to follow along and learn a little about Node.js. I hope to show you what I learn as I learn it.

The first step is get the latest version of Node installed.

Node.js Website

http://nodejs.org

Using Node.js interactively

Bring up a command prompt. Bring up a command prompt.
Type in node start the interpreter.
Define a function. You can ignore the “undefined” message.
You can now call the function, passing in “212.”

Notice we get “100” as the answer, since 212 Fahrenheit is 100 Celsius.

Write Node.js scripts and running them

You can request the process id very simply.

If you want A LOT of information, just type in “process.” It is a lot of information.

This will list a lot details about the process, including environment variables.

Running Node.js Scripts

Simply type in “node [node.js code file]”

c:\> node simpleServer.js

setTimeout.js

setTimeout(function () { console.log(" world"); }, 2000);
console.log("Hello");

The point is that there is no “sleep” in Node. You cannot halt execution. The setTimeout() lets you do things in the background. In the code above the word “Hello” shows up immediately and “World” shows up 2 seconds later.

setInterval.js

setInterval(function () { console.log(" world"); }, 2000);
console.log("Hello");

A simple HTTP Server – Demo

The code below creates a very basic web server.

The code below does the following:

Line 1	Brings in the code to write an http server
Line 3	createServer() gets called, passing in some code as the callback.
Line 5	Indicate that the web server return plain text
Line 6	Send “Hello World” back to the browser.

Here is the output. Notice that on the left we execute simpleServer.js. On the right side we execute the code in simpleServer.js by navigating a browser to http://127.0.0.1:8000. Note the 8000, because that is the port we are listening on.

Inspecting http headers with Fiddler

Fiddler is an HTTP debugging proxy server application. It captures HTTP traffic and logs it for the user to review. Here is what to notice about the call we just made.

HTTP/1.1	The latest application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems.
Connection: Keep-Alive	Means that a persistent connection is maintained with the web server. Modern http means with one connection you can get multiple responses.
Transfer-encoding is chunked	Means that a server to can maintain an HTTP persistent connection for dynamically generated content. We dont know how big the content will be.

A Node.js TCP Server

We just demonstrated http. The next section is learning about TCP. TCP is considered a very lightweight protocol, free of the overhead of http. Notice in the code below we require ‘net,’ not ‘http.’ Everything else should look somewhat familiar from before.

But let’s be clear. TCP is a transport layer protocol and HTTP is an application layer protocol. HTTP (usually) operates over TCP, so whichever option you choose, it will still be operating over TCP.

TCP sockets are more bandwidth efficient, since HTTP contains a whole bunch of extra data (the headers) that would likely not be needed. HTTP is not particularly suited to n-way chat servers.

tcpServer.js

var net = require('net');
var tcp_server = net.createServer(function(socket)
{
socket.write('hello\n');
socket.end('world\n');
});
tcp_server.listen(8000);

Let’s write a C# program to read those TCP bytes (“Hello World”)

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    TcpClient tcpClient = new TcpClient();
    tcpClient.Connect("127.0.0.1", 8000);
    NetworkStream clientStream = tcpClient.GetStream();

    byte[] message = new byte[4096];
    int bytesRead;
    bytesRead = 0;

    try
    {
        // Read up to 4096 bytes
        bytesRead = clientStream.Read(message, 0, 4096);
    }
    catch
    { 
        /*a socket error has occured*/ 
    }

    //We have read the message.
    ASCIIEncoding encoder = new ASCIIEncoding();
    Console.WriteLine(encoder.GetString(message, 0, bytesRead));

    tcpClient.Close();
}

Here is the TCP client reading and displaying the bytes.

Building Hybrid Applications in the Cloud on Windows Azure–Guidance

BrunoTerkaly — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:29:26 GMT

Download the free book

Building Hybrid Applications in the Cloud on Windows Azure

http://wag.codeplex.com/releases/view/74838

Table of Contents

Chapter 1	The Trey Research Scenario
Chapter 2	Deploying the Orders Application and Data in the Cloud
Chapter 3	Authenticating Users in the Orders Application
Chapter 4	Implementing Reliable Messaging and Communications with the Cloud
Chapter 5	Processing Orders in the Trey Research Scenario
Chapter 6	Maximizing Scalability, Availability, and Performance in the Orders Application
Chapter 7	Monitoring and Managing the Orders Application
Appendix A	Replicating, Distributing, and Synchronizing Data
Appendix B	Authenticating Users and Authorizing Requests
Appendix C	Implementing Cross-Boundary Communication
Appendix D	Implementing Business Logic and Message Routing
Appendix E	Maximizing Scalability, Availability, and Performance
Appendix F	Monitoring and Managing Hybrid Applications

Windows Azure–Relational Storage in the cloud is very inexpensive

BrunoTerkaly — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:15:39 GMT

I know of companies that have shaved off 75% their On-Premise SQL Server costs

Microsoft Cuts SQL Azure Storage Pricing	http://redmondmag.com/articles/2012/02/14/sql-azure-storage-pricing.aspx
Pricing Overview	https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/#database/?WT.mc_id=cmp_pst001_blg_post0055pri

One of the members (Robin is an MVP) of my community absolutely loves SQL Azure. She will flat out tell anyone that her company saved up to 80% of their costs for maintaining their own database infrastructures. If you don’t believe me, I can put you in contact with her.

These prices are dramatically lower

Database Size	Price Per Database Per Month
0 to 100 MB	Flat $4.995
Greater than 100 MB to 1 GB	Flat $9.99
Greater than 1 GB to 10 GB	$9.99 for first GB, $3.996 for each additional GB
Greater than 10 GB to 50 GB	$45.954 for first 10 GB, $1.998 for each additional GB
Great than 50 GB to 150 GB	$125.874 for first 50 GB, $0.999 for each additional GB

GigaOM Provides a great article on Windows Azure (the Microsoft Cloud)

BrunoTerkaly — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:02:26 GMT

Windows Azure is a Kick-Butt Cloud offering

2/10/2012

Don’t look now but Microsoft Azure is a kick-butt cloud

http://gigaom.com/cloud/dont-look-now-but-microsoft-azure-is-a-kick-butt-cloud/

What I liked in the article

GigoOM Article	My (Bruno) Response
“It is a full fledged platform as a service”	Means the developer doesn't deal with VMs. Just data and applications.
“Google plans a dropbox killer”	But MS already has SkyDrive, which is awesome. Skydrive is backed by 6 huge global data centers. You can easily integrate other high end cloud features using Azure storage.
“[Nasuni monitored] ...cloud storage performance, availability and reliability ...”	The conclusion - MS has a very robust, powerful cloud offering, compared to the others.
“Microsoft Azure overall has not gotten as much traction as expected as a PaaS, he said, but the infrastructure is so solid and scalable that Microsoft can profit even in the extremely thin margins afforded by plain-old-but-very-important cloud storage.”	I agree. People ask me all the time, like at Cloud Connect in Silicon Valley yesterday. How does MS make money when its margins are so razor thin? My answer is simple, our data centers are super automated, with the lowest manual intervention of any cloud provider out there.

Microsoft West Region Evangelism

BrunoTerkaly — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:05:12 GMT

Cloud Applications and Application Lifecycle Management (Includes Azure)

BrunoTerkaly — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:05:22 GMT

Application Development in the cloud

Azure Application Lifecycle Management with Buck Woody	http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2012/02/07/application-lifecycle-management-overview-for-windows-azure.aspx
ALM with Azure	http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff803362.aspx
David Chappell	http://www.microsoft.com/global/applicationplatform/en/us/RenderingAssets/Whitepapers/What%20is%20Application%20Lifecycle%20Management.pdf
Northwest Cadance Can Help	http://itevent.net/application-lifecycle-management-alm-from-design-to-development
Microsoft MSDN – Application Lifecycle Management	http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/ff625779