The new sample application, StockTrader 5, is now running live on Windows Azure at https://azurestocktrader.cloudapp.net. New docs are available directly from the home page of the app at this Azure link, plus you can try out the app in the cloud. The downloadable source code will follow this month (April), complete with the StockTrader application and the new Configuration Service 5.  Both are major upgrades with significant new features/functionality. 

This is the new implementation, that can run on-premise or as shown above, in the public Windows Azure cloud. This is using SQL Azure as the backing database, and each service tier is scaled out across multiple Azure instances. The new sample also illustrates some common hybrid cloud scenarios with integration between the public Azure cloud, and on-premise private clouds. These scenarios are shown in the new documentation, available on the home page of Azure StockTrader 5, or the sample home page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/stocktrader.

Please note the full source code, for all tiers of the application, will be posted to MSDN very soon, with an automated MSI setup program that creates the Web sites, databases, and gets you started with a full working configuration. The Azure projects will also be included in this download kit:

-StockTrader 5 Web Application (ASP.NET)
-StockTrader 5 Business Services (WCF)
-StockTrader 5 Order Processor Service (WCF)

The new version already incorporates the new Configuration Services 5.0, to which many new features have been added. So when the new source goes live, Configuration Service 5 will be included as shared libraries you can use within your own apps and services, whether on-premise or hosted on Windows Azure. This makes it handy, for example, to change configurations between all-Azure deployment, and the hybrid cloud scenarios that go back into my private data center, running in my lab in Building 40 on the main Microsoft campus. Just point and click. So the new sample highlights WCF message and transport security, since everything has to be locked down once hosted on the Internet.

The StockTrader 5.0 Technical Document (download from site now) highlights exactly what had to change to move this .NET service-oriented application to Azure. Not much! The biggest things were complete redesign of UI to ensure cross-browser, and make sure it renders well and is quite usable from mobile devices including Windows Phone 7, Apple IPhone, and Google Android-based phones.

I did also make some performance improvements to the application, and will be doing a blog post on these. It is interesting the cloud makes you think not just about top-end throughput, but also latency. So there are some areas the StockTrader 5 improves latency, from some service call consolidations, query consolidations, and async ASP.NET web pages.

I am going to highlight these on this blog starting today. This was my first Azure project, so I am not unlike many of you, I think, wondering what it is all about, and going through the initial learning curve wrt to multi-tier apps with WCF, ASP.NET, SQL Azure, etc. So I hope my learnings will prove useful.

-Greg