Windows Azure SDKs for PHP and Java and tools for Eclipse version 1.0 released today

We’ve worked very hard to release version 1.0 of three different projects today, all timed to coincide with the availability of the Windows Azure platform, which was also announced today at the Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles.

This release is the culmination our team’s year-long work with our partners for bringing core PDC09 scenarios to life and a release that many of our customers & open source developers have eagerly been waiting for since our last CTP release at Eclipse Summit Europe. I want to thank our engineering partners Real Dolmen & Soyatec who have done a great job in such a short period of time to complete SDKs & tooling.

The version 1.0 of the tools & SDKs can be downloaded from the below location.

• Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse
• Windows Azure SDK for Java
• Windows Azure SDK for PHP

The Eclipse tooling & SDKs are fully compatible with Windows Azure that has just been released, so you can build services & web applications using PHP & Java in Eclipse and deploy them to the cloud today.

I am excited to share some of the new features that we have included in this version of the Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse:

• Improved PHP Project Migration & Portability: We have introduced a new wizard that enables PHP developers to convert their existing web applications to Windows Azure. Further, the wizard supports developers targeting Windows Azure or SQL Azure for their storage needs.

• Development Fabric & Storage Support: Eclipse tooling is now deeply integrated with development fabric & storage that offers a high-fidelity simulation of the Windows Azure hosting & storage services on the developer’s desktop or laptop to test their cloud applications.
• SQL Azure Support: A new Management tool that allows PHP developers to setup their SQL Azure accounts and test connectivity against local (development fabric) & Cloud database. Based on the developer’s choice, the project system automatically bundles appropriate SQL Server driver and extensions.

• Service Model UI: A redesigned and significantly more complete interface for manipulating Role configuration information. To access, right mouse click on the WebRole project and click properties.

• Improvements to Storage Explorer: The Storage Explorer now supports shared & signed access signatures. The idea behind this to allow developers create signatures that are more granular than the shared key for the whole storage account and then embed these signatures directly in a blob URL instead of an authorization header.
• Certificate Management: We have laid a solid foundation to support SSL certificates in Eclipse tooling to allow secure automated deployment of certificates to services hosted on Windows Azure. This feature will be fully completed in the upcoming milestone.
• Updated PHP Samples & Tutorial: The samples included with Eclipse tooling enable developers to jumpstart their project targeting Windows Azure Storage or SQL Azure. Learn more here

Finally, the many new features of the Windows Azure SDK for Java are showcased in a new tutorial that illustrates how Java developers can take advantage of Window Azure in heterogeneous scenarios, with both on-premise and cloud Java applications. The tutorial is available at: http://www.windowsazure4j.org/learn/setup/

You may also have heard that Microsoft today announced new third-party technologies that can be run inside Windows Azure, including MySQL and  Java (we’ll come back to this later!). All of these technologies take advantage of the automated service management capabilities in Windows Azure. These developments further deliver on Microsoft’s strategy to make the Windows Azure platform open and interoperable.

More interoperability treats are going to be announced at PDC, so stay tuned!

-- Vijay Rajagopalan, Principal Architect