I’ve been spending quite a bit of time lately thinking about the best ways to test PHP applications in a Windows Azure environment. I think that, at a high level, my ideas are applicable to any OSS/Azure application that can be tested using any...

It's the countdown to the holiday's, but we plan on keeping the links flowing through the new year! Here's some interesting links to start December with. Resources to Run Open Source Stacks on Windows Azure : Resources for running Java, Apache Tomcat...

One of the things that will be introduced in the next update to SQL Azure is a database sharding solution called SQL Azure Federations. Brian and I will have some examples of using this feature with specific languages once it releases, but we thought...

One feature of the scaffolds that are in the Windows Azure SDK for PHP is that all rely on the Web Platform Installer to install PHP when a project is deployed. This is great until I want my application deployed with my locally customized installation...

It’s been a quiet week on the blog for Larry and me, but that is not to say we haven’t been busy! We’ve been delivering training on Windows Azure to colleagues, making sure to convey the importance support for OSS technologies. We have...

Swapping with Brian this week for the weekly links post. Some Node.js learning resources, Ruby for Kids, mobile development, the release of a stable Windows build of Node.js, and other goodies. Enjoy! Windows Azure Storage: A Highly Available Cloud...

June 7, 2012 update: The Microsoft Windows Azure team has released a new Windows Azure SDK for PHP . This release is part of an effort to keep PHP client libraries up to date with new Windows Azure features and to make PHP a first-class citizen in Windows...

One of the projects I’m working on during my day job is pulling together information on how Windows Azure can be used to host social applications (i.e. social games.) It’s an interesting topic, but I think I’ve managed to isolate it...

Larry and I had a very busy week, so this week’s reading list is shorter than usual. BUT, there is some interesting (even strange) stuff here: Generate PHP code with Ruby?! Make PHP and Node talk to each other?! And don’t miss the “free...

As usual, this week’s work led Larry and me to a varied assortment of reading topics…everything from a comparison of cloud offerings to changes in Node.js v0.06. Be sure not to miss the announcement about lowered Windows Azure storage costs…...

I have a confession to make; In college, I was the guy who wrote his flowcharts after writing the program (yes flowcharts describing program flow, it’s been that long since I was in college.) It just seemed a worthless exercise to me at the time...

June 7, 2012 update: The Microsoft Windows Azure team has released a new Windows Azure SDK for PHP . This release is part of an effort to keep PHP client libraries up to date with new Windows Azure features and to make PHP a first-class citizen in Windows...

Once again, here’s the list of interesting reading that Larry and I ran across this week in our travels across the web. My personal favorite is the first link…running memcached for PHP applications in Windows Azure… Running Memcached...

In my last post , I looked at the session handling functionality that is built into the Windows Azure SDK for PHP , which uses Azure Tables or Azure Blobs for storing session data. As I wrote that post, I wondered how easy it would be to use SQL Azure...

One of the challenges in building a distributed web application is in handling sessions. When you have multiple instances of an application running and session data is written to local files (as is the default behavior for the session handling functions...

As Brian mentioned in an earlier post , we’ve been working on an internal training plan for our team around using OSS languages with Windows Azure. Brian posted some resources for PHP, so it’s my turn with some Node and Ruby resources. ...

LOTS of very exciting news this week! As you will see from the first few links, Microsoft has announced that it is working on Hadoop for Winodws Server and Windows Azure, AND it is working on a SQL Server ODBC driver for Linux. Those are two big steps...

Windows Phone 7 supports push notifications that let you do things like send alerts to a WP7 application, or update the tile (icon) for an application. The notifications are sent using the Microsoft Push Notification Service (MPNS), a free service that...

This week’s reading list is lengthy and heavy…perfect for a rainy weekend (as is forecast for the Seattle area). This week’s list includes two white papers, one looking at a class of algorithms for distributed load balancing, and the...

June 7, 2012 update: The Microsoft Windows Azure team has released a new Windows Azure SDK for PHP . This release is part of an effort to keep PHP client libraries up to date with new Windows Azure features and to make PHP a first-class citizen in Windows...

June 7, 2012 update: The Microsoft Windows Azure team has released a new Windows Azure SDK for PHP . This release is part of an effort to keep PHP client libraries up to date with new Windows Azure features and to make PHP a first-class citizen in Windows...

Recently I was trying to figure out how to allow users to login to a Ruby (Sinatra) web site using an identity service such as Facebook, Google, Yahoo, etc. I ended up using Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control Service (ACS) since it has built-in support...

How’d we get to the end of September already? Time flies when you’ve got good reading…speaking of which, here’s this week’s reading list. As usual, topics are wide-ranging…everything from experiments in deploying...

June 7, 2012 update: The Microsoft Windows Azure team has released a new Windows Azure SDK for PHP . This release is part of an effort to keep PHP client libraries up to date with new Windows Azure features and to make PHP a first-class citizen in Windows...

Recently I've been thinking about roles and what makes the most sense for a deployment, mainly around the size of the role to pick. If you look at pricing and capabilities of the medium or larger roles you'll notice something interesting; two small roles...