Today I am happy to announce the availability of StockTrader 6, a new end-to-end reference application for Windows Azure and Windows Azure SQL Database.  The sample application with full source code and Visual Studio solutions can be downloaded and installed from MSDN here. 

If you want to check the application out before downloading it yourself, you can:

a) Browse a live deployment of the sample application on Windows Azure via HTML5/MVC here.
b) Install and run the working mobile applications:

1. Install the iOS application from the Apple App Store.
2. Install the Android application from the Google Play Store.
3. The Windows 8 and Windows Phone clients are included in the download.

Sharing Client Code across Device Types

One of the cool things about the sample is that each mobile client has a native user-interface for each device type, but via Xamarin mono roughly 60% of the client code (including REST service calls, data communication, security, etc.) is shared across all device types and written entirely in C#.

Sharing a Single Azure Cloud Service Backend across Device Types

Also, all clients across all devices work against the single, common Windows Azure Cloud Service backend.  The backend is a Windows Azure RESTful service that scales out across as many middle-tier compute instances as you want. The data tier has also been specifically designed to optionally take advantage of Windows Azure SQL Database Federation for data tier scale out.

More Details

The focus of the sample is thus two-fold:

1. Cloud-connected mobile applications: Illustrate how to adapt existing applications and services to extend the reach to all major mobile platforms, including Apple iPhone/iPad, Android devices, Windows 8, and HTML5, with shared client code across device types.
2. Achieving backend scale: Illustrate the use of SQL Database Federation for data-tier scale-out, in conjunction with Windows Azure Cloud Services, including optional use of Windows Azure Service Bus for durable, asynchronous messaging.

View Technical Presentation and Documents Online

I highly encourage developers to also check out the following materials that cover the application itself, and the core technologies used:

1. StockTrader 6 online technical presentation (1 hour)  
2. StockTrader 6 Technical Whitepaper
3. SQL Database Federations Deep-dive presentation (1 hour)

You can post questions and discuss the StockTrader 6 sample application via the discussion forum on MSDN, which is easily accessed on the MSDN landing page.