Tag: Azure
All the articles with the tag "Azure".
-
Vote to help me speak at the MIX 2010 conference!
Everybody knows the Microsoft MIX event, right? The one in Las Vegas? The one with all the fancy web-related stuff? Rings a bell? Ok, great. In the beginning of December 2009, Microsoft did an open call for speakers, which I answered with some session proposals. Who doesn’t want to go to Vegas, right? The open call proposals have been processed (150+ sessions submitted, wow!) and a voting has started. Yes, you hear me coming: please go ahead and vote for a session I submitted. Voting ends January 15th, 2010. Since I could not decide which color of the voting banner matched best with my blog’s theme, I decided to put them all three online: Thanks in advance! PS: There's also Elijah Manor, Justin Etheredge, K. Scott Allen, and many others who submitted good looking sessions.
-
Cloud computing and the Windows Azure Services Platform (KU Leuven)
It was a fun session yesterday at KU Leuven university! I did a session on cloud computing and Windows Azure there for the IEEE Student Branch Leuven. Abstract: "This session covers the basics of the Windows Azure Services Platform and drills into some architectural challenges. Learn what components the Windows Azure Services Platform is built of and how they can be leveraged in building a scalable and reliable application." If you want more info about Windows Azure and how to develop, architect or benefit from the platform as a whole, register freely at the Azure User Group Belgium. Thank you for attending!
-
MSDN - Converting an existing ASP.NET application to Windows Azure
Back from PDC 2009 with a lot of information on Windows Azure, I did an MSDN Live Meeting on ASP.NET and Windows Azure today. Here's the slide deck and demo code. Abstract: "Put your stuff in the cloud! Windows Azure allows you to take advantage of cloud computing infranstructure for hosting, computing, and storage of your applications. In this demo filled session we take an existing ASP.Net Application and move it to be hosted in Windows Azure, while taking advantage of Windows Azure storage." Example code can be downloaded here: MSDN - Converting an existing ASP.NET application to Windows Azure.zip (2.01 mb) If you want more info about Windows Azure and how to develop, architect or benefit from the platform as a whole, register freely at the Azure User Group Belgium.
-
Microsoft PDC09 keynote highlights
Finally found some time to write a short blog post on the announcements this morning at PDC 2009. Ray Ozzie started the keynote this morning, focusing on Microsoft’s “three-screen” vision for the future. There will be three screens connected to the cloud: TV, (handheld) devices and of course good old PC. This vision is driven by some key players: Windows 7, Internet Explorer, Silverlight and Windows Azure. Make sure to have a look at these four if you want to play in this future. Some announcements were made as well:
-
Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse for PHP developers
Pfew! Finally I can spread the word on this! While working on the Windows Azure SDK for PHP, I had the opportunity to test-drive the development builds of the WIndows Azure Tools for Eclipse. Today, the project has been released officially at www.windowsazure4e.org. Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse provides a series of wizards and utilities that allow developers to write, debug, and configure for and deploy PHP applications to Windows Azure. The plug-in also bundles the existing Windows Azure SDK for PHP, which was introduced a few months ago. This SDK provides a simple API for PHP developers who use the Windows Azure storage component, making it very easy to use the blob, queue and table data storage features. Just visit the project site at http://phpazure.codeplex.com/.
-
Upcoming sessions on Azure, PHP and ASP.NET
It’s going to be a filled end of 2009… There’s Microsoft PDC which I will be attending and will probably cause me some sleepless nights (both due to jetlag and due to all the new stuff that will be released). Next to that, I’ll also be doing some sessions in the next few weeks. Here’s a list… Date Event 28 october 2009 PHPBenelux Meeting: PHP and Microsoft technologies I’ll be doing two sessions here: · PHP and Silverlight, together with Kevin Dockx “This session covers the basics of Microsoft Silverlight and demonstrates how PHP developers can benefit from developing rich client-side components that run in the web browser using Silverlight and PHP.”
-
Simple API for Cloud Application Services
Zend, in co-operation with IBM, Microsoft, Rackspace, GoGrid and other cloud leaders, today have released their Simple API for Cloud Application Services project. The Simple Cloud API project empowers developers to use one interface to interact with the cloud services offered by different vendors. These vendors are all contributing to this open source project, making sure the Simple Cloud API “fits like a glove” on top of their service. Zend Cloud adapters will be available for services such as: Note that the Simple Cloud API is focused on providing a simple and re-usable interface across different cloud services. This implicates that specific features a service offers will not be available using the Simple Cloud API.
-
SQL Azure Manager
A few days ago, the SQL Server Team announced the availability of three major CTP’s and several new upcoming projects in the SQL related family tree: SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server StreamInsight and SQL Azure. Now that last one is interesting: Microsoft will offer a 1GB or 10GB database server “in the cloud” for a good price.
-
Signed Access Signatures and PHP SDK for Windows Azure
The latest Windows Azure storage release featured a new concept: “Shared Access Signatures”. The idea of those is that you can create signatures for specific resources in blob storage and that you can provide more granular access than the default “all-or-nothing” approach that is taken by Azure blob storage. Steve Marx posted a sample on this, demonstrating how you can provide read access to a blob for a specified amount of minutes, after which the access is revoked. The PHP SDK for Windows Azure is now equipped with a credentials mechanism, based on Signed Access Signatures. Let’s see if we can demonstrate how this would work… Let’s take Steve’s Wazdrop sample and upload a few files, we get a set of permissions:
-
Accessing ServiceConfiguration in FastCGI (PHP) web role
While working on a sample PHP application hosted on Windows Azure, I found that it is nearly impossible to retrieve information from the Windows Azure ServiceConfiguration.cscfg file. Also, it is impossible to write log messages to the Windows Azure Web Role. Well, both are not 100% impossible: you can imagine dirty hacks where you let a ASP.NET page do something from PHP and stuff like that. But how about a clean solution? How about… A PHP extension module? I’ll not be going into detail on how this module was built, but there is a native C++ RoleManager implementation in the Windows Azure samples. Using the resources listed below, I managed to create a PHP extension module, wrapping this RoleManager. The result? You can now retrieve configuration values from the ServiceConfiguration.