Windows Azure
I'm pleased and proud to announce that my new book "Visual Basic 2012 Unleashed" is available, both paperback and digital edition!
This time I had the honor of featuring Lucian Wischik, the VB Specification Lead at Microsoft, as the author of a great foreword.
As usual, it has really been a hard work, but fortunately working with a great team (including Matthew Kleinwaks as the tech editor) makes things easier. The book has been fully updated to target the .NET Framework 4.5 and the new features in the Visual Basic programming Language, such as the Async/Await pattern, new tools in the...
Migrating a SQL Server database to the cloud, so SQL Azure, is with no doubt an interesting scenario. Often this process is not easy and usually just executing a SQL script on Azure is not enough to get full compatibility. So a number of volunteers has created an open source tool called SQL Azure Migration Wizard, available on CodePlex.
This tool allows to perform a number of tasks, such as analysis over SQL scripts to check for compatibility between on-premise and the cloud, or a full database migration including data.
For instance, imagine you want to migrate to SQL Azure the famous Northwind...
With this blog post I would like to start a series about how we can interact from Visual Basic 2010 with the on-line Cloud Storage offered by Windows Azure. My goal is not discussing what Windows Azure is and how the storage works (except for some necessary hints), since you can find more detailed documentation across the Internet; instead I will show you how to write code for managing containers and blobs in your storage account.
My assumptions about you
I assume that you already have an account on Windows Azure and that you already created your storage account. If you need...
I just released onto CodePlex a new tool called Azure Blob Studio 2011. This tool provides an easy way to manage files on your Windows Azure's blob storage, including both the online and developer accounts; it is available in two editions:
stand-alone WPF client
extension for Visual Studio 2010 (precisely a tool window)
The stand-alone client is available via a ClickOnce installer, whereas the extension is available as a VSIX package from the Visual Studio Gallery (and the Extension Manager tool in VS). With this approach you can receive updates easily.
The application has...
Among the available data sources that Visual Studio LightSwitch allows connecting to, since the current beta, we can find SQL Azure databases. SQL Azure is the database "on the cloud" of the Windows Azure Services Platform. The cool thing is that once you have your database on SQL Azure, the way you connect to it does not change.
Once LightSwitch is running, click "Attach to an external database". Next select Database as the data source:
Next you have to specify connection parameters such as the SQL Azure server name, user name and password (you work with SQL authentication) and, of course, the database name:
In my case...
Some time ago I published onto CodePlex the first version of a WPF client to manage files on the Windows Azure blob storage. I just updated the application so that it can take advantage of the July 2009 CTP of Windows Azure SDK APIs removing also some unused references to unit testing assemblies that caused crashes with ClickOnce installations.
If you are interested in Windows Azure and you need a simple tool for uploading and removing files and folders in the blob storage without reinventing the wheel, try to take a look at its CodePlex workspace :-)
The client's source code is in Visual Basic 2008, while...
If you are interested in developing applications for the clouds and you have signed up for an account on the Windows Azure Services Platform, you might have noticed that uploading files to the Blob storage is not immediate. Of course you could take advantage from the source code shipped with the Azure SDK for programmatically managing blobs.
To make things easier, I decided to create my own client for managing files on my Blob storage and I did it with Visual Basic 2008 and Windows Presentation Foundation. The source code for this application is available on CodePlex and you can find it by...
I just learnt from Steve Marx's blog that the Windows Azure Team has released some "How-do-I" videos on the Windows Azure Developer Portal from MSDN.
The videos are related to creating and deploying applications for Windows Azure (5 videos) and getting started with .NET Services (2 videos). If you are interested into or just curious about Windows Azure development, these videos are the best starting point for learning this new great technology.
The videos are available on this page.
Alessandro