In October, 2008, I first read about Microsoft's Azure Platform. I started working with the product soon after wards. I've built a couple of apps, one that has been up and running for about 18 months. I think of Azure as some great stuff. As you can well imagine, because I started really early on, I learned a lot of lessons the hard way. Thankfully, you don't have to. Chris Hay and Brian Prince have produced a book on building applications with Windows Azure. I've been really impressed as I have read it. It has several things that I really like and as a fellow author, I am thankful for. These are:
- The book covers more than the 1.0 immediate release. As a writer, the market wants material immediately. Unfortunately, fast, fast, fast tends to lead to mistakes. Given that Azure 1.0 tools were released at the end of 2009 and their book is coming out in Fall, 2010, they've had the opportunity to get things right.
- The book is based on the tools in Visual Studio 2010. Awesome, show me the most up to date stuff. It's what I'm likely to see going forward.
- Messaging, messaging, messaging. Trying to explain the concept of messages is hard. Until you have used it, its really hard to explain the significance of it. Chris and Brian have devoted a good section of the book to messages and messaging.
- It would have been really easy for Chris and Brain to just talk about Sql Azure. It's what Microsoft is going to push because that's what they will push. Chris and Brian wrote a good amount of material on Sql Azure. They also spent a significant amount of material/pages/time on Table Storage, which is Microsoft's cloud based NoSql product. I personally like Table Storage and find it fairly interesting to work with. I learned a couple of things about Table Storage from reading thier pages on the subject.
Overall, this book will help you as you develop an application that target's Windows Azure. You'll be glad when you buy a copy through
Amazon or
Manning's site.
DESCRIPTION
Cloud-based applications pose an intriguing value proposition for businesses. With an easily scalable, pay-as-you-go model and very small startup costs, the cloud can be a great alternative to systems hosted in-house. Developers are scrambling to understand the impact a cloud-based approach will have on current and future projects.
Azure is Microsoft's full-fledged entry into the "Cloud Services Platform" arena. Unlike other cloud offerings that address only one piece of the puzzle, Azure includes an operating system, a set of developer services, and a data model that can be used individually or together. It's designed to interact seamlessly with other .NET-based components, and leverages your knowledge of Visual Studio, the .NET platform, and SQL Server. It's also fully compatible with multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and XML.
Azure in Action is a fast-paced tutorial intended for architects and developers looking to develop on Windows Azure and the Windows Azure Platform. It's designed both for readers new to cloud concepts and for those familiar with cloud development but new to Azure. After a quick walk through the basics, it guides you all the way from your first app through more advanced concepts of the Windows Azure Platform.
The book starts by looking at the logical and physical architecture of an Azure app, and then moves to the core storage services—binary store, tables and queues. Then, it explores designing and scaling frontend and backend services that run in the cloud. Next, it covers more advanced scenarios in Windows Azure. After covering the core of Azure, it introduces the rest of the Windows Azure Platform with a particular focus on SQL Azure Database.
Table of Contents
Part 1 Welcome to the cloud
1. Getting to know Windows Azure
2. Your first steps with a Web role
Part 2 Understanding the Azure service model
3. How Windows Azure works
4. It's time to run with the service
5. Configuring your service
Part 3: Running your site with web roles
6. Scaling web roles
7. Running native, full trust, and other code
Part 4 Working with blob storage
8. The basics of blobs
9. Uploading and downloading blobs
10. When the blob stands alone Part 5 Working with structured data
11. The Table Service, a whole different entity
12. Working with the Table REST API
13. SQL Azure and relational data
14. Working with different types of data
Part 6 Doing work with messages
15. Processing with worker roles
16. Messaging with the queue
17. Connecting with AppFabric
18. Running a healthy service in the cloud