Book Image

Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook

By : Neil Mackenzie
Book Image

Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook

By: Neil Mackenzie

Overview of this book

The Windows Azure platform is Microsoft's Platform-as-a-Service environment for hosting services and data in the cloud. It provides developers with on-demand computing, storage, and service connectivity capabilities that facilitate the hosting of highly scalable services in Windows Azure datacenters across the globe. This practical cookbook will show you advanced development techniques for building highly scalable cloud-based services using the Windows Azure platform. It contains over 80 practical, task-based, and immediately usable recipes covering a wide range of advanced development techniques for building highly scalable services to solve particular problems/scenarios when developing these services on the Windows Azure platform. Packed with reusable, real-world recipes, the book starts by explaining the various access control mechanisms used in the Windows Azure platform. Next you will see the advanced features of Windows Azure Blob storage, Windows Azure Table storage, and Windows Azure Queues. The book then dives deep into topics such as developing Windows Azure hosted services, using Windows Azure Diagnostics, managing hosted services with the Service Management API, using SQL Azure and the Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus. You will see how to use several of the latest features such as VM roles, Windows Azure Connect, startup tasks, and the Windows Azure AppFabric Caching Service.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Connecting to SQL Azure with ADO.NET


An application communicates with SQL Azure using the same tabular data stream (TDS) format used in communicating with Microsoft SQL Server. This simplifies the task of migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to SQL Azure as an application need only change to the appropriate connection string to use SQL Azure.

When a SQL Azure server is provisioned, it is assigned a fully qualified DNS name of the form: SERVER_NAME.database.windows.net. A database name must be provided when the SQL Azure database is created. SQL Azure logins are created in precisely the same way they are in Microsoft SQL Server. It is conventional to specify SQL Azure logins in the form LOGIN@SERVER_NAME. All communication with SQL Azure is over an encrypted channel and it is recommended that the server certificate used with this channel not be trusted. This leads to a connection string like:

Data Source=SERVER_NAME.database.windows.net;Initial Catalog=DATABASE_NAME;
User ID=LOGIN@SERVER_NAME...