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

Managing Windows Azure queues


A Windows Azure Queue Service queue provides a way to decouple the connection between two roles, so that one role can request another role to perform some task. The producing role inserts into the queue a message containing the details of the request. The consuming role polls the queue and, on getting the message, performs the associated task. If necessary, the consuming role can insert a message in another queue indicating the completion of the task.

A more general view is that the Queue service provides a way to manage the processing of a task, so that it is more robust against failure. Windows Azure is a scalable system and it is possible that a component of the system could fail at any time, causing the loss of any work in progress. The extent of this loss can be minimized by breaking the task into individual steps. The loss of work-in-progress for an individual step is less significant than that of the overall task. The Queue service supports this functionality...