Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook

Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook

By : Neil Mackenzie

Buy this Book

Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook

By: Neil Mackenzie

Buy this Book

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.

Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

Controlling Access in the Windows Azure Platform

Introduction

Managing Windows Azure Storage Service access keys

Connecting to the Windows Azure Storage Service

Using SetConfigurationSettingPublisher()

Connecting to the storage emulator

Managing access control for containers and blobs

Creating a Shared Access Signature for a container or blob

Using a container-level access policy

Authenticating against the Windows Azure Service Management REST API

Authenticating with the Windows Azure AppFabric Caching Service

Handling Blobs in Windows Azure

Introduction

Setting properties and metadata for a blob

Using blob directories

Creating and using a blob snapshot

Creating and using the root container for blobs

Uploading blocks to a block blob

Uploading a VHD into a page blob

Downloading a blob asynchronously

Optimizing blob uploads and downloads

Using retry policies with blob operations

Copying a blob with the Windows Azure Storage Service REST API

Leasing a blob using the Protocol classes in the Windows Azure Storage Client Library

Using the Windows Azure Content-Delivery Network (CDN)

Going NoSQL with Windows Azure Tables

Introduction

Creating a table

Creating a data model and context for an entity

Using entity group transactions

Diagnosing problems when using the Table service

Handling concurrency with the Table service

Choosing a PartitionKey and RowKey for a table

Using continuation tokens and server-side paging

Performing asynchronous queries

Performing queries in parallel

Handling the WritingEntity and ReadingEntity events

Disconnecting with Windows Azure Queues

Introduction

Managing Windows Azure queues

Adding messages to a queue

Retrieving messages from a queue

Storing large amounts of data for a message

Implementing a backoff when polling a queue

Identifying and handling poison messages

Developing Hosted Services for Windows Azure

Introduction

Choosing the service model for a hosted service

Choosing which Windows Azure storage type to use

Configuring the service model for a hosted service

Hosting multiple websites in a web role

Providing a custom domain name for a hosted service

Implementing HTTPS in a web role

Sharing session state with the Windows Azure AppFabric Caching Service

Using local storage in an instance

Using startup tasks in a Windows Azure Role

Managing upgrades and changes to a hosted service

Handling changes to the configuration and topology of a hosted service

Using an Azure Drive in a hosted service

Using the Azure Drive simulation in thedevelopment environment

Using a VM Role

Using Windows Azure Connect

Consuming data from the Windows Azure MarketPlace DataMarket

Using Web Deploy with Windows Azure

Digging into Windows Azure Diagnostics

Introduction

Initializing the configuration of Windows Azure Diagnostics

Using a configuration file with Windows Azure Diagnostics

Using the Windows Azure Diagnostics trace listener

Performing an on-demand transfer

Implementing custom logging

Accessing data persisted to Windows Azure Storage

Using the Windows Azure Platform PowerShell cmdlets to configure Windows Azure Diagnostics

Using IntelliTrace to diagnose problems with a hosted service

Managing Hosted Services with the Service Management API

Introduction

Creating a Windows Azure hosted service

Deploying an application into a hosted service

Upgrading an application deployed to a hosted service

Retrieving the properties of a hosted service

Autoscaling with the Windows Azure Service Management REST API

Using the Windows Azure Platform PowerShell cmdlets

Using SQL Azure

Introduction

Provisioning a SQL Azure Server

Creating a SQL Azure database

Migrating a database to SQL Azure

Measuring SQL Azure usage

Connecting to SQL Azure with ADO.NET

Handling connection failures to SQL Azure

Scaling out SQL Azure into the Windows Azure Blob Service

Looking at the Windows Azure AppFabric

Introduction

Creating a namespace for the Windows Azure AppFabric

Using the Service Bus as a relay service

Using Service Bus events

Using a Service Bus message buffer

Using the Windows Azure AppFabric Caching service

Index

Customer Reviews

5 star

4 star

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1 star

Adding messages to a queue

The CloudQueue class in the Windows Azure Storage Client Library provides both synchronous and asynchronous methods to add a message to a queue. A message comprises up to 8192 bytes of data. By default, the Storage Client library Base64 encodes message content to ensure that the request payload containing the message is valid XML. This encoding adds overhead that reduces the actual maximum size of a message. The Windows Azure SDK v1.3 added an EncodeMessage property to CloudQueue allowing a message, the content of which is already valid XML, to be sent without being Base64 encoded.

Each message added to a queue has a time-to-live property after which it is deleted automatically. The maximum, and default, time-to-live value is 7 days.

In this recipe, we will learn how to add messages to a queue.

How to do it...

We are going to create a queue and add some messages to it. We do this as follows:

Add a new class named AddMessagesExample to the project.
Set the Target Framework...

Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook

By : Neil Mackenzie

Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook

By: Neil Mackenzie

Overview of this book

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Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook

Adding messages to a queue

How to do it...