The Windows Azure Blob Service is the Windows Azure Storage Service feature that manages the storage of file-based entities referred to as blobs. In this chapter, we will focus on the Blob service. In the next two chapters, we will look at the other storage services: the Table service and the Queue service.
The definitive way to access the storage service is through the Windows Azure Storage Service REST API. The Windows Azure Storage Client library is a high-level managed library, included in the Windows Azure SDK, which abstracts the RESTful interface into a set of classes. The Windows Azure Storage Client Protocol classes contained in the Storage Client library expose functionality not provided in the core library classes. Specifically, the protocol classes provide access to the underlying HttpWebRequest object used to invoke the RESTful operations.
Nearly all the recipes in this chapter use the Storage Client library. Scattered through the recipes are examples of how to use...