The role of the web

In Azure, a web role is an HTTP or HTTPS endpoint, and so a web role can include both front-end websites as well as web services. Web roles can also make outbound connections to web services via HTTP.

Web roles can access Azure storage services (queue, blob, or table) via either the REST API or Windows Azure Storage Client Library, and can also connect to SQL Azure. Azure uses IIS7 and supports FastCGI for interpreted languages such as PHP or native code. Azure supports additional IIS modules such as the URL rewrite module.

Web roles can be an important way to collect or distribute information. Information can be supplied or collected via web services, or users can access websites to perform any number of functions.

With a few small differences, web development using Azure is nearly identical to standard web development. Microsoft is making a concerted effort to support a number of platforms and languages. In our example, we'll use Visual Studio 2008 and VB.NET, but SDKs...