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Microsoft Silverlight 5 and Windows Azure Enterprise Integration
Microsoft Silverlight 5 and Windows Azure Enterprise Integration

Microsoft Silverlight 5 and Windows Azure Enterprise Integration: A step-by-step guide to creating and running scalable Silverlight Enterprise Applications on the Windows Azure platform with this book and ebook

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Profile Icon David Burela
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Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon 4.3 (4 Ratings)
Paperback Mar 2012 304 pages 1st Edition
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Arrow left icon
Profile Icon David Burela
Arrow right icon
$19.99 per month
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon 4.3 (4 Ratings)
Paperback Mar 2012 304 pages 1st Edition
eBook
$27.98 $39.99
Paperback
$65.99
Subscription
Free Trial
Renews at $19.99p/m
eBook
$27.98 $39.99
Paperback
$65.99
Subscription
Free Trial
Renews at $19.99p/m

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Microsoft Silverlight 5 and Windows Azure Enterprise Integration

Chapter 2. Introduction to Windows Azure

The Windows Azure platform comprises a number of services that can be used independently or combined together to create cloud-enabled applications. In order to create scalable solutions, it is important to understand how all the pieces of a platform relate to each other.

In this chapter, we will discuss the following topics:

  • Windows Azure

  • Developing applications locally

  • Resourcing issues within the enterprises

Windows Azure

Windows Azure is a set of services that enables the enterprises to create scalable, fault-tolerant web applications that are hosted within the owned datacenters and operated by Microsoft. Microsoft abstracts the infrastructure for hosting the applications, so that you can focus on your application and features. The Windows Azure platform provides on-demand compute, storage, and middleware services that can be used to host, scale, and manage web applications.

The web applications hosted by Azure can be public-facing websites, secured...

Windows Azure


Windows Azure is a set of services that enables the enterprises to create scalable, fault-tolerant web applications that are hosted within the owned datacenters and operated by Microsoft. Microsoft abstracts the infrastructure for hosting the applications, so that you can focus on your application and features. The Windows Azure platform provides on-demand compute, storage, and middleware services that can be used to host, scale, and manage web applications.

The web applications hosted by Azure can be public-facing websites, secured enterprise applications, or any other standard application that would be hosted in a datacenter. Microsoft hosts datacenters at different strategic locations around the world. Offering a range of hosted datacenters across the world allows the enterprises to deploy their applications to geolocations that are physically close to their expected users, lowering latency.

Windows Azure automates the allocation and usage of the underlying hardware resources...

Developing applications locally


Microsoft has made it easy for the developers to develop Windows Azure applications on their local machines. When the Windows Azure SDK and tools are installed, a basic simulation of the Azure compute and storage services is included. This gives the developers the ability to run and debug Azure applications locally.

The compute service is simulated by spawning multiple instances of the role, rather than provisioning multiple virtual machines. The system is still limited by the resources of the development machine. So, creating 20 instances of a role would result in a degraded performance.

Storage services are simulated by creating REST endpoints on the local development machine. While developing applications, the endpoint URL just needs to be set to the local endpoint. These endpoints are only accessible from the local machine and are not exposed on the network.

SQL Azure is not directly simulated, but can be done by connecting it to a local Microsoft SQL Server...

Summary


The Windows Azure platform can help enterprises to be more agile by enabling them to quickly deploy new applications or scale as the demand changes. There are many components offered by the Windows Azure and it is important to be aware of the role that each plays.

Splitting a large complex application into discrete roles can help to lower the complexity of an application and allow each piece to be scaled independently. However, also remember that scaling a single role over multiple instances brings new development challenges while trying to share the state between machines.

In the next chapter, we will explore how Windows Azure and Silverlight can be used together within the same application. We will also see techniques for scaling WCF services over multiple Azure instances.

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Key benefits

  • This book and e-book details how enterprise Silverlight applications can be written to take advantage of the key features of Windows Azure to create scalable applications
  • Provides an overview of the Windows Azure platform and how the different technologies can be integrated within your enterprise application
  • Examines ways that distributed asynchronous systems can be created to allow scalable processing
  • Learn from a distinguished author with tips, tricks, and hands on experience to create scalable enterprise Silverlight applications that run on the Windows Azure platform

Description

Microsoft Silverlight is a powerful development platform for creating rich media applications and line of business applications for the web and desktop. Microsoft Windows Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. Silverlight allows you to integrate with Windows Azure and create and run Silverlight Enterprise Applications on Windows Azure This book shows you how to create and run Silverlight Enterprise Applications on Windows Azure. Integrating Silverlight and Windows Azure can be difficult without guidance. This book will take you through all the steps to create and run Silverlight Enterprise Applications on the Windows Azure platform. The book starts by providing the steps required to set up the development environment, providing an overview of Azure. The book then dives deep into topics such as hosting Silverlight applications in Azure, using Azure Queues in Silverlight, storing data in Azure table storage from Silverlight, accessing Azure blob storage from Silverlight, relational data with SQL Azure and RIA, and manipulating data with RIA services amongst others.

Who is this book for?

If you are an application developer who wants to build and run Silverlight Enterprise applications using Azure storage, WCF Services, and ASP providers, then this book is for you. You should have a working knowledge of Silverlight and Expression Blend. However, knowledge of Azure is not required since the book covers how to integrate the two technologies in detail.

What you will learn

  • Learn the components that make up the Azure platform and know which components to use in each of your applications
  • Understand how to partition your relational database into shards to improve scalability and performance
  • Discover how to use frameworks such as WCF RIA Services to speed up the development of your line of business applications
  • Learn how to configure your development environment quickly by using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer
  • Deploy your enterprise applications onto Windows Azure servers
  • Use AppFabric caching to improve the performance of your applications
  • Understand what Azure Storage is, how it compares to SQL Azure, and when to choose one over the other
  • Expose your data via OData to allow Silverlight, javascript, and other web enabled technologies to access and query your data

Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Mar 19, 2012
Length: 304 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781849683128
Vendor :
Microsoft
Category :
Languages :

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Product Details

Publication date : Mar 19, 2012
Length: 304 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781849683128
Vendor :
Microsoft
Category :
Languages :

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Table of Contents

12 Chapters
Getting Started Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Introduction to Windows Azure Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Hosting Silverlight Applications in Azure Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Using Azure Queues with Silverlight Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Accessing Azure Blob Storage from Silverlight Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Storing Data in Azure Table Storage from Silverlight Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Relational Data with SQL Azure and Entity Framework Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
RIA Services and SQL Azure Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Exposing OData to Silverlight Applications Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Web-scale Considerations Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Application Authentication Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Using Azure AppFabric Caching to Improve Performance Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon 4.3
(4 Ratings)
5 star 25%
4 star 75%
3 star 0%
2 star 0%
1 star 0%
Brian Noyes May 25, 2012
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
I think this book is an outstanding read and resource for developers and architects who are getting started with Windows Azure and what is involved in building cloud-based solutions. It does a great job of covering most of the capabilities exposed by the Windows Azure platform, and tying them into a Silverlight application context through the samples presented throughout the chapters. You do not have to be a Silverlight client developer to benefit from this book - any .NET developer who wants to start building applications leveraging the Windows Azure cloud can start with this book to get a great sense of what the individual features of Windows Azure are and how they can tie into either a web-based front end client like Silverlight or ASP.NET or even how to tie them in with back-end services that support something like a WPF or Metro client app (even though those are not explicitly covered in the book).I won't do a chapter-by-chapter break down of the book, a quick look at the TOC will give a good sense of what is covered. One of the main downsides to this book I think is the title. It is less about Silverlight than it is about Windows Azure (and as mentioned, you definitely don't need to be a Silverlight developer to get a lot out of the book if you are new to Azure), and the "Enterprise Integration" part of the title is kind of vague and misleading. The "integration" part is one of the strong aspects of the book, it does a good job of first educating you on what each of the Windows Azure services is, and then shows how to build applications that leverage one or more of those services in an integrated fashion.You are not going to learn how to build Silverlight applications from this book, or even become an expert in Windows Azure. Each feature of Azure really needs a book unto itself to achieve expert level knowledge in it. But this book is great for building the big picture of what each Windows Azure capability is, what it does for your architecture, how to use it from a basics perspective, and also how to tie it in with other Azure services and your application architecture.Some of the things you get expose to in the book are:- How to get your development environment set up to do Azure development, as well as a good survey of related and useful tools for building Silverlight and web client application on Azure- A good survey of all the Windows Azure features- How to get web client and Silverlight client applications and services hosted in Windows Azure web roles- Working with Azure queues, blob storage, and tables- Working with SQL Azure, Entity Framework, WCF RIA Services, and OData (very light coverage on the latter three, but enough to see how they fit into an Azure deployment scenario on top of SQL Azure)- Basics of securing your Azure hosted applications- Scaling and using AppFabric CacheBottom line, think it is definitely a good read for someone wanting to get their hands dirty for the first time doing some cloud Azure development, especially (but not only) if you are a Silverlight developer.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Neil Mackenzie Jun 07, 2012
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
Late last year I was looking for information on Silverlight and Windows Azure and came across a RAW (preview) eBook named Microsoft Silverlight 4 and Windows Azure Enterprise Integration written by David Burela. The eBook looked to be just what I needed so I bought it and found it to be helpful. David has now finished the book which Packt has released as Microsoft Silverlight 5 and Windows Azure Enterprise Integration.There are a lot of books that go deep into Windows Azure technology, such as my Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook. Going forward I think we will see more books like David's that show how to integrate Windows Azure with other technologies such as, in this case, Silverlight. The book is targeted at Silverlight developers who want to use Windows Azure to provide back-end services such as scalable storage with the Windows Azure Storage Service and relational storage in SQL Azure.The primary issue with using client-side technologies to access data stored in Windows Azure is authentication. Both the Windows Azure Storage Service and SQL Azure require that the caller be authenticated using either an authentication token or a password. It is not safe to expose these credentials in client-side code where they could be accessed by a malicious user. This book primarily focuses on how to use Windows Azure compute services to proxy access to secured Windows Azure features from Silverlight.The book begins with a chapter describing how to get started with Silverlight and Windows Azure and provides information on additional tools that can facilitate development. The next chapter provides an overview of Windows Azure. Chapter 3 brings the introductory material to a conclusion by showing how to host a Silverlight application in Windows Azure.The book continues with a sequence of chapters describing the queue, blob and table features of the Windows Azure Storage Service. Each chapter describes the feature and then provides a fully worked out sample showing how to access it from Silverlight. Several chapters provide various ways to access SQL Azure data from Silverlight and, again, come with fully worked out samples. Techniques covered include Entity Framework, RIA Services and OData. Finally the book closes with a few chapters discussing: how to scale-out the Windows Azure service (CQRS); authentication; and the Windows Azure Caching Service.The coverage of Windows Azure is not as detailed as would be found in a book focused exclusively on Windows Azure. However, I like that the book provides a convenient reference for various ways of accessing secured Windows Azure resources from Silverlight. Indeed, the techniques are general enough to be applicable to any client accessing secured Windows Azure resources.(Full disclosure) Packt asked if I would be willing to review the book on my blog and provided an eBook to allow me to do so. However, as I pointed out earlier, I actually bought my own copy of the book last year. You can never have too many copies of an eBook.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Gizi Ben-Tovim Sep 27, 2012
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
I found the book very useful to start using Azure.It gives a very good list of required components and tools and where to get them from.It also has a good review of Azure features and how to use them from Silverlight.What I missed, is more material about how to deploy and update the projects on the cloud, there are only a few pages about this, and only from Visual Studio.Also nothing was said about the old and new Azure portals and how to use them, which I think could save time for the beginner.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Adwait Ullal May 09, 2012
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
This book covers the basic of Windows Azure development using Silverlight as a presentation tool. The author assumes reader's familiartiy with Silverlight.Though it delves into the intricacy and differences of developing in Azure, it does not cover topics such as:- (Application) Integration- Application Monitoring- Release and Change managementand other "enterprise" topics.A good book for a Azure beginner who knows Silverlight and is ready to make the leap. Enterprise developers and architects will be disappointed.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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