Chapter 4. Storing Your Data

"The desktop metaphor was invented because one, you were a standalone device, and two, you had to manage your own storage. That's a very big thing in a desktop world. And that may go away. You may not have to manage your own storage. You may not store much before too long."

—Steve Jobs

This chapter describes the different storage services Windows Azure offers. It describes typical scenarios that touch the Geotopia case. It is possible to store geographical information for the location-based messaging capabilities in Geotopia. It can also save user profile information, in addition to standard Facebook and Twitter profile information. Geotopia can also store media such as video and graphics that can be part of the geotopics users can post.

In this chapter, we will describe and demonstrate how to use table storage, blobs, queues, the content delivery network, and SQL Azure and its different services, for example synchronization.