Windows Azure - tutorial.wmlcloud.com

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A common design practice with REST services is to make the addressing (the manner in which target resources are addressed) as intuitive as possible. The social bookmarking site Delicious is a great example of this.

Cloud Services with Windows Azure : A Web Service in Windows Azure

In this section example, we take a closer look at a Web service that is deployed to Windows Azure in order to better understand the code-level impacts of moving a service to a cloud.

Cloud Services with Windows Azure : Hello World in Windows Azure

If you are carrying out the upcoming steps with Visual Studio 2008, you will need to be in an elevated mode (such as Administrator). A convenient way of determining whether the mode setting is correct is to press the F5 key in order to enter debug mode.

Cloud Services with Windows Azure : Windows Azure Roles

A cloud service in Windows Azure will typically have multiple concurrent instances. Each instance may be running all or a part of the service’s codebase. As a developer, you control the number and type of roles that you want running your service.

Cloud Services with Windows Azure : Windows Azure Platform Overview

The Windows Azure platform is an Internet-scale cloud computing services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers. Windows tools provide functionality to build solutions that include a cloud services operating system and a set of developer services

Cloud Services with Windows Azure : Cloud Computing 101

Just like service-oriented computing, cloud computing is a term that represents many diverse perspectives and technologies. In this book, our focus is on cloud computing in relation to SOA and Windows Azure.

SOA with .NET and Windows Azure : Orchestration Patterns with WF - Compensating Service Transaction

With WF, compensation logic can be defined via the graphic design by dragging-and-dropping activities, just as you would define regular workflow logic.

SOA with .NET and Windows Azure : Orchestration Patterns with WF - State Repository

Orchestrations are the central place where the flow of business processes are controlled. You could say that the properties of an orchestration and the current point of execution are the state of a process instance

SOA with .NET and Windows Azure : Orchestration Patterns with WF - Process Centralization

Centralized Process Maintenance An advantage of creating applications using workflows is the ability to define the workflow graphically, which is why WF includes a designer for Visual Studio.

SOA with .NET and Windows Azure : Process Abstraction and Orchestrated Task Services (part 4) - Publishing WF Workflows as REST Services

WCF in .NET 3.5 added the “Web Programming Model” to bring the SOA programming model to REST endpoints. The webHttpBinding abstracted REST endpoints in the same way basicHttpBinding allowed access to SOAP endpoints.

SOA with .NET and Windows Azure : Process Abstraction and Orchestrated Task Services (part 3)

When taking into account the Service Discoverability principle and the Metadata Centralization pattern, it is worth noting that because service interfaces for workflows are based on either ASMX or WCF technology, WF orchestrations expose the discovery interfaces provided by these technologies

SOA with .NET and Windows Azure : Process Abstraction and Orchestrated Task Services (part 2)

WF 4.0 changes the programming model for workflows in that workflows, and consequently Workflow Services, are exclusively developed either declaratively in XAML or imperatively in a .NET language, such as C#. Workflows are strongly typed with interfaces defined via InParameter, OutParameter and InOutParameter properties.

SOA with .NET and Windows Azure : Process Abstraction and Orchestrated Task Services (part 1) - Workflows Published as ASMX Services

Visual Studio offers the “Publish as Web Service” option to expose a body of workflow logic as an ASMX Web service. It requires the definition of a .NET interface that serves as the formal contract for the service

Service-Orientation with .NET : Service Composition and Orchestration Basics - Orchestration (part 2)

Whereas regular task services tend to encapsulate parent business process logic that can be executed within reasonable timeframes as part of single, runtime service activities, orchestrations offer the ability to create and manage long-running service activities.

Service-Orientation with .NET : Service Composition and Orchestration Basics - Orchestration (part 1)

Orchestration builds upon service composition by aiming to establish a physical environment capable of centrally executing and governing multiple automated business processes. The Orchestration compound pattern represents such an environment via the co-existent application of a set of specific patterns

SOA with .NET and Windows Azure : Service Composition 101 (part 2)

With the potential for Capability Recomposition to be applied frequently, a given service can find itself participating in different ways within a given service composition.

SOA with .NET and Windows Azure : Service Composition 101 (part 1)

One of the fundamental characteristics that distinguish service-oriented technology architecture from other forms of distributed architecture is composition-centricity, meaning that there is a baseline requirement to inherently support both the composition and re-composition of the moving parts that comprise a given solution.

SOA Security with .NET and Windows Azure Security (part 2) - Windows Azure Platform AppFabric Access Control Overview

The Identity Metasystem model, is the foundational architecture implemented by Access Control. Access Control exists as the cloud-based service that manages the trust relationships, credentials, identities, roles, and privileges, and also acts as an STS that issues claims and handles claims transformations to enable the use of claims-based identity in enforcing secured access to services.

SOA Security with .NET and Windows Azure Security (part 1) - Cloud Computing Security 101

Cloud-based services and service-oriented solutions deployed on cloud platforms can typically leverage and be designed with existing security frameworks

Running a healthy service in the cloud : Better together for scaling

The thermostat in your home is a simple component of a common control system. Other examples include the cruise control in your car, the autopilot in a plane, and many manufacturing systems

Running a healthy service in the cloud : Using the service management API (part 4) - Changing configuration and dynamically scaling your application

One of the golden promises of cloud computing is the dynamic allocation of resources to your service. It’s really cool that you can deploy a service from nothing to 20 servers, but you also want to be able to change that from 20 servers to 30 servers if your service experiences a spike of some sort.

Running a healthy service in the cloud : Using the service management API (part 3) - Automating a deployment

Even though you can do everything you need through the naked REST API of the service management service, it’s a lot easier to use something that provides a higher level of abstraction. REST is fine, but it’s too low-level for us on a daily basis.

Running a healthy service in the cloud : Using the service management API (part 2) - Listing your services and containers

You’re going to use the WebRequest class to work with the REST call you’ll be making. You need to pass in the URI of the call you want to make. The following listing shows how to use REST to query for a list of services.

Running a healthy service in the cloud : Using the service management API (part 1) - Setting up the management credentials

The service management API has a lot of power, so all of its calls and responses must be secure. All calls are transferred over HTTPS, using a signed certificate that you associate with your Azure account

Running a healthy service in the cloud : Transferring diagnostic data

The diagnostic agent does a great job of collecting all the local data and storing it on the machine it’s running on. But if the diagnostic information is never moved to Azure storage, it won’t be any good to anyone.

Running a healthy service in the cloud : Configuring the diagnostic agent (part 3)

Windows Azure Diagnostics covers a lot of the diagnostic sources you might use to troubleshoot an issue with your system. It covers IIS logs, performance counters, Windows event logs, and several other things.

Running a healthy service in the cloud : Configuring the diagnostic agent (part 2) - Diagnostic host configuration

You can change the configuration for the agent with code that’s running in the role that’s collecting data, code that’s in another role, or code that’s running outside Azure

Running a healthy service in the cloud : Configuring the diagnostic agent (part 1) - Default configuration

When the diagnostic agent is first started, it has a default configuration. The default configuration collects the Windows Azure trace, diagnostic infrastructure logs, and IIS 7.0 logs automatically

Running a healthy service in the cloud : Diagnostics in the cloud

Every API, tool, log, and data source is the same way it was, which keeps the data sources known and well documented. The diagnostics team provides a small process called MonAgentHost.exe that’s started on your instances.

SOA Security with .NET and Windows Azure : Windows Identity Foundation (part 3)

WCF supports all the WS-* standards used by Windows Cardspace, including WS-MetadataExchange, WS-Security, WS-SecurityPolicy, WS-Trust, as well as the Identity Metasystem itself.

SOA Security with .NET and Windows Azure : Windows Identity Foundation (part 2) - Windows Cardspace & Active Directory Federation Services

Windows Cardspace is a part of WIF that acts as an identity selector. A large underpinning of the Windows Cardspace mechanisms is mutual authentication.

SOA Security with .NET and Windows Azure : Windows Identity Foundation (part 1) - Digital Identity

Digital identity is a set of claims in a security token that express properties about a subject or user. It identifies a person or a thing in the digital environment where identities are managed differently by different organizations

SQL Azure and relational data : Common SQL Azure scenarios

People are using SQL Azure in their applications in two general scenarios: near data and far data. These terms refer to how far away the code that’s calling into SQL Server is from the data.

SQL Azure and relational data : Limitations of SQL Azure

You can’t use the USE command in SQL Azure because the routing layer is stateful, because the underlying TDS protocol is session-based. When you connect to a server, a session is created, which then executes your commands.

SQL Azure and relational data : Migrating an application to SQL Azure

One of the goals Microsoft had in delivering SQL Azure was to make it as easy as possible to migrate an existing application and its database to their Azure platform.

SQL Azure and relational data : Managing your database

SQL Azure is heavily automated, and it protects you from the concerns of the physical infrastructure. This frees you up to focus completely on managing your database.

Authentication and Authorization with WCF (part 3) - Claims-Based Authorization

A claim represents a right with respect to a particular value. The right can be considered an action, such as read and write, or it can posses a value that can be viewed as some system resource, such as a database, a file, or an operation

Authentication and Authorization with WCF (part 2) - Role-Based Authorization

Authorization is the practice of managing access to protected resources based on the rights of an individual consumer or a class of consumers.

Authentication and Authorization with WCF (part 1) - Direct and Brokered Authentication

When aggregating services into compositions, new requirements emerge for authentication. In the past, monolithic systems were able to take into account certain assumptions about the security context from which an application was accessed.

Connecting in the cloud with AppFabric : Listening for messages on the bus

Changing your application to listen for messages from the bus instead of the HTTP endpoint is easy. You need to change the binding and address information to point to the bus.

Connecting in the cloud with AppFabric : Connecting with the Service Bus

The second major piece of Windows Azure platform AppFabric is the Service Bus. As adoption of service-oriented architecture (SOA) increases, developers are seeking better ways of connecting their services together.

Example: A return to our string-reversing service (part 4) - Configuring the ACS namespace

The ACS needs to be configured for your service. You’ve already learned how to define a namespace, and the namespace is a container for the rest of the ACS configuration

Example: A return to our string-reversing service (part 3) - Sending a token as a client & Attaching the token

In this case, our biggest customer, Maine Reversal, will be building this client. We’ve set up a trusted relationship with them by swapping keys and configuring them in ACS

Example: A return to our string-reversing service (part 2) - Accepting tokens from ACS & Checking the token

You’ll need to upgrade the service so it can receive and work with ACS tokens. This code is fairly trivial, and much of it is supplied in the AppFabric SDK, which you’ll have to install in order to follow these next steps

Example: A return to our string-reversing service (part 1) - Putting ACS in place & Reviewing the string-reversal service

Your first step in upgrading the service is to support a simple scenario where customers will have a shared secret (similar to a username and password) to access the service.

Connecting in the cloud with AppFabric : Controlling access with ACS

When you move all of these concerns out of your own network and into the cloud, these concerns become even bigger issues. The application is no longer sitting right next to the source of authentication; the identity boundaries have been broken

Joining dynamic and infrequently changing data together

If data synchronization is a big concern and your dynamic data is a very small set of data, you could take the hit of performing a client-side join.

Enterprise Service Bus with BizTalk Server and Windows Azure : Mapping the Microsoft Platform to the Enterprise Service Bus Pattern

The ESB is represented as a compound pattern comprised of a series of core and optional patterns that co-exist to establish an environment with a specific feature-set.

Enterprise Service Bus with BizTalk Server and Windows Azure : Governance Considerations

ESB governance is a multi-faceted issue, and can become complex depending on the runtime management requirements and the necessary involvement on an organizational level.

Enterprise Service Bus with BizTalk Server and Windows Azure : Cloud-Enabling the ESB with Windows Azure

By extending the ESB on-ramp to the Windows Azure platform, we can address several of these concerns. Windows Azure provides the Windows Azure platform Service Bus and the Windows Azure platform Access Control Service