Same Old Applications

While developing application for Azure platform developers often need to check the content in the blob storage. Or after publishing the application the view on Storage could be usefull. Don't run and build a new blob viewver because there is one allready published on CodePlex. SpaceBlock is windows forms application for managing:

• Azure Blob Storage area
• SQL Data Services
• Amazon S3 service
• Nirvanix service

You can use SpaceBlock (install with ClickOnce deployment) it to put or delete storage content on any of those services and also watch the REST calls written to log ;-)

While learning Windows Azure I developed simple image resizing application called Azure Image Resizer. It's developed for and hosted by Azure Services Platform. Application is build for exploring Azure Services Platform possibilities and learn about it in practice with Windows Azure SDK and Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio.

Deployment is made thru the Azure Services Developer Portal. I like the way staging/production management works - you can only upload new version to Staging area and after testing it promote to Production.

Application consist of Web Role (UI and managing upload) and Worker Role (unzipping, resizing, zipping in the background) and Azure Storage, Azure Tables and Azure Queues are used. The plan is  to work further on this application adding functionallity based on Live Services, SQL Services, Workflow services etc. and make it sort of showcase or learning playground for Cloud technologies.

Application is online on http://adamec.cloudapp.net/Default.aspx and you can test it. The URL cloudapp.net says: "yes I'm application in the cloud" ;-)

I would like to add something like:

• Integrate Live Services - LiveID authentication
• Integrate SQL Services - storing usage informations
• Workflow Services
• Service Bus
• AJAX or Silverlight uploader

If you have any interesting idea for some Cloud based functionnality please make a comment about it ;-)

In a post Azure Storage Services vs SQL Services I mentioned that we could think of Azure Storage as this is File System for us. After that came the usual question: is there any access to File System from Web Role deployed into Azure environment. Well - there is - usage is simple thru the ILocalResource inteface.

It had to be LocalStorage element (WebRole element child) in Service Definition File ServiceDefinition.csdef.

<LocalStorage name="AIResizerStorage" sizeInMB="2"/>

And this declared local storage is accessible thru the ILocalResource:

ILocalResource myIO = RoleManager.GetLocalResource("AIResizerStorage");

After the initialization you could use the free space in your storage like you use to:

string PathToFile =  Path.Combine(resource.RootPath, "myFileInCloud.txt");
FileStream stream = File.Open(PathToFile , FileMode.Create, FileAccess.ReadWrite);

But be carefull!!! This is non-persisted storage - it exists only while WebRole is up and running. Every suspend or restart of the role will clean the local storage. So this is really a temporary storage and we should have this in mind. It is usefull for caching some data, temporary serialization on IO or upload in chunks for example but for the persisted storage we should stick to Storage Tables or Blobs.

After deploying application on Windows Azure (Staging or Production) there is often need for cleaning Azure Storage Tables on start up of an application. There is two ways of acomplish this task.

• First is deleting the data - iterating thru all the entities in the table and deleting the object by object. If there is a lot of objects in Storage Table this process would result in lot of HTTP requests to the Azure Storage Service (for example: 200 objects = 200 HTTP DELETE calls)
• Second one is deleting the whole table and recreate it. This would run over 2 HTTP calls and in the most scenarious would be faster then deleting objects one by one.

Windows Azure SDK 1.0 came with samples and in the Storage Client sample is TableStorage class - helper class for accessing the table storage service. Usage of this class is good and clean way to start connecting to Azure Storage Services. For deleting the table you could add following method:

And then in the Application_BeginRequest or any other place that suite your app logic you could use it to delete tables that "belongs" to your data model and context.

Of course - you should recreate the tables from your model after this action ;-)

Microsoft push a lot of technologies lately (read Damir Dobrić Live Services Summary post) and it might get us confused with a lot of options for one task. One of many questions that came is how to choose beetween Azure Storage and SQL Services. The names might confuse you 'cause Azure Storage has entites, tables, columns, RowGuid etc. But the truth is that we had to look at Azure Storage primaly as File System in the Cloud. Aldo we can create tables and put data in it they are non-relational. Any relations, if you need them, must be handled with the custom logic. If you need scalable and relational storage with the DB in mind you should stick to SQL Services.

Querying Azure Storage and SQL Services share the same REST logic and syntax but there is lot of differences. There is one small example.

If you want to order the data from Azure Storage Table you could try to add "orderby" in LINQ query like in:

LINQ query from upper code would be encoded into HTTP GET call with order by in query string (ADO.NET Data Services syntax): 
http://adamecstorage.table.core.windows.net/MeteoInfoDataTable()?$orderby=Date

And the response would get us unwanted message "... not implemented ...":

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<error xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/metadata">
 <code>NotImplemented</code>
 <message xml:lang="en-US">The requested operation is not implemented on the specified resource.</message>
</error>

SQL Services supports order by clause and of course more. We should carefully read the docs and announcements to be sure not to start driving over this Live wide highway into wrong direction ;-)

Microsoft acquired Dundas company a year and a half ago and implementing theirs charting technology into the products. And from last month they give us the free charting controls (both Web and WinForms) for use in our .NET 3.5 application. To start you need to download and install:
Microsoft Chart Controls for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 and Microsoft Chart Controls Add-on for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008.

For introduction try Samples Environment for Microsoft Chart Controls  and read the docs: Microsoft Chart Controls for .NET Framework Documentation

There is  post from Alex Gorev about MS Charts - Dundas Charts relation.

Axinom, tvrtka kolege Damira Tomičića, osvojila je njemački IPTV Award 2008 za MSN ClipClub TV aplikaciju kategoriziranu kao pazite sada: socijalni video mashup = MSN video + live servisi (chat) + Silverlight 2 itd.

Bravo za Axinom!

Community members from Croatia with attendees from other countries will meet this weekand at first KulenDayz conference near Osijek. Technical sessions will be spiced up with EURO 2008 football match these evening (Croatia - Turkey), community football match (Developers - DBAs) and some other fun time. We are looking forward for KulenDayz weekend.

Download and read a pattern and practice pdf book - guide: Improving Web Services Security: Scenarios and Implementation Guidance for WCF . Thanks to guys from Microsoft Patterns and Practices it is a must have coockbook for WCF.

Download .NET 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit and play with hands-on-labs and demos or watch the presentations. Training kit contains materials for all .NET 3.5 Enchancements parts: ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, ASP.NET AJAX History, ASP.NET Silverlight controls, ADO.NET Data Services and ADO.NET Entity Framework.

Na WinDays 2008 konferenciji je na press konferenciji predstavljen ms community, njegov rad i novi portal. Pogledajte kratke video isječke o tome što smo o zajednici i njezinom radu izjavili Marin Mamić, Tomislav Bronzin i ja.

On WinDays 2008 conference in Opatija last week I delivered a presentation about ADO.NET Data Services. You can download samples from presentation here: ADONETServicesDemos.zip.

We have a new central site for the whole croatian community (Čakovec, Dubrovnik, IT Pro, Osijek, Rijeka, Poreč, Split, Zadar, Zagreb) the place for aggregating news and announcements from all groups.
And also a start page for registering and start using all our services like blogs, wiki, video etc. Visit http://cro.mscommunity.net and explore our work. Work on site is in progress and new features will be added soon.

I recently had to deploy DB that was developed in SQL Server 2005 Express to SQL Server 2000. The little tool i found help me a lot.

It's a Database Publishing Wizard - part of SQL Server Hosting Toolkit. The toolkit has a wider purpose but the DB Publishing wizard is really usefull because it can script database (both 2000 and 2005, and both schemas, objects and data) with customized syntax for target SQL Server version. Writing scripts by hand with little changes in syntax or object names changed (sys.objects - sysobjects) can make you a lot of trouble and this tool can save you a lot of your time. And of course - time is money - isn't it? Or could I say - time is free time ;-)