Month: April 2011

David Robinson (Senior Lead Program Manager) SQL Azure Relational Database Based on SQL Server 2008 R2 engine Use same tools and data access frameworks Six global datacenters High Availability & Redundancy Reads are completed at the primary Writes are replicated to a quorum of secondaries SQL Azure Roadmap MIX08 Introduced SQL Server Data Services (ACE type) MIX09 Introduce SQL Data Services (Real Relational Database) MIX10 New Features announced 50 GB Database PHP Support MARS support OData Endpoint Preview Geo Spatial Data Types ASP.NET MVC 3 Razor view Engine which provides a very streamlined syntax for writing clean and concise views. … Continue reading MIX11 – Session Review – Powering Data on the Web and Beyond with SQL Azure

Haridas (Software Developer Lead) Windows Azure Storage What is it? Scalable, Durable, Highly Available Cloud Storage System Pay for what you use Abstractions Blobs – Provides a simple interface for storing named files along with metadata for the file Drives – Provides durable NTFS volumes for Windows Azure Applications to use – based on Page Blobs Tables – Provides structured storage. A Table is a set of entities which contains a set of properties Queues – Provides reliable storage and delivery of messages for an Application Data Storage Concepts Based on the Account Container for Blobs (Blob Storage) https://<account>.blob.windows.net/<container> Table … Continue reading MIX11 – Session Review – Windows Azure Storage -Getting Started and Best Practices

James Conard (Sr. Director – @jamescon) What is the Windows Azure Platform? Provide the best and most comprehensive Platform as a Service offering for building, deploying, and running cloud applications Open & Flexible Using several technologies and not only the .NET Framework Leverage Existing Investments Use the known technologies and ways to develop that exist already in the market in order to reduce the difficulty of entering in the cloud Ready for next Generation apps Prepare for the next types of apps like mobile, and high available Windows Azure Core Services Compute Scalable environment for running code Enables .NET, C++, … Continue reading MIX11 – Session Review – What’s New in the Windows Azure Platform

Giorgio Sardo (Senior Technical Evangelist) What is HTML5? Currently Working Draft Microsoft believes that HTML5 is ready to go “Last Call” (Feature Complete) and early May 2011 This isn’t everything that has been talked about as being HTML5 since several different specs related to HTML5 are being worked on and in different stages Developer Web Platform Silverlight XAML Managed Languages .NET APIs Browser HTML SVG CSS Javascript Web Apps Note: For Microsoft, Silverlight shouldn’t compete with HTML5, but really being an extension for HTML5, since it does things that are currently not possible in HTML6. Client Side Frameworks jQuery Modernizr … Continue reading MIX11 – Session Review – HTML5 for Silverlight Developers

Michael Cook ( Developer on Silverlight Performance ) Ideology Develop a performance culture in your group Test throughout your product cycle Automate your performance Tests Use your customer’s target hardware Performance is a feature, treat it like one! Spec Schedule Sign-off Profiling with Visual Studio 2010 Sampled profiling (Available for Silverlight in the SP1 of VS2010) Collects statistics about program execution Identifies execution bottlenecks Low overhead Available on VS2010 Premium and Professional If you don’t have it just use the WIndows Performance Toolkit (XPerf) – Free Using the “EnableRedrawRegions” flag How? SilverlightHost host= Application.Current.Host; host.Settings.EnableRedrawRegions = true; Analyzing memory usage … Continue reading MIX11 – Session Review – Silverlight Performance Tips