.NET Renaissance

SOA - SOAP – WCF camp vs. ROA - REST – HTTP - ASP.NET Web API camp: Which one to choose?

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 06:17:00 +0000

Connected Systems:

One of the biggest challenges / opportunities in the industry is the integration and reuse of the existing systems. Connectivity (Connect people, organizations, and existing systems) through connected applications becomes the key factor in the software development. Solution to this challenge lies on developing interoperable, loosely coupled, secure distributed application.

Around a decade back, Web Services and other RPC style framework assists the developers to build distributed applications. The Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) simplifies development of connected applications through a new service-oriented managed programming model. WCF takes Web services to the next level by providing developers with a highly productive framework for building secure, reliable and interoperable applications that send messages between services and clients. WCF is pretty much mature now with .NET 4.5.

At the same time, there is another camp/ community where started using REST (Representational State Transfer) which is another different, alternative architectural style for building resource oriented services. The REST architectural style was developed by W3C Technical Architecture Group in parallel with HTTP/1.1. The World Wide Web itself, based on HTTP, can be viewed as a REST-based architecture. . Unlike SOAP, Restful services simply relies on the HTTP application protocol verbs (GET – Fetch, PUT – Replace, POST – Insert and DELETE – Delete etc…). REST was initially described in the context of HTTP, but it is not restricted to HTTP protocol alone. RESTful architectures may be based on other Application Layer protocols, but in real time, it is only used with HTTP.

At this moment, REST approach is gaining upper hand because of its simplicity and reach. Restful services won’t require any proxies to consume and it be reached by a variety of device and client platforms. Microsoft have seen the increase in emergence of Restful services exposed over plain HTTP rather than through a more formal RPC style (like SOAP or WS*). Microsoft already moved many of its implementations away from SOAP based technologies to REST. But WCF is not dead yet, it is still very well alive and in certain scenarios, it fit’s better than REST.

SOAP vs. HTTP

Before going into WCF vs. Web API discussion, I would like to discuss more on some fundamentals. Any technology you mention which has its own merit and drawback. SOAP and HTTP protocols have different purpose and usage.

Simple Object Access Protocol, is a communication protocol specification for exchanging structured information over HTTP. It is based on XML and platform, Language independent. It build on top of HTTP as an abstraction layer. From the past decade, everyone agrees that HTTP is the correct intended way for communication between applications over traditional remote procedure calls (RPC) between objects like DCOM and COBRA. SOAP is designed be versatile enough to allow multiple or any transport protocols including HTTP, SMTP, TCP, UDP, Named pipes or even JMS. One thing, I learned in the last few years in program management is any system which performs more than couple of intended functionality will eventually fail.

SOAP actually was simple, but over time it tries to solve multiple enterprise demands like security, transaction, trust, discovery, federation etc. and slowly becomes complex and less interoperable. But if you want any of the WS-* specification feature, SOAP is the correct approach. For example: SOAP provides end-end message security compare to point to point communication. If the SOAP message is routed via multiple intermediaries before reaching the last receiver, the message itself is not protected once an intermediary reads it. Another example, say if you want a distributed transaction feature in your services, SOAP supports distributed transactions through the WS-Atomic Transaction (WS-AT) specification. Of course there are ways to achieve transaction in REST approach, but SOAP, WS-* make the implementation easy.

On the other hand, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application, communication protocol which is more than a simple transport protocol. HTTP itself provides most of the features like authentication, caching, and content-type negotiation, so why an additional abstraction layer or different protocol – SOAP which is on top of HTTP anyway. In many scenarios, where you want to build services where the goal is reaching multiple devices, client platform, highly scalable, easy to consume, REST / HTTP services is the correct option. You can make REST / HTTP services secure, as similar to SOAP via HTTP authentication along with HTTPS.

The key advantage with RESTful services are simpler and better reach. Is Web Popular?! ;) Web - WWW, which is omnipresent everywhere now. Almost everyone knows about Web. HTTP/RESTful Services simply follows the tenets of the web which provides the same reach to people. I will give you a specific example - Just think of accessing a Service as below. You can access whatever the book detail of any author you want through HTTP GET itself! No Soap Messages, Proxy etc.

amazon.com/authors/{author}/{book}

Ex: amazon.com/authors/ArunGanesh/VS2010

amazon.com/authors/{author}?book={book}

Ex: amazon.com/authors/ArunGanesh?book=VS2010

HTTP provides the following nine methods or verbs that we can perform on an identified resource.

HEAD – Similar to a GET request without the response body. This is useful for retrieving meta-information written in response headers.

GET - Requests to just retrieve the specified resource.

POST – Client sends data (message body) to the server for an action.

PUT - Uploads or updates the resource.

DELETE deletes the specified resource.

TRACE - allows the client to see what is being received at the other end of the request chain and use that data for testing or diagnostic information

OPTIONS Returns the HTTP methods that the server supports for specified URL.

PATCH Is used to apply partial modifications to a resource.

1. In Web, every resource being referred by a unique identifier, also known as a universal resource identifier (URI).

a. URL+URN = URI. URI / Segment of a URI map to Application Logic. In the above example you can see that the segment of the URL itself being mapped to an application logic.

2. Utilize HTTP Verbs - HTTP GET, POST, PUT, DELETE etc.

3. Utilize HTTP Headers for representing what content type is required and services is returning. For instance, you can represent things like: languages, authentication, authorization, accepted encoding, char set, content type, length etc...

ASP.NET Web API:

ASP.NET Web API is a framework for building and consuming HTTP services. It’s latest Microsoft platform for building RESTful services. ASP.NET Web API takes the best features from WCF Web API and merges them with the best features from MVC!

It supports the following features:

Modern HTTP programming model

Easily define your URI space using the flexibility of ASP.NET Routing

Rich support for formats (JSON, XML, form URL encoded, OData, custom) and HTTP content negotiation

Request validation using data annotations

Automatically generate rich help page documentation for your web APIs

Content negotiation and custom formatters

Filters

Code-based configuration

Server-side query composition

IIS hosting or Self-host

Link generation

Testability

IoC integration

Tracing

VS template, scaffolding

Check out this article to get an idea around implementation is of ASP.NET Web API: http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/getting-started-with-aspnet-web-api/tutorial-your-first-web-api. You would have noticed how much it is integrated and part of ASP.NET MVC.

I see WCF/ SOAP and ASP.NET Web API/ HTTP as two separate service design options that you need to choose wisely based on your current scenario.

Scenario	WCF 4.5	ASP.NET Web API
Need to support specific scenarios like Message queues, duplex communication, end to end message security, distributed transactions, one way messaging etc….	X
Already you have existing working WCF services and would like to add HTTP support additionally.	X
One code base to support both SOAP and RESTful endpoints	X
Need to create a resource-oriented services over HTTP		X
Your project is a MVC application and want to expose some functionality over HTTP		X
Want to build only a HTTP / RESTful services		X
Duplex communication over HTTP	SignalR
SQL backend and need to expose OData endpoints	WCF Data Services

Why the move from WCF to ASP.NET Web API?

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 06:21:00 +0000

Web Services (SOAP) to WCF (SOAP + WS-*) to WCF 3.5 (SOAP+ WS-* + HTTP request - WebHttpBinding) to WCF REST Starter Kit (REST part of WCF) to WCF Web API to ASP.NET Web API (Moved away from WCF to ASP.NET MVC)

As REST/ HTTP services start getting popular around .NET 3.5 time frame, Microsoft introduces features - WebHttpBinding part of WCF 3.5 and WCF REST Starter Kit to create RESTful services. The REST starter kit tries to enrich the support of WCF 3.5 for HTTP services.

WCF 4.0 and 4.5 introduces few other feature set along with WCF Web API and tries to simplify the development of HTTP / Restful services. Check this post - http://arunmvp.blogspot.com/2011/07/whats-new-in-wcf-40.html on the .NET 4.0 features. But the key challenge is WCF is built on top of SOAP stack and treats HTTP as a transport instead of as an application protocol. ASP.NET Web API is all about HTTP and moreover already one can start develop a service which can return JSON from an ASP.NET MVC controller.

End of the day, ASP.NET provides a first class support for HTTP programming model and it make sense and easy for Microsoft to build Web API’s in ASP.NET MVC world rather than in WCF world.

Debug your Web page: F12 Developer Tools and Fiddler

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 20:18:00 +0000

In my day to day job, when it comes to debug a web page for finding out what's the problem, from which server the request coming through, debug html, css, change document mode, to analyze cookie, to do high level performance analysis, I will go for the below two tool sets:

How to use F12 Developer Tools to Debug your Webpages

Common usage:

Profiler Tool to analyze the performance of your code
Clear-up Cache
Identify the size and position of elements. do some minor modifications and visualize the change.
Always Refresh from Server : Forces Internet Explorer to always acquire webpage content from the server rather than using cached content
Informational and error messages in Console Tab
Debug JavaScript code without leaving the browser

Fiddler: Very powerful tool which allows you to inspect traffic, set breakpoints, and "fiddle" with incoming or outgoing data.

Story Boarding - TFS 2012

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 06:40:00 +0000

Click Storyboarding tab on the PowerPoint ribbon.
Create a new slide with your desired layout.
Open Storyboard Shapes and start dragging and dropping shapes onto your storyboard.

Microsoft Visual Studio Virtual Labs - Worth checking!

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 08:38:00 +0000

Check here on set of interesting Virtual Labs that covers some good TFS 2012 features:

Check this Visual Studio 2012 Product Guide
Download now

TFS - Continuous actionable Feedback

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 06:41:00 +0000

In any project, it is very crucial to understand and capture requirements from users, which can then be implemented. With new Visual Studio 2012, it has set of very handy tools to rapidly storyboard your requirements, and - as your software evolves - get rich, actionable feedback from users and need necessary changes / modifications. In the past, one need to use some third party tools to do these tasks. Now, it is all build in part of the TFS itself.

NuGet - Easier way to share, find, add, remove and update libraries

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 19:52:00 +0000

NuGet is a free, open source package manager available from around 2010.

So first What exactly package manager?! It is a tool set which automate the process of installing, configuring, upgrading and removing libraries. There are variety of package manager tools available based on operating system and target devices like starting from Windows, Linux to Android and iOS app store. NuGet is open source package manager for .NET Framework.

Some of the NuGet packages that I will recommend / used:

Logging:

Elmah: Logging Unhandled Exception

https://nuget.org/packages/Elmah.MVC/2.0.2

log4net is a tool to help the programmer output log statements to a variety of output targets.

https://nuget.org/packages/log4net/2.0.0

Scripting:

jQuery: jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development.

https://nuget.org/packages/jQuery/1.9.0

Modernizr is a small and simple JavaScript library that helps you take advantage of emerging web technologies (CSS3, HTML5) while still maintaining a fine level of control over older browsers that may not yet support these new technologies.

https://nuget.org/packages/Modernizr/2.6.2

Knockoutjs: A JavaScript MVVM library to help you create rich, dynamic user interfaces with clean maintainable code

https://nuget.org/packages/knockoutjs/2.2.1

Validation:

jQuery Validation: Simple client side validation

https://nuget.org/packages/jQuery.Validation/1.10.0

Framework:

ASP.NET Web API is a framework that makes it easy to build HTTP services that reach a broad range of clients, including browsers and mobile devices.

https://nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.Client/4.0.20710.0

Entity Framework: Entity Framework (EF) is an object-relational mapper that enables .NET developers to work with relational data using domain-specific objects.

https://nuget.org/packages/EntityFramework/5.0.0

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/data/ef

This client library enables working with the Windows Azure storage services which include the blob service for storing binary and text data, the table service for storing structured non-relational data, and the queue service for storing messages that may be accessed by a client.

https://nuget.org/packages/WindowsAzure.Storage/2.0.3.0

Manage your workitems via KANBAN Board!

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Kanban board is a visual project management tool to visualize the work items, plan, prioritize and monitor the current velocity. Obviously if you visualize the work items as below, it will give more clarity and easy to maintain/ manage the work items. It will clearly give you who is working on what, what is the status of each work items, ensuring limited items assigned, work in progress, how much we completed etc. It is not only help in understanding the current status of work items and also control/manage the work flow meaning you can simply drap and drop from one section to another. The real value is all these productive tools part of Team Foundation Service / TFS 2012.

With Kanban board, you can easily track your work item progress on the task board with real-time capacity charting. You can easily drag n’ drop as needed. I can't wait how this tool going to evolve in the upcoming updates!

For more information:

https://tfs.visualstudio.com/en-us/learn/collaborate/view-your-kanban-board/

Check this Channel 9 video:

Microsoft Virtual Academy

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 01:55:00 +0000

Check out this MVA. It has set of some useful course modules, specifically around cloud like:

IaaS

Office 365

PaaS

Private Cloud

Public Cloud

SaaS

Security

SQL Azure

Sample video on IaaS

WCF Web API to ASP.NET Web API

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 08:44:00 +0000

WCF Rest Starter Kit --> WCF REST (WebHttpBinding) --> WCF Web API --> ASP.NET Web API (WCF to ASP.NET Migration!)

ASP.NET MVC 4 now includes ASP.NET Web API (single integrated web API framework), a framework for building and consuming HTTP services that can reach a broad range of clients including browsers, phones, and tablets.

Everything including technology has a start and an end. Including technology, it necessities evolution to survive. This evolution of Web API track from WCF to ASP.NET is good for below reasons:

1. This will stop the confusion among developers to use what ASP.NET MVC Controller (JSON data from controller) or WCF Rest API

2. Moving to ASP.NET MVC enables to better code re-use, easier & maintenance. One can use the same model to expose your data as HTML, JSON, XML, ATOM, OData etc….No Need of one more WCF Layer.

3. HTTPClient / System.Net.HTTP part of .NET Framework 4.5 would be better suitable part of ASP.NET rather than WCF. Web API name itself contains both Web & Services! And Http belongs to more of Web than Services.

4. Remember one of the main goal for WCF is unification of Microsoft’s distributed computing technologies (ASMX, .NET Remoting, Enterprise Services, WSE, System.Messaging, System.Net etc) with SOAP/XML as base framework. WCF won’t support or scale HTTP to full extent.

This is not end of WCF, but the scope of exposing data via WCF is reduced (Mostly SOAP). World is around REST now. In the competitive world, the system or technology that are easily maintainable, sustainable, easy reach or interoperable including browsers, phones (IPhone, Android, Windows Phone etc….), tablets (IPad) only survives. Restful approach follows most of the things – Simple, easily maintainable, reach etc. With Web API moves into ASP.NET, overall it is good for end-users. ASP.NET Web API is great for building services that follow the RESTful way.

Why HTTP?

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application protocol for distributed, collaborative systems. HTTP is not just for serving up web pages. HTTP is simple, flexible, stateless and ubiquitous.

HTTP provides the following nine methods or verbs that we can perform on a identified resource.

HEAD – Similar to a GET request without the response body. This is useful for retrieving meta-information written in response headers.

GET - Requests to just retrieve the specified resource.

POST – Client sends data (message body) to the server for an action .

PUT - Uploads or updates the resource.

DELETE Deletes the specified resource.

TRACE - allows the client to see what is being received at the other end of the request chain and use that data for testing or diagnostic information

OPTIONS Returns the HTTP methods that the server supports for specified URL.

PATCH Is used to apply partial modifications to a resource.

What is REST?

REST defines an architectural style for building services in the “Web” way. REST is not tied to any particular technology or platform – it’s just another way to design things to work like the Web. Again this is not something new. REST concept exists for a long time but not utilized to its full power, until now.

Operations in Restful services are supported using HTTP methods (Like GET, PUT, POST, or DELETE).

Definition:

"Representational state transfer (REST) is a style of software architecture for distributed hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web. The term Representational State Transfer (REST) was introduced and defined in 2000 by Roy Fielding^[1][2] in his doctoral dissertation. Fielding is one of the principal authors of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) specification versions 1.0 and 1.1." - From wikipedia.org

Why REST Popular?

Is Web Popular?! ;)

Web - WWW, which is omnipresent everywhere now. Almost everyone knows about Web. RESTful architecture simply follows the tenets of the web which provides the same reach to people. I will give you a specific simple example - Just think of accessing a Service as below: You can access whatever the book detail of any author you want through HTTP GET itself! No Soap Messages, Proxy etc.

amazon.com/authors/{author}/{book}

Ex: amazon.com/authors/ArunGanesh/VS2010

amazon.com/authors/{author}?book={book}

Ex: amazon.com/authors/ArunGanesh?book=VS2010

Key Items to remember (REST):

1. In Web, every resource being referred by a unique identifier, also known as a universal resource identifier (URI).

URL+URN = URI

URI / Segment of a URI map to Application Logic. In the above example you can see that the segment of the URL itself being mapped to an application logic.

2. Utilize

HTTP Verbs - HTTP GET, POST, PUT, DELETE etc.

What ASP.NET Web API provides:

The integrated stack supports the following features:

Modern HTTP programming model

Full support for ASP.NET Routing

Format flexibility

HTTP Client integration

Enabled OAuth and OData support

Configuration simplification

Content negotiation and custom formatters

Model binding and validation

Filters

Query composition

Easy to unit test

Improved Inversion of Control (IoC) via DependencyResolver

Code-based configuration

Self-host

What’s the key difference:

ASP.NET Web APIs are based on controllers, classes which derive from a new ApiController class.

WCF Web API	ASP.NET Web API
Service	Web API controller
Operation	Action
Service contract	Not applicable
Endpoint	Not applicable
URI templates	ASP.NET Routing
Message handlers	Same
Formatters	Same
Operation handlers	Filters, model binders

Migration guidance

"Office 15" Technical Preview

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:19:00 +0000

Office 15 is the codename for the next generation of the Microsoft Office products and services. Microsoft announced the Technical Preview for a select group of partners under non-disclosure agreements for testing and to provide feedback. In the upcoming months, we may see few more details.

While announcing the Windows 8 ARM's plan, they also showed a quick preview of Office 15 too.

Watch this Video to get a quick preview of Office 15.

Kinect for Windows

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:02:00 +0000

As you all known, Kinect is the game changer in game industry. In most of our home, who love to play games will be having Kinect console. Kinect is no more just a playing console, it show potential to use it many other industries like healthcare, diagnosysis etc...

Check it out this inspiring video for Kinnect Effect!

Now Microsoft released Kinect for Windows. So What's in this? and What we can do with this?
With this SDK, you can know

How the Kinect color and depth camera work
How to use skeletal tracking to track joint positions in your application.
How to use the Kinect to record audio
How to use speech recognition to control your application via voice commands and much more

Are you excited, then what are you waiting for, download and have fun!!!

Azure Portal and Training Kit Transformed

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:52:00 +0000

Both the Azure portal and training kit evolved over the years. Portal is easy to navigate, build and manage Azure services. It also have all the useful help links.

I recently installed Azure Training kit and surprised on looking at all the demos, presentation for each and every artifacts. The content would be very helpful for the developer community to jump-in into Azure world.

Installation experience is also good. The pros is all the required component can be installed from the same wizard (which in turns use the Web platform Wizard). The con part is the memory it takes and sometime get stuck.

Check out the Trainig kit here: Windows Azure Training Kit - January Refresh

Windows Azure AppFabric name is missing!

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 04:08:00 +0000

When I was searching for Azure Appfabric, I noticed there is no more Appfabric term being used.

Specifcally when I noticed in the Appfabric blog that they are moving from this blog to general Windows Azure Team blog, it is clear that no more Appfabric term.

So what happens to all the services - Windows Azure Service Bus, Windows Azure Access Control, Windows Azure Caching etc... It's look like still all services exists only the name changes from Appfabric to just Azure.

In a way, it is better, during inital days, I was confused between Azure Appfabric and Windows Server Appfabric. But I am sure, it will take some time for deverlopers to understand this brand name change.

Check all my Azure related blogs: http://arunmvp.blogspot.com/search/label/Azure

What is the Windows Azure platform?

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 03:40:00 +0000

The Windows Azure platform is nothing but Microsoft’s cloud computing services platform. Windows Azure, Microsoft SQL Azure and AppFabric are the key components of the Windows Azure platform. Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform is a group of cloud technologies, each providing a specific set of services to end users.

Key Components:

· Windows Azure Compute: Windows Azure compute service enables developers to run any applications starting from .NET, Java, PHP etc… In Windows Azure for an application to scale out, it will run multiple copy of the code in various virtual machines. Windows Azure application consists of Web role instances and/or Worker role instances, each of which runs in its own Windows virtual machine.

· Windows Azure Storage: The Windows Azure storage services provide storage for binary and text data, messages, and structured data in Windows Azure

· Microsoft SQL Azure: Provides relational cloud database solution

· Windows Azure platform Services (Connectivity, Identiry and Perforamance) : It includes services like: AppFabric Access Control, AppFabric Service Bus, CDN and AppFabric Caching Service.

Check all my Azure related blogs: http://arunmvp.blogspot.com/search/label/Azure

Azure Pattern - Scale Application

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 21:47:00 +0000

Web role instance nothing but which accepts a HTTP/HTTPS request and respond back to customer web request via IIS 7 (ASP.NET Application). This instance needs to run in an IIS 7 Web Server only.

Worker role instance will do some background job (similar to Windows Service) and doesn’t expose to outside world directly. For instance one can use Worker role process to do some parallel bulk computing operations and then share with web role instance. A worker role can have any number of HTTP, HTTPS, or TCP endpoints.

Queue: It allows Web role instances to communicate asynchronously with Worker role instances. It acts as a reliable and persistent messaging between services.

Windows Azure services may be comprised of one or both types of roles and can run multiple instances of each type. Web / Worker Role instances can be added or removed based on demand and allow applications to quickly and economically scale-up or down as per the need. Windows Azure also exposes set of API’s to programmatically control the role instances.

The typical Pattern for scaling up application on demand would look like below:

How to: Use Windows Azure Diagnostics to Monitor and Collect Logging Data
How to Initialize the Windows Azure Diagnostic Monitor
How to Collect Data from IIS 7.0 Failed Request Trace Logs
How to Collect Data from Windows Event Logs
How to Collect Data from Crash Dumps
How to Collect Data in a Custom Log
How to Use the Windows Azure Diagnostics Configuration File
How to Configure the TraceListener in a Windows Azure Application
How to Use Trace Messages in a Windows Azure Application
How to Collect Data from Performance Counters
How to Create and Update Custom Performance Counters
How to Query Performance Counter Data
How to Specify a Storage Account for Transfers
How to Schedule a Transfer
How to Perform an On-Demand Transfer
How to View Diagnostic Data Stored in Windows Azure Storage
How to Remotely Change the Diagnostic Monitor Configuration

Web API - WCF Web API programming model

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:26:00 +0000

WCF Web API is a set of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) components to develop Web APIs (Future Services).

Check out here for more details: http://wcf.codeplex.com/releases

Azure Storage

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 03:30:00 +0000

The Windows Azure storage services provide storage for binary and text data, messages, and structured data in Windows Azure

Option 1: Blob – Contains binary data: Blobs are organized by container. Each storage account will be partitioned by hierarchal containers which in turns have one or many blobs. We can store huge amount of data (text, audio, video, images etc…) with association of metadata like author details etc…

Two types of blobs:

· Block blobs, which are optimized for streaming. Block blobs are comprised of blocks, each of which is identified by a block ID. Contain up to 200 GB.

· Page blobs, which are optimized for random read/write operations. Page blobs are a collection of pages. Contain up to 1 TB.

A URL to refer to a blob includes the account name, the container name, and the blob name, as follows: http://myaccount.blob.core.windows.net/mycontainer/myblob

Sharing Policy: Container ACL access:

· Full public read access: Container and blob data can be read via anonymous request.

· Public read access for blobs only: Blob data within this container can be read via anonymous request, but container data is not available.

· No public read access: Container and blob data can be read by the account owner only.

Windows Azure Drives: A Windows Azure drive acts as a local drive mounted on the file system and is accessible to code running in a role. The data written to a Windows Azure drive is stored in a page blob defined within the Windows Azure Blob service, and cached on the local file system.

Delivering High-Bandwidth Content with the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network:

This Windows Azure CDN feature enables customers to provide maximum bandwidth content to their users. As of now, Windows Azure CDN has 18 locations globally (United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and South America). As Windows Azure CDN caches Windows Azure blobs at strategically placed locations which is close to the location from which the request being made. This is applicable to only blobs that are in public blob containers, which are available for anonymous access.

For more details, refer here: http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsazure/archive/2009/11/05/introducing-the-windows-azure-content-delivery-network.aspx

Option 2: Table - Entity Data Store: Tables store data as collections of entities. Table made up of rows / columns. Entities are similar to rows. A property is a name, typed-value pair, similar to a column. Don’t consider this as a RDBMS; it is more similar to ADO.NET Data services with reduced sub set including integer, string etc... It is mainly for store durable and scalable data structure that can be queried. It is equivalent of Amazon SimpleDB.

The operations are almost similar to that of a conventional database – tables. You can create, query and delete.

Option 3: Queue: It allows Web role instances to communicate asynchronously with Worker role instances. It acts as a reliable and persistent messaging between services.

In all the above options, Windows Azure storage keep the data replicated in many places and ensure data safety. Even one data copy being deleted or missed out can be available from another data copy from a data center. Isn’t this cool? Yes, this is nice feature which provides reliability and business continuity.

Moreover each of the data storage has a named URI (universal resource identifier) which can be accessible by any application including on cloud or on premises application through REST. REST defines an architectural style based on a set of constraints for building things the “Web” way. For more information on REST, refer my blog.

URL template: http://myaccount.queue.core.windows.net/myqueue?comp=metadata

Check all my Azure related blogs: http://arunmvp.blogspot.com/search/label/Azure

Wanna Try Windows Azure?

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 02:42:00 +0000

Do you want to try / explore Windows Azure, then check here: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/

Free trial includes the following:
Free Trial Details:

compute VM	750 small compute hours per month
relational database	1GB web edition SQL Azure database
storage	20GB with 50,000 storage transactions
bandwidth	Unlimited inbound / 20GB Outbound

Scenarios where we can use Windows Azure Platform?

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 06:36:00 +0000

Key Scenarios where we can use Windows Azure Platform?

Please remember one point, cloud computing is not the ONLY best option for all scenarios. It suits best for some key scenarios.

One can leverage Azure platform in various scenarios, few thoughts:

Speed to Market: Small vendors or initial startup company can utilize windows azure platform to deploy their application without worrying about the infrastructure. Based on the application popularity they can scale up the platform.
Peak Load (Predictable and unpredictable): Enterprise applications can utilize windows azure platform especially during peak load. For instance, in support.xbox.com site, the load is at its peak during Christmas Holiday season. We can’t just add more hardware just for few weeks, unless we have something like Azure where one can scale up or down the hardware in minutes with very less cost. Another best example would be IRCTC, Indian railway online ticket booking web site, this will be always at its peak at 8.00 – 8.30 A.M (that’s the time Tatkal is open), Azure is a place where we can set such that only for this specific time frame to scale the hardware resources to serve the end client.
Limited Time frame: In scenarios where we want to expose an application for only specific time frame. For instance, a movie release, the web site provides all the movie information review etc. This site will exist for minimal duration depends on film.
Scalability: Scenarios where one no need to worry about capacity planning. Increase or reduce the capacity real time.
Heavy Computing: Scenarios where you need to do large scale processing like analytics. You can leverage cloud for infinite computing capacity.

Check all my Azure related blogs: http://arunmvp.blogspot.com/search/label/Azure

Do I really need to consider Cloud Computing?!

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 01:14:00 +0000

(Image From Wiki)

To answer the question why cloud computing, first we need to look into what is the existing traditional way of computing, deploying and maintain the applications and what are the available options:

Option 1: Companies can have their own servers with required software and connectivity. In this option, we need to spend more initial infrastructure cost and we have complete control.

Option 2: Hosted Servers on rental. You have less control over here, but the user no need to worry about the maintenance of the server including hardware and software. But one key downside in this approach is you need to still pay even your application usage is idle.

With both these options, we have still the following open questions:

How to scale up or down your hardware very quickly with very low cost?
How to reduce your operation costs based on the usage?
How to provide high availability / business continuity?
How quickly I can make my application Go-Live?

Cloud computing is a new emerging third option which answer the above questions.

Option 3: Cloud computing which is a scalable virtualized hosting environment. Cloud computing users can avoid capital charges on hardware, software, and services. Just pay the provider only for what we use (consumption based model). Charging will be similar to resources consumed, like electricity or subscription time-based, like a newspaper.

What are the Benefits?

Agile: Ability to implement, deploy the solutions for end users very quickly.
Low Cost: Operation and capital cost will be less.
Scalability / Flexibility: Ability to scale up/down your application hardware / software in minutes.
Pricing Model: You pay for what you use. Based on the Usage of resources.
Reliability: Multiple redundant sites and the quality maintained in Datacenters by Microsoft / Amazon etc makes more reliable. Most of the time, it will be 99.99% availability.
Maintenance: Less maintenance (Hardware / Software) as it will be takes care by service providers.
Better Operational models: For instance, we can utilize in places where we require scale-up hardware only for particular time frame alone where the user load is heavy.
Easier Deployment: Simplified Application Deployment and management.

Check all my Azure related blogs: http://arunmvp.blogspot.com/search/label/Azure

Cloud Computing - How this idea emerged?!

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 01:00:00 +0000

Microsoft's Windows Azure Platform is a cloud platform offering hosted in Microsoft Data centers that provides wide range of useful services (Operating system and set of developer services) which can be consumed by both on-premises and on-cloud applications.

Cloud is nothing but just the internet and cloud computing refers to internet based computing. This is something didn’t appear suddenly, this technology is evolving from a long time frame. Basically cloud platforms utilize virtualization to share dynamically scalable resources (hardware / software) over Internet based on demand as a service.

A technical definition from Wikipedia: "a computing capability that provides an abstraction between the computing resource and its underlying technical architecture (e.g., servers, storage, networks), enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction." This definition states that clouds have five essential characteristics: on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service.

How it evolved or How this idea emerged?

Let’s look back the history how this got evolved. Data Center comes into existence as for all major IT companies for their business continuity (IT operation to up and running 24/7) through reliable infrastructure. Many companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, IBM etc having their own datacenters to manage their IT during 2000’s. But after dot-com bubble, the usage of the servers in the Data center is pretty low (80% unutilized) and most of the time the server computing is idle and not being used fully. But companies invested huge money in building the Data centers. It forced them to utilize / better leverage the data centers for new business opportunities.

Once Virtualization also emerge which helps in better hardware/software management and help running the data centers efficiently. By making the server farms virtualized, it helps a lot in cost savings with more server availability and maintenance. This helps them to increase / add the capabilities on fly by re-using the existing hardware to maximum utility.

Amazon is one of the pioneers in utilizing their data centers to expose their servers computing power to public through Web Service around 2004. I am also one of the members of the Amazon Web Services which got very popular in quite a bit of time and got huge user base for the same. To my opinion, most of the key services in cloud computing came from Amazon!

Check here - http://aws.amazon.com/products/?ref_=pe_undef for all their key products as of now across cloud computing, data storage, networking, monitoring, messaging etc…

That’s the WIN-WIN situation for both the consumers and the cloud computing service providers. Won't you agree?

Check all my Azure related blogs: http://arunmvp.blogspot.com/search/label/Azure

Cloud Computing using Windows Azure platform

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:43:00 +0000

Cloud computing is the key buzz word right now and many major companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Google etc betting on this platform. The Windows Azure platform is nothing but Microsoft’s cloud computing services platform. Windows Azure, Microsoft SQL Azure and AppFabric are the key components of the Windows Azure platform.

Let's discuss about end – end information about Azure including what Windows Azure Platform is and how it benefits end customer in resolving their challenges, What’s for Developers, What’s for enterprise, challenges and other options available in cloud platform in the upcoming blogs.

Check out here: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/tour/overview/ for a quick tour of what are all the scenarios that you can consider and what kind of applications one can build.

Check all my Azure related blogs: http://arunmvp.blogspot.com/search/label/Azure

Windows Azure compute

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 03:10:00 +0000

Windows Azure compute service enables developers to run any applications starting from .NET, Java, PHP etc… Developers now have the ability to choose the size of VMs to run their application based on the applications resource requirements. Windows Azure compute instances come in four unique sizes to enable complex applications and workloads.

Compute Instance Size	CPU	Memory	Instance Storage	I/O Performance
Small	1.6 GHz	1.75 GB	225 GB	Moderate
Medium	2 x 1.6 GHz	3.5 GB	490 GB	High
Large	4 x 1.6 GHz	7 GB	1,000 GB	High
Extra large	8 x 1.6 GHz	14 GB	2,040 GB	High

In Windows Azure for an application to scale out, it will run multiple copy of the code in various virtual machines. Windows Azure application consists of Web role instances and/or Worker role instances, each of which runs in its own Windows virtual machine.

Web role instance nothing but which accepts a HTTP/HTTPS request and respond back to customer web request via IIS 7 (ASP.NET Application). This instance needs to run in an IIS 7 Web Server only.

What's new in WCF 4.0?!

arunganesh@gmail.com (G. Gnana Arun Ganesh) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 23:19:00 +0000

.NET Renaissance

SOA - SOAP – WCF camp vs. ROA - REST – HTTP - ASP.NET Web API camp: Which one to choose?

Why the move from WCF to ASP.NET Web API?

Debug your Web page: F12 Developer Tools and Fiddler

Story Boarding - TFS 2012

Microsoft Visual Studio Virtual Labs - Worth checking!

Check here on set of interesting Virtual Labs that covers some good TFS 2012 features:

TFS - Continuous actionable Feedback

NuGet - Easier way to share, find, add, remove and update libraries

Installing NuGet

Managing NuGet Packages Using The Dialog

Using the Package Manager Console

Videos

Some of the NuGet packages that I will recommend / used:

Manage your workitems via KANBAN Board!

Microsoft Virtual Academy

WCF Web API to ASP.NET Web API

"Office 15" Technical Preview

Kinect for Windows

Azure Portal and Training Kit Transformed

Windows Azure AppFabric name is missing!

What is the Windows Azure platform?

Azure Pattern - Scale Application

Web API - WCF Web API programming model

Azure Storage

Wanna Try Windows Azure?

Scenarios where we can use Windows Azure Platform?

Do I really need to consider Cloud Computing?!

Cloud Computing - How this idea emerged?!

Cloud Computing using Windows Azure platform

Windows Azure compute

What's new in WCF 4.0?!