Your hands-on, step-by-step guide to the programming fundamentals for Windows Azure™
Teach yourself how to build and host scalable applications in the cloud using Windows Azure—one step at a time. Ideal for those with basic programming skills, this tutorial provides practical, learn-by-doing exercises for working with the core services and features of the Windows Azure platform.Discover how to:
Extend your existing skills to the cloud development model
Build a simple web role application and deploy it to the cloud
Create a worker role project to perform backend processes
Store persistent data with Windows Azure Storage
Develop a scalable database application in the cloud using Microsoft SQL Azure™
Connect several cloud-based applications with Windows Azure AppFabric
Design a multitiered solution that can scale to meet user demand
Roberto Brunetti is an experienced consultant, trainer, and author. He's a co-founder of DevLeap, a company focused on providing high-value content and consulting services to professional developers, and the founder of ThinkMobile, the largest Italian community for mobile development. He is a regular speaker at major conferences, and works closely with Microsoft Italy to put on events and build training courses.
Comments about oreilly Windows Azure™ Step by Step:
I have previously used Microsoft Step by Step books and found them helpful in getting a quick grounding in a technology. This one is turning into a slow and painful experience.
Most of the exercises are reasonably detailed but some steps are missing or just plain wrong. Two examples are:
Page 56, Deploy your Project manually. This seems to have been written for an old version of Visual Studio. It says to select the Publish menu, then goes into an explanation of why the steps are to be done interspersed with some vague instructions. After a few hours I found that the result was achieved by selecting the Package menu and following a few simple steps.
Pages 62 to 65 go into great detail to describe how to add a field to an application, including C# code and lots of explanation. Then the last paragraph on Page 65 says "You can add a [configuration setting] in the Web.config file..." without any details of how this is done. The introduction does not mention that details ASP.NET knowledge is required.
