Microsoft Silverlight 5 and Windows Azure Enterprise Integration

A step-by-step book and eBook guide to creating and running scalable Silverlight 4 Enterprise Applications on the Windows Azure platform

• This book and e-book details how enterprise Silverlight applications can be written to take advantage of the key features of Windows Azure to create scalable applications
• Provides an overview of the Windows Azure platform and how the different technologies can be integrated within your enterprise application
• Examines ways that distributed asynchronous systems can be created to allow scalable processing
• Learn from a distinguished author with tips, tricks, and hands on experience to create scalable enterprise Silverlight applications that run on the Windows Azure platform

In Detail

Microsoft Silverlight is a powerful development platform for creating rich media applications and line of business applications for the web and desktop.

Microsoft Windows Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform.

Silverlight allows you to integrate with Windows Azure and create and run Silverlight Enterprise Applications on Windows Azure.

This book shows you how to create and run Silverlight Enterprise Applications on Windows Azure.

Integrating Silverlight and Windows Azure can be difficult without guidance. This book will take you through all the steps to create and run Silverlight Enterprise Applications on the Windows Azure platform. The book starts by providing the steps required to set up the development environment, providing an overview of Azure. The book then dives deep into topics such as hosting Silverlight applications in Azure, using Azure Queues in Silverlight, storing data in Azure table storage from Silverlight, accessing Azure blob storage from Silverlight, relational data with SQL Azure and RIA, and manipulating data with RIA services amongst others.

What you will learn from this book

• Understand federated authentication and how it can be used with your enterprise’s on premise Active Directory, or integrated to allow logins through Google, Yahoo, LiveId, or Facebook
• Learn the components that make up the Azure platform and know which components to use in each of your applications
• Understand how to partition your relational database into shards to improve scalability and performance
• Discover how to use frameworks such as WCF RIA Services to speed up the development of your line of business applications
• Learn how to configure your development environment quickly by using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer
• Deploy your enterprise applications onto Windows Azure servers
• Use AppFabric caching to improve the performance of your applications
• Understand what Azure Storage is, how it compares to SQL Azure, and when to choose one over the other
• Expose your data via OData to allow Silverlight, javascript, and other web enabled technologies to access and query your data

Approach

This book is a step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to obtain the necessary toolset to create and run Silverlight Enterprise Applications on Azure. The book also covers techniques, practical tips, hints, and tricks for Silverlight interactions with Azure. Each topic is written in an easy-to-read style, with a detailed explanation given and then practical step-by-step exercises with a strong emphasis on real-world relevance.

Who this book is written for

If you are an application developer who wants to build and run Silverlight Enterprise applications using Azure storage, WCF Services, and ASP providers, then this book is for you. You should have a working knowledge of Silverlight and Expression Blend. However, knowledge of Azure is not required since the book covers how to integrate the two technologies in detail.