The Best of Windows Azure This Week

1. Implementing Geographic Redundancy with SQL Azure

Geographic redundancy is a fancy word for distributing your data across multiple data centers globally. One way to accomplish this is to spread your data across many SQL Azure data centers using Data Sync Service for SQL Azure to synchronize a hub database to many global member databases. SQL Azure has six data centers worldwide. See this blog post.

2. Windows Azure Architecture Guide – Part 1 Now Available

As David Aiken recently mentioned on his blog, the Microsoft Patterns & Practices team has just released the Windows Azure Architecture Guide - Volume 1. The first in a planned series about the Windows Azure platform, this book walks readers through how to adapt an existing, on-premises ASP.NET application to one that operates in the cloud.  Each chapter explores different considerations including authentication and authorization, data access, session management, deployment, development life cycle and cost analysis.

The book is intended for any architect, developer, or information technology (IT) professional who designs, builds, or operates applications and services that are appropriate for the cloud, works with Windows-based systems and is familiar with the Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft Visual Studio, ASP.NET, SQL Server, and Microsoft Visual C#.

3. Handling Transactions in SQL Azure

This article covers some of the aspects of transaction handling in SQL Azure.
This includes Local Transactions and the Transact-SQL commands BEGIN TRANSACTION, ROLLBACK TRANSACTION, COMMIT TRANSACTION which work exactly the same as they do on SQL Server. It also discusses Isolation Levels and other aspects of SQL Azure transactions.

Enjoy

Bill Zack

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