What's New in the Public Marketplace

This topic maintains a record of Marketplace's service improvements and upgrades.

Windows Azure Marketplace (WAM) Februrary 2013 Improvements

In this release we added an Auto-refill option you can enable on any of your paid and limited subscriptions. Requested by you, our customers, Auto-refill is ability to ensure that you, or anyone using your subscription, do not reach your usage limit before the end of your subscription period, and thus avoid the resultant loss of service. Auto-refill does this by cancelling your current subscription and creating a new subscription before you reach your usage limit.

Marketplace SU9 Improvements

Support for end users using OrgID

In this release we’ve added support for purchasing commercial offers using OrgID. Members of your organization can subscribe to offers using your organization’s OrgID rather than having to use a personal LiveID.

Marketplace SU8 Improvements

View Sample Data

If the publisher enables View Sample Data, you can preview a sample dataset while perusing the list of offerings. For more information, see Find a Dataset of Interest.

Promotional Discounts

Publishers can create and distribute discount coupon codes to targeted demographics. Customers can use the coupon codes to purchase data or applications at discounted rates. The publisher sets the term and discount rate. For more information, see Promotional Discounts.

Marketplace SU7 Improvements

Support for OrgID

Marketplace integrates with a number of existing Microsoft services. Some of these services, such as Office 365, CRM Online, and Azure, support OrgId for user authentication. WAM seamlessly integrates with services that use OrgID so that a user logged on to one of these services with an OrgID can access WAM without further authentication.

When accessing WAM apart from a service that uses OrgID, the user has the choice of logging on with OrgID or Live ID.

View Sample Data

Publishers can create a default sample of their data available for customers to view. A predefined query generates the sample data that allows the customer to see but not use the data.

If the publisher enables View Sample Data, customers can preview a sample dataset from the Details page. For more information, see Pre-Examine the Dataset.

Marketplace SU6 Improvements

Create Promotional Discounts

Support is added for promotional codes which enable you to motivate others to purchase your datasets through targeted, time limited discounts.

Retrieve a Customer’s Subscription Info

For Microsoft Azure applications that access Windows Azure Marketplace (WAM) data, it is necessary to determine which datasets the customer is presently subscribed to. The My Datasets service allows appropriately authenticated applications to retrieve information about a user’s Windows Azure Marketplace (WAM) subscriptions.

Marketplace SU4/SU4.5 Improvements

Publish Your Data via the Marketplace

Publishing your valuable data on the Marketplace is now quicker and easier than ever. Use the online forms to register as a publisher and create data offerings.

See the topic Publish on the Marketplace for details and instructions.

Marketplace SU3 Improvements

Application Marketplace

The Windows Azure Marketplace (WAM) is expanded to include commercial applications provisioned by the Marketplace. These applications may or may not consume Marketplace data.

Now you can create and market your applications and leave provisioning to the Marketplace. Developers can use built-in support for consuming data feeds from the Marketplace within Visual Studio or from any web development tool that supports HTTP.

Publish Your Marketplace Application

The Marketplace provides a centralized place where you can market your applications. Like data publishers, you do not need to concern yourself with the subscription or billing process, the Marketplace takes care of those details for you. You just cash the checks we send to you.

Guidance for creating a Marketplace application is available at Develop a Marketplace Application.

Subscribe to a Marketplace Application

The Marketplace provides a centralized location where you can search for and subscribe to applications that leverage Microsoft Azure services. Browse the store of available applications and subscribe to any that provide you with you need.

Application subscriptions save you the upfront cost of purchasing an application and allow you to subscribe only as you need it.

Return to the Marketplace often as the list of available applications is dynamic and growing.

Revamped UI

The Marketplace Home page is updated for SU3 to include application subscriptions in addition to data subscriptions. The links in the ribbon are now:

• Learn
  Find out more about the Marketplace. You can also initiate the process of becoming a Marketplace publisher from this screen.

• Applications
  Browse and subscribe to applications.

• Data
  Browse and subscribe to datasets.

• My Account
  Manage your account keys and details, and browse you data and application subscriptions.

Marketplace SU2 Improvements

Service Explorer

The Marketplace Service Explorer UI is changed and now includes additional features. New Service Explorer features allow you to:

• Query your dataset and page through, jump to the beginning, end, or specific page of the result set. You can also change result set views (table, chart, .xml) with a single click of a button. See Query a Dataset.

• Visualize a query result as a bar, column, or line chart right in Service Explorer.

• Export your query result in any of a number of file formats. See Download from the Marketplace to a file.

• Capture the query url for use in other programs. See Get the Query URL.

Trial Subscriptions

Some publishers of paid subscriptions provide one month free trials so you can try their datasets before you commit to purchasing. See Subscribe to the Dataset.

International Billing

The Marketplace now supports eight new international markets and four new currencies. See https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=217257.

OAuth 2.0 Support

Marketplace's support for OAuth 2.0 (see OAuth 2.0) enables application development and distribution with the Marketplace taking the responsibility to manage and bill the individual application user. See Implement OAuth in your Marketplace App.

Social Networking Support

Find a dataset you think others would like? Click the Data tab then click the "Like" icon below the dataset description.

Click the Data tab then the Facebook icon in the lower right corner of the screen to follow the Marketplace on Facebook®.

Catch the Marketplace on You Tube®. Click Data tab and then the You Tube icon in the lower right corner of the screen.

Marketplace V1 Features

Marketplace UI

The User Interface (UI) for the Marketplace is changed.

Select from any of these five navigation tabs at the top of the page.

• Learn - find out about the Marketplace.

• Browse - see and subscribe to any of the many datasets available.

• Partners - see and use solutions developed by others. See who is currently publishing data at the Marketplace.

• My Data - manage your account and the datasets you subscribe to.

• Help - get help

Select from any of the navigation buttons in the center of the page.

• Learn More - find out about the

• Explore the MarketPlace - browse datasets.

Learn/Learn More

Use the links in this section to find resources, including videos, designed to help you use the Marketplace service.

Browse/Explore the MarketPlace

See the catalog of datasets available through the Marketplace. See a list of all the datasets together or a subset of datasets based upon Categories or Publishers you select.

• Use Categories to filter the list of datasets to the subject matter of interest.

• Use Publishers to filter the list of datasets to a particular publisher.

Partners

Click any of the publishers to link to their sites. This list is dynamic, so check back often.

My Data

Use the options in this section to manage your account information, access your subscriptions, and manage your account keys.

New Features

• More help, including videos and community links, to learn about the Marketplace.

• Richer browse experience allows you to prefilter the datasets you browse by either category or publisher.

Infrastructure changes that impact developers include:

• All data feeds are RESTfull OData feeds that use HTTP/HTTPS URIs.

• Downloadable Service Classes access fixed query datasets.

• Service References in Visual Studio to access flexible query datasets.

See Also

Tasks

Compare Fixed and Flexible Query Types

Concepts

Develop a Marketplace Application

Other Resources

OData Home web site