Bring the clouds together: Azure + Bing Maps

We will start to write series of articles under the name of "Bring the clouds together". Those series contain articles, sample applications, and live demonstrations, that show how you can combine the power of Microsoft cloud computing solutions, as well as related technologies. We will provide both source code and written guidance to help you design and develop cloud applications of your own.

This first series will focus on how to combine Windows Azure, SQL Azure, and Bing Maps. You can find a preview of live demonstration on https://sqlazurebingmap.cloudapp.net/. Currently this is a preview, which may contain some bugs. As we go through this series, we will release the source code, and fix the issues in the live demonstration.

Chapters list

The chapters list will grow as new articles become available.

Topic	Description
Chapter 1: Introducing the Plan My Travel application	Describes the sample application, including its features, and high level overviews of the implementation.
Chapter 2: Choosing the right platform and technology	Discusses how to make decition when architecting for a typical cloud based consumer oriented application.
Chapter 3: Designing a scalable cloud database	Discusses how to design a scalable cloud database.
Chapter 4: Working with spatial data	Discusses how to work with spatial data in SQL Azure.
Chapter 5: Accessing spatial data with Entity Framework	Discusses how to access spatial data in a .NET application, and a few considerations you must take when working with SQL Azure.
Chapter 6: Expose data to the world with WCF Data Services	Discusses how to expose data to the world using WCF Data Services. In particular, it walks through how to create a reflection provider for WCF Data Services.
Chapter 7: Working with Bing Maps in a rich HTML application	Introduce how to develop with Bing Maps AJAX Control and Bing Maps REST Services. Features include: Display a map, invoke REST services to obtain location information, and operate pushpins. It discusses both Bing Maps AJAX SDK 6.3 and 7.0.
Chapter 8: Displaying structured data in rich HTML applications with jQuery Templates	Introduces jQuery Templates, and how it helps to reduce efforts when displaying structured data in a rich HTML application.
Chapter 9: Accessing OData Services from AJAX Clients	Describes how to access OData Services from AJAX clients, and combine the clients to cloud services.
Chapter 10: Federated authentication with AppFabric ACS and Windows Live Messenger Connect	Describes how to adopt federated authentication using AppFabric Access Control Service and Windows Live Messenger Connect.Also briefly introduces AppFabric Distributed Cache Service.
Chapter 11: Creating a Silverlight Client	Describes how to add an additional (Silverlight) client to our existing solution, without modifying any existing code.
Chapter 12: Creating a Silverlight Client	Describes how to add an additional (Windows Phone) client to our existing solution, without modifying any existing code, and compares some of the similarities and differences between Desktop Silverlight and Windows Phone.