Books - Technical Review

These are the books I did Technical Review for apress Inc.

 

VS 2010 Goes International

Read Somasegar's blog post about this

Why Windows Azure

Checking the Health Status of Windows Azure services

Once you have deployed your application and its in production environment.

If you want to check the health of Azure services which are running in any of the geographical location which you have choosen as afinity while creating the service project.

Microosft offers the health status of each and every Azure service running in all the data centers.

It shows health for current day to last 6 more days, liste under "Status History" sections towards the bottom of the page.

You can check the health of the services by following this url http://status.windowsazure.com/

Connecting with SQL Azure through SSMS

In order to connect with SQL Azure Db, you need special version of SQL Server Management Studio.

Ability to connect with SQL Azure is buid in "SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP".

You can download this from SQL Server® 2008 R2 November Community Technology Preview - Express

TownHall - an Engagement program hosted on Windows Azure

Windows Azure team developed a new Azure based feature, known as TownHall.

This is a software which will aloow to create applications where people seek opinions, message-boards, vote etc. TownHall applications will be based on REST API in the Azure which will enable the delivery of clients on a number of platforms, in order to store the collected data, database used for this will be on SQL Azure.

There is no License fee for TownHall, you only pay for the WindowsAzure. Some common scenarios where TownHall can be used:

• Event hosting as offered by evite etc
• Engagement with communities
• Message boards
• Vote
• Fan clubs , followers etc

You can see a TownHall sample at http://www.microsofttownhall.com/ . You can try this site by clicking on "Log in" link on the top-left of this web site. Using the login name - demouser and password - demopassword
Note- I am not sure how long this site is available for demo purpose.

You can download the design templates, themes for TownHall development from http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/TownHall/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=4209

Solution - VS 2010 IDE Crash Issue with VS 2008 pre-instsalled

I came across a strange behavior of VS 2010 Ultimate and other version's. I had VS 2008 Professional on my laptop and I tried installing VS 2010, it got installed each time but IDE crash was an issue. For instance, if I try to "Add a New Item" to the project IDE will crash and VS 2010 IDE will re-start.

I struggled with this for couple of days, and finally I thought of doing reverse installation. I.e, install VS 2010 and then VS 2008. So I Un-Installed Vs 2008 and VS 2010 (which was crashing) completely.

I did a fresh install of VS 2010, and then VS 2008, it works just fine.

Solution - VS 2010 RC Un-install hangs

If you have VS 2010 RC installed and now you try to uninstall it, it begins but hangs after sometime.
You continue to wait but neither it does anything nor it progress to the next step.
Most obvious solution to this problem is to shut down the system, restart and then un-install it again, it will pick from the features/options where it got hung last time.

This time there are bright chances that it will finish until the end, and you will see a Successful Un-Installation message :)

Motivation Behind the term Azure

Windows Azure is Cloud computing technology from Microsoft.

Azure is the term which is also considered as a synonym for "blue color", Azure alsos refers to a bright blue color, resembling the sky like it apperass on a bright and clear day.