Sriram Krishnan - Programming Windows Azure: Programming the Microsoft Cloud

This book is dedicated to my parents. None of this would have been possible without them .

I hate the term the cloud . I really do. In a surprisingly short period of time, Ive seen the term twisted out of shape and become a marketing buzzword and applied to every bit of technology one can conjure up. I have no doubt that in a few years, the term the cloud will be relegated to the same giant dustbin for bad technology branding that the likes of SOA and XML-based web services are now relegated to. Underneath all that marketing fluff, though, is the evolution of an interesting trend. Call it the cloud or Something-as-a-Service it doesnt matter. The idea that you can harness computing and storage horsepower as a service is powerful and is here to stay.

As a builder of things, I love technology that frees up obstacles and lets me focus on what I want to do: create. The cloud does just that. Whether youre a startup or a huge Fortune 500 company with private jets, the cloud lets you focus on building things instead of having to worry about procuring hardware or maintaining a storage area network (SAN) somewhere. Someday, well all look back and laugh at the times when trying to run a website with reasonable traffic and storage needs meant waiting a few months for new hardware to show up.

My involvement with this book started in early 2009. Windows Azure had just come on the market and other cloud offerings such as Amazon Web Services and Googles App Engine had been out for some time. I saw a lot of people trying to grapple with what exactly the cloud was, and try to cut through all the marketing jargon and hype. That was no easy feat, let me assure you. I also saw people trying to wrap their heads around Windows Azure. What exactly is it? How do I write code for it? How do I get started? How do I do all those things I need to do to run my app? I hope to answer those questions in this book.

One of the problems about putting anything in print is that it will inevitably be outdated. I have no illusions that this book will be any different. As Windows Azure morphs over time in response to customer needs and industry trends, APIs will change. Features will be added and removed. To that end, this book tries to focus on the why more than the how or the what. Im a great believer that once you know the why, the how and the what are easy to wrap your head around. Throughout this book, Ive tried to explain why features act in a certain way or why certain features dont exist. The actual API or class names might have changed by the time you read this book. Thanks to the power of web search, the right answer is never far away.

This book is split into two halves. The first half digs into how Windows Azure works and how to host application code on it. The second half digs into the storage services offered by Windows Azure and how to store data in it. The two halves are quite independent and if you choose, you can read one and skip the other. The nice thing about Windows Azure is that it offers a buffet of services. Like any buffet, you can pick and choose what you want to consume. Want to host code on Windows Azure and host data on the same platform? Thats perfect. Want to use the Windows Azure blob service but want to host code in your own machines? Thats just as good, too.

Throughout this book, youll find tiny anecdotes and stories strewn around. Several times, they are only tangentially relevant to the actual technology being discussed. Im a big fan of books that try to be witty and conversational while being educational at the same time. I dont know whether this book succeeds in that goal. But when you see the umpteenth Star Trek reference, youll at least understand why it is in there.