Introduction

This book is intended for developers interested in learning more about how to develop against the set of Microsoft cloud services: Windows Azure and Office 365. In some cases, you can combine the two technologies to build your solution, but in other cases you will use only one of the cloud solutions, so understanding what each has to offer enables you to decide on which cloud technology to build your solution.

Who This Book Is For

This book is for the professional developer who understands the Microsoft development platform and web-development technologies. To get the most value from the book, you need to read it sequentially, and then after you have decided which technologies you want to use, refresh your knowledge with that particular chapter. We assume you have knowledge of .NET and web programming such as JavaScript in the chapters. Although some content requires some IT professional knowledge, you are not overburdened with understanding these IT pro-centric topics deeply.

What This Book Covers

This book covers Windows Azure and Office 365. Although cloud-centric technologies are primarily discussed, the book also mentions on-premises software because it is the primary software deployed today. However, over time, more and more of you will need to support hybrid cloud and on-premises deployments until finally the majority of your applications and application development are cloud-based.

How This Book Is Structured

This book is divided logically so that you can get a deep understanding of one cloud technology, such as Office 365, before diving deeply into another cloud technology. Each section introduces the technologies so that you have a good grounding in the overview before jumping into the development topics. The following sections summarize each chapter’s content.

Part I

This gives an introduction to Microsoft’s Cloud and includes the following

• Chapter 1, “Welcome to the Cloud”: This chapter discusses various approaches for clouds, an overview of what both the Microsoft Azure Platform and Office 365 have to offer, and what challenges you may encounter.
• Chapter 2, “Getting Your Environment Ready for the Office 365”: This covers setting up the Office 365 environment and the various approaches to build that environment as well as how to set up a development environment in Office 365. You also see how to develop your first applications for SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online using Visual Studio and discover the various Office 365 development challenges you may face.

Part II

This part gives you an overview of Office 365. Individual chapters include:

• Chapter 3, “Office 365 Identity Services” This chapter has an overview of identity in Office 365 (Online IDs, Password Policy Controls for Microsoft Online ID’s, Directory Synchronization, and Federated Authentication and Identity) as well as a discussion of Role Based Administration.
• Chapter 4, “Introducing SharePoint Online”: Discusses SharePoint Online versus On-Premises, what is possible for application developers, and what isn’t supported by SharePoint Online.

Part III

This part discusses how to develop various Office 365 solutions and includes:

• Chapter 5, “SharePoint Online Development”: You are introduced to SharePoint Online, exploring your development options, and gain an understanding of authentication and authorization
• Chapter 6, “Exchange Online Development”: In this chapter, you learn various Developing Solutions for Exchange Online using the Exchange Web Services Managed API and how to connect to Exchange Online. You also learn how to administer Exchange Online using Remote PowerShell as well as how to work with Exchange data and services using the Exchange Web Services Managed API.
• Chapter 7, “Lync Online Development”: This chapter shows you how to develop solutions for Lync Online using the Microsoft Lync 2010 SDK as well as how to work with the Lync Controls in WPF and Silverlight, Conversations, and Extensibility Applications.

Part IV

This part shows how to work with Azure and includes the following chapters:

• Chapter 8, “Setting Up Azure”: You learn how to set up your Windows Azure account and development environment as well as how to create and deploy your first Windows Azure application.
• Chapter 9, “Identity in Azure”: This chapter covers federated identity and claims-based identity, and how to work with federation and claims with Windows Identity Foundation. You also see how to create a website and WCG service with Windows Identity Foundation.
• Chapter 10, “Leveraging Blob Storage”: This chapter covers how to work with blobs and blob storage as well as how to program that storage.

Part V

In this part, you learn how to program Azure. Content includes:

• Chapter 11, “SQL Azure”: The chapter starts with a comparison between SQL Azure and SQL Server, then shows how to manage SQL Azure Servers and Databases with the Azure Portal. You learn how to use SQL Server Management Studio with SQL Azure, how to querying SQL Azure and how to troubleshooting connectivity issues.
• Chapter 12, “An Azure Datamarket Overview”: This chapter covers the Windows Azure Datamarket including how to build the Datamarket.
• Chapter 13, “Service Bus”: You learn how to program Service Bus Brokered Messaging, how to select between REST and managed clients and how to choose between Service Bus Brokered Messaging and Windows Azure Queues.
• Chapter 14, “AppFabric: Access Control Service”: You see how to use the Access Control Service to secure Web applications with Windows Live ID and Google ID. You then learn how to integrate the Access Control Service login page into your application. Finally, you set up Single Sign-On from the local network to the cloud.
• Chapter 15, “Azure Connect”: This chapter shows you how to define Windows Azure Connect as well as explores the differences between it and Service Bus. You also see how to set up Azure Connect, test if your SQL Server is connect and how to troubleshoot Windows Azure Connect.
• Chapter 16, “Azure Diagnostics and Debugging”: This covers how to define Windows Azure diagnostics, the differences between local and cloud debugging and how to use Intellitrace and profiling. You also see how to use Windows Azure Diagnostics and Windows Azure MMC.
• Chapter 17, “When to Use Azure Versus Office 365”: This chapter shows how flexibility, identity federation, productivity features, cross platform challenges, Service Level Agreements, and develop tools differ between these to services.

What You Need to Use This Book

You need the following:

• A copy of Visual Studio.
• An Office 365 account that can be a 30-day trial.
• A Windows Azure account.
• (Optional) Windows Server installed locally with trial copies of SQL Server, Exchange Server, Lync Server, and SharePoint Server if you want to try developing against on-premises software and integrating that into Azure and Office 365.

Conventions

To help you get the most from the text and keep track of what's happening, you see a number of conventions throughout the book.

Boxes with a warning icon like this one hold important, not-to-be forgotten information directly relevant to the surrounding text.

The Pencil icon indicates notes, tips, hints, tricks, and asides to the current discussion.

As for styles in the text:

• We italicize new terms and important words when we introduce them.
• We show keyboard strokes like this: Ctrl+A.
• We show filenames, URLs, and code within the text like so: persistence.properties.
• We present code in two different ways:

  We use a monofont type with no highlighting for most code examples.
  We use bold to emphasize code that’s particularly important in the present context.

Source Code

As you work through the examples in this book, you may choose either to type in all the code manually or to use the source code files that accompany the book. All the source code used in this book is available for download at www.wrox.com. The code snippets from the source code are accompanied by a download icon and note indicating the name of the program so that you know it’s available for download and can easily locate it in the download file. When at the site, simply locate the book’s title (either by using the Search box or by using one of the title lists) and click the Download Code link on the book’s detail page to obtain all the source code for the book.

Because many books have similar titles, you may find it easiest to search by ISBN; this book’s ISBN is 978-0-470-07656-9.

After you download the code, decompress it with your favorite compression tool. Alternatively, you can go to the main Wrox code download page at www.wrox.com/dynamic/books/download.aspx to see the code available for this book and all other Wrox books.

Errata

We make every effort to ensure that there are no errors in the text or in the code. However, no one is perfect, and mistakes do occur. If you find an error in one of our books, such as a spelling mistake or faulty piece of code, we would be grateful for your feedback. By sending in errata you may save another reader hours of frustration and at the same time you can help us provide even higher quality information.

To find the errata page for this book, go to www.wrox.com and locate the title using the Search box or one of the title lists. Then, on the book details page, click the Book Errata link. On this page you can view all errata that has been submitted for this book and posted by Wrox editors. A complete book list including links to each book’s errata is also available at www.wrox.com/misc-pages/booklist.shtml.

If you don’t spot “your” error on the Book Errata page, go to www.wrox.com/contact/techsupport.shtml and complete the form there to send us the error you have found. We’ll check the information and, if appropriate, post a message to the book’s errata page and fix the problem in subsequent editions of the book.

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