The Azure Services Platform is a cloud-computing technology from Microsoft. It is composed of four core components - Windows Azure, .NET Services, SQL Services, and Live Services - each with a unique role in the functioning of your cloud service. It is the goal of this book to show you how to use these components, both separately and together, to build flawless cloud services. At its heart, Windows Azure Platform is a down-to-earth, code-centric book. This book aims to show you precisely how the components are employed and to demonstrate the techniques and best practices you need to know to use them to best effect. That said, author Tejaswi Redkar regularly takes time out to provide a thorough overview of the architectural concepts that underpin Windows Azure. Without this understanding, you will find it hard to use the platform to its full potential. By the time you've read this book, you will be comfortable building high-quality end-to-end Azure services of your own. What you'll learn * Know everything you need to about the Azure Services components - from Access Control to SQL Services, from the Service Bus to Workflow Services * Understand both the architectural thinking behind Azure and the nuts-and-bolts code that binds your service together * Design, build, and deploy an Azure service with the assistance of a fully worked template for end-to-end application design that mimics a real-world scenario and gives you a rock-solid example of the design and development processes that you need to work through Who this book is for This book is intended for professional developers who want to dig into the internals of Azure and start investigating its features in depth and adopting them into their workflow systems. A taster to the subject is provided by the Apress title Introducing Windows Azure, published in December 2009. Table of Contents * INTRODUCING CLOUD SERVICES * WINDOWS AZURE PLATFORM OVERVIEW * WINDOWS AZURE * WINDOWS AZURE STORAGE PART I – BLOBS * WINDOWS AZURE STORAGE PART II – QUEUES * WINDOWS AZURE STORAGE PART III – TABLES * APPFABRIC: ACCESS CONTROL SERVICE * APPFABRIC SERVICE BUS * SQL AZURE