14 DAY TRIAL // It’s not only the latest version of Drupal that evolved to embrace the Microsoft Platform, it’s also the Redmond company that worked to boost interoperability with the open source CMS and technologies such as PHP. Case in point: Drupal 7 on Windows Azure. With the recent launch of Drupal 7, developers using elements of the Microsoft platform such as Windows, IIS, SQL Server, etc. received some much needed love from the community behind the content management system.
But the software giant is also showing love in return, and an illustrative example is the fact that it’s enabling PHP devs to use it on Windows Azure, and not lock them into ASP.Net.
“Since the launch of Windows Azure a couple years ago, we’ve been working on driving Interoperability scenarios that enable various developers to harness the power of the Windows Azure cloud platform,” revealed Craig Kitterman, Sr. Interoperability Evangelist, Microsoft
“In parallel, we’ve supported interoperability projects, in particular on PHP and Drupal, in which the focus is showing how to simply bridge different technologies, mash them up and ultimately offer new features and options to the developers.”
Concomitantly with the availability of Drupal 7, Microsoft announced the availability of four new modules for the CMS designed to leverage Windows Azure.
Once developers run Drupal 7 on Microsoft’s Cloud platform they can also take advantage by the modules developed by Schakra and Mindtree, including Bing Maps, Windows Live ID, OData and the Silverlight Pivot Viewer.
Craig Kitterman, Sr. Interoperability Evangelist, Microsoft offered details on the new modules for Drupal 7 on Windows Azure:
“- The Bing Maps Module for Drupal provides for easy & flexible embedding of Bing Map in Drupal content types, such as a technical article or story.
- The Windows Live ID Module for Drupal allows Drupal user to associate their Drupal account to their Windows Live ID, and then to login on Drupal with their Windows Live ID.
- The OData Module for Drupal allows developers to include data sources based on OData in Drupal content types. The generic module includes a basic OData query builder and renders data in a simple HTML Table.
- The Silverlight Pivot viewer Module for Drupal enables easy & flexible embedding of Silverlight PivotViewer in Drupal content types, using a set of preconfigured data sources like oData producers or existing Pivot collections,” he stated.