Riviera Windows Azure Reference Application Available

The release of version 1 of Microsoft’s first Cloud operating system is approaching fast and will be available to customers in November 2009. In this regard, companies that are looking to jump aboard the Windows Azure wagon now have available a reference application. Project Riviera can be accessed through the MSDN Code Galley and is available for download with components governed by three separate licenses. Source code files are up for grabs via the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL), the binary files are offered with an MSDN Code Gallery Binary License, and the documentation files with a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

“Project Riviera is a comprehensive code sample to demonstrate how to develop multi-tenant highly-scalable line-of-business application on Windows Azure Platform. This sample is developed by Global Partner Architecture Team in Developer & Platform Evangelism group at Microsoft in collaboration with Cumulux - our Cloud ISV partner. Riviera uses Customer Loyalty Management scenario for illustration purpose but many building blocks are applicable to range of line-of-business applications,” Microsoft revealed.

Customers should know that Project Riviera is in no way a product or solution from the Redmond company. In this regard, the software giant indicated that the sample code had been built and offered only for evangelism purposes. Windows Azure, the company’s Cloud platform, was debuted into public testing at the end of October 2009. For the time being the Cloud OS continues to be available to testers as a Community Technology Preview.

“Key features of Riviera:
-Multi-tenant data store based on Azure Table Storage as well as SQL Azure.
-Per tenant customization of data model
-Per tenant customization of business logic (using Windows Workflow in Windows Azure)
-Per tenant customization of user interface using Silverlight 3.0. Customization can be multi-level – custom theme, custom XAML, and custom XAP.
-Automated tenant provisioning.
-Windows Azure web role->Azure Queue->worker role pattern for high volume transaction processing that can scale on demand
-Claims aware web service and web application using Geneva Framework
-Active and Passive Federation using Geneva Framework, Geneva Server and .NET Access Control Service (ACS)
-Windows Live ID authentication for consumer facing web site
-Use of Patterns & Practices Enterprise Library Caching and Logging application blocks in Windows Azure,” reads an excerpt from the description of Project Riviera.