14 DAY TRIAL // At this year’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC 2009) in Los Angeles, Microsoft unveiled two components of its Windows Azure platform, namely Windows Server AppFabric and Windows Azure platform AppFabric. While embracing the Cloud, and attempting to convince corporate customers to adopt its Cloud platform, the Redmond company moved to essentially make it easier for companies to both build and manage applications, in both hosted and on-premise scenarios. As of mid-November 2009, early adopters were given access to Windows Server AppFabric Beta 1, and now they can also grab Windows Azure platform AppFabric SDK V1.0 from the Microsoft Download Center.
“Windows Azure platform AppFabric is part of the Azure Services Platform. Microsoft .NET Services includes two services: the Access Control Service and the Service Bus,” Microsoft explained. “This SDK includes API libraries and samples for building connected applications with the .NET platform. It spans the entire spectrum of today’s Internet applications – from rich connected applications with advanced connectivity requirements to Web-style applications that use simple protocols such as HTTP to communicate with the broadest possible range of clients.”
Companies that want to start test driving the DKS as soon as possible need to first set up a Windows Azure platform AppFabric project. At the same time, Microsoft also requires testers to have at least one service namespace. In order to do this, customers will have to sign up for Service Bus and Access Control.
“The Windows Azure platform AppFabric SDK samples are available as Visual Studio 2008 solutions (C# and VB) and require Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 or higher to run. The SDK is supported on Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP operating systems. Some Access Control Service samples require IIS 7.0,” Microsoft added.
Windows Azure platform AppFabric SDK 1.0 is available for download here.
Windows Server AppFabric Beta 1 is available for download here.