Workflow Foundation Activity Pack for Windows Azure CTP 1 Available

Microsoft has added yet another item on the list of resources that it shares through the Windows Workflow Foundation site on CodePlex, namely a taste of the Activity Pack for Windows Azure.

Workflow Foundation Activity Pack for Windows Azure is currently available as a pre-release Build, with the software giant offering a Community Technology Preview designed for testing.

Workflow Foundation Activity Pack for Windows Azure CTP1 is available free of charge, and early adopters are encouraged to provide feedback to the Redmond company, helping it shape the future of the pack.

“The WF Activity Pack for Windows Azure CTP 1 is the first community technology preview (CTP) release of Windows Azure activities implementation based on Windows Workflow Foundation in .NET Framework 4.0 (WF4) and Windows Azure SDK,” a member of the Windows Azure team explained.

“The implementation contains a set of activities based on Windows Azure Storage Service and Windows Azure AppFabric Caching Service, which enables developers to easily access these Azure services within a workflow application.”

Testing taking the CTP out for a spin will need to have the latest software development kit for Microsoft’s Cloud platform already deployed.

“The Activity Pack is built on top of Windows Azure SDK (August Update, 2011). Please install the SDK on your development machine,” the company said.

According to the software giant, early adopters will find a range of activities packed inside the resource, including in relation to the Windows Azure Storage Service – Blob, namely: GetBlob, PutBlob, DeleteBlob, CopyBlob, ListBlobs.

DeleteEntity, DeleteEntity<T>, UpdateEntity<T>, QueryEntities<T> and InsertEntity<T> are available for Windows Azure Storage Service – Table. At the same time, customers get AddCacheItem, GetCacheItem, and AddCacheItem for the Windows Azure AppFabric Caching Service.

In addition to being offered through CodePlex, the Workflow Foundation Activity Pack for Windows Azure CTP 1 “package is also available via NuGet, you can type “Install-Package WFAzureActivityPack” in your package manager console to install the activity pack,” Microsoft said.

Workflow Foundation Activity Pack for Windows Azure CTP 1 is available for download here.