14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft Astoria is essentially just one aspect of the company's Cloud operating system strategy. And as of August 6, Microsoft is offering via Astoria an online storage space for Rich Internet Application program data, the platform forecasted to bring the end of the Windows operating system. No less than 100 MB of storage is available free of charge as an Astoria component, in Microsoft's cloud storage servers. Microsoft Codename "Astoria" aims to streamline the integration of "data back-end for AJAX-style programs and Rich Interactive Applications", offering an online service for applications operating with data hosted on the web.
"The service is still experimental, and limited to 100MB storage, but this is huge. You can start getting your feet wet today, develop some cool applications, and get prepared for the future of rich Internet applications. This scenario is potentially game-changing. With a solution like this, you'll be able to deploy rich apps that maintain state, without having to maintain a server cluster. We already have thousands of developers using Silverlight Streaming services to deploy rich client code (which can include .NET code, Python, etc.). Now developers can tie to a powerful back-end data store which supports the entity model using XML or JSON. All without configuring a single web server or database server," revealed Joshua Allen, Microsoft Evangelist.
Microsoft is already offering access to the Microsoft Codename "Astoria" Online Service introductory information but it is also enabling users to design their own Astoria Data Service which will subsequently be hosted in the company's cloud. "In order to create a web data service using Microsoft Codename Astoria in your own environment you will need Microsoft Visual Studio Codename "Orcas" Beta, and a database with updated data-access providers, such as Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (SQL Server Express). After installing Visual Studio Codename "Orcas" Beta 1 and SQL Server Express Edition, download and install the Astoria toolkit," Microsoft informed.