Microsoft has released a new Windows Azure Toolkit for developer to make applications for Windows that use Azure services. The Windows Azure Compute and Storage is MSFT’s cloud platform. This new toolkit is meant to make it easier for developers to build Windows 8 applications that leverage Azure. This toolkit was announced at BUILD conference that is taking place at Anaheim, Calif.
The new Azure toolkit was announced by Microsoft’s Server and Tools president Satya Nadella. According to him, the toolkit will be providing guidance to the developers for building a Windows Azure based app for Windows 8. It also contains templates for app development to make the process of getting off the bat faster when it comes to developing Windows 8 apps that can access Azure.
The template provided generates an ASP.NET MVC 3 project and a Windows Metro Friendly JavaScript application project. Once done, the client and the cloud projects integrate together and initiate push notifications through the Windows Push Notification Server or WNS. The project also demos the execution of the WNS recipe and also shows the developer how to better utilize the Windows Azure Blob and Table Storage.
Some months back, Microsoft had released another toolkit for Windows Azure that was meant to help developers make apps for devices runnign Android, iOS and of course Windows Phone. The toolkits can help developers step up their app creation on these popular mobile platforms process through using the Azure cloud. With this toolkit, Microsoft has given those same back-end capabilities to developers to power their Metro style apps with the scalable power of the Azure cloud platform.
The toolkit has support for commonly used programming languages — .NET, C#, C++ and Visual Basic — and also supports HTML5 and JavaScript (used by Metro on Windows 8). Hence, developers can choose the program that they are comfortable with. This shows Microsoft’s current attempts of making sure that Windows 8 attracts and support as many developers as possible. The toolkit also contains code samples, documentations and best practices, tooling support with Visual Basic project samples and reusable services and libraries.
On top of everything else, the toolkit also has a rich set of useful assets such as a dependency checker, Windows Push Notification Server recipe, DEv 11 project templates, VS 2010 templates and also sample applications.
Back at BUILD, Microsoft’s John Shewchuk demoed a Metro style travel app that used Azure to process and store its data. The engineer who build the app, called Vittorio Bertocci, said that the application was a simple travel app written in HTML5, CSS and JavaScript with Azure connect. It’s called Margie’s Travel and is a sample app that helps you track and manage your trips across multiple Windows 8 devices. He also said that his team was working with the proper teams within Microsoft in order to ensure that they are aligned properly with the new security features of the OS. Wade Wagner, an engineer who helped Bertocci, said the app was built rapidly using only what was provided within the toolkit, to serve as a useful example.
