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eWEEK Labs Takes a First Look at the Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform
by Jeff Cogswell
New Project Types
Azure Tools for Visual Studio create new project types that you can use in Visual Studio.
Two Projects
When you create a Cloud Service, the wizard creates two different projects for you.
Development Storage
The first time you run your project, the Development Storage gets created. Although this is flat data, it's actually stored inside SQL Server Express.
Development Fabric
The Development Fabric includes a user interface for managing the services. Included is the log output for each.
User Interface
The Development Storage also includes a UI for managing the data.
Further Configuration
When you click the Tools menu in the Development Storage, you can open the Table Service Properties window, allowing for further configuration.
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With Azure, Microsoft is taking on Amazon.com, Google and others in the increasingly competitive space of cloud computing platforms. The Azure offering includes a software development kit that ships with a starter sample to get developers more comfortable with the Microsoft technology. Here, eWEEK Labs tries it out.