Nuno Filipe Godinho : Windows Phone 7, Cloud Computing

Things to take into account when you deliver applications for Connected Devices – Windows Azure to the rescue (EN)

NunoGodinho — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 21:43:29 GMT

Currently one very important space is the development of Applications for Connected Devices like Windows Phones, Windows Slates and so on.

One important elements is that we are currently going more and more to Wireless, and so it’s important to understand the current state of the art on Wireless.

According to AT&T “We will deliver as much data over our network in the first 5 weeks of 2015 as we did all year in 2010”.

Also currently there are several identified congestion factors that are affecting Wireless, like:

More subscribers with smartphones consuming data, uploading and downloading photos and videos
Spectrum + cell towers + antennas + home users
Mobile Operator bandwidth caps
Latency of all communications between the server and the destination device, passing by the Cell Towers, Backhaul network, internet, firewalls and so on

And so having this is mint, it’s really important to understand that we as developers cannot continue thinking that we’re going to continue developing our apps and services the same way, without thinking about these network related topics, because this will affect greatly the User Experience of our Solutions. And one important note is that UX is not only related to the User Interface (UI), like some developers try to think, it’s more then that. It’s really about having a great experience while using our applications.

So in order to do great applications for connected devices, and support millions of those devices, we need to think about scale.

Some examples of how we can scale our applications are:

Making Database that almost nobody touches, since we really shouldn’t let every single device connect and work on our databases, instead we should really be doing multi-tier application to abstract those devices from the Database, and by doing that we are reducing the stress of our databases and at the same time enabling the possibility of scaling the services that really give us access to our data
Place thousands of Web Servers on commodity hardware, by scaling out their app
Replicate Data
Scale horizontally
Use NoSQL databases at the edge
Shard our data using small tables for fast access
Place Load-Balancing at every tier
Use Hundreds of terabytes of data in an in-RAM distributed cache (For example Facebook uses MemCache and has something like 300 TB of data in memcache)
Use pre-compile elements, since compiling slow (For example Facebook uses PHP because they think that is very productive for them, but it didn’t work very well in terms of compiling, so they made a team to create a PHP to C++ compiler in order to get more performance)
use MapReduce pattern for parallel analysis of “Big Data”

Some of the apps that are doing this are, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Zynga, and so on.

So how in order to achieve that kind of scale we have Windows Azure. But what should we do to take the best out of Windows Azure for Connected Devices?

Scale-out. This is easy in Windows Azure, because we can define the number of instance we want of a particular role
SQL Azure should be never touched by the Devices. Instead we should use:
- In terms of Outbound Data - Worker roles that replicate outbound data from SQL Azure to NoSQL Azure Table Storage
- In terms of inbound Data - Worker Role move inbound data from Azure queues to SQL Azure
Use Distributed caching, that in Windows Azure is handled by AppFabric Caching
Do wireless efficient Services. For example using Web Roles that expose REST + JSON WCF Services is very interesting, because it saves message size, and by doing so saves time and money
Also important is making our devices cache data and work on it offline. Not every thing should be made “live” and on top of “live” data. Don’t stress the wireless connection

I hope this helps you think better about your Connected Device Apps.

Building Offline Applications using Sync Framework and SQL Azure – PDC10 Session Review

NunoGodinho — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 20:58:43 GMT

Nina (Ling) Hu – Program Manager @ Sync Framework Team

Key Takeaways:

Offline applications have lots of benefits comparing to online applications especially for mobile devices and cloud services
Sync Framework, SQL Azure and Windows Azure provide a data platform that makes it very easy to build offline applications and sync services
Sync Framework caters for offline on any client platform, and provides better end-to-end support for Windows, Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 clients.

Why to Build Offline capable Apps?

Offline/Cached mode apps enjoy lots of value
- Client apps get better UX through
  - Lower latency – data access doesn’t require round-trips
  - Higher availability – App still runs if server is unreachable
- Network utilization is reduced – most data access is local
- Servers gain better ability to schedule work asynchronously
Benefits of cached mode are magnifies on the internet because
- Server/service is further away
- Network is less tuned/reliable
- Lowers the need of scaling you app

Overview for Sync Framework v4

Capabilities where extended to other platforms like:
- Windows
  - SQL Server Express
  - SQL Compact
- Silverlight
  - Isolated Storage
  - Other Storage
- Windows Phone 7
  - Isolated Storage
  - Other Storage
- Windows Mobile
  - SQL Compact
- Browser 7 / HTML5
  - HTML5 Stores
- iPhone / Any Client
  - SQL lite
  - Other Stores
How was this achieved?
- Using a single protocol for doing the communication and Synchronization. ODATA
What platforms have Client API support?
- Windows
- Silverlight
- Windows Phone 7
All other platforms have minimal client & store requirements
- Basically there are made available a set of samples to show how to implement those.
- Over time there will be provided some tools to generate the code needed to integrate with you platform

Offline Applications Architecture

On the Server
- ODATA Sync Framework
- Sync Logic
- SQL Azure Provider
- Business Logic
  - This is the only part needed to be written for our application
- SQL Azure

Steps to Build a Sync Service
1. Provision the Database to use Sync Framework
  1. Launch the SyncSVCUtilHelper.exe
  2. Select the configuration file for the Synchronization
    1. Select the Name of the configuration file
    2. Provide the name of the database
    3. Create a Sync Scope
      - Define if we enable filtering or not
    4. Select the Tables/Columns/Rows that you want to define the scope
  3. Provision the Database
    1. Select the configuration file
    2. Next
  4. Code Generation
    1. Select the Configuration file
    2. Specify the Side that you want the file to be Generated (Server/Client)
    3. Specify the Output directory
    4. Select the Language (CS/VB)
2. Create the Sync Service
  1. Open VS
  2. Create a new ASP.NET Project
  3. Add Reference to Microsoft.Syncronization.Service.dll
  4. Add the Code generated by the Tool?
Note: When you open the Service in the Browser if you add the $diag you’ll get a page with the diagnostics of the service, and see if everything needed is in place

Overview
- Data Store
  - Expose data from SQL Azure or SQL Azure
- Host
  - Hosted on Windows Azure or IIS/Windows Server
  - Exposed using WCF Sync endpoint
- Protocol
  - Expose data for synchronization via a protocol and allows third-parties to build offline clients
- Features
  - Support business logic
  - Custom authentication / authorization
  - Filtering
- Tooling
  - Provide a Tooling wizard experience to configuring server and client

On the Client
- Silverlight Offline Application
  - Only this is needed to be developed
- Collections
- Isolated Storage
- Cache Controller
- OData Sync Proxy
- Isolated Storage Provider

Support for Silverlight 3 and 4

Steps to build a Sync Framework Client
1. Create a new Silverlight Application
2. Add Reference Microsoft.Synchronization.ClientService.dll
3. Add Reference System.ComponentModel.DataAnotation.dll
4. Add Reference System.Windows.Controls.Data.dll
5. Open the Tool SVCSyncUtilHelper.exe
6. Choose the previous Configuration file
7. Select the Side you want to generate (Isolated Storage client)
8. Select the Language (CS/VB)
9. Add the Files generated to your application

On the Client for other Platforms
- Track changes on the local storage (samples for common stores)
- Implement the client-side sync proxy (samples for sync proxies)

Protocol
- OData Protocol & Sync
  - Apply the principals of OData to the problem of data-sync
  - Standardize on protocol not components
  - Minimal client sync logic and algorithms
  - Service manages sync keeping client simple
  - Provide samples to how to consume protocol for any platform
  - Provide components for richer experience in Silverlight & Windows Phone 7
  - Full interop details defined in the SDK

Roadmap

Sync Framework 4.0 CTP is available now.
SQL Azure Data Sync CTP 1 its for the Cloud to Cloud Service
SQL Azure Data Sync CTP 2 will support On-premise to Cloud Sync
Sync Framework 4.0 RTW will be available on 2011

More resources

http://msdn.microsoft.com/sync

VS Connections 2010 – Day One - Keynote

NunoGodinho — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:58:16 GMT

Bob Muglia – President of Server and Tools Business - Microsoft

Announcement: Release of Visual Studio 2010

“Get In the Zone”

Multi-monitoring
Box Selection
Extension Manager
JQuery Integration
HTML code snippets

“Get Current”

Windows Platform

Windows 7

Takes advantage of the Multi-Touch
Develops using the Ribbon
Native Support

Animation API
Native Ribbon Designer integrated into VS2010
MFC Class Wizard is Back
Multi-touch and Advanced Gesture Support

Sharepoint

Build Sharepoint Sites
Build WebParts
Features

Packaging Automation
Use Server Explorer for explore all the Sharepoint Site contents
Linq-to-Sharepoint
Real Debug Support

Silverlight
Windows Phone
Windows Server
Windows Azure

Windows Azure & Mobile Integration
WCF Sinks
EntityFramework support on Azure

SQL Server

A new Major release will be available in a few weeks

“Great Team Work”

Announcement: Visual Studio Team Explorer Everywhere

Works on Several platforms, IDEs, and OS
ALM tools

Dependency Graph
Sequence Diagram – UML 2.1 compliant
Microsoft Test Manager

Creates the notion of an Actionable Bug
Capability to see

replay of what was done when the bug was generated
the steps to replay the bug
replay the tests that were already done to see be sure the bug was solved

IntelliTrace

Gives the capability to debug application with the code that was working when the trace was made.

Integration with Sharepoint

Availability of Dashboards about Project Status reports

Virtualized Test Environment

Step up Program is available until the end of April

You buy a lower end subscription of MSDN and get the next level edition for free