Skip to main content

Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio 2010 - August 2011 Upgrade

Last week the Windows Azure time did not only announced the availability of the Windows Azure Storage Analytics feature but also released Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio 2010 - August 2011 Upgrade.

Some features that are included are:

  • Profiling the application running in Windows Azure.
  • New ASP.NET MVC 3 web role template.
  • Multi-configuration files in one cloud project.
  • More validation in the service package and deployment phase.
Download and Install

The easiest way to install the upgrade is by using the Web Platform Installer which can be found here. The WebPI will download some dependency packages besides, such as the latest Windows Azure SDK, ASP.NET MVC 3 for Windows Azure, etc.

ASP.NET MVC 3 Web Role

When creating a new cloud project you now have a  new ASP.NET MVC 3 Web Role template available. This template already added all the required  assemblies related to MVC3 and set the Copy Local = True by default.

Multiple Service Configurations

Under the cloud project we can find that there are two service configuration files (CSCFG) which are:

  • ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg
  • ServiceConfiguration.Local.cscfg

The Multiple Service Configurations feature makes it easier to switch between the local emulator and the real cloud environment. With two configuration files enabled, we can choose which one will be the service configuration file when locally debugging, packaging and deploying. 

New Package and Publish Window

Previously we choose to package or publish our windows azure project by selecting the radio button in the Publish window. In this upgrade the package and publish had been totally separated. In the context menu of the windows azure project we can create a package by using the Package menu, and use the Publish menu to deploy the application directly to the cloud.

More Validation

Because of the differences between the local emulator and the real cloud environment, deploying a Windows Azure project can be a trial-and-error process.  With the new tools update, Visual Studio helps us to validate our project and detect some common mistakes(like not setting Copy Local=True, connection to a local database, etc…).

Powered by ASP.NET Universal Providers

The ASP.NET Universal Providers extends the Session, Membership, Roles and Profile support to SQL Compact Edition and SQL Azure, which means as a developer, we can implement the business logic regardless which backend database we are using. More information in Scott’s blog post.

Go try it out yourself!

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Podman– Command execution failed with exit code 125

After updating WSL on one of the developer machines, Podman failed to work. When we took a look through Podman Desktop, we noticed that Podman had stopped running and returned the following error message: Error: Command execution failed with exit code 125 Here are the steps we tried to fix the issue: We started by running podman info to get some extra details on what could be wrong: >podman info OS: windows/amd64 provider: wsl version: 5.3.1 Cannot connect to Podman. Please verify your connection to the Linux system using `podman system connection list`, or try `podman machine init` and `podman machine start` to manage a new Linux VM Error: unable to connect to Podman socket: failed to connect: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:2655: connectex: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it. That makes sense as the podman VM was not running. Let’s check the VM: >podman machine list NAME         ...
Read more

Azure DevOps/ GitHub emoji

I’m really bad at remembering emoji’s. So here is cheat sheet with all emoji’s that can be used in tools that support the github emoji markdown markup: All credits go to rcaviers who created this list.
Read more

VS Code Planning mode

After the introduction of Plan mode in Visual Studio , it now also found its way into VS Code. Planning mode, or as I like to call it 'Hannibal mode', extends GitHub Copilot's Agent Mode capabilities to handle larger, multi-step coding tasks with a structured approach. Instead of jumping straight into code generation, Planning mode creates a detailed execution plan. If you want more details, have a look at my previous post . Putting plan mode into action VS Code takes a different approach compared to Visual Studio when using plan mode. Instead of a configuration setting that you can activate but have limited control over, planning is available as a separate chat mode/agent: I like this approach better than how Visual Studio does it as you have explicit control when plan mode is activated. Instead of immediately diving into execution, the plan agent creates a plan and asks some follow up questions: You can further edit the plan by clicking on ‘Open in Editor’: ...
Read more