Namaste!

Some time back I blogged about Microsoft .Net 4.0 Support in Windows Azure Platform. So a further step by Microsoft is supporting .Net Framework 4.0 as target framework when building Windows Azure Cloud Services.

Those who have ever worked on Windows Azure development using Visual Studio 2010, knows that you need to select .Net Framework 3.5 as target framework for Windows Azure Cloud Service Project. So with the new release of Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio it allows you to select .Net Framework 4.0 as target framework.

There are many other improvements, additions in new release of Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 1.2 (June 2010 Updates) few of which are listed below:

  • Visual Studio 2010 RTM Support: Full support for Visual Studio 2010 RTM.
  • .NET 4.0 support: Choose to build services targeting either the .NET 3.5 or .NET 4 framework.
  • Cloud storage explorer: Displays a read-only view of Windows Azure tables and blob containers through Server Explorer.
  • Integrated deployment: Deploy services directly from Visual Studio by selecting ‘Publish’ from Solution Explorer.
  • Service monitoring: Keep track of the state of your services through the ‘compute’ node in Server Explorer.
  • IntelliTrace support for services running in the cloud: Adds support for debugging services in the cloud by using the Visual Studio 2010 IntelliTrace feature. This is enabled by using the deployment feature, and logs are retrieved through Server Explorer. This is indeed good feature. For more details, you may like to visit here.

Along with this, the greatest resource I know for learning Windows Azure – Windows Azure Platform Training Kit has also a new release for June updates. Download Windows Azure Platform Training Kit – June Update to learn more about it.

  • The following items are introduced in this release:
  • Introduction to Windows Azure – VS2010 version
  • Introduction To SQL Azure – VS2010 version
  • Introduction to the Windows Azure Platform AppFabric Service Bus – VS2010 version
  • Introduction to Dallas – VS2010 version
  • Introduction to the Windows Azure Platform AppFabric Access Control Service – VS2010 version
  • Web Services and Identity in the Cloud
  • Exploring Windows Azure Storage VS2010 version + new Exercise: “Working with Drives”
  • Windows Azure Deployment VS2010 version + new Exercise: “Securing Windows Azure with SSL”
  • Minor fixes to presentations – mainly timelines, pricing, new features etc

 Stay tuned for more information on Windows Azure Platform.

Dhanyawad!