October, 2012

(Intro: Sometimes as part of testing I go to silly lengths to try to point out what I think is going to be a bug in a piece of code I have seen. And frequently when I do this, I am basically wrong, for any of various reasons – it’s a bug according to some world view which is not quite aligned with reality, or whatever. Overall I think I tend to frustrate some people when I go through this exercise, but an end result is often that I learn something...) I just emerged from the testing vaults with a...

This download is described in my forthcoming DevProConnections article. Stay tuned for a direct link to the article. For those looking for the source in the article, here it is: Download Ronin

A few weeks ago I blogged about Windows Azure Mobile Services - a new capability in Windows Azure that makes it incredibly easy to connect your client and mobile applications to a scalable cloud backend. Earlier today we delivered a number of great improvements to Windows Azure Mobile Services.  New features include: iOS support – enabling you to connect iPhone and iPad apps to Mobile Services Facebook, Twitter, and Google authentication support with Mobile Services Blob, Table, Queue, and Service...

Earlier today we released a number of enhancements to the new Windows Azure Management Portal.  These new capabilities include: Service Bus Management and Monitoring Support for Managing Co-administrators Import/Export support for SQL Databases Virtual Machine Experience Enhancements Improved Cloud Service Status Notifications Media Services Monitoring Support Storage Container Creation and Access Control Support All of these improvements are now live in production and available to start using...

This week we finished rolling out .NET 4.5 to all of our Windows Azure Web Site clusters.  This means that you can now publish and run ASP.NET 4.5 based apps, and use  .NET 4.5 libraries and features (for example: async and the new spatial data-type support in EF), with Windows Azure Web Sites.  This enables a ton of really great capabilities - check out Scott Hanselman’s great post of videos that highlight a few of them. Visual Studio 2012 includes built-in publishing support to Windows...

We have completed our validation work and are pleased to announce that Microsoft AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server now supports the following platforms: .NET 4.5 Windows Server 2012 Windows 8 x64 (for development purposes) Windows PowerShell 3.0 SQL Server 2012 No changes were required in AppFabric to run on these platforms, so no updates are required. Blog Post by: Jurgen Willis

Today, I am pleased to announce the ten finalists for the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure powered by TechStars . These startups are about to launch into a three-month program where they will develop new products and businesses using Windows Azure. The response to the program has been fantastic - we received nearly 600 applications from entrepreneurs in 69 countries around the world, spanning a host of industries including retail, travel, entertainment, banking, real estate and more. ...

Today we announced the RTM release of Workflow Manager 1.0, a new offering that builds on and extends the capabilities of WF 4.5. It's been an incredibly busy time for the team, and we're thrilled to get this release out to our customers, hot on the heels of our WF enhancements in .NET 4.5 . As previously mentioned , this first release of Workflow Manager has had a strong focus on supporting the upcoming releases of SharePoint Server 2013 and Office 365. Thank you to all of you who helped...

We delivered a Workflow session at the //build/ conference yesterday. Slides and a recording of the presentation are now available ; it was a great opportunity to provide an update on all of our recent investments . It was a packed session with lots of good questions and discussions afterward. Thank you to everyone who was able to attend //build/ in person - the team is really enjoying all of the great conversations! Blog Post by: Jurgen Willis

We have a new case study from one of our good partners, PayGlobal . The case study does a great job describing how WF contributes to their Exolvo solution. It also highlights the developer productivity gains that PayGlobal's consultants and customers are seeing from the Workflow designer enhancements we made in .NET 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012. From the article: “Adopting Windows Workflow Foundation 4.5 for our Exolvo product development has made it much easier to build and maintain the...