Everybody was Confoo fighting…

Last week I had the Pleasure of going out to Montreal, Quebec to present at an Open Source Developers Conference called Confoo.  Confoo was put on by PHP Quebec, with hard hitting sponsors including Savoir-Faire Linux, Microsoft Canada, and Google.

Presenting at Confoo was a big deal for me it’s the first time I’ve been to Quebec, and the first time flying on an air plane by myself. It’s was also a great experience, even though I try to keep a vanilla front on the diversity of programming languages Microsoft folk, and Open Source folk are normally on two separate planes.  However the crowd that came out to my presentations were extremely attentive and even though I was pitching a Microsoft product you could see there was quite a bit of interest in Windows Azure in the group.

In the spirit of open source I have released my source code on CodePlex. I hope that people will be able to download and learn from the code I’ve created.  Unfortunately, I had to remove the references to the database and I will be decommissioning my WCF Service in the cloud (SQL Azure). Currently I have only release three projects on CodePlex but I will update this post in the future with the new Projects as I complete the PHP and Python versions that I am still working on.

The LittleBlackBook Database Project

This project contains the SQL Script to create the database on either a local installation of SQL Server, or run against your SQL Azure database. This Project also contains the WCF Data Service code so you have all you need to expose the data as an OData Service.

Download the LittleBlackBookDB Project

The LittleBlackBook .NET Connection Project

This project consumes the data from the WCF Data Service and uses the Entity Framework to provide the strongly typed classes to represent the data in the Service.  You can add new People, and modify their Bets.

Download the LittleBlackBook.NET Project

The LittleBlackBook Ruby Connection Project

Because I’m primarily a .NET developer I got a fellow Guelph Coffee and Code member and good friend of mine Tony Thompson. Tony is a Graduate Student at the University of Guelph, and is currently looking to find a steady job as a Developer. He is primarily a Ruby, or Python Developer, but can easily adapt to any language.

Tony used an Atom gem to read the OData from the WCF Data Service.

Download the LittleBlackBook Ruby Project

More to come!

As I would like to be able to help anyone start working on the Azure platform, I am still in the midst of creating a PHP and Python application. If you are interested in seeing those demos check back or follow me on twitter.

Cloudy Head causes Cloudy Conversations

I would like to apologize for the misinformation that I made at Confoo on  March 12th, 2010.  After many of late nights staying up to prepare my slide decks and demo’s for the Confoo Conference, I had misread an email from the Windows Azure Platform Team.

Unlike stated on March 12th Windows Server Fabric will not be releasing in “ A week or so “ rather there is no definite release date for the private cloud version of Windows Azure rather, just a projection of Q3 of 2010.  Windows Server AppFabric Beta 2 was just released March 1st, and is available for download.

To clarify, Windows Azure AppFabric will be Commercial on April 9th, 2010. This means that if you are currently using the AppFabric in your Windows Azure account billing will start to accumulate starting at 12:00 AM GMT on April 9, 2010.