During the Development Cycle it is necessary to connect to a database to ensure that your data is getting stored in Windows Azure Storage Services. Microsoft was nice enough to give us this functionality out of the box so we don’t actually need a Windows Azure account before beginning development on an application. Of course you will need to Initialize your Development Storage Service on your development machine before you get going. Once you’re done setting up the Development Storage Service you will need to configure the Development Storage in the ServiceConfiguration.cscfg file. You will need to add the following ConfigurationSettings to each Role element in the ServiceConfiguration.cscfg [Please note that these are default values and may be subject to change].
1: <ConfigurationSettings>
2: <Setting name="DiagnosticsConnectionString"
value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" />
3: <Setting name="AccountName" value="devstoreaccount1" />
4: <Setting name="AccountSharedKey"
value="Eby8vdM02xNOcqFlqUwJPLlmEtlCDXJ1OUzFT50uSRZ6IFsu
Fq2UVErCz4I6tq/K1SZFPTOtr/KBHBeksoGMGw==" />
5: <Setting name="BlobStorageEndpoint" value="http://127.0.0.1:1000" />
6: <Setting name="QueueStorageEndpoint" value="http://127.0.0.1:1001" />
7: <Setting name="TableStorageEndpoint" value="http://127.0.0.1:1002"/>
8: </ConfigurationSettings>
Once you have these configuration settings in place you will be ready to interact with the Windows Azure Development Storage Service on your Development Machine. Stay tuned for my next blog Series which will describe the different between Blob Storage, Queue Storage, and Table Storage and how you will go about interacting with the different storage spaces.