On the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference last week the business and partner model for Windows Azure got announced. (Daddy goes on vacation for two weeks and THIS happens. Man you can’t turn your back for a moment. ;~) ) Windows Azure: Compute @ $0.12 / hour Storage @ $0.15 / GB / month stored Storage Transactions @ $0.01 / 10K SQL Azure: Web Edition – Up to 1 GB relational database @ $9.99 Business Edition – Up to...

I will show in this post how to extend the basic Windows Azure Project Template and make the solution a bit more intelligent. I will do this using a new and upcoming .NET Framework 4 technology; Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF). MEF Preview 5 is targeting .NET Framework 3.5 and is even developed under MSPL license and so fits like a glove into Windows Azure. Intro My overall goal is to create a Windows Azure project template that: enables testability abstracts away storage is extensible and easy...

If you create a class library and add a reference to it from an Azure Web Role or Azure Worker Role you get an error. Here’s how to get around it. The problem is that the class library template for Visual Studio 2010 creates a .csproj file with too few configuration settings. In Visual Studio 2008 the default target platform is AnyCPU. In Visual Studio 2010 it’s x86 and the configuration for AnyCPU is not included. It seems to me this is an error in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1. This is what a standard .csproj file excerpt...