The latest relase of the WIndows Azure platform, portal and tools (check here) includes support for one of the features announced at PDC last month: remote desktop access to your role instances. This feature is pretty easy to use and currently allows you to deploy a preconfigured VM with IIS where you can play with the OS. No real application needed!
MvcSiteMapProvider is, as the name implies, an ASP.NET MVC SiteMapProvider implementation for the ASP.NET MVC framework. Targeted at ASP.NET MVC 2, it provides sitemap XML functionality and interoperability with the classic ASP.NET sitemap controls, like the SiteMapPath control for rendering breadcrumbs and the Menu control.
Here is a quick jump-list of all 8 videos from the Silverlight Firestarter. This includes the keynote and the 7 sessions that are targeted at helping you build business applications with Silverlight. I included links to:
By popular request, we are collecting the updated slides and code samples from speakers and will post them on the event site soon, too.
There where great announcement from the PDC10 in Dublin, and thankfully David Northy posted a great summary on Technet.
Here is the link
Great article on pre-planned strategies using partitioning techniques for SQL Azure.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/scaling-out-with-sql-azure.aspx
Originally announced @ TechEd 2010
Excerpt follows
Assume we have a a web edition database that has a MAXSIZE=5GB. If the database size is 800MB, the daily charge for the database will be at the 1GB rate for web edition. if the next day, the database size grows to 3GBs, the daily charge will be based on the next billing increment for web edition which is 5GB for that day. If the next day, after some data deletion, the size drops back to 900MB, the daily charge will be based on 1GB back again.
The same example applies to a business edition edition database. Assume we have a business edition database with MAXSIZE=50GB. If the total database size is 8GB, the daily charge for the database will be at the 10GB rate. If the next day, the database size grows to 25GB, the daily charge will be based on the next billing increment for the business edition which is 30GB and so on.
- Cost Predictability Enhancements: Even though both editions can grow to larger ceiling sizes (such as 50GB), you can cap the data size per database and control your bill at the billing increments. MAXSIZE option for CREATE/ALTER DATABASE will help set the cap on the size of the database. If the size of your database reaches to the cap set by MAXSIZE, you will receive an error code 40544. You will only be billed for the MAXSIZE amount for the day. When database reaches the MAXSIZE limit, you cannot insert or update data, or create new objects, such as tables, stored procedures, views, and functions. However, you can still read and delete data, truncate tables, drop tables and indexes, and rebuild indexes.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing/#sql
Pricing at time of article on Tuesday 12th October 2010
* No charge for inbound data transfers during off-peak times through October 31, 2010
So you need to migrate from SQL Azure Web to Business : Migrate your say? Wrong.
You can just look up SQL Managment Studio 2008 (R2) and Add the following
[code]
ALTER DATABASE database_name
{
MODIFY NAME = new_database_name
|MODIFY (<edition_options> [, ..n])
}
<edition_options> ::=
{
(MAXSIZE = {1 | 5 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50} GB)
|(EDITION = {'web' | 'business'})
}
[;]
[/code]
Assuming you are connected to the Master Db then it you could, for example upgrade from a 5GB Web to 10GB Business Azure DB
[code]
ALTER DATABASE [DB_NAME] Modify (EDITION = 'business', MAXSIZE = 10 GB)
[/code]
Another good article on this is http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlazure/archive/2010/06/16/10026036.aspx
More can be found out on MSDN @ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff394109.aspx
But how does this affect your pricing? Well you need to read the following document.
Except from link below
“Lets look at a few examples; Assume we have a a web edition database that has a MAXSIZE=5GB. If the database size is 800MB, the daily charge for the database will be at the 1GB rate for web edition. if the next day, the database size grows to 3GBs, the daily charge will be based on the next billing increment for web edition which is 5GB for that day. If the next day, after some data deletion, the size drops back to 900MB, the daily charge will be based on 1GB back again.
Lets look at a few examples; Assume we have a a web edition database that has a MAXSIZE=5GB. If the database size is 800MB, the daily charge for the database will be at the 1GB rate for web edition. if the next day, the database size grows to 3GBs, the daily charge will be based on the next billing increment for web edition which is 5GB for that day. If the next day, after some data deletion, the size drops back to 900MB, the daily charge will be based on 1GB back again.
The same example applies to a business edition edition database. Assume we have a business edition database with MAXSIZE=50GB. If the total database size is 8GB, the daily charge for the database will be at the 10GB rate. If the next day, the database size grows to 25GB, the daily charge will be based on the next billing increment for the business edition which is 30GB and so on. “
Another great Developer Developer Developer conference, this time it was in Dublin.
Some interesting stats.
The hashtag #dddie was mentioned 134 times between13:07 8th October 2010 to 21:32 11th October 2010
Total first degree audience for the hastag #dddie was 51468 people.
Some Chatter Graphs
Developer Developer Developer : Chatter Stats for 2010/10/09
Developer Developer Developer : Chatter Stats for 2010/10/08 - 2010/10/11
#DDDIE was mentioned by
Twitter account order by Influence.
You can find out more stats & tools for social network by registering @ http://exise.co
Just hit a real snaffu on get our new dev server up and running. For some reason SQL Reporting Services are not part of SQL 2008 WorkGroups. However, in theory we should be able to do an in place upgrade to another SQL edition. It has only took about 2 hrs to find out why, but hey least know I know.
the inital probelm appear using the TFS Advance configutation Wizard dropping out with
[code]
Error [ Reporting ] TF255344: Either a connection could not be made to the server that is running SQL Server Analysis Services, or the service is not running. For more information, review the following exception message: Error encountered when creating connection to Analysis Services. Contact your Team Foundation Server administrator..Error [ Reporting ] TF255275: The following Web service for SQL Server Reporting Services could not be accessed: http://exsdev/ReportServer/ReportService2005.asmx.
[/code]
but after some research it actual turned out the be that SQL 2008 RC WorkGroups just does support this. It a bit dumb in my option not to just ship this, and it probably nested away somewhere.
Anyhow, some useful links
SQL Server® 2008 R2 Reporting Services Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint® Technologies 2010
Troubleshooting Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 1 error <- useful if outdate, but it show how to recreate reports db
Using Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010 <- nice example with a custom customer list with twitter integration and deployment to outlook
[Update]
Only ISO of SQL 2008 I had was developer, so upgrade/downgrade policy was not a valid scenario. Option was to download another ISO from MSDN
MS SQL Version and Edition Upgrades
[Update]
2 hours to find the bug. 5 mins to upgrade 
We just launched our product website @ http://exise.co
“Manage multiple social networks for your company or clients with one easy to use web-based app.”
Interesting in the first 12 hours we received 412 unique visitors, with Chrome being the most popular browser.