Developer Choice in Languages and Runtimes with Windows Azure Platform
The Windows Azure platform offers choices to developers, allowing them to use multiples languages (.NET, PHP, Ruby, Python or Java) and development tools (Visual Studio or Eclipse) to build applications which run on Windows Azure and/or consume any of the Windows Azure platform offerings.
Development Environments & Programming Language Choice
Windows Azure platform’s goal is to provide a broad choice for various programming languages and development tools (e.g., Visual Studio, Eclipse, and Command-line tools). These choices allow the ease of development and deployment of web applications, thus enabling developers to take advantage of scalability and service offerings on Windows Azure.
Developers have the choice of several programming languages for building their web applications for deployment into Windows Azure: including support for strongly-typed languages such as C#, VB.NET, Managed C++, and Java, as well as dynamically typed languages such as PHP and Ruby.
Windows Azure platform services from various languages
The Windows Azure SDKs for Java and PHP provide classes for working with Windows Azure Blobs, Tables, and Queues. They also provide helper classes for HTTP transport, AuthN/AuthZ, REST & Error Management.
For more information, please refer to the respective SDK open-source project web-sites:
The Windows Azure AppFabric SDKs for PHP, Java, and Ruby provides APIs for using the Service Bus as a connectivity solution across network and organizational boundaries, and the Access Control Service for claims-based authorization as a service. The SDKs facilitate cross platform development between applications deployed on different infrastructures (clouds, on premises).
For more information, please refer to the respective SDK open-source project web-sites:
Use Database as a Service with SQL Azure from .NET, PHP, and Java
Microsoft SQL Azure extends SQL Server capabilities to the cloud. SQL Azure offers a relational database service called Microsoft SQL Azure Database, and using SQL Azure, you can easily provision and deploy relational database solutions. Benefits include manageability, high availability, scalability, a familiar development model, and a relational data model. Additional SQL Azure services are planned.
When developers create on-premises applications that use SQL Server, they use client libraries that use the Tabular Data Stream (TDS) application-level protocol to communicate between client and server. SQL Azure also uses a TDS interface so that you can use the same tools and libraries to build client applications for data that is stored in SQL Azure.
Access by TDS support by several languages, including:
- .NET (C# and Visual Basic), C++
- PHP (via the SQL Server Driver for PHP)
- Java (via the SQL Server JDBC Driver)
For more about TDS, see Network Protocols and TDS Endpoints.
Windows and Non-Windows Platform Choices
Windows Azure platform uses industry standard protocols including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and ATOMPub that enable applications hosted on non-Windows platforms to work with the Azure Services Platform.
For example, a PHP application running on the Linux, Apache, and MySQL stack can make use of Windows Azure Storage and Windows Azure AppFabric from the Windows Azure platform without making any changes to the operating environment of the PHP application.