Windows Azure Guest OS 1.4 (Release 201005-01)

Important

The Windows Azure Guest OS 1.4 includes a fix for a bug in the WCF Data Services. This fix may affect how your service runs on Windows Azure. If your code queries a table in the Windows Azure Table service using LINQ, you may need to take action to ensure that your service continues to work as expected. Please read this section carefully to determine whether you may be affected by the upgrade to the Windows Azure Guest OS 1.4.

Bug Description and Fix

In previous versions of the Windows Azure Guest OS, the LINQ translator provided by the WCF Data Service client library contained a bug such that it did not always correctly encode reserved characters on the request URI. This bug has now been fixed, and reserved characters are encoded according to URL-encoding rules.

For example, the following LINQ statement was previously translated into the first URI shown below it. Notice in this first result that the percent character was not URL-encoded. In the second result shown, the bug has been fixed, and the percent character is correctly URL-encoded:

LINQ statement:
From c in ctx.MyTable
Where c.Name == "mike%25"
Select c

Resulting URI on Windows Azure Guest OS 1.3 and earlier:
http://server/service.svc/MyTable?$filter=Name eq 'mike%25'

Resulting URI on Windows Azure Guest OS 1.4
http://server/service.svc/MyTable?$filter=Name eq 'mike%2525'

Recommended Actions

If your code is relying on the previous behavior of the LINQ translator, upgrading your guest operating system to the Windows Azure Guest OS 1.4 may result in unexpected behavior. It's recommended that you take the following actions for your service:

1. If the guest OS for your service is set to upgrade automatically, change your settings so that you can upgrade it manually instead. If your guest OS has already been upgraded, you can manually set it to Windows Azure Guest OS 1.3 (Release 201004-01) to work around this problem. See Configuring Settings for the Windows Azure Guest OS for more information.
   
   
2. Change your code so that it adheres to the newly corrected encoding rules.
   
   
3. Test your service in the staging environment on the Windows Azure Guest OS 1.4.
   
   
4. When you are satisfied that it will work as expected, deploy your service to the production environment on Windows Azure Guest OS 1.4.
   
   

The Windows Azure Guest OS 1.4 includes the following security patches, as well as all of the security patches provided by previous releases of the Windows Azure Guest OS:

Windows Azure Guest OS 1.4 is substantially compatible with Windows Server 2008 SP2, and includes all Windows Server 2008 SP2 security patches through April 2010.