MSDN Magazine July 2014

Azure Web Sites: Scaling Your Web Application with Azure Web Sites

Yochay Kiriaty kicks off our July issue themed on Microsoft Azure Web Sites development, with an article that shows how to modify Web applications to handle millions of HTTP requests across both multiple instances and multiple regions. Yochay Kiriaty

Azure Web Sites: Architect for the Cloud Using Azure Web Sites

Sometimes bad things happen to good apps, and when they do you need to react fast. This article explores the tools and patterns you can adopt to make your Web applications even better and more resilient in a sometimes-hostile cloud environment. Apurva Joshi, Sunitha Muthukrishna

Azure Web Sites: Building a Node.js and MongoDB Web Service

Tejaswi Redkar shows you how to develop a RESTful Web service in Node.js that accesses a MongoDB database in the cloud, and how to deploy it to Azure Web Sites. Tejaswi Redkar

Azure Web Sites: Hybrid Connectivity: Connecting Azure Web Sites to LOB Apps Using PortBridge

Hybrid apps bring the power of the cloud to existing software services that run on-premises in your datacenter. This articles takes a deep look at connecting a Web site to a line-of-business application running on-premises and shows how to enable seamless connectivity. Tejaswi Redkar

Azure Web Sites: Teaching from the Cloud

Using Azure Web Sites, MVC 5, SignalR and Azure SQL, this article explores the creation of an e-learning application that provides course modules, lessons and basic user administration. The result is a Web site that allows an instructor to "push" content to the students' browsers, keeping all students in sync with the current lesson. James Chambers

Columns

Editor's Note: Introducing Azure Web Sites Services Microsoft Azure has been very busy of late improving the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. This issue of MSDN Magazine explores how developers can leverage the improved capabilities of Azure Web Sites. Michael Desmond	Windows with C++: Embracing the Windows Composition Engine Kenny Kerr explores the Windows composition engine and shows how an alpha-blended window from his previous column can be reproduced using a composition surface rather than a swap chain. Kenny Kerr	Data Points: Tips for Updating and Refactoring Your Entity Framework Code, Part 2 Julie Lerman breaks out a small Entity Data Model and, using that model, works through some of the problems you might encounter when switching from the ObjectContext API to the newer DbContext API. Julie Lerman
Test Run: Distorting the MNIST Image Data Set James McCaffrey presents a demo program that generates deformed images in order to create additional training data for an image recognition system. James McCaffrey	The Working Programmer: Fun with C# Both F# and C# are languages based on the Microsoft .NET Framework, so you can often resolve a programming problem in one language, then transfer the code over to the other. This functional programming approach opens new avenues to problem resolution. Ted Neward	Modern Apps: Authentication and Identity in Windows Store Apps Since many Web sites and apps require some sort of user sign in, it’s up to us as developers to make it as easy as possible. Here you’ll learn the basics of enabling application authentication on the Windows platform. Rachel Appel
DirectX Factor: Breaking the Z Barrier with Direct2D Effects Using custom effects you can get much closer to authentic 3D programming than otherwise possible with Direct2D, as Charles Petzold explains. Charles Petzold	Don't Get Me Started: Windows XP: An Old Soldier Fades Away Years after it helped change the computing world, Microsoft support for the Windows XP operating system is finally ending. But that doesn't mean we've seen the last of Microsoft's venerable OS. David Platt