This Week’s Link List (August 13, 2010)

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time recently trying to wrap my head around the access control functionality in the Windows Azure platform AppFabric, so you’ll find a couple of related links in this week’s list. You’ll also find several cloud-related announcements, mostly about new content that is available for developers, but also an announcement about getting one month of Windows Azure for free. All that said, I found this first link to be most interesting…

• It was great to see Maarten Balliauw's PHPLinq project in the number 3 spot on this list of "10 Experimental PHP Projects Pushing the Envelope": http://www.developer.com/open/article.php/10930_3896056_1/10-Experimental-PHP-Projects-Pushing-the-Envelope.htm
• This is the first article in a series of 4 that provides an excellent overview of how AppFabric access control (part of the Windows Azure platform) works. Janson Follas uses a bouncer-bartender analogy to make it a a fun read (although Jason says the analogy wasn't originally is idea...he credits Brian H. Prince with the idea): http://www.jasonfollas.com/blog/archive/2010/03/08/windows-azure-platform-appfabric-access-control-overview.aspx
• After reading the series of articles about how AppFabric access control works (see previous link), you can get your hands dirty with the Appfabric SDK for PHP Developers: http://dotnetservicesphp.com/Content/ACS.html
• An interesting NY Times comparison of cloud speeds using CloudSleuth, a new graphical tool from Compuware: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/how-fast-can-a-cloud-run/
• "IIS team has recently released a Web Farm Framework 2.0 beta. The goal of the Web Farm Framework is to enable easy provisioning, deployment and managing of web farms. This blog post provides an example of what Web Farm Framework can do and how it can simplify the Web Farm management tasks.": http://blogs.iis.net/ruslany/archive/2010/07/30/web-farm-framework-2-0-overview.aspx
• The Windows Azure team announces "Try Windows Azure for One Month FREE!": http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2010/08/05/try-windows-azure-for-one-month-for-free.aspx
• A new Windows Azure security whitepaper is now available: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2010/08/10/new-windows-azure-security-overview-white-paper-now-available.aspx
• Tips for migrating applications to the cloud: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff872379.aspx
• Microsoft announces the release of the SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) for MySQL: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ssma/archive/2010/08/12/microsoft-announces-sql-server-migration-assistant-for-mysql.aspx

That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend!

Thanks.

-Brian

Share this on Twitter: http://bit.ly/9ea00h