This project started to shape up when we first prototyped the Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse www.windowsazure4e.org. We wanted to build within the Eclipse IDE a Windows Azure “storage explorer” which allows developers to browse data contained in the Windows Azure storage component, including blobs, tables, and queues. The Storage Explorer was developed in Java (like any Eclipse extension), and we realized that abstracting the RESTful communication aspect between the Storage Explorer user interface and the Azure storage component made a lot of sense. So this led us to package the Windows Azure SDK for Java developers as open source project now living here www.windowsazure4j.org.

In short, the Windows Azure SDK for Java enables developers to easily leverage Azure storage service in their Java applications. The logical architecture is very simple:

From a deployment’s perspective, you can either deploy the SDK with a web application or with a desktop application

Of course, comments and feedback are welcome, so feel free to try this out and join us on the forum.

We are very excited to introduce the Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse, an open source plug-in that enables PHP developers using Eclipse to create web applications that target Windows Azure.

In a nutshell, the Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse provides a series of wizards and utilities that allow developers to write, debug, and configure for and deploy PHP applications to Windows Azure. For example the project creation wizard looks like this:

Architecturally speaking, the plug-in leverages the PHP Development Tools (PDT) framework for enabling PHP developers with integrated developer experiences. We are planning to move fast on this project and deliver a final version 1.0 by the end of 2009.

We really hope this project will give PHP users more options when they want to leverage cloud services and of course we’re seeking feedback on feature and user experience. Feel free to speak up on the forum.

We are excited to announce the availability of Technology Preview of eclipse4SL for Macintosh platform. The download is available directly via Eclipse Update Manager. Here is the Update site URL http://www.eclipse4sl.org/update/mac

All the features that we support in the M2 release for Windows are supported in Mac Platform as well. Some of the key features include Project Management, XAML Design & Editor, C# Editor, Code Completion, build system.

We are excited to share with you RIA development experience on MAC in the form of a “Customer Technology Preview” version. Please give it a try and give us your feedback on the bug tracker, and join the discussion on the user forum.

Here is a wonderful demo proposed by Jean-Christophe Cimetiere. It gives an overview of the developer experience of creating a basic Silverlight application in Eclipse, shows how collaborating with a designer could work, and finally you’ll see a sample Silverlight application talking to a Java web service:

This demo is hosted on YouTube as well:

Happy new year to all!
We are pleased to deliver our second Interoperability Guidance (By the way, did you check our SOAP guidance?).
http://www.eclipse4sl.org/documentation/userdoc/html/webservice/restlet/index.php

We look forward to your feedback and feature proposals. Of course, if you are building Silverlight applications accessing Interoperable Web Services, please share your experience (User Forum).