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PHP Interoperability for Windows AZURE

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

Microsoft's Windows Azure is a cloud platform that increases choice for

developers and allows them to use PHP — one of the most popular programming

languages on the web. The main purpose of Windows Azure is to provide an

infrastructure that is robust, reliable, and scalable for hosting Web

applications. Development tools like Visual Studio or Eclipse can be used to

build applications that run on Windows Azure. The Windows Azure platform

supports Internet protocols like HTTP, XML, SOAP and REST. PHP runs on Azure

using FastCGI, and therefore Azure services can be called from other platforms

and programming languages like PHP. It is a cloud environment that helps PHP

applications to share the stored information with .NET applications and

vice-versa.

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Direct Hit!

Applies To: PHP developers



USP:
Learn How PHP Tool Kit integrates with

Windows Azure

Primary Link: http://phpdataservices.codeplex.com



Search Engine Keywords: Windows Azure, PHP Azure SDK

PHP Tool Kit for Windows Azure



The Open Source PHP Azure SDK (PHP Azure) provides interoperability for PHP

application developers to work with Windows cloud services platform. PHP Azure

provides a set of PHP classes for HTTP transport, AuthN/AuthZ, REST and Error

Management. Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse for PHP Developers enhances cloud

interoperability. It enables PHP developers to create Web applications targeting

Windows Azure. It includes a Window Azure storage explorer that allows

developers to browse data contained into the Windows Azure tables, blobs or

queues.PHP Tool Kit for Windows Azure is an open source application that

facilitates PHP developers to use ADO.Net Data Services included in .NET

Framework. The Windows Azure PHP tool kit developed on PHP requires the PHP

extensions for XML, XSL and CURL to be installed. This can be installed on

Windows or Linux operating systems.The way it works is that a PHP proxy file

that contains class definitions is generated based on the metadata interpreted

by ADO.NET Data Services. PHP client applications can use those classes to

access the data service. The PHP tool kit is independent of the .NET framework

and communicates with data services using HTTP and XML or JSON. The Tool Kit

offers basic authentication mechanism and also has classes that support

authentications for developers.

Opportunities for developers



The Fast CGI protocol in Windows Azure hosting environment enables

developers to run web applications on Windows Azure that were written using 3rd

party programming languages including PHP. The applications include:

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1. Silverlight applications using PHP



2. IE Webslices & accelerators in PHP web applications


3. Microsoft Virtual Earth maps in PHP web applications

Interoperability opens up chances to work on Windows Azure cloud-based

applications with other platforms. Now PHP developers have opportunity to work

on Microsoft Visual Studio development environment and .NET Framework and they

can build scalable applications using their development skills. PHP developers

can make use of the tremendous ADO.NET Data Services features and Visual Studio

IDE features. They can also use environments like Eclipse. Microsoft's

intentions of getting closer to Open Source projects creates a series of

opportunities and ideas of interest for the PHP developers and IT professionals.

The number of PHP developers that use Windows on development or production

environments is significant. Microsoft embracing the PHP community and offering

to make use of ADO.NET data services support in Windows Azure platform gives

more scope for developers and IT professionals to use Microsoft technologies in

terms of cloud computing and interoperability.

PHP application on Windows Azure



To develop PHP applications on Azure using Eclipse, Microsoft has provided
Windows Azure tools for Eclipse. For a step by step installation of all

pre-requisites kindly refer to



http://www.windowsazure4e.org/download.

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Creating PHP Windows Azure Project from Eclipse

Once you get your development environment ready, things are fairly

straightforward from then on. You can start creating your first PHP Windows

Azure project from Eclipse. For this, open Eclipse and select File->New Project.

You will be presented with a window.

The Windows Azure tool for eclipse gives you an easy to use template to get

started on your software. Each Windows Azure project would have two components

-- the configuration component where you specify a set of configurations

including the number of processor cores required for your software and the other

being the software package which contains your compiled code.

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You can now start

building your app like any regular PHP application and once you are ready to

deploy the application, you can do so on the local development fabric

(simulation environment) by choosing 'Run in Development Fabric', from the

'Windows Azure' menu option.

The image shows the Development Fabric UI

To review your application running in your local development fabric, look for

the 'Windows Azure icon' in the System tray (bottom right hand corner), and you

will find an option 'Show Development Fabric UI' in the context menu.

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Connecting

to SQL Azure from PHP




If your application requires data storage / retrieval
capabilities, you can leverage the features provided in SQL Azure - the

relational database in the cloud. The following code snippet is a sample to

connect to a SQL Azure instance. The code is similar to what you would use to

connect to an on-premise database — the only change required is a connection

string change.

include_once "connect.php";



$masterDB = ;


$dbuser = ;


$dbpwd = ;


$conn = sqlsrv_connect($host, array("Database" => $masterDB,


"UID" => $dbuser,


"PWD" => $dbpwd,


"MultipleActiveResultSets" => '0'))


or die("Couldn't connect to SQL Server on $host");


$query = "";


$result = sqlsrv_query($conn, $query);


while ($row = sqlsrv_fetch_array($result, SQLSRV_


FETCH_ASSOC))


echo " - " . $row<"name"> . "


sqlsrv_free_stmt($result);


sqlsrv_close($conn);

















Going Live



When you are done with testing your program in the local development fabric

and you would want to deploy your application on Windows Azure you can leverage

the deployment portal http://lx.azure.microsoft.com/ to deploy your application.

You can subscribe for Windows Azure at https://mocp.microsoftonline.com/site/default.aspx. The free 'Windows Azure Platform Introductory Special' gives you free

limits for all MSDN premium subscribers to get hands-on with Windows Azure.

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