Office 365 e-book from Microsoft

Connect & Collaborate – Virtually anywhere & anytime – Explore Microsoft Office 365.

Office 365 is Microsoft’s smart and simple answer to cloud computing. Using the various programs in Office 365, you can do all the tasks you’re used to doing in your favorite Office applications—write documents, create presentations, check email, manage your calendar, crunch numbers, and more—and then share what you create in real time on a team site, design and publish a website, and even create and host live online meetings while you’re traveling on the train, sitting in a coffee shop, or dialing in on your phone.

The cloud computing enhances the features of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook  in Office 365. A complete SAAS model for solutions for small business professionals to Enterprise large communications drive.

 

What Cloud Computing Means for You:

Office 365 makes using Office in the cloud a simple, natural, and affordable
way to make the most of services you are already familiar with, in ways that
easily extend the technology
you are probably already using. Sound too good
to be true? It’s not. Office
365 enables you to easily and naturally
■ Collaborate globally in real time.
■ Use programs you already know.
■ Create a virtual office where you can work with information securely
while you’re on the go.
■ Use your PC, browser, or phone interchangeably.
■ Keep your information secure.
■ Keep your hardware costs down.
■ Use multiple devices to access and work with files.
The Office 365 comes with three different versions targeting three different consumers level:

• The Office 365 for Small Business
• The Office 365 for Enterprises
• The Office 365 for Education.

For more, Download e-book for Office -365  here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2011/08/17/free-ebook-microsoft-office-365-connect-and-collaborate-virtually-anywhere-anytime.aspx

Transient Fault Handling Framework for SQL Azure, Azure Storage Services

SQL Azure databases is a distributed system in which each physical server hosts many databases. This sharing of resources leads to capacity constraints on operation throughput. SQL Azure handles these capacity by throttling operations & closing connections that are using too many resources. SQL Azure also closes connections when it alleviates operational hot spots by switching from a primary  SQL Azure database to one of its two backup databases.

One of the cloud development strategy is “Design for Failure” . It’s important that applications using SQL Azure being designed to handle failures appropriately.

There are two kinds of error:

1. Permanent Error: Indicating failure of a part of the system.

2. Transient Error: Existing only a brief time.

Permanent errors may be the indicate the logical problem with the application – and handle transient errors gracefully by retrying the operation that led to the error in hope that it does not recur. A dropped connection should be regarded as transient and application should respond to a dropped connection by opening new connection and retrying the operation.

There remains the problem of distinguishing permanent from transient errors. This can be done by comparing the error returned from a failed operation with known list of transient errors. An application can therefore include a retry mechanism that checks the status of operations and retries any operations that experienced a transient error.

 

The Windows Azure Appfabric Customer Advisory team has made available on MSDN code gallery the source code & pre-compiled assemblies for Transient Fault Handling Framework for SQL Azure , Azure Storage Services , Azure Appfabric Service Bus & Caching Services.

Download Here:  http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Transient-Fault-Handling-b209151f              (C# Code)

• Features of the framework:
• Provides the foundation for building high extensible logic for handling a variety of transient conditions, not limited to SQL Azure.
• Supports a range of pre-defined retry policies (Fixed retry interval, Progessive retry interval)
• Supports seperate retry policy for SQL  connections & SQL Commands for adding flexibility.