Thread: Microsoft makes rooms for Java on Window Azure cloud

Microsoft has recently decided to accumulate some more Java developers on its Azure Cloud, which has an advanced plug in for its Eclipse-based software developers.

The Window’s Azure platform is a cloud platform developed by Microsoft that is used to develop, host as well as scale web applications by utilizing the data center of the company. The Azure platform is actually a part of the cloud computing strategy of Microsoft. The platform is used to commoditize its three product brands, namely Windows Azure, SQL Azure and Windows Azure AppFabric.

The company released the plug-in in June last week. According to senior program manager for the interoperability strategy teams at Microsoft, Martin Sawicki the Windows Azure Plug-in for Eclipse with Java is built to help the numerous Eclipse users to compose various Java apps for Azure. The programmer on his blog said, “I invite you to take a look at our latest release and share your feedback to help us make further progress in helping Java developers take advantage of the Windows Azure cloud.”

Replying to an email, the developer said, “There are many ways to build packages to deploy to Windows Azure, including Visual Studio and command line-based tools. For Java developers, we believe the Eclipse plug-in we are providing may be the easiest.” Adding further, he said that the company has also received a tremendous response from the developers who believe that it acts as a brilliant tool for those willing to learn how the Windows Azure cloud works.

The brand new feature of the plug-in includes a user interface that is used for remote access configuration during trouble shooting and scheme validation. Additional features of the plug-in include the Azure project creation wizard followed by the sample utility scripts for downloading and unzipping files. In addition, the plug-in also houses shortcuts to test deployment in the Azure compute emulator, Ant-based builder as well as a UI with project properties.

The newly released plug-in is congruent with the Azure Starter kit for Java. Moreover, the programmers can also download the plug-in or take advantage of the Eclipse by installing the new software.

The CTP (community technology preview) is the third one to release after the first two releases in March and April. Sawicki said in his blog that the company will continue to update its tools and make them open to the Java developer’s community throughout the development of Azure.