Windows Azure: PDC2010 – Building Engaging Apps with Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket Session

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Showing off different and Interesting integration scenarios with DataMarket

Facebook application that integrates with a Data.Gov DataSets
Usage of Windows Azure DataMarket Portal to explore the DataSets and also to show off the Tableau application to consume the DataSet from DataMarket

Integration Scenarios

Choices:
- Specific dataset versus generic
  - Influences the choice over the type of client technology to be used
    - WebRequest – need to parse the XML by hand
    - WCF Data Services client – ODATA client
    - DataMarket service proxy classes
- Which DataMarket Account?

Building a simple Windows Phone 7 application

App that uses two DataMarket DataSets, one about weather forecast and another about the population density
1. Choose the DataMarket DataSet
2. Explore the DataSet
3. Test the DataMarket DataSet
4. Choose the Type of Integration to use
  - In this case the WebRequest is the one that is chosen
5. Copy the Query URL
6. Pass the Account Id and Account Key to the WebRequest
7. Perform the Request
8. Analyze the Response and Extract the XML elements that you need from the response.
Each content provider deliver a set of help resources like samples, and documentation about the respective DataSet that are accessible on the DataSets Page
Notes:
- Can be built using WebRequest directly
- Consider service-side
  - Filtering – Filter only what you need and cache your results on the server to lower the bandwidth
  - Projections – Do Projections on the Server-side in order to send only the elements that are interesting and needed by the client, reducing the used bandwidth