Deploying WCF service to Azure CTP Platform

To deploy a WCF service (ASPnet Web Role) on Azure platform is fairly straightforward.

Once testing the solution on Development fabric, replace the &<;endpoint address="" with staging or production uri in the ServiceReferences.ClientConfig file. Publish the webrole project. This should generate application package file and configuration file to be deployed on Azure platform. Leave the port number to be default since Azure would run the webservice under port 80.

Compile error 'Cannot implicitly convert type 'System.Collections.ObjectModel.ObservableCollection'.

While trying to call a WCF service and assigning a resultant array to a local variable, you may encounter an compile error 'Cannot implicitly convert type 'System.Collections.ObjectModel.ObservableCollection'.

How to resolve this error.
below might be code you might be trying to compile

void proxy_GetUOSListCompleted(object sender, SilverScreens.SilverServiceProxy.GetUOSListCompletedEventArgs e)
{
//Here result returns a List object
SilverServiceProxy.UOS[] ResultUOS = e.Result;
UOSList.ItemsSource = ResultUOS;
}

Following are the steps to resolve it.

Right click on Service Reference in your Webapplication. In the context menu select "Configure Service Reference...", choose in the combobox of collection type: System.Array.

The other work around is to change the code to use ObservableCollection collection, since ObservableCollection also implements suitable property changed notification mechanism such as the INotifyPropertyChanged interface

void proxy_GetUOSListCompleted(object sender, SilverScreens.SilverServiceProxy.GetUOSListCompletedEventArgs e)
{
//Here result returns a List object
List&; = (List&;).Result.ToList();
UOSList.ItemsSource = ResultUOS;
}

One other observation was that while compiling the above code resulted in the compile time error that ToList() operator could not be associated. To resolve this issue, add the system.linq namespace statement.

Rest Azured

Working on Azure November CTP version is quite exciting. Azure provides various way to store and presist data if needed. One way is using Azure Storage (Blobs, Tables and Queues). The other way is using SQL Azure. Which is a relational database.

To lay your hands on SQL Azure you would need an invitation code which would be be available after you register in http://sql.azure.com. The invitation code was provided to me after a week since i registered. Once received you would need to enter the invitation code on http://sql.azure.com to create database and tables. The limitation of SQL Azure as of now is that the database can of maximum 10 GB size. Note the service is free till Jan 2010, hence forth it will be charged based on the consumption. For SQL Azure only support SQL Authentication.

Enter a long URL to make tiny:

Excel Addin to extract MDX Query

One the question raised by my end users is, how they can view the MDX query out the Pivot table in excel they created connecting to an OLAP database. Excel has the excellent facilty to connect to a OLAP database and generate Pivot table using multi-dimensional cube. The pivot table can be defined by dragging and dropping the measures and dimension values with ease.

Found this super cool addin which eases out this pain of exacting the MDX query out of the Pivot table.

http://www.codeplex.com/OlapPivotTableExtend

The addin is easy to install and use.

Recompiling Database objects programatically

To recompile stored procedure

sp_recompile [@object=] objectname


To compile view use

sp_refreshview @viewname