WCF

Connecting To and Using a Windows Azure SQL Database via a Cloud Service

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One of the most prominent features of Windows Azure is no doubt Windows Azure SQL Databases, which allows us to have a database on the cloud and benefit from the advantages of cloud computing, such as high-availability and scalability. Azure’s portal interface allows us to easily manage the database, and by using a cloud service as an API for our backend we can quickly access the database from any platform.

In this step by step article, we’ll create a Windows Azure SQL Database, create a web service which connects to this database and allows us to perform specific operations on it and then use that web service in a Windows Store app.

1) Creating the Windows Azure SQL Database

Obviously, you’ll need to have an Azure account to do this. You can go to http://www.windowsazure.com and click on the Free Trial option on the upper right and follow the instructions to get a free 1 month trial. Keep in mind that although it is free, you still need to enter a valid credit card information for validation purposes.

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After you get an Azure account (or if you already have one), click “Portal” on the upper right or go to http://manage.windowsazure.com and log into the Management Portal.

➤ This database – web service – client configuration is a very effective way of creating applications

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Using SSL (Https) in an Azure Cloud Service – Boredom Challenge Final Day

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Any person that has a basic computer knowledge can go ahead and use Microsoft Network Monitor, Fiddler or any other similar application to monitor his/her own network traffic, whereupon he/she will see that the applications which use HTTP have their data displayed plainly. And people with a little more technical knowledge can go further and use other applications (such as Cain and Abel) to sniff the whole network, which will include packages from every computer connected to it. So, someone just logged in to a website that used HTTP while you were listening to the network? Well, tough luck for him/her, because you’ve just sniffed the username and password.

For demonstration, I’ve created an Azure Cloud Service that has a method which returns the number of characters for a given string. And as you see, Fiddler directly catches my request to the web method and its response:

This is what I sent to the web method.

This is what I sent to the web method.

And this is what the web method returned.

And this is what the web method returned.

Of course, a competent developer would take precautions against this. We use hashing and salting for username – passwords so they are not displayed plainly, but still, we don’t want people to get the hashed version either, because then they could try decrypting it or use that hashed version to make calls to our service themselves. Therefore, we need more security.

This is where HTTPS comes in, which is actually the HTTP protocol with SSL on top. SSL (Secure Socket Layer) uses certificates for encryption and authorization, therefore allowing a secure communication over the network. Many applications (such as e-mail, instant messaging or voice-over-IP applications) use this to ensure security, and in this article, we’ll see how we can use it in our own Azure Cloud Service.

➤ For bonus points, use Fiddler to check other apps’ web method calls. It’s quite entertaining to see how they work. 🙂