Onward and UpwardKeith Ward, Editor in Chief, Visual Studio Magazine
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Microsoft Releases Windows Azure SDK for Ruby
Ruby developers now have a home on Windows Azure. Microsoft has released the Windows Azure SDK for Ruby, and provided tools and guidance as well.
Since Windows Azure was just released as an Infrastructure-As-A-Service (IaaS), as Microsoft Corporate Vice President Scott Guthrie announced on his blog, Ruby projects can be hosted there without an SDK. What the SDK adds is Windows Azure Data Management and the Windows Azure Service Bus. Data storage options include tables, blobs and queues; the service bus provides message queuing and topics and subscriptions.
Microsoft officially supports Ruby Web apps through Linux-based Virtual Machines; other methods can be used to host Ruby apps, but they're not supported, according to Microsoft's Silver Lining blog.
The Ruby SDK joins a growing lineup of Azure-integrated languages that include Java, Node.js, Python, PHP and mobile devices like iOS , Android Windows 8/Phone (along with Microsoft's .NET languages, of course). Microsoft is essentially saying that no matter what language you use, or what platform and devices you target, that Azure is the best place to host it.
Continuing another trend, the SDK for Ruby is fully open source and hosted on GitHub, which is also true of the other SDKs. Microsoft seems to be doing a 180-degree turn in this area; it's embraced open source to a degree that must be shocking to the open-source software (OSS) community that has bashed Redmond forever for its desire to remain a proprietary software company.
Posted by Keith Ward on 04/29/2013