Tuesday
Dec162008
Playing with Azure and SQL Data Services: No "Random Access Paging"
Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 1:20PM
So, I've started playing around with the whole Azure Services Platform (http://www.azure.com), now that school's done :) and I thought I'd blog about things I discover along the way.
My first idea was to create a simple blogging engine in MVC that would store data in SQL Data Services and run in Windows Azure (I got my invite code recently, yay!). However, I soon discovered that would be difficult. It turns out that while SQL Data Services does support "Paging" the results of a query so that you don't retrieve every result in one batch, it does not support what I refer to as "Random Access Paging". Random Access Paging (and I'm sure theres some other term for it) basically means providing a page index and page size to the data layer and having it retrieve just that page (i.e. Skip/Take in LINQ). There are some solutions, but most of them requrire that you step through each page sequentially, rather than just being able to request a page.
Of course, I may be missing something. So, if you know how I could solve this problem, feel free to post in the comments!
In a blogging engine, this is practically a necessity, since you only want to display a certain number of posts per page. So I've tabled that idea for now.
My next idea: An RSS reader which stores your set of subscribed feeds in your Live Mesh (though I don't have access to that CTP yet).
My first idea was to create a simple blogging engine in MVC that would store data in SQL Data Services and run in Windows Azure (I got my invite code recently, yay!). However, I soon discovered that would be difficult. It turns out that while SQL Data Services does support "Paging" the results of a query so that you don't retrieve every result in one batch, it does not support what I refer to as "Random Access Paging". Random Access Paging (and I'm sure theres some other term for it) basically means providing a page index and page size to the data layer and having it retrieve just that page (i.e. Skip/Take in LINQ). There are some solutions, but most of them requrire that you step through each page sequentially, rather than just being able to request a page.
Of course, I may be missing something. So, if you know how I could solve this problem, feel free to post in the comments!
In a blogging engine, this is practically a necessity, since you only want to display a certain number of posts per page. So I've tabled that idea for now.
My next idea: An RSS reader which stores your set of subscribed feeds in your Live Mesh (though I don't have access to that CTP yet).
in Azure, Cool Software, MVC
Azure, Cool Software, MVC 
Reader Comments (1)
Thanks Steve! I was hoping to use SDS, but your solution does look cool. I'll take a look, and maybe revive my blog engine idea :)