Got Microsoft Codename “Dallas”! CTP Invitation Today

Today i got Microsoft Codename “Dallas”! CTP Invitation from Microsoft.

What is Microsoft Codename “Dallas”!

Use Dallas to:

• Find premium content to power next-generation killer apps for consumer and business scenarios
• Discover and license valuable data to improve existing applications or reports
• Bring disparate data sets together in innovative ways to gain new insight into business performance and processes
• Instantly and visually explore APIs across all content providers for blob, structured, and real-time web services
• Easily consume third party data inside Microsoft Office and SQL Server for rich reporting and analytics

Benefits

Developers

• Trial subscriptions allow you to investigate content and develop applications without paying data royalties
• Simple transaction and subscription models allow pay as you grow access to multi-million dollar datasets
• Consistent REST based APIs across all datasets facilitate development on any platform
• Visually build and explore APIs, preview results
• Automatic C# proxy classes provide instant object models and eliminate the need to write tedious XML and web service code

Information Workers

• Integration with PowerPivot to easily work with the data in Microsoft Excel
• Simple, predictable licensing models for acquiring content
• Coming soon: ability to consume data from SQL Server, SQL Azure Database, and other Microsoft Office assets

Content Partners

• Easy publication and on-boarding process regardless of blob data, structured data, or dynamic web services
• Developer tooling on the Microsoft platform to ease Visual Studio and .NET development
• Expose your content to Microsoft’s global developer and information worker community
• Content discovery and integration inside Microsoft Office and SQL Server
• Scalable Microsoft cloud computing platform handles storage, delivery, billing, and reporting

Dallas Features

Rich Web Services

• Secure, REST based model for consuming services across the entire content catalog
• Dynamic pagination built into the APIs to simplify access
• Standard ATOM 1.0 feeds are available for most of the services
• Consistent billing, provisioning, and usage reporting across all services

Service Explorer

• C# proxy classes generated to simplify development
• Preview the data in tabular form and as ATOM 1.0 feed, if the service supports ATOM 1.0
• Invoke the service to understand the results that the compiled service call retur
• Find short documentation and sample values for each of the parameters
• Instantly copy the visually built URL for the service call into clipboard to ease development

Marketplace Integration and Discovery Portal

• Easily Discover new data across all domains including consumer and business
• Manage service subscriptions and usage limits
• Manage account keys to access the services
• Get a detailed access report containing the services/datasets that were accessed, grouped by date and by account key

 

Dallas allows developers and information workers to instantly find, acquire, and consume data in their applications and analytics scenarios. To start, all you need is an account key (see below for your default key) which will accompany all web services calls to Dallas for content requests and a subscription to the content you’re interested

When you request a CTP Developer Account, you will receive an Access Code with following mail content from Microsoft.

Thank you for your interest in Microsoft Codename “Dallas”!

Your invitation code is: cccxxx-123233-swdxdsds-ytwtyetye. Please visit the Dallas developer portal to initiate your account.

Resources:

Developer Information: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/developers/dallas/
Product Overview: http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsAzure/dallas/
If you have any questions contact the Dallas team at DataCTP1@microsoft.com  

For updates on the Dallas service periodically check http://blogs.msdn.com/dallas

The Microsoft “Dallas” team

More Details Visit
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/developers/dallas/

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/dallas/