Migrate an WinForms application to Azure

Question

Hi,

I have migrated my web application to Windows Azure, and scripted my database to SQL Azure - everything works fine.

When I had this locally on my developer server I also had a WinForms Application that had a Timer running once a night. This timer had a script in it that averaged some values in the database. Now that my database is in SQL Azure, how can I rewrite my Winforms Application to be running and hosted on Azure?

Is a worker role the subject I should be looking at?

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Mcad

Answer 1

Hi,

You could use a worker role for this, but for a task that runs once a night you will be paying 24/7 for the instance to run. With an extra small instnace that would be about $37 a month.

If you are concerned about costs, you could use the application Application_BeginRequest event to check when the last update was, and update using an asynchronous service call. This would not give you exact timing on the updates, but it would be a chraper option.

Regards,

Alan

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Answer 2

Hi,

Is there any particular reason you would want to move your WinForm app to Azure? You can have this application connect to SQL Azure database from your location itself and do any calculations. If the computation are not complex enough and can be done in the database itself, may be you can write a stored procedure in your database, and store the result back into SQL Azure database and all you would need to do is invoke this procedure from your WinForm application.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

Gaurav Mantri

Cerebrata Software

http://www.cerebrata.com