The SQL Azure Database Manager is a light and easy to use tool to manage you SQL Azure Database.

This tool runs inside your browser thanks to the Silverlight power (remember, the dead Silverlight!).

The URL to access the SQL Azure DB Manager is : https://manage-db3.sql.azure.com/

***

Edit (14/12/2010)

I was contacted by Microsoft today. Working with a direct URL is a bad practice.

Here is their message :

In the post you reference https://manage-db3.sql.azure.com . We have instances of database manager co-located in each of the SQL Azure datacenters. The best practice would be to launch database manager directly from the portal, instead of hitting the url directly to ensure that you are running on an instance of database manager that is closest to your data. That url points to one of our European datacenters and may not be the best launch point for it(depending on where your data is located).

***

One you get the Silverlight application loaded, insert :

• Your SQL Azure Server Name (Fully Qualified DNS Name)
• Your database Name
• Your login Name
• Your password.

That's it! Click on the Connect button an you're in!

If you've any problem connecting, you'll see a small error link :

Click on it and you'll have a more detailed error message:

Once the door is open, you'll meet this new view :

More to come… :)

If you install the last version (1.3) of the Azure SDK, you'll now have the possibility to use an Extras small VM size :

For more information about the VM sizes : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee814754.aspx

To download the 1.3 version of Azure SDK : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=7a1089b6-4050-4307-86c4-9dadaa5ed018&displaylang=en

If you want to use the ASP.NET Authentication Service with your Windows Phone 7 (this is quite similar if you want to use it with Silverlight), just create a standard Windows Phone project in Visual Studio 2010 :

Once this is done, add an empty web test project :

Create a new WCF service in this Web Application :

Name it AuthenticationService.

Remove the auto-generated Code-Behind file and Interface.

Edit the .svc to rely on the AuthenticationService (more info) provided by Microsoft :

Edit the Web.config or use the WAT (Web Site Administration Tool Security Tab) to enable the Authentication Service and to create some users. Here is how my Web.config file looks like :

Once this is made, you can reference this service in your WP7 application and start to use the authentication mechanism :

And the result is :

Or :

You can download the sample here

I created a user Spiderman with a password Spiderm@n

Recently I've worked on a small Silverlight application that targets Sharepoint 2010 file operations (copy, move, delete, …).

Sharepoint 2010 has a lot of great enhancements compare to Sharepoint 2007 but still lacks of basic file operations facilities (e.g. if you want to copy a file from a doclib to another doclib, you must give the URL of the destination doclib).

This V 0.1 of Sharepoint 2010 SilverXplorer currently only offers files & folders browsing.

Here is how the application looks like inside of Sharepoint :

Here is how the loading progress looks:

To change the Sharepoint site, click the button and choose a new site URL:

To go inside a folder, just click it!

To go up, click the button.

You can also use it in an out of browser way (with elevated trust).

On the Silverlight side, the new Sharepoint 2010 Client Object Model has been used.

If you take a look at the code, you'll also note that I've used a Resource Dictionary & Merged Dictionaries for styles and states and that I'm playing a lot with states (I like them!).

Sharepoint queries were optimized by Mathieu Gretry who joined the project!

To download the V 0.1 of the XAP or to access the source code, just go to : http://spsilverxplorer.codeplex.com/

If you've Firefox 3.6.4 or above installed on your computer and if you use it as your default browser, you'll probably meet some problems while trying to debug a Silverlight application in Visual Studio.

The Mozilla team has changed security settings for plugins.

I found the solution in the Silverlight forum (Thanks to MisterGoodcat!).

Here is what you to do :

• Type "about:config" into Firefox address bar
• Accept the warning (if applicable)
• Search for the entry "dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npctrl.dll"
• Change its value from "true" to "false" (by double-clicking it)
• Restart the browser