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Using Drupal on Windows Azure: Hands-On with 4 new Drupal Modules

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Since the launch of Windows Azure a couple years ago, we’ve been working on driving Interoperability scenarios that enable various developers to harness the power of the Windows Azure cloud platform. In parallel, we’ve supported interoperability projects, in particular on PHP and Drupal, in which the focus is showing how to simply bridge different technologies, mash them up and ultimately offer new features and options to the developers (azurephp.interoperabilitybridges.com).

Today, I’d like to show you the result of some hands-on work with Drupal on Windows Azure: We are announcing today the availability 4 new Drupal Modules, Bing Maps, Windows Live ID, OData and the Silverlight Pivot Viewer that can be used with Drupal running on Windows Azure. The modules are developed by Schakra and MindTree.

To showcase this work, the new Drupal 7was deployed on Windows Azure with the Windows Azure Companion: Check out the Drupal & Windows Azure Companion tutorial
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IMPORTANT NOTE - July 13, 2011
The Windows Azure Companion was an experimental tool to provide a simple experience installing and configuring platform-elements (PHP runtime, extensions) and web applications on Windows Azure. Based the feedback and results Microsoft has decided to stop any further development of the Windows Azure Companion and instead we recommend using the new tools available at http://azurephp.interoperabilitybridges.com/downloads to deploy applications to Windows Azure.
]

On top of this Drupal instance running on Windows Azure, are deployed the four NEW generic modules that allow Drupal administrators/developers to provide their users with new features:

The Bing Maps Module for Drupal provides for easy & flexible embedding of Bing Map in Drupal content types, such as a technical article or story.

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The Windows Live ID Module for Drupal allows Drupal user to associate their Drupal account to their Windows Live ID, and then to login on Drupal with their Windows Live ID.

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The OData Module for Drupal allows developers to include data sources based on OData in Drupal content types. The generic module includes a basic OData query builder and renders data in a simple HTML Table. In this case, we are taking the Netflix OData catalog and using a simple visual query engine, generating a filtered query to display on our Drupal “Article” page.

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The Silverlight Pivot viewer Module for Drupal enables enables easy & flexible embedding of Silverlight PivotViewer in Drupal content types, using a set of preconfigured data sources like oData producers or existing Pivot collections

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In this example, we are using the wedding venues pivot collection exposed on http://beta.hitched.co.uk to render the interactive Silverlight PivotViewer of that collection with deep zoom image support and a complete visual query experience.

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These modules are independently developed and contributed by Schakra and MindTree, with funding provided by Microsoft. The modules have all been made available on GitHub, and we hope to see them moved to the Drupal module gallery in the near future. As always I look forward to your comments and feedback.

Enjoy!

Craig Kitterman, Sr. Interoperability Evangelist, Microsoft

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 24, 2011
    Awesome Pivot and bing inegration!!!

  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2011
    It would be awesome if these modules would be located in Drupal.org itself, since that's where all modules live and people can really contribute by reporting bugs, contribute code, ask for features, etc. Drupal.org itself will be moving to GIT (away from CVS) so that's no longer an issue =)

  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2011
    @janusman Thank you for the feedback.  We are working with both MindTree and Schakra to make the modules more widely available including on the Drupal.org module repository in the near future.

  • Anonymous
    February 10, 2011
    video of pivot integration with drupal is not available , i am eager to see that implemenation

  • Anonymous
    February 11, 2011
    @Jack i hope to do a  video demo of this scenario as well in the coming weeks.  stay tuned!