First Challenge: Getting Started.
I will be creating a series of articles covering an end to end
Azure cloud solution. I intend to add
features as the challenges progress. The
ultimate goal of my application is to allow fantasy sports players to make
intelligent decisions based on the current state of their teams. A future phase might make recommendations
based on data mining or even completely automate a user’s team. For the purpose of this article and based on
the time of year I will limit my sports to fantasy baseball.
Second Challenge: Build a website. April 29 - May 12
Initial stage: My website
will allow users to enter the names of Major League baseball players in an
effort to determine their fantasy baseball value relative to other
options. I will be using the Azure
Datamarket STATS dataset to provide data to the application. Code samples will show web service
development and calls to the services.
Third Challenge: Using SQL on Azure
I will add SQL storage to the application to allow for saving of
players and comparison between them. For
example you might want to store your entire roster so you can come back later
and see updated calculations.<o:p>
Fourth Challenge: Virtual Machines
To extend the application further, I will use an Azure virtual
machine running a headless, scripted web browser to pull data from the user’s
fantasy baseball team site. The user
should be able to enter their team info and have the information pulled down
and stored in the Azure SQL database on the site.
Fifth Challenge: Mobile access
Using the front end javascript framework that powers the site I
will develop mobile views so that the application can be used effectively on
the go.
