Introduction

Cloud and Windows 7 phones are two common terms that you can hear from many tech-savvy people. So I thought it was the right time to integrate these technologies. In this article, I have tried my best not to focus on the theoretical aspects. Instead, I will present a step-by-step approach on how to consume Data from cloud in a Windows 7 phone application.

In this article, we will cover

• Migrating local Database to SQL Azure
• Creating Data Model on Database in Cloud
• Expose Data Model as WCF Data Service
• Consumption of Data from cloud in Windows 7 phone through WCF Data Service.

The block diagram for the same is given below. We have a School Database on our local (In premise) SQL Server. We will be moving the local school database along with the schema and data to SQL Azure. Then, we will create a Data Model on the school database in the cloud and expose that Data model as WCF Data Service. Once the data from cloud is exposed as WCF Data Service, we will fetch that in the Windows 7 phone

So, actually, there are two major steps involved,

• Exposing Data from cloud as WCF Data Service
• Consuming WCF Data Service in Windows 7 Phone

Exposing Data from cloud as WCF Data Service

There are two steps mainly involved in this process:

• Creating local Database and migrating to SQL Azure
• Exposing SQL Azure Database as a WCF DATA Service

Step1: Creating local Database and migrating to SQL Azure

The first step is to create the database. We are going to use School database. Script of sample School Database copy from here

Right click on School Database and select Tasks. From Tasks, select Generate Script.

From the Pop up, select Set Scripting option.

Give the file a name by selecting Save to file option.

Now the main thing to be noticed here is that we need to so some change in the advanced setting. For that, click on Advanced options.

And in types of data to script, select Script and Data - both options.

After that, click next and Finish. You can see that a SQL file is created, and we will be using this script to migrate our in-house school database to SQL Azure.

Create School Database in SQL Azure

Login the SQL Azure portal with your live credential

https://sql.azure.com/

Click on the SQL Azure tab. You will get the project you have created for yourself.

Click on the project. In my case, the project name is debugmode. After clicking on project, you can list the entire database created in your SQL Azure account.

Here, in my account, there are two databases that have been already created. They are the master and student database. Master database is the default database created by SQL Azure for you.

Click on Create Database.

Give the name of your database. Select the edition as Web and specify the max size of database.

You can select the other option also for the edition as business

Next, click on Create, you can see on the Databases tab that Demo1 database has been created.

Run the Script in SQL Azure

Open the SQL Server management Studio.

You will get Connect to server dialog box. Click on cancel.

After cancelling the dialog box, click on New Query (top left corner).

On clicking New Query, the Connect to Server dialog box appears again.

Now, here you need to provide the Server name of SQL Azure and Login credential of SQL Azure.

To know what is the database server name of SQL Azure portal, login to Windows Azure portal with your live credential and then click on the SQL Azure tab

You will get the server name in form of

abc.database.windows.net

where abc is name of your SQL Azure server. We need to provide this server name at the local SQL server management studio.

Make sure to select SQL Server Authentication and provide login user name and password of your SQL Azure database portal.

After that, before clicking Connect, click on Option

From Option, select School database.

Now once you have successfully connected to School Database in SQL Azure, copy the script and Run as given below.

After successfully runn script, run the below command and all the tables name will get listed.

In this way, you have successfully migrated database to SQL AZURE.

Step2: Exposing SQL Azure Database as WCF DATA Service

Create a new project and select ASP.Net Web Application project template from the Web tab. Give a meaningfull name to the web application.

We can create a Data Model, which can be exposed as WCF Data Service in three ways

• Using ADO.Net Entity model.
• Using LINQ to SQL class.
• Custom Data Model.

Here, I am going to use ADO.Net Entity model to create the data model. So to create an entity model, do the following:

• Right click on web application and add a new item
• Select ADO.Net Entity model from Data tab.

Since we have table in SQL Azure DataBase, we are going to choose the option Select from database.

Choose a new connection.

After clicking on New Connection, this is the important step. We need to give extra care here.

So provide the information as below,

Click on Test Connection to test if the connection established successfully or not? After this, you will get prompted if the Connection string contains sensitive data regarding if you want to keep that in configuration file or mange through program. You can select any one of these options according to what you need.

On providing your option, click on Next button; you can see that all the tables, Views, and Stored Procedures' are available to be chosen as a part of the data model for WCF Data Service.

Select tables, views and stored procedure from the database you want to make as the part of your data model.

Creating the WCF Data Service

Right click on Web Application project and add a new item.

Select WCF Data Service from Web tab. Give any meaningful name. I am leaving the default name here.

After adding the WCF Data Service, we can see a service file with extension .svc has been added to the solution explorer.

First, we need to put data source name. To do so, uncomment the first commented line and put the data source name. In our case, the name of the model which we created in the 2nd step is the data source. Our data model name is SchoolEntities.

Now we need to set access rules for the entity or entity set. Since we have only one table; so either we can give name of the table explicitly or if we want to set the same access rule for all the table in the data model or data source, we can put *.

So we are setting the access rule that, on the entity in data source perform all the operations.

So finally, the svc file will look like

Run the WCF Data Service

Just press F5 to run the WCF Data Service. The Data Service will be hosted in the default ASP.Net server.

On running, you can see all the table is listed there.

Append the URL with People and you will get all the records from People table

So we have exposed data from cloud using WCF Data service. Now any OADTA client can consume the data from cloud by consuming WCF Data Service.

Consuming WCF Data Service in Windows 7 Phone

First, we need to do is to create proxy of WCF Data service for Windows 7 phone. So to do this,

• Open command prompt in administrator mode.
• Navigate to folder C:\Windows\Microsoft.Net\FrameWork\V4.0. Version of framework may vary depending on .Net framework you are working on.
• Once navigated to this particular folder, run the below command to create proxy class. We will add this proxy class in Windows 7 mobile application.

Explanation of command

• There is space between all /out, /uri and /version
• We are redirecting the output to D drive and Temp folder. So make sure that the Temp folder exists in the D drive.
• School.cs is name of proxy class. You can give any name of your choice here. Once the command runs successfully, you will get School.cs class in Temp folder of D drive.
• After uri tag, give the uri of WCF data service.

Now after the execution of this command, we will have School.cs in Temp folder of D Drive.

Download the ODATA client library for Windows 7 phone from the below link and save the dll on local drive. We will add this DLL in Windows 7 phone application.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=b251b247-70ca-4887-bab6-dccdec192f8d

Create a windows 7 phone application. Open Visual Studio and select the Windows phone Application project template from Silverlight for Windows Phone tab.

Right click on the project and add existing item. Then navigate to Temp folder where you have created the WCF Data Service proxy class. In our case, it is School.cs. We created this in the previous step.

Now we need to add ODATA client library reference in the Windows 7 Phone application. Right click on the project and add reference. Navigate to the folder where you saved System.Data.Service.Clientdll

Display Data from Person Table in Windows 7 Phone application

We are going to display records of Person table in the list box. So first, let us create an entity class at client side. Right click and add a class called Person

Listing 1: Person.cs

Create a list box and we will bind the data in this list box. On click event of the Button, Data will get bound to the list box.

Listing 2: MainPage.Xaml

Add the namespace,

Now on click event of the button, we need to call the WCF Data Service and bind the list box

Listing 3: MainPage.Xaml.cs

Output will get as

Future scope

• Hosting of WCF Data Service on Windows Azure Web Role
• Hosting of WCF Data Service on IIS
• Hosting of WCF Data Service on App Fabric.

If we are hosting WCF Data Service on Windows Azure Web Role or App Fabric, then Data and service part will be completely in the cloud. In the next article, we will host WCF Data Service as Windows Azure web role to convert our existing application as a complete tryst of Cloud and Windows 7 phone application.

About Dhananjay Kumar

Dhananjay Kumar is a developer who blogs at http://debugmode.net/. He is Microsoft MVP ,Telerik MVP and Mindcracker MVP. You can follow him on twitter @debug_mode This author has published 8 articles on DotNetSlackers. View other articles or the complete profile here.