Casablanca, a set of C++ libraries intended to support cloud-based client-server communication in native code using an asynchronous design, can be considered a cloud SDK for C++.

In a blog post announcing the new DevLabs project codenamed "Casablanca", Microsoft vice president S. Somasegar wrote:

"Casablanca aims to make it significantly easier for C++ coders to consume and implement RESTful services. It builds on lessons from .Net, from Node.js, from Erlang and from other influencers to create a modern model that is meant to be easy to program while still being scalable, composable, and flexible."

The Visual C++ team blog explained:

Casablanca is a project to start exploring how to best support C++ developers who want to take advantage of the radical shift in software architecture that cloud computing represents.

If you are a developer writing a responsive client app, or a scalable server-side solution, where asynchrony goes hand in hand with parallelism, you should give Casablanca a try.

It lists the following features of the new library:

• Support for accessing REST services from native code on Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 Consumer Preview by providing asynchronous C++ bindings to HTTP, JSON, and URIs
• A Visual Studio extension SDK to help write C++ HTTP client side code in Windows 8 Metro style apps
• Support for writing native-code REST for Azure, including Visual Studio integration
• Libraries for accessing Azure blob and queue storage from native clients as a first class Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) feature
• A consistent and powerful model for composing asynchronous operations based on C++ 11 features
• A C ++ implementation of the actor-based programming model inspired by Erlang.
• A set of samples and documentation

Casablanca has a Visual Studio wizard for setup but the  current release

does not provide Visual Studio 11 support for Azure since the Windows Azure SDK does not officially work for Visual Studio. Azure bindings on the Windows 8 OS and Visual Studio 11 will be supported in an upcoming release of Casablanca.

This Channel 9 video provides a reasonable introduction:

More Information

Somasegar's blog
Announcing Casablanca, a native library to access the cloud from C++

Download Casablanca for Visual Studio 2010 and the upcoming Visual Studio 11 IDE.

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