TCP vs. HTTP

Transmission Control Protocol (also known as TCP) is a core protocol of the Internet Protocol Suite. It operates at a higher level than its compatriot, Internet Protocol (also known as IP). The two main concerns of TCP are the two end systems –a web browser and a web server, for example. TCP provides the delivery of a stream of bytes from a program from one computer to another computer. TCP is also in charge of controlling size, flow control, the rate of data exchange, and network traffic congestion.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (also known as HTTP) is an Application Layer protocol –meaning it is a protocol that categorises other protocols and methods in the architectural models of computer networking. It is used for those information systems that are distributed, collaborative, and hypermedia. It is a request/response standard that is commonly found in client server computing –in which the web browsers or spiders serve as the clients and an application running on the computer and hosting the web site serves as the actual server.

TCP provides communication services at an intermediate level between an application program and the IP. What this means is that when an application program wants to send a large piece of data across the internet using the IP, instead of breaking the data into sizes that will fit the IP and using a series of requests from the IP, the software is capable of issuing a single request to TCP and let this protocol handle the details of the IP transfer. TCP detects problems that arise in the IP, requests retransmission of the packets that were lost, rearranges the order of the packets (so that they are put back into their proper order), and helps to minimise network congestion (in order to reduce the occurrence of other problems down the line). Once all this has been done and the proper copy of the data has been compiled, the packet is passed along to application program.

In HTTP there is such a phenomenon as a session. An HTTP session is, in fact, a sequence of request/response transactions that occur on the network. The client puts forth the request and establishes a TCP connection to a particular port on a specific host. The HTTP server ‘listens in’ on that particular port and awaits a request message from the client. Once this request is received, the server sends the line back to the client with its own message –which is comprised of the requested resource, an error message, or any other piece of information.

Summary:

1. TCP is a core operates a relatively high level; HTTP is an Application Layer protocol that is a request/response standard found in client server computing.

2. TCP provides communication services at an intermediate level between an application program and the IP; in HTTP there are a series of sessions in which the client sends a request and the server sends a reply message back to the client including the request, an error message, or another piece of information.

Reference: http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/internet/difference-between-tcp-and-http/

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Hash table represents a collection of key-and-value pairs that are organized based on the hash code of the key.

Reference : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.collections.hashtable.aspx

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     Using computers in the cloud can make lots of sense. Rather than buying and maintaining your own machines, why not exploit the acres of Internet-accessible servers on offer today? For some applications, their code and data might both live in the cloud, where somebody else manages and maintains the systems they use. Alternatively, applications that run inside an organization—on-premises applications—might store data in the cloud or rely on other cloud infrastructure services. Applications that run on desktops and mobile devices can use services in the cloud to synchronize information across many systems or in other ways. However it’s done, exploiting the cloud’s capabilities can improve our world.

    But whether an application runs in the cloud, uses services provided by the cloud, or both, some kind of application platform is required. Viewed broadly, an application platform can be thought of as anything that provides developer-accessible services for creating applications. In the local, on-premises Windows world, for example, this includes technologies such as the .NET Framework, SQL Server, and more. To let applications exploit the cloud, cloud application platforms must also exist. And because there are a variety of ways for applications to use cloud services, different kinds of cloud platforms are useful in different situations.

Microsoft’s Azure Services Platform is a group of cloud technologies, each providing a specific set of services to application developers. As Figure 1 shows, the Azure Services Platform can be used both by applications running in the cloud and by applications running on local systems.

Figure 1: The Azure Services Platform supports applications running in the cloud and on local systems.

    The components of the Azure Services Platform can be used by local applications running on a variety of systems, including various flavors of Windows, mobile devices, and others. Those components include:

Windows Azure: Provides a Windows-based environment for running applications and storing data on servers in Microsoft data centers.

Microsoft .NET Services: Offers distributed infrastructure services to cloud-based and local applications.

Microsoft SQL Services: Provides data services in the cloud based on SQL Server.

Live Services: Through the Live Framework, provides access to data from Microsoft’s Live applications and others. The Live Framework also allows synchronizing this data across desktops and devices, finding and downloading applications, and more.

       Each component of the Azure Services Platform has its own role to play. This overview describes all four, first at a high level, then in a bit more detail. While none of them are yet final—details and more might change before their initial release—it’s not too early to start understanding this new set of platform technologies.

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Refer : http://chandoo.org/

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Common Prerequisites

• Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0
• Visual Studio 2010
• ASP.NET MVC 2.0
• Windows Powershell
• Microsoft Internet Information Server 7

Windows Azure Platform SDKs & Tools

• Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 1.2 (June 2010)
  Windows Azure SDK provides developers APIs, tools, documentation and samples needed to develop applications for internet scale on Windows Azure. Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extend Visual Studio to enable the creation, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable services on Windows Azure.
  
• Windows Azure platform AppFabric SDK V1.0 - July Update
  The Windows Azure platform AppFabric SDK SDK includes APIs, libraries, samples, and documentation for building connected applications with the .NET platform.

SQL Server & Tools

• Microsoft SQL Server Express 2008 (or later)
  SQL Server Express is a free edition of SQL Server that is an ideal data platform for learning and building desktop and small server applications, and for redistribution by ISVs.
  
• SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2 Express Edition
  Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Management Studio Express (SSMSE) is an integrated environment for accessing, configuring, managing, administering, and developing all components of SQL Server Express.

Windows Identity Foundation

• Microsoft Windows Identity Foundation Runtime
  Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) is a new extension to the Microsoft .NET Framework that makes it easy for developers to enable advanced identity capabilities in the .NET Framework applications. Based on interoperable, standard protocols, Windows Identity Foundation and the claims-based identity model can be used to enable single sign on, personalization, federation, strong authentication, identity delegation, and other identity capabilities in ASP.NET and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) applications that run on-premises or in the cloud.
  
• Microsoft Windows Identity Foundation SDK
  The Windows Identity Foundation SDK provides templates for use with Visual Studio and code samples.

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