Azure Cloud on Ulitzer

In my previous post (http://thinkfirstcodelater.com/blog/?p=3242) I showed you how to view the list of preview features available to a Windows Azure Mobile Service. In this post I’ll show you how to enable a preview feature.

Once again, just a reminder that I’m using the command line tools on a MacBook Air with OSX (Mountain Lion) installed, and I’m using Google Chrome as my default browser. However, the experience should be identical on Windows and Linux as well.

Open an instance of your command line (Terminal, Bash, Command Prompt, etc.) and type the following:

azure mobile preview enable -h

In order to enable a preview feature you need to provide two parameters:

1. The name of the service you want to enable the feature for
2. The name of the preview feature you want to enable

At the time of this writing the only preview feature available is SourceControl. This feature allows you to use the popular distributed version control system Git to manage source code for your Windows Azure Mobile Service. Enter the following into your CLI, substituting where appropriate:

azure mobile preview enable “[YOUR WINDOWS AZURE MOBILE SERVICE]” “SourceControl”

In my case I entered the following:

azure mobile preview enable “zumo101″ “SourceControl”

Of particular importance is the data.repository value that is returned. This allows you to clone the Git repository to your local machine.

You can verify the feature is enabled by entering the following command into your CLI:

azure mobile preview list “[YOUR MOBILE SERVICE NAME]“

In my case I entered the following:

azure mobile preview list “zumo101″

As you can see from the results the SourceControl preview feature has been enabled.

That’s it for now. In the next post I’ll show you how to start working with data by creating a table.

Did you know you can try Windows Azure for free for 30 days? Just go to http://aka.ms/thecloud and sign up.