Windows Azure SDK Update and New Storage Features

The Windows Azure team have announced a refresh to the Windows Azure SDK and Visual Studio Tools for Windows Azure together with some significant updates to Windows Azure Storage. 

The updated SDK includes improved Visual Studio integration, support for development on Windows 7RC, Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008 SP2 and addresses some bug fixes.

The new Windows Azure Storage features include new capabilities that allow applications to perform atomic transactions across multiple entities and to copy blobs. Essentially they include entity group transaction support for Windows Azure Table, Copy Blob for Windows Azure Blob, Block List for Windows Azure Blob, and API versioning.  In addition, there are two changes to the semantics of the Windows Azure tables, namely Property Names and PartitionKey and RowKey sizes. 

New updates will continue to be released as the platform matures ready for general availability of the service.