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Open source took center stage at Microsoft Build 2017

  • By Microsoft + Open Source, Microsoft’s commitment to open source is ingrained in our business. Investments in this space began several years ago and continue to be reinforced through technology decisions, partner momentum, customer adoption, and community contributions.
a city with tall buildings in the background

Microsoft supports the diverse needs of every organization and developer – from core infrastructure services to platform services and tools to software-as-a-service – for any language, across any platform. Last week at Build, Microsoft focused on how to empower Windows, iOS, Android, Mac and Linux developers to reach billions of new customers.

Here’s a round-up of the big open source news at Build:

Azure Cosmos DB

Azure Cosmos DB is the first globally distributed, multi-model database service for building planet-scale apps. You can easily build globally-distributed applications without the hassle of complex, multiple-datacenter configurations. Designed as a globally distributed database system, Cosmos DB automatically replicates all of your data to any number of regions of your choice, for fast, responsive access. Cosmos DB allows you to use your favorite APIs, including SQL (Document DB), JavaScript, Gremlin, MongoDB, and Azure Table storage to query your data. For more on this announcement, check out the Azure Cosmos DB announcement blog and the technical overview blog.

More Linux distros coming to Bash/Windows Subsystem for Linux

Last year at Build, Microsoft unveiled the first tech preview of Bash on Ubuntu for Windows. This year, Microsoft announced that the install of Ubuntu will be simplified by bringing it to the Windows Store, as well as SUSE Linux and Fedora Linux distributions will be coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux and the Windows Store. Now, Windows is the only platform that can run both Windows apps and Linux apps side-by-side. More on this news here.

Visual Studio for Mac

Visual Studio for Mac brings the integrated development environment (IDE) loved by millions to the Mac. Developers get a great IDE and a single environment to not only work on end-to-end solutions – from mobile and web apps to games – but also to integrate with and deploy to Azure. Whether you use C#, F#, .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, Xamarin or Unity, you’ll get a best-in-class development environment, natively designed for the Mac. Learn more about Visual Studio for Mac here.

Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL (Preview)

Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL services are built on the intelligent, trusted and flexible Azure relational database platform. This platform extends similar managed services benefits, global Azure region reach, and innovations that currently power Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Data Warehouse services to the MySQL and PostgreSQL database engines. Starting at preview, customers can use the service to build and deploy their applications using MySQL version 5.6/5.7 and PostgreSQL version 9.5/9.6 in 11 regions across US, Europe, Asia and Japan. More on this news here.

Azure Data Lake Tools for Visual Studio Code

Azure Data Lake Tools for Visual Studio Code (VSCode) gives developers a light but powerful code editor for developing big data queries. Able to run on Windows, Linux, or MacOS, ADL Tools for VSCode supports integrated authoring of U-SQL and C# to develop scripts that can process any type and size of data. The tools make it easy to extend U-SQL with custom code using local code-behind files or shared assemblies. Code can be directly submitted for execution on Azure Data Lake Analytics (ADLA) service, or run and validated locally.  The tooling is also integrated with the Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) service allowing developers to browse, preview, and upload files into ADLS. More on this GA release on the Azure blog.

Web App on Linux (Preview)

More capabilities were announced for Web App on Linux, currently in preview. Web App on Linux enables developers to run their cloud apps natively on Docker Containers for Linux. It makes it easier to migrate existing apps hosted and optimized for the Linux platform into Azure App Service. With custom Docker Container support, developers can implement applications in many programming languages and stacks while taking advantage of Docker tooling, as well as the industry leading PaaS capabilities of Azure App Service. For more on what’s new with the Web App on Linux (Preview), check out the Azure blog.

Azure CLI 2.0

Azure CLI 2.0 was announced in February and at Build the team new functionality available through new or significantly enhanced command modules: appservices, cdn, cognitive services, cosmosdb, data lake analytics and store, dev/test labs, functions, monitor, mysql, postgres, service fabric client, and vsts. Some of these changes include new syntax and modified names for existing CLI commands. More on this new functionality and the roadmap for Azure CLI 2.0 can be found here.

Build sessions available on demand

Watch all the Build sessions on demand on Channel 9, including the below open source and cross-platform talks and tutorials. Tip: go directly to Channel 9 for a more sortable list of hundreds of sessions.

Something else you’d like to see next year? Let us know in the comments.

Microsoft + Open Source
Microsoft’s commitment to open source is ingrained in our business. Investments in this space began several years ago and continue to be reinforced through technology decisions, partner momentum, customer adoption, and community contributions.

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