Azure Developer Contest Outline

First Challenge: Getting Started.

I will be creating a series of articles covering an end to end Azure cloud solution.  I intend to add features as the challenges progress.  The ultimate goal of my application is to allow fantasy sports players to make intelligent decisions based on the current state of their teams.  A future phase might make recommendations based on data mining or even completely automate a user’s team.  For the purpose of this article and based on the time of year I will limit my sports to fantasy baseball.

Second Challenge: Build a website. April 29 - May 12

Initial stage:  My website will allow users to enter the names of Major League baseball players in an effort to determine their fantasy baseball value relative to other options.  I will be using the Azure Datamarket STATS dataset to provide data to the application.  Code samples will show web service development and calls to the services.

Third Challenge: Using SQL on Azure

I will add SQL storage to the application to allow for saving of players and comparison between them.  For example you might want to store your entire roster so you can come back later and see updated calculations. 

Fourth Challenge: Virtual Machines

To extend the application further, I will use an Azure virtual machine running a headless, scripted web browser to pull data from the user’s fantasy baseball team site.  The user should be able to enter their team info and have the information pulled down and stored in the Azure SQL database on the site.

Fifth Challenge: Mobile access

Using the front end javascript framework that powers the site I will develop mobile views so that the application can be used effectively on the go.