Microsoft Casablanca ties C++ to the cloud

Microsoft is making accommodations for C++ developers who want to take advantage of cloud computing with its "Casablanca" project.

Now in an incubation stage and under the jurisdiction of Microsoft DevLabs, Casablanca is intended to support cloud-based client-server communication in native code using a modern asynchronous C++ API design. It is being billed as an SDK for C++.

"Casablanca is a set of libraries for C++ developers, taking advantage of some recent standard language features already available through Visual Studio," said Microsoft vice president S. Somasegar. "Casablanca aims to make it significantly easier for C++ coders to consume and implement RESTful services. It builds on lessons from .Net, from Node.js, from Erlang and from other influencers to create a modern model that is meant to be easy to program while still being scalable, composable, and flexible." There has been a lack of simple tools for developers using C++ and that is where Casablanca comes in, he said.

Developers can download Casablanca for Visual Studio 2010 and the upcoming Visual Studio 11 IDE. Casablanca features a Visual Studio wizard for setup. Developers can target web and worker roles, as well as access Windows Azure cloud storage using the built-in C++ library bindings, Somasegar said. At this point, the project is in an experimental stage and Microsoft wants to know if developers are interested in using C++ to consume and implement cloud services. Feedback can be given in DevLabs forums.

The current release of Casablanca does not provide Visual Studio 11 support for Azure since the Windows Azure SDK does not officially work for Visual Studio. Azure bindings on the Windows 8 OS and Visual Studio 11 and Windows 8 will be supported in an upcoming release of Casablanca.