Introducing Fog

Windows Azure provides its API through HTTP services. This is advantageous as it allows any programming language to interact with the platform. Additionally, various wrappers have been created to allow interaction from specific languages to be even easier. If you’re creating a .NET application, the easiest option is to use the Windows Azure SDK for .NET, which I mentioned earlier.

While the SDK for .NET can be used from F# in much the same way as from C# or VB.NET, it’s certainly geared for more of an object-oriented paradigm. In order to take advantage of some of the unique features of F#, I have created a library called Fog.

Fog brings the cloud down to Earth and harnesses it with F#. Its goal is to reduce boilerplate code as well as to provide a more functional way of interacting with Windows Azure. Throughout the rest of this chapter I will show you some of the code you could use to interact with Azure without Fog, as well as some of the ways Fog makes your life easier. You can find Fog on my GitHub and get it from NuGet as package ID Fog.