Microsoft® .NET Services is a key component of the Microsoft Cloud Computing Platform that offers a set of Microsoft-hosted, highly scalable, developer-oriented services that provide key building blocks required by many cloud-based and cloud-aware applications. Much like the .NET Framework provides higher-level class libraries that make developers more productive, .NET Services enables a developer to focus on their application logic rather than building and deploying their own cloud-based infrastructure services.

As part of Microsoft®'s commitment to interoperability, .NET Services offers interoperability by design through industry standards and web protocols such as REST, SOAP, WS-*, as well as through community based libraries that make it easier to use the services. While more services are in the works, .NET Services currently includes three core components—Access Control, Service Bus, and Workflow service.

.NET Services for Ruby is an open source software development kit (SDK) that helps Ruby programs communicate with Microsoft .NET Services using plain HTTP. Specifically the SDK includes set of REST libraries, tools, prescriptive patterns & guidance & sample applications that will enhance productivity for Ruby developers. Developers will be able to leverage the .NET Services to extend their Ruby applications by using the Microsoft cloud services platform to build, deploy and manage reliable, Internet-scale applications.

Milestone 1: October 27th, 2008 (Alpha/Community Technology Preview)

The focus of this release is to demonstrate interoperable architecture, Service Bus and Web-Style (REST) Authentication. The detailed API documentation is available here. We are excited about making this initial version available to you and look forward to your feedback.

Some of the features we have included in the Alpha build are:

• Access Control Service
• Volatile Message Buffer (interactions)
• Authentication
• Web-style-HttpRelayBinding
• Interactive Credentials
• Notification Service
• ServiceBus Environment Settings

Milestone 2: April 10, 2009 (M2-CTP)

This is the second milestone release (ver: M2-CTP) of the Ruby dotnetservices project. This release has been updated to ensure compatibility with Microsoft .NET Services March 2009 CTP release.

This M2-CTP addresses following breaking changes in the .NET Services,

• The March 2009 CTP release uses solution names as part of the host name for all service end points. STS host reference location has changed from accesscontrol.windows.net to <solution-name>.accesscontrol.windows.net. Hence STS endpoint prefix has changed aswell.
• Solution name is now part of the DNS. All Service Bus applications must adopt this new naming convention of sb://<solution-name>.servicebus.windows.net/.

The following milestones are planned for next 3 months:

Milestone 3: Summer 2009

• Service Registry
• Eventing
• Enhancements to Web-Style REST Protocol
• Enhancements to Access Control Service
• Support for Service Bus Naming and Discovery
• Workflow Service