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Blog Announcements. Software help development building applications on the service, blockchain also introduced our Azure Blockchain development kit for Ethereum. Microsoft has announced the first iteration of the Azure Blockchain Development Kit. Software extension will start and run an instance of ganache for the user. This means that you can prove that a certain information object—like blockchain e-mail, document or image—existed at a certain point in kit. The resulting applications will run atop a network that has higher rated cloud performance than other large-scale providers and enable federating identities between participants using Azure Active Directory. After signing into Infura, you will kit askted development authorization to share your Infura projects with the extension.
Custom web development and cold storage kit off-chain accounting. Samples showing how to connect to blockchain enterprise systems such as SQL databases, FTP, storage, or cloud file and email services. The blockchain giant has been developing blockchain-based products for use development a wide range of scenarios. Transparent transactions and complete information about properties. DevOps are essential to developing robust software in a time-effective manner. Software will help you turn any idea into the solution that will solve real industry problems with or without a usage of Blockchain technology. A prompt will be presented kit allow you to enter a project name.
Verify e-Documents with Smart Contracts in Azure Blockchain Development Kit
The decentralized digital identity management platform would allow users to own and secure access to their online persona. Over the past year, Microsoft said it has been exploring how to use Blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies to create new types of digital identities to enhance personal privacy, security and control. Smart contract events and state changes can then trigger actions and data updates to 'off chain' systems and data. These external systems and AI will also need the ability to query attestable data from smart contracts to inform action.
And the Linux Foundation's open-source blockchain collaborative, Hyperledger, has also released SDKs , or modular frameworks for building, deploying and running business blockchains.
Senior Reporter Lucas Mearian covers financial services IT including blockchain , healthcare IT and enterprise mobile issues including mobility management, security, hardware and apps. Here are the latest Insider stories. More Insider Sign Out. These include identity management , authentication and provenance , enterprise blockchains , the financial market , and even mass communication.
From its past experience in working with businesses to create effective blockchain-based solutions, Microsoft was able to pinpoint the challenges involved in the process. As a result, its development kit is designed to address these problems and make blockchain development easier for enterprises and developers. Apps have been built for everything from democratizing supply chain financing in Nigeria to securing the food supply in the UK, but as patterns emerged across use cases, our teams identified new ways for Microsoft to help developers go farther, faster.
Microsoft identified three major capabilities that developers encountered the most significant challenges with. The key themes that came up are the lack of effectively functioning connection interfaces as well as difficulty in integrating off-chain data and systems. The final theme that developers had challenges with was the actual deployment of smart contracts and blockchain networks. To this end, the set of tools places a great deal of importance on providing solutions for these challenges while building further on prior work.
The Azure Blockchain Workbench utilizes the server-less Azure services for the management of keys as well as off-chain identity and data. It also provides oversight capabilities, allowing for the organization of messaging APIs into a reference architecture that can be used to quickly develop and deploy blockchain-based applications. The development kit now includes the capability to create SMS and voice platforms through which users can interface with a blockchain network.
This is an important factor for those users of enterprise blockchains who do not have access to more advanced technology but still require access to the networks. Examples include small-scale cocoa farmers in Africa who are using a blockchain-based system to manage the supply chain. The Azure Development kit also comes with the capability to easily and effectively connect with the Internet of Things IoT devices as well as mobile clients, especially those that are utilized to add any necessary supportive data to a blockchain-based system.
According to the feedback Microsoft received from its past undertakings, mobile clients are an essential part of the entire operation and thus provisions need to be made to ensure the devices are able to access a network. Mercuri explains:. Mobile devices also have sensors such as GPS and cameras that can add complementary data that can help attest to the what, where, and when of deliveries.
Additionally, Microsoft found that for businesses to effectively utilize blockchain-based systems, they must also include a form of Enterprise Resource Planning ERP.
A blockchain-based system should be approached as a simple tool through which a business can streamline its operations, increase its productivity and possibly reduce its costs. Moreover, ERP systems should also be able to interact with smart contracts in order to add and view the data contained in the blockchain-backed agreements. In the context of blockchain-backed supply chain management systems, bots and assistants are essential to the network. These products help those interacting with the network, such as manufacturers and retailers, to easily interface with the supply chain.
Thus developers should include the provisions for these services to easily access the data in the DLT network. Moreover, these services should be able to view the data in natural language as they are used by the human component of the network, to order or direct any relevant action. Lastly, blockchain-based management systems should be able to accommodate the end consumers who typically utilize web clients to view the history of their products.
Blockchain technology is being heavily employed to provide provenance, especially for edible products. Mercuri explains that the Azure Development Kit is now able to support a vast array of scenarios and clients, especially as was determined through the received feedback. For instance, in many business documents and media are essential types of data used to quantify and authenticate any number of processes.
However, the reality is that blockchain networks cannot support the storage of these data types because they typically require a significant amount of storage space. The usual method used by developers to add document and media to a blockchain is to generate a unique hash of the media and the metadata that describes it.
These hashes are, in turn, added to a public or private chain. If the new hash is found to be different in any way from the original hash referred to in the blockchain system, then the document is declared inauthentic. To put it another way, a document or any other data should always produce the same hash value and if the hashes do not match then tampering is obvious. To this end, the Azure Blockchain Development Kit includes a set of Logic Apps that enable the hashing of files and file related metadata.
Additionally, the kit also contains tools to create smart contracts for files as well as a file registry to store any created hashes on-chain.
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Logic Apps and Flow deliver a graphical design environment with more than connectors dramatically simplifying the development of end to end blockchain solutions, and Azure Functions enable the rapid integration of custom code.
A serverless approach also reduces costs and management overhead. With no VMs to manage, built-in scalability, and an approachable pricing model the Azure Blockchain Development Kit is within reach of every developer — from enthusiasts to ISVs to enterprises. Solutions are written using online visual workflow designers and Visual Studio Code , a free download that provides an integrated development environment on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
The resulting applications will run atop a network that has higher rated cloud performance than other large-scale providers and enable federating identities between participants using Azure Active Directory. With Azure, those applications can be deployed to more regions than any other cloud provider and benefit from more certifications.
To learn more about how to use these samples to build and extend blockchain applications, you can find a host of videos on our Channel 9 show Block Talk. Blog Announcements. Introducing the Azure Blockchain Development Kit. Connect To deliver end to end blockchain solutions for consortiums, developers need to enable organizations, people, and devices to connect to the blockchain and do it from a heterogenous set of user interfaces. Take for example an end to end supply chain for a commodity such as cocoa.
SMS and voice interfaces enable small hold farmers in Africa to transact and track their goods at the first mile of the supply chain. Internet of Things IoT devices deliver sensor data to track the conditions of the goods at different points in their journey to market — tracking the humidity in the containers where the beans are held to the temperature of the end product of ice cream that it is incorporated into.
Mobile clients enable logistics providers to accept and transfer responsibility for products on their journey from manufacturer to retail using the compute power that already exists in the pockets of its employees. Mobile devices also have sensors such as GPS and cameras that can add complementary data that can help attest to the what, where, and when of deliveries.
These systems also become clients via extension and need to interact with smart contracts to provide and receive attestable data on behalf of an organization. Bots and assistants enable manufacturers and retailers to interact with the supply chain. This includes interacting with smart contracts for orders and provenance using natural language and using attestable data from the blockchain to direct actions taken on behalf of a user. Integrate Businesses are using blockchain and smart contracts to facilitate multi-party processes.
Specifically, there are two areas of integration where guidance is most needed: Documents and Media: Documents and media do not belong on chain, but business processes often involve images, videos, audio, Office documents, CAD files for 3D printers or other file types. As digital transformation expands beyond the walls of one company and into processes shared across organizations, businesses are looking to blockchain as a way to share workflow data and logic.
This spring we introduced Azure Blockchain Service , a fully-managed blockchain service that simplifies the formation, management, and governance of consortium blockchain networks. With a few simple clicks, users can create and deploy a permissioned blockchain network and manage consortium membership using an intuitive interface in the Azure portal. To help developers building applications on the service, we also introduced our Azure Blockchain development kit for Ethereum.
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Enter the port number kit use for this development network. With a single, immutable and verifiable record store, blockchain software development kit, people will own their digital identity software records—think of identity or residence documents, medical records, educational or professional certificates and licenses. The ability to create documents, develop reports, or provide strategy, marketing, and compliance support for your project. Earlier this software, Microsoft announced it was planning to pilot a blockchain-based digital ID platform that would allow users kit control access to sensitive online information via an encrypted data hub. Blockchain Blockchain Application Development Kit includes Workbench integration samples in the following areas:. Blockchain, the Hyperledger Besu is fully compatible with the extension, however the provisioning of the nodes is not yet fully integrated. Latest Podcasts.
This will fundamentally change the world and how we interact. Interested in using our products? We Can not help you with non-decentralized Blockchain products. We won't help you to get listed on exchange with fake trading volumes. We will not help you to create fake ICO's to defraud innocent people. You are at wrong place if you are planning a Pump and Dump scheme.
We can not help you with Algorithmic robot trading to defraud investors. Join our mailing list to get regular Blockchain and Cryptocurrency updates. All Rights Reserved. The calculation of the hash value is done in an Azure Function built on the. NET runtime stack. After reading the request body in the Run method, the function computes the hash using the SHA library available in the System.
Cryptography namespace. The hash value is returned as a UTF8-encoded string. The Logic App flow is triggered when a new document is uploaded to a SharePoint site. To configure this action, after entering your authentication credentials for SharePoint, you have to specify the site address of the SharePoint site to monitor for new files, and the specific folder where files are uploaded.
You can also set the frequency of polling this folder and checking for new files. A reasonable setting is to check once per minute. This is a JSON object that will be transferred in input to the function, obtaining its hash value as output. The previous step is needed to hash the file metadata. Now I must hash also the entire file content, to preserve it in an immutable state in the blockchain network.
As before, add another Choose an Azure function action from the Azure Functions connector, but this time, instead of the several file attributes, pick File Content. Access to the digital ledger can be obtained by sending a message to the Azure Service Bus deployed as part of the Blockchain Workbench solution.
An external system like a Logic App action can communicate with a smart contract hosted in Blockchain Workbench by sending a message to Service Bus. The message is picked by the Blockchain Workbench runtime and a new blockchain transaction is created, containing the message.
Communication with Ethereum can happen only by generating a transaction that invokes a smart contract, as depicted in Figure 5. Figure 5 Sending a Message to a Smart Contract.
A connection to an Azure Service Bus is identified by a connection name and a connection string. The message to send to the Service Bus also requires the following parameters:. I define these parameters as variables in the Logic App flow, by using the Initialize variable action from the Variables connector.
The processedDateTime variable can be set to utcNow, which represents the current coordinated universal time. The next section describes the smart contract for processing these messages sent by the Logic App flow.
Hash values of the file metadata and content are. In this article, I describe the storage of documents on SharePoint, which is a centralized service. The FileContract smart contract describes a file through its metadata, based on the values passed in the message sent by Logic App to Blockchain Workbench via Azure Service Bus. A file entity is identified by its file ID and the address on blockchain of the FileContract smart contract that contains the metadata.
This structure is saved in a private collection defined as a dictionary, whose key is the FileId string. The mapping keyword in Solidity defines a dictionary and its key and value types as follows:. To save a file entity its ID and metadata , I simply add the constituent values to the Registry dictionary in the Save method.
Users who need to verify their certificates with a third party do so by sharing the authenticity token that is, the file contract address , which contains all the necessary information to verify that the document exists and is authentic and not counterfeited.
Figure 7 describes the parties and actions involved in the verification process. The user retrieves the certificate to verify from its location 1 and initiates a new transaction on the blockchain network, transferring the authenticity token 2 to the verification authority. The authority obtains the signed content and metadata of the certificate being verified 3 , which is stored on the immutable digital ledger, and then compares them with the equivalent hash values from the off-chain copy.
If the values match, the document is verified 4. Figure 7 The Verification Actors and Process. Once documents and unstructured data are signed and verified—and a hash of their content and metadata are stored on a blockchain—it creates an immutable and independent, verifiable record of transactions.
This process is referred to as proof of existence and proof of authenticity of digital assets. Proof of existence refers to creating an unalterable date and time stamp for a specific object. This means that you can prove that a certain information object—like an e-mail, document or image—existed at a certain point in time. This is accomplished by digitally signing an object and thus creating a hash, its unique identifier. The identifier then gets committed into the distributed blockchain ledger, and the transaction gets time-stamped, as well.
Because every entry in the blockchain is immutable, this means you have proof that this specific object existed at a certain point in time. Using the same approach, an object can be verified and validated. A flow similar to the one I described for the signing process creates a unique identifier and verifies this unique identifier against the blockchain ledger. The FileContract smart contract exposes a GetFile method that, given a file ID in input, returns its contract address on the blockchain.
Why use blockchain to sign and verify digital assets, when solutions for electronic signature already exist and are broadly adopted in the industry?