Some scenarios when we can use Shared Access Signature from Windows Azure

In this post we will talk about some possible scenario when Shared Access Policy can be used. We will discuss about a different scenario for blobs, tables and queues.

Blobs

We are a graphical designer that creates templates for web applications. We decide that we what to offer this content to any persons based on a subscription that is paid for each template package. A template package can contain 100 web applications template for example.

How we can share this content very easily with our clients. A simple solution is using blobs and Shared Access Signature. For each client we create an access token that allow to access the templates for which he paid. Over this structure we create a web-application that allow user to download the templates packages after he insert his access token that is send via email.

Table

Let’s imagine an application that store on Azure table information about stock reports for the each weeks. This information is generated based on a lot of computation power. Because of this the company decides to share sell this valuable content based on a weekly subscriptions. A client can have access only to information for the weeks that he paid.

A solution could be to write a service that retrieves all this content based for a given password. To be able to do this we would need to register our client, authenticate them each time and so on.

A more simple solution is to put this content in Azure table and use Shared Access Signature to give read only access to our clients. Based on the unique token, the client will be able to access and query this information in any way they want. From our perspective, we can define for each table what partitions keys and rows keys a client can access. Each week, all we need to do is to update the Shared Access Signature for clients that paid the subscription for the next week. This can be done automatically without any problems.

Queues

We can imagine that we the biggest ice producer from our region and we create ice for other companies that sell it to general public (we create in 5 locations). We create a system that process each command based on the arrival. Our partners submit a request on our web site and based on their location and loading we are able allocate them to a specific ice fabric. Each ice fabric could have allocated a queue where from it could process the commands.

In the summer, the ice request is so big that we cannot delivery it. Because of this we decide to work with small ice factory that can help us. A solution to share all the commands for ice, but without sharing client and price information is to use Shared Access Policy over queues.

Each of our partners could get a limited access to the commands and queue and produce ice for us for a specific time. When we don’t need any more their help we can restrict the access to the commands queues.

There are a lot of scenarios that we could imagine. Don’t expect that Shared Access Signature to be the only solutions for our problems. But there will be times, when this is the simples solution, when we don’t need to implement something more and use an out of the box mechanism.

Tutorials about Shared Access Signature:

1. Overview
2. How to use Shared Access Signature with tables from Windows Azure
3. How to use Shared Access Signature with blobs from Windows Azure
4. How to use Shared Access Signature with queues from Windows Azure
5. How to remove or edit a Shared Access Signature from Windows Azure 
6. Some scenarios when we can use Shared Access Signature from Windows Azure