The features development by RealDolmen, which intends to provide high-level abstractions for PHP developers to interoperate with Azure.

"The PHP SDK for Windows Azure focuses on REST and provides PHP classes for Windows Azure blobs, tables and queue, helper classes for HTTP transport, AuthN/AuthZ, REST, and error management as well as manageability, instrumentation, and logging support," said Peter Galli, senior open source community manager at Microsoft, in a .

Microsoft's Vijay Rajagopalan, principal architect, also will reveal the launch of projects that offer samples and a toolkit for PHP developers to include Silverlight controls, Microsoft Virtual Earth maps, and Internet Explorer Webslices and Accelerators in PHP applications.

The projects are available on the open source project site under a BSD license. A technology preview of PHP SDK for Windows Azure will be offered under a BSD license as well. A functionally complete version of the SDK is due by this fall.