Reading Notes #105

 

Suggestion of the week

• Create Single Use URIs to Protect Your Resources! - Great tutorial. I like the idea of "real" scenario.

Cloud

• Keep Your Privates Private! - Nice post that shows an elegant way to solve a security topic.
  
• A Cloud and Azure Glossary for the Confused (Scott Hanselman) - Nice post that explains very well all the cloud buzz words.
  
• Windows Azure: General Availability of SQL Server Always On Support and Notification Hubs, AutoScale Improvements + More (Scott Guthrie) - Even during summer (read vacation period) the Windows Azure Team delivery a lot of new amazing features. Read more about it in this very complete post.
  
• Push Notifications made easy: Using Windows Azure Notification Hubs with Windows Phone (andywigley) - Great post to get started with Azure Push Notification. The article contains a sample before using the hub and after.

Programming

• Am I really a developer or just a good googler? (Scott  Hanselman) - Good question... and nice answer.
  
• Today's ideal developer - In this nice post, Jeff is giving his opinion to answer a post published earlier this week about developers vs. Googlers.
  
• AutoMapper 3.0 released (Jimmy Bogard) - Definitely a great tool, now that it's a PCL it will be even easier to use.
  
• The Magic of using Asynchronous Methods in ASP.NET 4.5 plus an important gotcha (Scott Hanselman) - Nice explication about where async could and should be use in web development.

Miscellaneous

• The Impact Of A New Developer - Often overlooked, these easy rules could lower the bad impact of a new member arriving in your dev team.
  
• Write the Story for Your Project (JD Meier) - Nice little "game" to get all team members in the spirit.
  
• Do Interruptions and Productivity Rhyme With Compatibility? (Alexandre Brisebois) - Ah ah! It's or it will append to each of us... It an important discovery to do and most important is the way we react...
  
• The 5 Must-Have Qualities Of The Modern Employee (Jacob Morgan) - I totally agree. Many times I read post about how a manager should change, but it's not only them who needs to adapt.
  
• **Saving and Retrieving Browser (and other) Passwords - It so easy and convenient that we sometimes forget how "dangerous" it could be...

~Frank

[Image from sxc.hu]

Reading Notes #101

Suggestion of the week

• Windows Azure Storage Best Practices - Great post that reviews the today's best practices to get the best of Azure Storage.

Cloud

• Scaling Up and Scaling Out in Windows Azure Web Sites (Craig Kitterman) - Nice post that clarified that scaling options from the Azure Website point of view.
  
• Windows Azure Storage Queue with error queues (Pascal Laurin) - Nice tutorial about using Azure Storage Queues in an asynchronous pattern. You just need to attach an alert from the new Azure Mobile Services to the Error queue, and you are in business! Until you get notified, then we will need the next post.
  
• Windows Azure SQL Database Automated Backups are Finally Here! - That really a good news! I cannot see any reason why anybody wouldn't use it.
  
• Linking a resource to your Cloud Service? What does that mean (Ashish Goyal) - Good clarification about what is exactly a link resource and what it's not.
  
• How to get a sticky load balancer in Windows Azure - Interesting post that comments the usage of sticky load balancer (to use session in a multi server context) and explains how to do it in Azure if you really need it.
  
• An Introduction to Windows Azure BLOB Storage (Mike Wood) - This incredibly complete post contains everything about Azure Blob storage. that the ultimate resource on that topics!
  
• Windows Azure SQL Database Automated Backup Frequency is in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) - Nice catch! so UTC it is...
  
• Dev/Test in the Cloud - Every developer should now what is available for them in Azure. It is so quick and simple! And if you stop your VMs when you are not developing, you stop paying for it!
  
• Windows Azure Web Sites: How Application Strings and Connection Strings Work(Craig_Kitterman) - Great post that explains how to get a more secure website by using application string.
  
• Turbo Charging Your Windows Azure Cloud Services - Interesting post where we can read about a real cost and performance optimization.

 

Integration

• Windows Azure BizTalk Services & BizTalk 2013 - comparing the mapper (Glenn Colpaert)- Very complete comparison of the two mappers that really shows the pros and cons of each of them.

Programming

• Deployment tool (Fredrik Normén) - Interesting "pet project": building is own deployment tool...
  
• Four Ways to Implement Lazy Loading in C# (Francesco Cariaggi) - Interesting post that gives alternative to the really handy lazy loading pattern.
  
• TypeScript 0.9 Preview Release (S.Somasegar) - Learn more about the new features (generics) that bring the last version of TypeScript released not long ago.
  
• Some of the Anti Patterns - Interesting post that identified some anti patterns that reflects bad practices. Knowing them helps to improve our code, so it's good to refresh our memory.
  
• Use PowerShell to Sort CSV Files in Order - Who don't need to sort stuff? Next time indeed of opening Excell I will type one command line; thanks to this post!
  
• The Great New Features in JustDecompile (James Bender) - Nice post that walkthru the new features included in the new release of this useful tool.
  
• Building static websites with Middleman - Very interesting code. I didn't know Middleman before I'll definitly look at it.

 

Database

• SQL – Difference Between INNER JOIN and JOIN (Pinal Dave) - Don't cheat and answer this frequently asked question before reading the post. And, did you got it?
  
• How to choose a No SQL Database - No Sql database with theirs pros and cons.

 

Miscellaneous

• Is Agile Really Cheaper? (Scott Sehlhorst) - I like this post because it puts words on though that I had. A good post to be more prepare next time a client asks you the question.

~Frank