Reading Notes #329

Suggestion of the week

• Azure Logic Apps, tips from the real world (gord) - Nice post that explains a real-life situation fixed using Logic Apps.

Cloud

• Create Your First ‘No Code’ Logic App in Microsoft Azure (Timothy Warner ) - Another great example of how easy and useful logic apps are.
• How I choose which services to use in Azure (Barry Luijbregts, Scott Hanselman) - Oh wow! Very interesting video, presenting a nice and structured way to pick our cloud services.
• Import Azure Portal Dashboard (Abhijit Jana) - Nah! I didn't know you could import/ export... That's cool.
• Quick Navigation using Azure Portal Keyboard Shortcuts (Abhijit Jana) - Nice reminder... I'll definitely have a new look at them and use them more.
• Serverless with AWS Lambda and Scala (Rob Hinds) - Interesting Tutorial to get started with the AWS Lamba Amazon Serveurless offer}
• Exploring Azure App Service – Web Apps and SQL Azure (Andrew B Hall) - Quick and simple tutorial about Azure webapp with EF and a database.

Programming

• Installing PowerShell Core on a Raspberry Pi (powered by .NET Core) (Scott Hanselman) - It looks like the Raspberry Pi is now "more accepted" into the familly. It's time to try docker and PowerShell again.
• Building, Running, and Testing .NET Core and ASP.NET Core 2.1 in Docker on a Raspberry Pi (ARM32) (Scott Hanselman) - Fantastic! Now that .Net Core is So easily portable on Pi, I can start building my summer project with a familiar language.
• Introducing Play with Kubernetes (Mano Marks) - Bookmark this post, next rainy day ( or before) let's learn some new stuff.
• Do you need to speak English to Code? Noor - An Arabic Programming Language (Ahmed Abdalla, Scott Hanselman) - Very interesting question, and even more interesting the solution Ahmed built! Great episode.

Books

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World (Gary Vaynerchuk) - Great book, for all of us you are trying to tell something, pass a message on the social media... This is a must.

Miscellaneous

• Why invest in backend developers when your customers don’t care? (Forrest Brazeal) - Interesting post about serverless and architecture patterns.
• Entreleadership #263: Thriving in the Age of Overload (Juliet Funt, Ken Colman) - I love that idea of Whitespace. Great episode very inspiring.

Reading Notes #323

Suggestion of the week

• Introduction to Azure Cosmos DB database and the SQL API (John Miner) - Great post to get started with CosmoDB.

Cloud

• Prepare data disks for stability & consistency in Azure throughout virtual machines and scale sets lifecycle (Stephane Lapointe) - Simple, efficient, and free! What else could we ask for a script that will fix our VM problem?

Programming

• Announcing Entity Framework Core 2.1 Preview 2 (Diego B Vega) - The nice features that are brought in this next release, EF continue to be a trending ORM.
• Create New Git Repository While Creating New Project in Visual Studio (Abhijit Jana) - If you are not creating a repo...it's because you plan to delete this code in the next 15 minutes ...right?
• Optimizing an ASP.NET Core site with Chrome's Lighthouse Auditor (Scott Hanselman) - Another day in the fantastic optimization journey. I'm definitely trying that tool today!
• Serverless vs. containers: How the two stand up next to each other (Christina Cardoza) - Very interesting post that compares and also not necessarily demystifies, but more clarifies those two great technologies.
• Updating jQuery-based Lazy Image Loading to IntersectionObserver (Scott Hanselman) - This post is part of an excellent series where Scott refresh his website done a few years ago with today tech.

Miscellaneous

• Announcing the Docs Markdown Extension for Visual Studio Code (Adam Kinney) - Nice new plugin that will help us to participate to the docs.

Databases

• Best practices for securing your Google Cloud databases (Ian Maddox) - Excellent post with a ton of best-practice advice.

Books

How to Win Friends & Influence People (Dale Carnegie) - 

This book doesn't age! 

This book may be old, but it's still incredibly true. I loved the way the reader was speaking and the rich vocabulary. It's definitely a must.

ASIN: B003WEAI4E

Reading Notes #320

Cloud

• The next generation of Azure Alerts has arrived (Kiran Madnani) - This is good news, alerts are an important piece of any serious system.
• Know your Azure Subscription Quota and Usage (Wriju Ghosh) - Because waiting until it breaks is probably not the option you are looking for... It's a good idea to know your quotas first.

Programming

• A Beginner’s Guide to Testing Blockchain Applications (Kayleigh Oliver) - You have a project that could use blockchain and you are asking yourself what's next? This post is for you.
• Building Container Images Securely on Kubernetes (Jessie Frazelle) - Excellent post that digs into some security process with containers.
• Entity Framework Core and NHibernate: Understand the Similarities and Differences (Ricardo Peres) - Interesting comparison between two well knows framework at this new age of .Net Core.
• MVC vs Razor Pages - A quick comparison (Jon Hilton) - Interesting post that compares two architecture. However, all the unit-test and mocking/ dependency injection were not included...Nevertheless it worth reading f you hare new in .Net Core development.
• Making an Azure static website EVEN MORE secure (Julian M Bucknall) - This post is like a pleasant journey in the security word. You will probably learn a lot, just like the author did (and myself obviously)

Data

• Azure Cosmos DB training webinars - Cosmo DB is gaining in popularity. It's time to boost your skill check this webinar/ on-demand training.
• Capturing Power BI queries using DAX Studio (Marco Russo) - Great post that gets us started on ways to find optimization for our Power Bi. Not enough people know about DaxStudio, have a look it's free!
• Coming soon to Power BI: Common Data Service for Analytics (Arun Ulag) - Looking forward to trying that as it definitely looks promising.

Book

Making Time (Bob Clagett) - I really enjoyed reading that book. I've been watching Bob's YouTube Channel for a while. ANd was happy to ear about his new book. In Making Time, a little bit like in his videos, Bob explains how he build stuff... but this time instead of a furniture or a room, it's a new career/ business. A short book (88 pages) but a lot of fun.  

Reading Notes #311

Suggestion of the week

• 4 Common Datetime Mistakes in C# — And How to Avoid Them (Carlos Schults) - This post is a must to all C# (and you know what?! All developers), because we all need to use dates at one point in our code and script...

Cloud

• Create Precompiled Azure Functions With Azure Event Grid Triggers (Jason Roberts) - A nice quick tutorial that shows how to plug the Azure Functions with the new Event Grid.
• Microsoft releases new time series data developer tools for Azure (Anirban Ghoshal) - It looks pretty neat and it is certainly easy to deploy. Looking forward to trying it.
• Setting up a managed container cluster with AKS and Kubernetes in the Azure Cloud running .NET Core in minutes (Scott Hanselman) - Not that long ago I would never guess that Building and deploying a cluster could be that easy... If you got 30mins it's a demo to try.
• The moment I came to play with .NET Standard 2.0… (Dominique St-Amand) - In this interesting post, the author shares with us all the gotchas and lessons learned developing his project.

Programming

• Styling Social Media Icon Lists in CSS (Mark Heath) - Yeah right, we can read CSS and probably hack some stuff... But it's excellent to learn how to do simple things the good way. And this post shows exactly that.

Data

• Microsoft Deep Drive Track at the Data and BI Summit April 22-26 (Charles Sterling) - Wow, it looks packed with so much great content!
• Power BI Desktop January Feature Summary (Amanda Cofsky) - It looks like some team did not take a lot of time-off during the Holidays... So many great new functionalities; it's a fantastic way to start the year.

Miscellaneous

• Long Distance Relationships, or How to Manage a Remote Team (Natallia Brych ) - Remote working is not for every situation nor everybody. This post will help you to get started on the topic.
• Why Consider a Website Redesign – Tips and Recommendations (Daniel Schwarz) - Good post, food for thought.

ReadingNotes #256

Cloud

• Bots are the new Apps (Alexandre Brisebois) - This interesting post answers many questions and probably will make yourself ask as much.
• Azure Relay – cross-platform, open-protocol connections (Clemens Vasters) - Plenty of new services available on Azure that will help us in our integration solution.
• Visual Studio Talk Show : 0200 - Stephane Lapointe - Azure Functions - Cool podcast episode where you learn more about what serverless really means.

Programming

• Docker Container Anti Patterns (Arun Gupta) - 12 great anti-patterns to use with containers.
• Using dotnet watch test for continuous testing with .NET Core and XUnit.net (Scott Hanselman) - Nice tutorial that shows the next step after the Hello word…
• Entity Framework Tips and Tricks (Robert Green) - Awesome video from the queen of EF herself.
• The Source of Truth: The Role of Repositories in DevOps (Kraig Brockschmidt) - Very interesting article about devops real word.
• Data Points - Run EF Core on Both .NET Framework and .NET Core (Julia Lermans) - Great article that shows how to use the stuff we like all together, the good way.

Miscellaneous

• Automated notifications from Azure Monitor for Atlassian JIRA (Paul Bouwer) - Really cool integration.

Reading Notes #249

Suggestion of the week

• Trying out the “standard” and “enterprise” templates in Azure Logic Apps (Richard Seroter) - Another excellent post from Seroter who shows us a quick simple logic app, and also a more "complex" one using the new integration account.

Cloud

• A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Functions Within Azure’s IoT Hub - Great tutorial to build a scalable solution.
  
• Azure Active Directory Labs Series – Creating an AD Forest (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - This post is a step by step lab. You will create everything you need without trouble.
  
• Azure Portal + Azure AD Management in Public Preview - Really happy to see new tools available (finally) to manage Active directory in the Azure portal.
  
• Visual Studio 2015 update for Logic Apps (Jon Fancey) - Nice update to the on-premise tool. Have you tried it yet?

Programming

• Entity Framework Pitfalls: Null Semantics - This post explains important gotchas, in one of the most popular ORM frameworks.
  
• Getting Started with YAML in Node.js using js-yaml (Dave Johnson) - Interesting post, I've been using YAML for few years now. However, it's true that when I did some work with Node.js I switched to json... Next time then...
  
• New book: Begin to Code with C# (Kim Spilker) - C# is a very popular and powerful language, I'm happy to see new books to bring more people aboard.

Databases

• Azure DocumentDB powers the modern marketing intelligence platform (Aravind Ramachandran) - This post is a great story about a real-life scenario where DocumentDB was selected as NoSQL solution and gives an overview of his structure.

Miscellaneous

• Want to know if you've been hacked? Troy Hunt has all the details - Excellent article, security breach, servers hack are not only in movies... Learn more about Troy Hunt who shares them with us.
  
• Why Programmers Should Track Their Time (Even if They Don't Charge Hourly) - It's so painful but so true.

Reading Notes #194

Suggestion of the week

• How to use Azure Search with D3.js to Build Interactive Data Visualizations (Liam Cavanagh) - An awesome idea to display the result of Azure Search, and it look really cool.

Cloud

• My First Azure DocumentDB Account (Eitan Blumin) - Nice tutorial that explains how to create a documentDB from scratch.
  
• Azure Preview Portal Improvements (June Update) (Leon Welicki) - Wow! See how little things can have a great impact on the user experience.
  
• Hey Azure, how's my Web App doing? - Great post about web apps metrics.
  
• New DocumentDB ORDER BY Features in the Azure Preview Portal (Stephen Baron) - Nice new feature.
  
• Cloud Cruiser and Microsoft Azure Billing API Integration - Interesting post that shows how we can use the new Azure billing API as data to there services.
  
• Gain insights into your Microsoft Azure resource consumption (BryanLa) - Interesting post to know more about our consumption.
  
• Azure Redis Cache Updates for June 2015 (Pranav Rastogi) - Nice quick post about the new Redis Cache features.
  
• Move VMware, AWS, Hyper-V and Physical Servers to Azure (Abhishek A. Hemrajani) - An amazing tool, and a great opportunity to try it for free!

Customers can replicate on-premises workloads to Azure with Azure Site Recovery for 31 days at no charge

• Integrate your on-premises infrastructure with Azure (Jim Dial) - A great tool to visualize the infrastructure to help in a hybrid situation.
  
• Announcing Cortana Analytics Suite and New Partner Investments at WPC 2015 (Takeshi Numoto) - I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Programming

• Microservices Guide - This is the perfect post to get started with micro services. a nice overview what it is, and when to use it.
  
• Are You Making These 10 DDD Mistakes? (Daniel) - Nice infographic about the most frequent mistakes.
  
• Transitioning from ASP.NET Web API 2 to ASP.NET MVC 6 - Great post that will walk you through all the things to watch before doing a transition to Asp.net 5 and Mvc6.
  
• A Step-by-Step Guide to Working with the ASP.NET Web API and AngularJS (Dhananjay Kumar) - Nice tutorial that presents a complete but simple scenario easy to follow.
  
• Node.js: Understanding NPM - This is the perfect post to get started on the Node NPM. A tool that every developer should know.

Documentation

• Role-based access control in the Microsoft Azure portal (Justin Hall) - Very complete doc.

Miscellaneous

• Cortana for Android Leaks Early, Available for Download (Kellex) - Nice, we can try Coryana today!
  
• Microsoft’s Global Partner Conference in Toronto July 2016 - Not far from home, this is really good.

~ Frank

Reading Notes #181

Suggestion of the week

• MVP Virtual Conference - A date to reserve, this conference look amazing.

Cloud

• The Kudu Debug Console, Azure Websites best kept secret (Jonathan Rozenblit) - This post is a nice introduction to a very useful debugging tool: Kudu.
  
• Node.js and Visual Studio: From Zero to a Cloud Foundry Deployment in 2 Minutes (Richard Seroter) - This great post shows us how to deploy a node.js app as in the same amount of time it took us to read the post.
  
• Azure API App and Logic App. In depth look into Hybrid Connector. Marriage between cloud and on-premise (Saravana Kumar) - Great tutorial / demo of an Azure logic app, the BizTalk way.
  
• First Look at Azure API Apps and Logic Apps (Ricardo Torre) - Great post that explains the similitude and difference between BizTalk and the new Azure Logic App.
  
• Introducing Azure Resource Explorer for the Azure Resource Management APIs (Scott Hanselman) - This project look great! It's a good opportunity to know more about what is happening under the hood. I'm looking forward to knowing more...
  
• Fail fast when the cloud fails you (Troy Hunt) - Very interesting true story about how to investigate an unpredictable problem involving the cloud.
  
• How we deploy Visual Studio Online using Release Management (Buck Hodges) - Interesting post that relates a reel d0eployment process.

Programming

• Node.js development with Visual Studio - Quick post to get stated with the new Node.js tool in Visual Studio.
  
• How to wait for DOM elements to show up in modern browsers - This post that explains how we should wait for an element in modern browser using javascript.
  
• How to Update a Forked Repository (blog.falafel.com) - Nice little howto for Github and Sourcetree.

Miscellaneous

• Making the Complex Simple - Not sure how to "classify" this post, is it a top list of the best bad practices, or literally "du bonbon"? A post to read, and relax.

Reading Notes #155

Suggestion of the week

• Azure: SQL Databases, API Management, Media Services, Websites, Role Based Access Control and More - Amazing new features that j4ust arrives in Azure!

• TIP: Lazy Code Snippets in Visual Studio (Jonathan Rozenblit) - OMG this post just makes my day!

Cloud

• How Azure Mobile Services enable your Cloud First Mobile First World (AdarshaDatta) - Nice post to get started on Azure Mobile Services.

• Automating Integration Testing with Microsoft Azure - Great post that explains how to use Web Plaform Installer to leverage our unit tests.

• How to host a ClickOnce deployment in Azure Blob Storage - This post is a nice crossover with ClicOnce and Azure, it's explained how to prepare our deployment to do it.

• Troy Hunt: 10 things I learned about rapidly scaling websites with Azure (Troy Hunt) - Another great post about scaling in Azure; how much it cost, how to manage it, etc....

Programming

• Integrating OneDrive into Your Windows Store Apps - Excellent post that gets us started with the Live SDK, so we can add One Drive capabilities to all our applications.

• Revisiting - how to make your EF queries testable (tilovell09) - Interesting post about testing our EF query.

• Automatically strong name signing NuGet packages (Maarten Balliauw) - Who never needed to fight to include an unsigned DLL to a project?! Here is nice to that will help to do it.

• 5 skills every programmer needs in 2014 - This post is a good place to start if we are looking to learn a new language.

• Git: It’s Just Data! - This post shows us Git from a database point of view. Julie also gives really good reference for tool and book.

• Choosing a JavaScript Framework with Craig McKeachie - Really interesting episode talking on key features of your projects or code that you like to pick a Javascript framework.

Databes

• What is new in RavenDB 3.0: Client side (Ayende Rahien) - This post explains the major improuvment the the last RavenDB release.

Miscellaneous

• Upgrade to BlogEngine.NET 3.1 (rtur.net) - Time to upgrade your blog engine.

• Lineup of Windows books and ebooks (Kim Spilker) - Nice windows books list.

• How do you deal with anxiety when Live Coding in Technical Interviews? (Scott Hanselman) - Nice tips, a post to share.

• Authoring Markdown - What, Why, How - Interesting post to introduce markdown.

~Frank

Reading Notes #140

 

Suggestion of the week

• Azure: VM Security Extensions, ExpressRoute GA, Reserved IPs, Internal Load Balancing, Multi Site-to-Site VPNs, Storage Import/Export GA, New SMB File Service, API Management, Hybrid Connection Service, Redis Cache, Remote Apps and more… (Scott Guthrie) - So many new great features that were expected since a long time.

 

Cloud

• Virtual Machines Best Practices: Single VMs, Temporary Storage and Uploaded Disks (Drew McDaniel) - Nice tips to improve vm’s users experience.
  
• Using OneNote API to count degustated beers - This short post describes a real and interesting project using OneNote, and how easy it looks!

Programming

• Tips to improve Entity Framework Performance (rahulgbhatia) - This post gives nice and simple tips to optimize our Linq to entities queries.
  
• Performance Considerations for EF5 - If you are doing or planning to do a project with Entity Framework, this white paper really worth the reading.

~Frank

Reading Notes #129

Suggestion of the week

• Auto-Healing Windows Azure Web Sites (Mark Brown) - Amazing new feature, that will simplify our lives. A post to read.

Cloud

• Stupid Azure Trick #5 – Got a Penny? Run a Simple Web Site 100% on Blob Storage – Cost Analysis Provided (Bill Wilder) - I can easily imagine plenty of scenarios where this static (and mostly free) website could be really useful.
  
• This Day on WindowsAzure Will be Back Shortly - This post is announcing a really promising series about the re-editing of a cloud application.
  
• Best Practices: Windows Azure Websites (WAWS) (Mark_Brown) - Interesting post that explains how we should use the tools and services available to follow the best practices.
  
• Using the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) - Nice update on a post that is still very true today.
  
• Microsoft has Released a Set of Symbols/Icons to Visually Represent Windows Azure Solutions - Time to refresh our presentations, and schemas....
  
• WindowsAzure Lessons Learned – Continuous Services Require Continuous Attention - The best way to improve is to learn for our "problems" or perhaps those of others.

Programming

• Content Negotiation and Web API for the ASP.NET MVC Developer - Web API is a big step forward in a web architecture.
  
• Unit Testing 101: Creating Flexible Test Code - Interesting way to structure unit tests.
  
• EF 6.1: Creating indexes with IndexAttribute (Arthur Vickers) - Nice tutorial that introduces the index management in EF 6.1.
  
• How to Write Unit Tests to Check Your HTTP Headers (and Other HTTP Request Stuff) in C# - This post is a good tutorial that will help to write HTTP unit tests.
  
• Converting AutoMapper to a Portable Class Library (Jimmy Bogard) - Good post that explains the conversion of the automapper (a great tool, btw) to a Portable Class library(PCL).
  
• A cleaner way to use setTimeout and anonymous callbacks (Dave Ward) - Nice tricks, It's a lot clearer.
  
• How I Work Around The require(“../../../../../../../”) Problem In NodeJS - This post shows one possible solution to the unpleasant ...... problem.

Databases

• Gartner Report: Big Data will Revolutionize the Cybersecurity in Next Two Year (Saroj Kar) - Interesting point of view about the impact of bigdata in a near future.
  
• How to count the number of rows in a table in SQL Server - Interesting demonstration of the cost generated by a simple row count operation.
  
• Not unit testing your databases? You should be - Interesting post that explains how we could (should) test our databases. It also quickly introduces tSQLt framework.

Miscellaneous

• How do we know if mobile apps are secure? (Scott Hanselman) - Outch! I was hoping the stats would be better. We definitely need to pick our apps more carefully.

Reading Notes #128

Suggestion of the week

• What is Windows Azure? - This post gives the definition of Azure that is short enough to be said in one breath.

Cloud

• Windows Azure Remote Debugging (Anjana Mazumder) - Really useful tips when searching for that bug how's only happening in the cloud...
  
• How to Setup and Protect an Azure Application with a Barracuda Firewall (Ashwin Palekar) - Great tutorial the builds a real application that used network security.
  
• Stupid Azure Trick #4 – C#, Node.js, and Python side-by-side – Three Simple Command Line Tools to Copy Files up to Windows Azure Blob Storage (Bill Wilder) - Nice and useful snippets.
  
• “The Cloud Never Goes Down”, Azure SLAs and other availability trivia - This post explains what we should expect from the cloud (from all providers) SLAs.

Programming

• If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014? (Scott Hanselman) - Learning a new language every year is a good practice, but we all run out of time. Here are some suggestions to get stared.
  
• Dependency Injection with Unity (Dominic Betts, Grigori Melnik, Fernando Simonazzi and Mani Subramanian) - Fantastic book that covers completely the Dependency Dnjection topics. It used Unity framework. A lot of code samples, detailed informations on different patterns and unit tests are also in this book.
  
• EF 6.1: Turning on logging without recompiling - I'm always impressed by all the little things in EF that could simplify our life as developer.
  
• Intercepting Asynchronous Methods Using Unity Interception - Great post that explains how to use IoC with Unity in an async situation.
  
• Understanding Entity Framework Code First Migrations (More..) - All steps are explained in this nice tutorial.
  
• Content Negotiation and Web API for the ASP.NET MVC Developer - Web API is a big step forward in a web architecture.

Miscellaneous

• Download Wrappers and Unwanted Software are pure evil (Scott Hanselman) - It is more and more difficult to install something without also installing unwanted stuff...

Reading Notes #124

Suggestion of the week

• Windows Azure: Staging Publishing Support for Web Sites, Monitoring Improvements, Hyper-V Recovery Manager GA, and PCI Compliance (ScottGu) - Great update again this week, may of the new features will be very appreciated.

Cloud

• Windows Azure Websites Development Stacks Support (Mark_BrownMS) - Nice post about how Azure website manages config version with his different supported languages.
  
• Using the Same Client-Side User with Multiple Azure Mobile Services (Chris Risner) - This nice post explains what are our options to bridge a UserID across multiple mobile application.
  
• GUIDs VS. IDs on Windows Azure SQL Database - Nice post, where the author gives is answer to a timeless question.
  
• Announcing E-book version of Scott Guthrie’s “Building Real-World Cloud Apps with Windows Azure” - Interesting talk that you can now download as text. However, the video is still available...

Programming

• Code First Goodies in Entity Framework 6 - Nice article that explains more in details some new features of EF 6.0.
  
• Comments should be sentences (About me) - Interesting point of view about how should be the comments and why.

Miscellaneous

• WTF is an Architect Anyway? - Interesting thoughts about the definition of the role architect.
  
• How Do I Get Things Done? New Pluralsight Course Reveals All My Secrets - Learn the best tips from a real Jedi.
  
• 5 Myths that Can Ruin Project Management - Interesting post that uncovers some myths in project management.
  
• 30 Ways To Leave Google Apps Behind (Ciara Byrne) - Great post not because I agree or disagree with the title idea, but because it presents a lot of great applications.

Reading Notes #123

Suggestion of the week

• Scott Hanselman's 2014 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows (Scott Hanselman) - A post to read, and bookmark. I always find awesome tool that I didn't know.
  
• Introducing Visual Studio Online - This post is a lot more than only an introduction. It explains all the options we will encounter to start our first project, but it also describes how to use it, build with a CI, test, monitor, etc.

Cloud

• A new year's present: introducing Glimpse plugins for Windows Azure (Maarten Balliauw) - Really interesting tools that provide a lot of useful information. I need to try this.
  
• Quick ways to edit your files hosted in Windows Azure Web Sites (WAWS), other than re-deploying - Nice quick tips that can save you a lot of time... and troubles.
  
• Do you serve your Azure Web Site hot or cold? - Useful use for the scheduler to improve website performance.
  
• New Windows Azure Network Security Whitepaper (Ashwin Palekar) - This is the post to improve your knowledge about network security, since it references the windows Azure white paper on the topic.
  
• Cloud Cover Show - Episode 125: Getting started with Application Insights for Visual Studio Online - Really great video. If you don't have time to read the MSDN Mag article or to get a better of the Online experience, this is the video.

Programming

• Composite Pattern: Handling child node collections - Interesting code solution. To read a second time.
  
• Temporary is The New Permanent - Interesting point of view about caring about our code.
  
• The Quality of Code (Paul W. Homer) - One of the best posts I read about this topic since a long time. It explains very well how easy it is to lose the focus.
  
• TypeScript: A New Language for .NET and JavaScript Developers - Nice introduction and quick overview of TypeScript.
  
• Prefixing ID columns with the table name in Entity Framework - See a time saving tips in this post to rename all ID property of your datamodel.

You can find out more about these conventions in the blog post Custom Code First Conventions (EF6 onwards)

Architecture

• How to Become a Software Architect - Interesting list.

Miscellaneous

• Finding a low-memory browser (Scott Hanselman) - Interesting information, and a simple but useful PowerShell script to get the info.
  
• What blogging was - Interesting thoughts about what blog became.

Reading Notes #122

Cloud

• Download the Windows Azure Training Kit (Rob Margel) - Good news, It had been long since the last update.
  
• Notification, New Dashboard, Another Check - Nice update in the AWS dashboard..
  
• Release unused space from your Windows Azure Virtual Hard Disks to reduce their billable size - A post to read. How you could save money really easily.

Programming

• Getting started with Node.js development in Visual Studio (Dhananjay kumar) - Excellent post to get started with the new node.js feature of Visual Studio.
  
• Entity Framework 6: The Ninja Edition (Julie Lerman) - Really great article about how Entity framework works and the plan about it's future.

Architecture

• SOLID Architecture principles using simple C# examples (Shivprasad koirala) - Nice post. The first time I eared about SOLID was at //Build 2013. 8nteresting concept.

Reading Notes #114

Suggestion of the week

• Episode 117: Introducing the new Windows Azure Management Libraries (Channel 9) - Very good explanation from Brady in this Cloud Cover show episode.
  
• Using a Surface 2 (RT/ARM) to get actual work done + Remote Desktop + Visual Studio + Azure - Amazing post full of tips and golden information. A must-read article.

Cloud

• Windows Azure Storage Queues VS Windows Azure Service Bus Queues - Nice and useful post that compares azure storage queues and Azure Service Bus queues.
  
• Remote PowerShell in Azure IAAS Virtual Machines (Sri Harsha BS) - Troubleshooting and resolving of different issues using Remote PowerShell.
  
• Snip/Shot by Toddy Mladenov - Good clarification about the very popular buzzword: as a Service.
  
• SoundCloud Now Reaches 250 Million Listeners In Its Quest To Become The Audio Platform Of The Web - See how this company has grown in the past few months.
  
• Some tips and tricks for azure table storage (Purbasha Ghosh) - Very interesting post that shows why it is to think differently to really take advantage of the cloud capabilities.
  
• Windows Azure Guidance - Cloud Design Patterns Alpha drop... - This post announced a new drop of an incredible source of information about Cloud Desing Pattern.
  
• Exploring the AutoScale feature in Windows Azure Websites - Nice tutorial that shows some of the new feature in Azure autoscale.

Database

• Create Database Diagrams of Your Windows Azure SQL Databases - Really? I though it was possible to connect with sql manager and make a diagram. I must try the dbforge tool, looks pretty slick.
  
• SQL Express v LocalDB v SQL Compact Edition (jerry-nixon) - Excellent post to demystify the differences between these Microsoft's database.

Programming

• Adaptive Access Layers + Dependency Injection = Productivity - Nice article that told how a company implemented some pattern to improve their productivity.
  
• Programming CSS: Bundling and Minification - Excellent article to get started with the bundling and minifying concept to get better performance.
  
• Configuring DB Connection and Code-First Migration for Identity Accounts in ASP.NET MVC 5 and Visual Studio 2013 - Good tutorial that explains really clearly how to use the migration feature in EF with the new as.net and VS.
  
• MVC Patterns (Active and Passive Model) and its implementation using ASP.NET Web forms (Khademul Basher) - Interesting post about MVC pattern using pasove Model.
  
• Katana 2 is Available! (Brian Benz) - This post announced the release of Katana 2.0 and reference another post to get started with this project.
  
• Command Pattern - Simple and very clear introduction to Commands Patter.

UX

• You Definitely Want to Beta Your App - Nice post where the author shares is experience about the benefit of beta testing our application.

Miscellaneous

• Got a HOT Post on Your Blog? Here’s What to Do To Find and Optimise It (Darren Rowse) - Interesting tips.

~Frank

Reading Notes #113

 

Suggestion of the week

• Windows Azure: Backup Services Release, Hyper-V Recovery Manager, VM Enhancements, Enhanced Enterprise Management Support - Wonderful! This news makes my week... Backup and Active Directory for the Azure Portal in the same release. I'm sincerely impressed by the quantity of features this week, and really happy to see the new Script Center.

Cloud

• Developing Windows Azure Mobile Services server-side - Very complete tutorial with a lot of details that cover also tests.
  
• WCF Worker Role Just Recycles on Windows Azure (Angshuman Nayak) - I really like this kind of post where the author shares with us how he investigated and found the solution for a problem.
  
• Run various Linux distributions with applications on Azure Cloud (gpillai) - Quick post that will show how we could, very easily, do SuSE CentOS or Ubuntu in Azure.
  
• Windows Azure: Announcing release of Windows Azure SDK 2.2 (with lots of goodies) - Good news. Learn all about the news virtual machine available in Windows Azure, the price drop and more in this post...
  
• Migration to AWS: part 1 - Very interesting story that shows how reel life considerations are taking in change, when moving to the cloud.
  
• Transient Fault Handling Application Block & Enterprise Library 6 - Nice post that summarizes all changes in Transient Fault Handleing Application Block of the last Enterprise Library release.
  
• Windows Azure Storage Queues VS Windows Azure Service Bus Queues - Nice and useful post that compares Azure Storage Queues and Azure Service Bus Queues.

Programming

• patterns & practices: Prism for the Windows Runtime - Home - Interesting patterns to develop on Windows 8.
  
• SCREENCASTS: What's New in Visual Studio 2013 - learn over lunch! (Scott Hanselman) - Great post that group many videos about the new Visual Studio 2013 features.
  
• How Do You Learn a New Framework? - Good post that introduces simplewebdev: a website that regroups information, blogs, articles about MVC pattern.
  
• How to become a better GIT - Very interesting post that provides details informations to pick your site and client, and explains how to act as a good Git contributor.

Database

• EF6 Connection Resiliency for SQL Azure* – When does it actually do it’s thing? : Don't Be Iffy - Nice post. Transient Fault exceptions are to be expected when developing in the cloud. Thanks to this post, we will save time trying to build Unit-tests.
  
• SQL Injection - Good sample that shows how easy it is to do SQL injection, and gives the final argument to protect your database.

Architecture

• Microsoft .NET: Architecting Applications for the Enterprise - This book looks very interesting.

Miscellaneous

• Make a Windows 8.1 Pinned Live Tile for YOUR website in minutes - Super! I'm just starting using Win8 on my personal machine. Now, I have plenty of idea on how to customize it... Or at lest, where I will to start.
  
• Ditch the Laptop: How to Work From a Tablet (Aaron Aders) - Nice post that gives good advices and accessories suggestions.
  
• Is OneNote the best ever App for Tablets? (Stu4rt) - I started using OneNote last year, and I never stop. It is a great application that works really smoothly on all devises.
  
• Working With Programmers: 3 Tips - This post make me smile....Ya, I know, I'm kind of a web developer....

~Frank

Reading Notes #106

Suggestion of the week

• Easily Copy Files from One Cloud Service to Another (Amit Agarwal) - Really useful tool and it looks so easy to use.
  
• Windows Azure: New Distributed, Dedicated, High Performance Cache Service + More Cool Improvements (Scott Guthrie)- A lot of brand-new features as just been release again. Learn more about the super easy to use cache services and all the new possibilities to scale and log and more in this post.

Cloud

• Opinari - Interesting point of view, where SLA match more with price than quality.
  
• Have You Met The Canadian Windows Azure Community Experts? - You may recognize some of them...
  
• Why is The New Windows Azure Cache Service Important? - This post explains why we should care about the new Azure cache services, and the difference between the old and the new version.
  
• Backup WordPress Site to Windows Azure Storage using “BackupToAzure” Plugin (Gaurav) - This post introduces a great free and open source to backup your WordPree.
  
• Public vs. Private Cloud: No Comparison - Interesting point of view about private cloud.

Databases

• Friends Don’t Let Friends use Lazy Loading on Windows Azure! - Very nice post that describes how to avoid big database issue on the cloud, but also in other situations.

Programming

• Are you missing an assembly reference? Why, yes I am. So kind of you to ask. (Bill Wilder) - Discover how NuGet could be so good that it will solve this problem for you.
  
• Jon Galloway - Interesting post that explains asp.net MVC routing. Most of the time MVC Routeing is just magic and easy, but it could be also a bit tricky.
  
• Claims-Based Authentication and Authorization (David Rogers Dev) - Really interesting tutorial on how to build a claims-based authentication and authorization for a website. All the code is available online.
  
• Coding for Domain-Driven Design: Tips for Data-Focused Devs - After reading this post, if you didn't know about Domain-Driven Design (DDD), good chance are that you want to know more...

Integration

• Collection of Visio 2013 Stencil for BizTalk Server updated with new stencils - Great, let's refresh our Visio's shapes.

Miscellaneous

• Scott Hanselman - It so easy and convenient that we sometimes forget how "dangerous" it could be...
  
• The Power of Habits (JD) - About the strength of habits versus knowledge.
  
• Four Areas Where Senior Leaders Should Focus Their Attention - Interesting post to help us on improving a meeting efficiency.

~Frank

Reading Notes Special Books Edition

For the last months I read few technical books.  I thought it could be interesting to add it.  This is not a complete review and it only reflect my personal opinion.


Programming Entity Framework: Code First 
By Julia Lerman, Rowan Miller
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Released: November 2011
ISBN 10:1-4493-1294-2

Note: By the time I write this post the version of Entity framework is 5.0.
Even if this book was about the previous version of Entity framework, it’s a golden mine of information. I found very useful the example that helps me to understand how to define the relation and more importantly what was the deference between the attribute way and the fluent way. It was easy to read, because well explains not because it was doing only the “beginner” stuff. Since EF is really useful when starting a new project or even for a POC, I think this book should be in all developer’s bookshelf.

 
Windows PowerShell 2.0 Best Practices
By Ed Wilson
Publisher: Microsoft
Released: December 14, 2010
ISBN-10: 0735626464

If you are a .Net developer and you still don’t know PowerShell or don’t know why you should consider PowerShell than this book is not for you… You should read some Introduction books or post THEN read this book.
This book is all about best practices. It will help you to structures your code or your library of scripts. That way, you will be able to understand and found and reuse all of it. Whether to do something in a build or to deploy something in Windows Azure or even just to quickly do a repetitive task this book will help to do it.  A book to keep nearby. 


Claims-based Identity Second Edition device
By Dominick Baier, Vittorio Bertocci, Keith Brown and Matias Woloski
Publisher: Microsoft
Releaed: April 21, 2010
ISBN-10: 0735640599

This is definitely THE book to get started with claims. It starts right at the beginning explaining what’s a claim, why we should use it.  Many different scenarios are presented. Each of them is presented with and without claims and most of the time how to migrate from one to the other.  The complete solution is available on codeplex.com and if a PDF is good enough for you; it's also available on codeplex for free. 


Building N-Layered Applications with ASP.NET 4.5
By Imar Spaanjaars
Publisher: Imar.Spaanjaars.Com
Released: July 2013

This document is, in fact, a series of post about the best practices related to Asp. Net 4.5. While writing this notes, only two or three posts were available online. To get the full document with the source code you must pay. Eventually, all parts of the rich document will be available for free, but it's only 20$ and its own is value.
The solution explained in this document is simple enough so it’s easy to understand the architecture but detailed enough to cover most of the case.  The solution will include a lot of technologies like: Entity Framework, Asp. Net MVC, WCF Services and many patterns: Dependency Injection, Repository, Unit Test, Mocking, etc.
It’s a really well done document, and I think it’s a must to any web developer or architect.

Microsoft SharePoint 2013 App Development

By Scot Hillier, Ted Pattison
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Released: November 2012
ISBN 10:0-7356-7498-1

I read this book to know more about the new “Apps” thing.  While I was ready, I understand that my project was not a good match for SharePoint App, so I didn’t finish it… yet. However, I found the book explications really clear, and it gives me all the tooling and options I needed to get started.
Since Apps are now very present in SharePoint, I decided to include it in my notes.



~Frank

Reading Notes #100

I’m back! The blog is not dead. I was just super busy. First, I went to the Microsoft Build and it was very nice. Then I moved! I have now a gigantic stack of books and articles to read… so more to come.

This week marks an important milestone, the 100th Reading Notes! I want to thank you all my readers / followers to have been supporting me all along. Let’s go for under more!

Happy reading!

 Suggestion of the week

Don’t Write Code You Don’t Need (Erik Dietrich) - Very interesting post that gives some best practices to write better code.

Cloud

Failure is not an option for Netflix's service oriented architecture (Joe McKendrick) - Good proof that working with failure is not a synonym of fail.

Is there more to using SQL in Azure than redirecting your connection string? - Nice post that explains why we need to think differently when doing cloud.

Quick Recap of cloud announcements at BUILD and WPC 2013 - (Luis Panzano) - Nice! A two-week summary in one post!

Autoscaling Windows Azure Cloud Services (and web sites) (Maarten Balliauw) - One of the announcements that impressed me the most at build conference. Don't miss the chance to learn more about the new autoscaling feature of Azure.

Programming

Stop Doing Internet Wrong (Scott Hanselman) - Interesting list of some simple things to do to get a better experience online.

Cross-Platform Portable Class Libraries with .NET are Happening (Scott Hanselman) - Great post to get started about Portable Class Librairy (PCL) how are very useful to write app that run on many platforms.

Try Visual Studio 2013 Preview – There’s an Azure gallery image for that!(Tyler Doerksen) - Resistance is futile. It is so easy to try that you won't be able to resist. And if you don't know what's new in VS2013 check Scott Hanselman Build conference.

What is claims-based authentication? (Gunnar Peipman) - Nice post that gives a nice introduction to claims. It looks like the first of a series about this topic.

ASP.NET N-Layered Applications - Introduction (Part 1) - Very promising series where the author describes all steps of is application. For the architecture to the unit tests.

Miscellaneous

Why So Many Leadership Programs Ultimately Fail (Peter Bregman)- Interesting story, that proof once again that the best wait to learn something is to hump in and do it.

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 prepared next time a client asks you the question.

 
~Frank