Reading Notes #273

Cloud

• Analyze your data with Application Insights Analytics (Dan Hadari) - Nice sample that really shows the power of that tool.
  
• Announcing Azure Service Fabric 5.5 and SDK 2.5 (Vaclav Turecek) - Nice updates in the SDK, and now supports Asp.Net Core.
  
• Azure IoT Suite adds device management capability updates (Sam George) - Nice little post that lists the new features available with the last update.
  
• Azure API Management, Release Notes – March 17 (Vlad Vinogradsky) - This post lists the details about the new features.
  
• Short introduction to serverless architecture (Gunnar Peipman) - Great agnostic overview of was are these serverless services.

Programming

• Using Azure AD with ASP.NET Core (Gunnar Peipman) - A cool tutorial that explains very clearly how to use AD.
  
• Using Dependency Injection in Multiple .NET Core Projects (Juergen Gutsch) - An interesting tutorial that explains how to implement one of the most-used patterns with the new .Net Core.
  
• Visual Studio 2017 can automatically recommend NuGet packages for unknown types (Scott Hanselman) - Nice little post that shares cool tricks with VS that you probably didn't know.

Miscellaneous

• Introducing Microsoft Data Amp (Mitra Azizirad) - All we need to know about this new online event.

Reading Notes #272

Cloud

• Cloud Messaging – Amazon or Azure? (Steve Smith) - Great post that suggests an answer to the eternal question.
  
• Connect Tableau to an Azure Analysis Services server (Josh Caplan) - Nice integration.
  
• Visual Studio Talk Show - Les données et Azure (Guy Barrette) - It was really pleasant to record that podcast. I hope it is also to listen.
  
• Leverage the Azure CLI with these examples (Brian Benz) - If you would like to help Azure CLI to get better, this post explains how you could help.
  
• Using templates to customize restored VMs from Azure Backup (Trinadh Kotturu) - This post shares nice tips to get the maximum of our VMs backup.

Programming

• ASP.NET Core Error Management with elmah.io (Damien Bod) - Elmah is a fantastic tool. This tutorial explains how to use it with .NetCore.
  
• Options for CSS and JS Bundling and Minification with ASP.NET Core (Scott Hanselman) - Nice tutorial that shows the how to find our sweet spot with the minification in VS2017.
  
• ZEIT now deployments of open source ASP.NET Core web apps with Docker - Scott Hanselman (hanselman.com) - Interesting new tools. I'm looking forward to trying it myself.

Databases

• Planet scale aggregates with Azure DocumentDB (Aravind Ramachandran Program Manager) - Fantastic news that was requested a lot by all the users. Get all the details in this post about all these new capabilities.

Where can I put my Data In Azure

This month, I’m the guest of Mario Cardinal (@mario_cardinal) and Guy Barrette (@GuyBarrette) on their Podcast The Visual Studio Talk Show.  A French Podcast that talk software architecture with Microsoft's technology. 
Alexandre Brisebois (@Brisebois) was also present on this episode, and the four of us spent about an hour talking about Data in Azure, and try to clarify the Microsoft offer.

You can listen to the episode here:  http://visualstudiotalkshow.libsyn.com/205-alexandre-brisebois-et-franois-boucher-les-donnes-et-azure

I did a little “Mindmap” before the show to help me keeping it as structured as possible. I’m sharing it with you here:


Version (3231x1130) here: http://cloudenfrancais.com/content/images/2017/03/Azure-Data.png

~Frank

Reading Notes #234

Suggestion of the week

• Observations and thoughts on the LinkedIn data breach (Troy Hunt) - These data breach posts are always very interesting but also a bit scaring.

Cloud

• Logic Apps: How to add several actions inside a Logic App condition branch (Sandro Pereira) - Nice little trick with Azure Logic App.
  
• Announcing general availability of Azure DevTest Labs (Xiaoying Guo) - Wow that's great, if you still not have tried it, the dev test is really good for any temporary environment, or that have a short live.
  
• Azure Marketplace: WordPress - Yep! Another great application that is available in the Azure Marketplace.
  
• Easily bring your SQL Server licenses to Azure VMs (Khalid Mouss) - Great news that announces a much simpler way to see licensing.
  
• Check out Azure Test Drives in preview (Bryon Surace) - If you wanna test an application on Azure without subscription or anything... Look at test drives.
  
• Diagnose and resolve issues with Azure Troubleshooting (Ritesh Garodia) - Nice post that helps us to know the troubleshooting tools available in the Azure portal.

Programming

• GitHub Pages now runs Jekyll 3.1 - Good news, Jekyll is a really nice generator what works with Marrkdown.
  
• Developer Tools Benchmarking 2016 survey (Cliff Simpkins) - Still a chance to win.
  
• Continuous deployment/delivery with Jenkins and VS Team Services (Anand Gaurav) - Jenkins doesn't need more introduction. This tutorial explains how to get setup in VSTS step by step.

Miscellaneous

• OneDrive and OneDrive for Business now MERGED into ONE CLIENT (Nazmus Khandaker) - Good news less app running in background and better user experience.

Reading Notes #231

Suggestion of the week

• Introducing docs.microsoft.com - Great post that explains all the nice features of the first glimpse of the new Microsoft documentation. They did a fantastic work, a post to read; a site to remember.

Cloud

• Why Service Fabric? - You heard about the buzz word your tech guys are exited, but you would like to know why service fabric could be good for your business? This post is for you.
  
• Azure Active Directory – Why You Should Care - Nice post. It's all in the title...

Programming

• Simplifying API documentation for a great first user experience (abhinav) - Nice post that touches a very important point... docs.

Data

• The 95th Percentile - Like they say the devil is in the details.
  
• Using The R Visual in Power BI - Interesting usage of two powerful tool.
  
• 10 things to know about DocumentDB Partitioned Collections (Aravind Ramachandran) - Perfect post to stay up to date with the latest DocumentDB features.

Miscellaneous

• How does criticism hit your brain? (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - Interesting thoughts, loaded of wisdom.
  
• Here's how I verify data breaches - Interesting post, because even hacks must be validated.

Reading Notes #230

Suggestion of the week

• Data Locality - Great troubleshooting session explained, definitely a post to read.

Cloud

• A first look at Azure Functions (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - Nice little post that demystifies Azure functions.
  
• Azure Gives Storage the Cold Shoulder! (Dan Patrick) - Now Azure has is own long storage for a very little price. Learn more in this post.
  
• Data Locality - Great troubleshooting session explained, definitely a post to read.
  
• What is Azure Resource Manager? - Very nice post that clarifies what's ARM where it comes from and witch gap it comes to fills.
  
• Introducing Azure Cool Blob Storage (Sriprasad Bhat) - Everything about the new Azure storage option.

Programming

• Getting Angular Intellisense in Visual Studio Code (Laurent Duveau) - Nice reminder how great is vscode and how easy it could become even better, just for you.
  
• Visual Studio Code Snippets - Another quick tip to customize your vscode.
  
• Simplifying API documentation for a great first user experience (abhinav) - Nice post that touches a very important point... docs.

Photo credit: Claus Tom via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Reading Notes #229

Cloud

• Live Metrics Stream in Application Insights (Beckylin Orooji) - Wonderful, I'm looking forward to testing it.
  
• Create a Service Bus namespace using an ARM template - Awesome news! The service bus was expected in Azure Resource Manager for a very long time.
  
• Logic Apps: Tips and Tricks about the “new” Logic Apps Designer (Sandro Pereira) - This post introduces the great features brought by the redesign of the Azure Logic App designer.
  
• Logic Apps: How to add several actions inside a Loop (Sandro Pereira) - Another great post about Logic App. This time it explains how to do looping and other actions that were done differently in Biztalk.

Data

• Azure Stream Analytics and Power BI general availability (Ryan CrawCour) - Good news, having meta-data it's really nice but being able to see what it contains that's fantastic!

Programming

• Become a Visual Studio 2015 Power User (Allison Buchholtz-Au, Andrew Hall) - All Visual Studio developers must watch this video, big chance you had a d in your hand and didn't know about it.

Miscellaneous

• It's a new blog! (Troy Hunt) - A delicious post, thanks Troy to share that with us.

Reading Notes #228

Cloud

• But Why Do You Trust Your Data? (Buck Woody) - I consider this post as a really great teaser. After ready his post most chances are you will check the video it recommended... and next give a shot to Azure data Catalog.

Programming

• An update on ASP.NET Core 1.0 RC2 - This post explains why the next release is taking "so long".
  
• PowerShell: Simplify Complex Function Calls (John Kirkham) - I love it! It's time to clean our scripts or at least stop writing more obfuscated ones.
  
• How to host your own NuGet Server and Package Feed - Wow, I didn't know it was that easy to have a private Nuget server...Definitely something to explore more deeply.

Data

• Analyzing your Azure Search traffic (Berni Torres Garayar) - Great post that explains how to improve our services by listening to our client's search requests, leveraging the new Azure Search Analytics and PowerBi.

Miscellaneous

• Give yourself permission to have work-life balance - In a connected world, it's easy not to slow down a moment and raise our head to look around us. Interesting post to read before you win the race to the burnout.
  
• Check out the new MVP Channel 9 page! - Channel9 has a brand-new section where you can see all MVPs video... see it by yourself.

~Frank

Reading Notes #221

Suggestion of the week

• Why You Should Learn JavaScript in 2016 (Ken Powers) - I eared a lot of people complaining about Javascript, this excellent post explains why you undeniably, we should all know it, an if it's not the case why 2016 is a great time to learn it.

Cloud

• Azure Logic Apps : Orchestrating business processes and systems integration (Carey Payette) - This is a very nice tutorial that shows how to build an Azure Logic App with twitter and Sql Databe's connector.
  
• How to Setup Application Insights in an Azure WebJob (Jon Gallant) - Nice quick post that will make you save a lot of time.
  
• Azure IoT Hub general availability overview (Nayana Singh) - IoT Hub is finally GA, get to know all included components in this nice overview.
  
• Azure Search indexer for Azure Blob Storage now in public preview (Eugene Shvets) - This excellent tutorial explains how we can benefite of all the magic in this azure search preview.

Programming

• VisualStudio Code v0.10.8 (January 2016) - Learn more about what's new in this latest release.
  
• Search now available on Visual Studio Marketplace (Harysh Menon) - Did you know you can add extension to visual studio team services (vsts) and code (vscode)? This is the perfect post to get started.
  
• Chris Pietschmann - Nice post that explains very clearly why we really soundn't be writing none tested code.

Data

• Power BI Service February Update (Amanda Cofsky) - Fantastic! This update will give us the possibility to share outside ou organization... And many other things.

Miscellaneous

• What Does a Petaflop Look Like on Azure? (Alexandre Brisbois) - Interesting dive in the supercomputer universe.
  
• ASP.NET MVC: Keep Private Settings Out of Source Control - Simple an efficient.
  
• Multitasking is Killing Your Brain — Life Tips. (Larry Kim) - Really interesting post that comment on a very popular debate: Can w multitask?

~Frank

Reading Notes #220

Suggestion of the week

• Microsoft Azure IoT Reference Architecture - Great post that explains part in IoT and micro-services with their respective roles.

Cloud

• Azure Search .NET SDK roadmap (Bruce Johnston) - All in one post, the list of new features and the ones coming next.
  
• What is Azure Stack? - Usually, we refer to the stack as a group of products from the same provider. Azure stack is a little of that, but with a little twist... it's on-premises! This post explains it all.
  
• Azure welcomes Parse developers (Glenn Gailey) - Interesting server who is now well supported in Azure.
  
• Azure Logic Apps Monthly Update – January 2016 (Sriram Hariharan) - Nice summary of the Logic App team's January video updates.

Programming

• Application Insights announces availability of Release Annotations (Mike Gresley) - A useful feature that is explained in this post.
  
• Why I No Longer Use MVC Frameworks - Very complete and moreover, very interesting article about strengths and weaknesses of different patterns and frameworks.
  
• Introducing Insiders Builds (Chris Dias [MSFT]) - The Insider's previews are back in a more convivial structure.

Data

• General availability: Azure SQL Database Query Performance Insight - What an awesome tool that gives us the ability to get the biggest resources consumer over a long period... and that, without redeploying.
  
• Queries To Debug SQL Server Replication Issues (Tim Smith) - If you are using database synchronization in your system, you should definitely bookmark this post that provides nice tools to us to diagnose problems.

Book

• Software Development Book Giveaway! - Cool! A great opportunity, 3 free books are given: Building Microservices, Working Effectively with Legacy Code, and Javascript: The Good Parts.

Miscellaneous

• GitHub Pages now faster and simpler with Jekyll 3.0 - Important changes announced for github and Jerkel users. And alternatively an important note to al Markdown users.

Reading Notes #219

Suggestion of the week

• I Hated JavaScript - Awesome post that presents Typescript under is best light.

Cloud

• Announcing the Azure SDK 2.8.2 for .NET (Brady Gaster) - This post will explain why you really want to upgrade to this new SDK version.
  
• Syncing Files Between Devices with Azure File Sync | - Nice tutorial that shows how to build a Xamarin application leveraging files synchronization between devices.
  
• Upgrading to the Azure Search .NET SDK version 1.0.1-preview - Wow!So So much in this new version, I'm looking forward to play with it.
  
• Getting Started with Selenium Testing in a Continuous Integration Pipeline with Visual Studio (Charles Sterling) - Great tutorial that shows how to use one of the more popular testing tools in a CI solution running in VisualStudio Team Services (VSTS).

Programming

• Visual Studio Code and local web server (Lachezar Arabadzhiev) - Really cool and light solution to develop a website or web application.
  
• Interactive Coding with C# and F# REPLs ScriptCS or the Visual Studio Interactive Window (Scott Hanselman) - Repl...Yep it's real thing an it could be really useful. L more about this tools and where to find it, in this post.

Books

• Free eBook: Enterprise Cloud Strategy - Hmmmm. To read.

Reading Notes #218

Suggestion of the week

• Open Source tools to kick start your Xamarin Projects (Guy Barrete, Erik Renaud) - Awesome video where Guy and Eric show many powerful tools to get stated with our project... the good way.

Cloud

• Freeing your Azure data with F# Type Providers - This nice post regroups good Azure storage tips, enough to make you fall in love with F# right await.
  
• How to refer an Azure Key Vault secret in an Azure Resource Manager deployment template - Nice post that shows some security best practices with ARM.
  
• Microservices in Azure (Jon Hilton) - Excellent post to get started and do you first Hello word micro-services application.

Programming

• .NET Rocks! vNext (dotnetrocks.com) - Another great show... And so happy about Glimpse.
  
• Tips for Deploying your .Net project (Gregor Suttie) - Looking for some quick suggestion from some on with experience? Here is the perfect post for that.

Data

• How Halo 5 implemented cloud scale telemetry using Azure Event Hubs (Dan Rosanova) - Inspiring post about scaling and the data platform.

Reading Notes #215

Cloud

• Azure Learning Paths (Laurent Duveau) - Did you know that the Azure documentation site has a set of 25 learning paths? I didn't, and it's awesome.
  
• Using Azure Storage Queues from .NET - Nice post that explores the Azure queues through .net, and feature th very useful cloud config...
  
• Advanced Use of Azure Virtual Machine DSC Extensions - Very nice tutorial about how to troubleshooting.

Programming

• Exploring the new .NET (Scott Hanselman) - This is the first post I read about the "dotnet compile" since the MVP Summit, and it looks at as much interesting as before.
  
• Why build scripts? (Amir Barylko) - This post changed my mind about F#, now I'm looking forward to try it.
  
• Signing into Windows 10 with your Face - Using an Xbox One Kinect with Windows Hello (Scott Hanselman) - I didn't think it was that easy to setup a XBox Kinect to a Pc...
  
• Visual Studio Shortcuts: Comment Selection / Uncomment Selection (Jeremy) - Time to learn some little time saving tips with this short post.
  
• Visual Studio Shortcuts: Format Document (Jeremy) - Recently, I have been surprised to learn that some people are still not aware of that very powerful feature o VisualStudio.

Data

• More Power BI Feature Updates: Power BI Desktop December Update and new Power BI service features - This post detailed the features of th December update.

Miscellaneous

• 12 Most Influential Books Every Software Engineer Needs to Read (roelljr) - Fantastic list of essential books to read. A must.
  
• Google Spotlight Story Special Delivery is a nice YouTube gift for the holidays (Jeff Causey) - Really interesting little animation movie in a 360 degree environment.
  
• First Update Released for Open Live Writer (Richard Hay) - Awesome new, and it works!
  
• Announcing Programmer Tools! (Henry Spencer) - We all need some little tools from time to time. This post lists many useful tools, and what's nice about them is that they are available from everywhere because they are online tools.

Reading Notes #160

Suggestion of the week

• Azure Blob Storage Uploading Large Blobs - Great post that explains all possible scenarios to upload file in Azure storage and how to do it.

Cloud

• Azure Service Bus – ‘NamespaceType’ default value change (Piyush Joshi) - Better to know before, is time to reviews our scripts.
  
• Microsoft Azure Websites WebJobs is now GA in the Microsoft Azure Platform - This post, besides bringing a fantastic news, is the perfect place to get started with webjob.
  
• La courbe d’adoption de l’infonuagique (André Giroux) - Good analogy that explains how we can start moving to the cloud.

Programming

• A basic Katana application - This tutorial is a nice little dive in the Katana world.

• Don't Frown on CSVs - Nice post that explains why we shouldn't over look the good old CSV format.

Miscellaneous

• Modeling exercise: The grocery store’s checkout model (Ayende Rahien) - Interesting exercises, some kind of brain push-up. I like it.

• Business Benefit from Public Data (The Open Group Blog) - Interesting post that explains how well it would be if more enterprise were sharing some data.

• Put yourself out there and publish that Open Source project today (Scott Hanselman) - Again a really inspiring post.

~Frank Boucher