Reading Notes #340

Cloud

• Run Azure Functions in a Docker Container (Mark Heath) - This is a great and simple tutorial, perfect to do a quick test.
• Announcing the public preview of Windows Container Support in Azure App Service | Blog | Microsoft Azure (Andrew Westgarth) - Free for all August, it's time to try stuff...
• Improving the Security of Azure App Service Websites > Mitchel Sellers (Mitchel Sellers) - Nice post that lists low hanging fruits to make our App Services more secure.
• Improving the development experience worldwide with Event Grid (Bahram Banisadr) - List of all the novelties on event grid.
• Learn how to orchestrate serverless functions by scraping APIs in 8 minutes (Maxime Rouiller) - A nice article that shows with a real use case how Azure Durable Function could be used.
• Why does my Azure Function sometimes stop being triggered (Benjamin Perkins) - Great tip, I wish I knew that before.

Programming

• How To Do Microservices Integration Testing in the Cloud (Alex Handy) - Interesting article that describes the current situation of test environment or what it should look like.
• Top Docker Monitoring Tools (Emna Trabelsi) - So many different tools, this is fantastic!
• dotnet new templates for serverless functions (Shayne Boyer) - This post explains how to add new templates for our .Net Core and shows how to build Azure function.

Integration

• Our Integration Product Roadmap (Jon Fancey) - VNext, the next version of BizTalk, is making its way.

Miscellaneous

• 11 essential characteristics for being a good technical advocate or interviewer (Scott Hanselman) - Read, think, improve, repeat. An excellent list to read and get better.

Reading Notes #336

Cloud

• Azure Tips and Tricks Part 139 - Prevent AzCopy Uploads from maxing out Internet Connection Speed (Michael Crump) - Nice little cool trick.

• Quickly create VSTS Work Items for Application Insights Telemetry from Visual Studio (Abhijit Jana) - Can it be more DevOps than that? I don't think so.

Programming

• 7 best practices for building containers (Google) - This post helps us to improve our skill with containers. It also shares a lot of excellent more detailed references.
• How Postman Can Improve Your API Documentation (Abhinav Asthana) - With openAPI and Postman, our Apis will definitely be easier to consume.
• Using Elasticsearch with ASP.NET Core and Docker (Miroslav Popovic ARCHIVE TAGS) - Interesting post. I like how docker was used in this case.

Miscellaneous

• How to Lead When You’re Feeling Afraid (Peter Bregman) - A really interesting post that will help us, for sure, because we all leave this kind of situation one day or the other.
• Defeating Electron (Felix Rieseberg) - Pretty good is the chance that you are (just like me) using an application builds on top of electron. This post explains a little about what's it happening under the hood.
• Here's Why Your Static Website Needs HTTPS (Troy Hunt) - Definitely a post to read.
• How to Write a Catchy Hook and Title for Your Blog - This post can definitely help us getting inspired.

Reading Notes #334

Suggestion of the week

• HTTPS Is Easy! (Troy Hunt) - A wonderful series of 4 videos that explains how to get secure with https. A must!

Cloud

• Function Proxies now Available in Functions Version 2.x! (Alex Karcher) - Yeah! I love it. Function proxies are awesome, if you don't know about them check out my post or videos.
• Static website hosting for Azure Storage now in public preview (Michael Hauss) - Great! Have been waiting for this feature for so long!

Programming

• Ghost in A shell - Part I : localhost (Manu) - A pretty cool little tutorial explains how to use different tools together.
• Detecting that a .NET Core app is running in a Docker Container and SkippableFacts in XUnit (Scott Hanselman) - Really cool way to continue doing unit tests within Docker containers.
• Injecting services to ASP.NET Core controller actions (Gunnar Peipman) - Nice tutorial, step by step, very clear.
• Top Visual Studio Code Extensions from Individual Contributors -- Visual Studio Magazine ( David Ramel) - Congrats to these badass developers.
• Working with T4 templates in Visual Studio - The Wit and Ramblings of David Giard (David Giard) - T4 are a really powerful tool. I used them a while back to avoid magic strings... Nice post to get started.

Miscellaneous

• Why Sunday Is the Most Important Day of the Week for Your Wellbeing (Ryan Coisson) - The secret has always been right in the middle... Well, a middle ;)
• Write That First Blog: Blogging for Programmers (Sander Rossel) - Excellent post that answers a question that is so frequently asked.

Reading Notes #333

Cloud

• Azure Tips and Tricks Part 133 - Use the Azure Portal for Durable Functions Development (Michael Crump) - Nice tips durable functions are indeed very useful.
• How to safely replace Find-AzureRmResource -ResourceType calls in Azure PowerShell 6.x+ (Stephane Lapointe) - Good to know! I'm happy about that change but didn't notice the depreciated method.
• Immutable storage for Azure Storage Blobs now in public preview (Mitra Sinha) - A pretty neat feature!
• New Features in Durable Functions - Nice little update from Mark, teacher of Durable Functions Fundamentals on Plurasight, directly.
• Penny Pinching in the Cloud: Deploying Containers cheaply to Azure (Scott Hanselman) - Great quick review of the container offer with the cost in mind.
• Disaster Recovery solution for Azure IaaS applications (Sujay Talasila) - Good new another GA to make people safe.

Programming

• HelloWorld (Luke Oliff) - Nice post with multiple labs (exercises) very well explained and detailed to get started with auth0.
• How to read, unable to read appsettings.json values ASP.NET Core  - Great post that explains a gotcha while using .net Core with deployment slots.
• Using ASP.NET Core 2.1's HttpClientFactory with Refit's REST library (Scott Hanselman) - Pretty cool, I didn't know this kind of tool existed.

Data

• Power BI and Sudoku – Yes Please (Mike Carlo) - Awesome! I really like when people think outside of the box. This post gives you link to the game and to a more detailed post.
• The June release of SQL Operations Studio is now available (Alan Yu) - Pretty cool and remember it's a cross-platform tool!
• Install SQL Operations Studio on Ubuntu Linux (Daniel Farina) - Nice tools. I think I should install it since its light weight and multi-platforms.

Reading Notes #332

Cloud

• Generate the OpenAPI definition for Azure Function Apps (Abhijit Jana) - Learn how to save time and get your API definition generated for you.

Programming

• ASP.NET Core Web API Best Practices (Marinko Spasojevic) - Great post. The perfect post to refresh our memories or learn the best practices.
• Adopting Kubernetes step by step (santiago arias) - Perfect post to get started with Kubernetes even more if you know React.
• Clean out your Docker images, containers and volumes with single commands (ryanwhocodes) - Useful post that gives a few examples of how to use the Docker commands.
• How to use Visual Studio Code (Flavio Copes) - Another post that confirms that VSCode definitely worth our attention. This post gives examples, and shows deferent extensions... If you don't know vscode... Yep start here.
• Controllers as action filters in ASP.NET Core MVC ( Filip W) - Same good old tricks, but with a fresh twist.
• C# Enum: Definition, Examples, Best Practices, and Pitfalls (Justin Boyer) - Nice post that ENUMerate the best practices and pitfalls.
• Preview of Visual Studio Kubernetes Tools (Visual Studio Blog) - Exciting news! This post introduces a new tool... I Think this is my cue to do more kubernetes!

Books

• [Invisible Ink: A Practical Guide to Building Stories That Resonate] (Brian McDonald)  - We all know it, a story is the element that will give that little plus to our post, and video. This short book explains how to really make an effective one talking about the not visual things...
  Really interesting.
  
  ISBN 0984178627 (ISBN13: 9780984178629)

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 #328

Cloud

• 10 Reasons to Use Durable Functions (Mark Heath) - To celebrate his new course about durable function, Mark shares with us his top10 of the best reason with should use durable functions.

Programming

• Advanced Raspberry Pi traffic lights simulator (Gunnar Peipman) - This Windows IoT project looks really awesome! Let's have a threat...
• Creating NuGet packages in Docker using the .NET Core CLI (Andrew Lock) - A useful tutorial that explains how to use .Net CLI with Docker commands.
• Why should we care about containers for development (Shayne Boyer) - Another nice Docker post this time focus on the continuous integration and deployment.
• Creating PDF on ASP.NET Core (Gunnar Peipman) - Am bookmarking this one. Creating PDF is a common task and that code look "simple".

Data

• Power BI Desktop May Feature Summary (Amanda Cofsky) - The monthly updates is always a great new. This month shows more about that new Q&A feature... You may not know about it, but you really want to use it...
• Data Encodings and Layout (Clemens Vasters) - Very useful and deep article that provides the best practices for data encoding for different type of situation.

Books

Exactly What to Say, The Magic Words for Influence and Impact
(Phil M. Jones)
I listen to this audio book and really enjoy it. Simple powerful key works selection tat helps us to get where we want to go. It was only about two hours long and I listen to it in one shoot. And I’m mostly certain I will listen to it again.
ISBN 9780692881958

Miscellaneous

• The Next Time You Want to Complain at Work, Do This Instead (Peter Bregman) - We all did it at least once… Should we do with again... This post explains why we shouldn't.

Reading Notes #326

Cloud

• AzCopy on Linux now generally available (Sercan Guler) - AZCopy is a must. These new features are just awesome.
• Azure Functions Recipes (Anthony Chu) - Have a look, there a recipe for every situation... And if its not there, well ask for it, they may add it!
• Create new Azure App Service using Cloud Explorer in Visual Studio (Abhijit Jana) - They're so many ways to do one thinks, there's one that fit your needs for sure. This post shows one I didn't know about... Did you?

Programming

• Creating RazorPage apps using the CLI (Shayne Boyer) - Cool slick optimization.
• Docker Compose and Kubernetes with Docker for Desktop - Docker Blog (Mike Coleman) - This post explains an awesome integration. It's time to upgrade our version to get that!
• Why Developers Should Install WSL Today (Matt Hyon, August Banks) - I love WSL (aka Bash on Windows). It has evolved, and become something much more. After ready this post you will either install it right away or smile because it's already installed.
• Why Responsive Web Design? (Chris Love) - A nice post that explains clearly why you really need to think responsive design, even more in 2018.

Miscellaneous

• 346: The Way to Build Relationships at Conferences (Dave StaChowiak, Robbie Samuels) - Great episode. I got so many "me too" and "ah ah". Looking Foward to read the book.
• The RULES of Blogging (Darren Rowse) - If you are already bloging, or thinking about starting, take two minutes and watch this short video... The rules are.... Simple.

Books

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
Author: Simon Sinek
- Fantastic book. To read a read-again to really capture and validate our path, our why.

Reading Notes #322

Cloud

• Azure WebApp : Checking the deployed WebApp file system (Sacha Barber) - Because everything doesn't need to be in a VM or containers... Read more about webapp in this nice post.
• Overview of Docker Containers in Azure | Vincent-Philippe Lauzon's on WordPress.com (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - Great overview of all the Microsoft services that support Docker containers.
• The Power of Logic Apps in Azure | Loosely coupled but highly cohesive on WordPress.com (Gregor Suttie) - Happy to see that I'm not the only fanboy around... Logic Apps are a must in your toolbox.

Databases

• A flexible new way to purchase Azure SQL Database  (Alexander (Sasha) Nosov) - A new kind of hybrid way to get your databases in Azure. It's not a full service, neither full pure VM... It definitely looks like less trouble for better performance.

Miscellaneous

• How to look for a technical evangelist job (Frederic Harper) - Interesting thought and things to consider when you are looking.
• 9 Common Coffee Mistakes and How to Fix Them (Alison Millington) - Interesting facts about coffee.

Books

Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life (Gary John Bishop)

I really enjoyed this book. Strong ideas. No repetition. It goes straight to the point. The narration is awesome.

ASIN: B0731QJ482

Reading Notes #315

Suggestion of the week

• DAX optimization examples (Alberto Ferrari) - An incredible dive into a DAX performance analysis. I loved it.

Cloud

• Bing Speech API extends its text to speech support to 34 languages (Qinying Liao) - Great new languages supported.
• Brand Detection in Microsoft Video Indexer (Dr. Abed Asi) - This is a great addition to this service.
• In order event processing with Azure Functions (Jeff Hollan) - This post explains how to keep our Functions in control to respect the message order.
• Monitoring issues on Stack Overflow with serverless, CosmosDB and Teams (Shayne Boyer) - Awesome post that gives all the detail on how a reel life solution is built.

Programming

• Docker for Windows Desktop... Now With Kubernetes! - Docker Blog (Jim Armstrong) - This post explains all the wonderful things you will have only by checking one simple checkbox.

Databases

• Share reports with your teams and partners | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI (Lukasz Pawlowski) - Perfect, we can now share report directly like we could with dashboard.
• Power BI Desktop February Feature Summary | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI (Amanda Cofsky) - So my great new features!

Miscellaneous

• How Long is Long Enough? Minimum Password Lengths by the World's Top Sites (Troy Hunt) - Do you use good passwords? Because length is not the only thing.

Photo credit: nickpettican on Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC-ND

Reading Notes #314

Suggestion of the week

• The Modern Dev Team (Rob Conery) - What a great post. Maybe it's only me getting old ;) but I think we all have these thoughts one day or the other.

Cloud

• A great developer experience for Ansible (Corey Sanders) - This post announces the integration of Austin in the cloud shell and visual studio. It somewhere we can learn more about it. I didn't know about it, but I really want t use in my next DevOps tasks.
• Announcing IoT extension for Azure CLI 2.0 (Chrissie Chi) - This post gives you everything you need to know: what it does, how to install it, and even some sample!
• Announcing integration of Azure Backup into VM create experience (Trinadh Kotturu) - Fantastic news, better be prepared then sorry.
• Azure Cosmos DB + Functions Cookbook— static client (Matías Quaranta) - Nice first post of a promising series that shares recipes, gotchas, and examples about two very powerful tools.
• Azure Functions Proxies (Eric Williams) - Azure Functions are a very useful thing to have in your toolbox. With the addition of Proxies, it becomes a must read a few ways to use them in this post.
• Jenkins on Azure: from zero to hero (Pui Chee Chan) - Jenkins is an extremely popular build server. This post list all the features pre-package for you when you deploy it in Azure in a few click.Pretty awesome.
• Migrate your classic storage account to Azure Resource Manager using PowerShell Azure v5.0.x (Stephane Lapointe) - Nice tutorial that shows how to move all (except vhd) your storage in the new format.

Programming

• How I use VSCode, VSTS and GitHub to develop Azure ARM Templates (Eric Leonard) - From A to Z, this post explains all steps in an application life circle; using only three simple tools.
• Dockerizing .NET Apps with Microsoft's Build Images on Docker Hub (Elton Stoneman) - This post explains how to package your .Net app, so the only dependency is... well Docker.
• Scalable and Performant ASP.NET Core Web APIs: Load Testing (Carl Rippon) - A great post that introduces multiple tools to load-test our API with ease BEFORE going to production. A must to all developers.

Databases

• My Favorite SQL Prompt Features (MarlonRibunal) - If you never try SqlPrompt and you write SQL in your day to day, stop read this, and go downloading it, or at least read this post that gives you a glimpse of it's feature.

Miscellaneous

• 5 Essential Trello Boards Every Remote Team Needs (Leah Ryder ) - This is a nice little post packed with good advice for remote workers.
• My Blog Now Has a Content Security Policy - Here's How I've Done It (Troy Hunt) - Interesting post again from Troy, who once more makes us think.

Reading Notes #312

Suggestion of the week

• Serverless Twitter Analytics with CosmosDB and Logic Apps (Jeremy Likness) - This great post explains the how Azure Logic App is so powerful by giving some examples.

Cloud

• Uploading Nest camera video to Azure Storage (Den Delimarsky) - Cool update that set more cloud-ready an open source project.

Programming

• Azure Table Storage in ASP.NET Core 2.0 (Tahir Naushad) - Cool "code-dump" post that shows how to get everything we need to manage simply our Azure storage.
• How to Scale Your API Design Process with OpenAPI (Ryan Pinkham) - This post introduces SwaggerHubs. I didn't know about this tool, it looks really good. As a heavy Azure user cannot miss some similitude with Api Managment. I will definitely give it a try.
• Simultaneous debugging of JavaScript and .NET code with Rider (Maarten Balliauw) - Rider is packed with great features and is becoming a really incredible tool.

Miscellaneous

• Did you know – Now you can duplicate Line of Code without losing your clipboard content within Visual Studio? (Abhijit Jana) - Nice tips that for me was an "Ah-ah" moment for me.

Reading Notes #310

Cloud

• Benefits of migrating IaaS to Azure Resource Manager (Kay Singh) - So many good reasons to jump in... Everything Is there to help us moving forward.
• Take a Break with Azure Functions (Justin Clareburt (MSFT)) (Justin Clareburt) - I know the Holidays are passed, but it's always time to learn Azure Function. Do yourself a favor the next rainy or super cold weekend... Follow this "program".
• What part of your job can you automate? (Kevin Bah) - With time, all developers accumulate "tools" and these days with all those scripts and API capabilities... It's not a question of how can we do something, but more: where to do it...

Programming

• 5 tips to learn Docker in 2018 - Docker Blog (Victor Coisne) - While we are all pumped-up and refreshed from the holidays, let's get inspired to learn new stuff.
• How to handle BLANK in DAX measures (Marco Russo) - This great post will helps us to think about if blanks could by part of our data and how to manage them.
• Is jQuery still relevant? (Remy Sharp) - I've really appreciated this post that brings numbers to sustain his answer.

Miscellaneous

• Why Do People Fail at Work-Life Balance? This Study Says It Has Nothing to Do With Productivity (Tommy Mello Tommy Mello is the founder of A1 Garage Doors, a $30 million-plus home service business with over 200 employees in 9 states. Full bio @realtommymello Founde) - I don't know for you, but e if I'm pretty happy with "my balance" a few extra hints could not hurt.

Reading Notes #306

Suggestion of the week

• Simple APIs With Microsoft Flow And Azure Functions | LINQ to Fail (Aaron Powell ) - Geniusly simple! I didn't think to use those like that, but now that will be my go-to scenario for so many things.... With Flow, Logic App and so may others.

Cloud

• Announcing the general availability of Azure App Service diagnostics (Jennifer Lee) - A fantastic tool that I hope all web App users will use.
• Lift and Shift, Migrating Nerd Dinner to the cloud using Docker (Shayne Boyer) - Interesting post that shows step by step how to do a real lift and shift to Azure.
• Logic Apps Management solution updated – search runs by tracked properties, bulk re-submit and more… (Sumit Kumar) - Nice little add-ons that will help us manage our LogicApps.
• Microsoft Cognitive Services updates for Microsoft Connect(); (Microsoft Azure) - Nice tutorial on how to build and train your custom image classifier.
• Transforming your VMware environment with Microsoft Azure (Corey Sanders) - Pretty cool tools that remove a lot of pain when we start thinking about migrating one or more VMs.

Programming

• Introducing Microsoft Coco Framework for Blockchain (Chris Pietschmann) - Coco framework will helps to manage a few important points in a business solution using BlockChain, more to come in 2018.
• Lightweight bundling, minifying, and compression, for CSS and JavaScript with ASP.NET Core and Smidge (Scott Hanselman) - Another (or rediscovery of a) great minifier for .Net core.
• Trying out new .NET Core Alpine Docker Images (Scott Hanselman) - Very interesting post, it'nice to see how one great tech complement another that well.

Databases

• Azure SQL Databases Disaster Recovery 101 (Xiaochen Wu) - One of the best posts a read on the topic. I'm not sure if I can sale the alien part to a client, but other than that very clear. lol

Reading Notes #304

Cloud

• Application Insights: VSTS dashboard chart widget now available (Mike Gresley) - Woohoo! Finally, it's there. I'm going to add it to all my projects right now.
• Monitor Azure services and applications using Grafana (Ashwin Kamath) - I didn't know that tool, but now it's definitely under my radar.
• Azure Durable Functions: Making Serverless Last (Mary Branscombe) - A great post that introduces the durable function and explains where it fits in the integration offer.

Programming

• Creating a Minimal ASP.NET Core Windows Container (Jeffrey T. Fritz) - This is an amazing post that shows how to optimize our containers. It may be about Asp.Net Core but it applies to any containers. It also shows one of the big improvements with .Net Core...
• WebOptimizer - a Bundler and Minifier for ASP.NET Core (Scott Hanselman) - This post shares a nice little tool available for Asp.Net Core.
• Why Is It So Difficult To Get Started Writing Automated Tests? (Matthew Jones) - So many very good questions are asked in this post, but what are the answers?

Databases

• Automatic tuning will be a new default (Veljko Vasic) - An important post t read and share to avoid any panic in January.

Podcast

• EntreLeadership #231: Renée Mauborgne—Move Beyond Competing (EntreLeadership Team) - A great episode with a few tools that look very interesting... And of course, a book reference that you should add to you to read list.
• Dotnet Rocks - 1491 Building VSTS using VSTS with Dan Hellem and Rogan Ferguson (Carl Franklin, Richard Campbell) - Great show about VSTS... If you using or think of using the tool... That's for you.

Miscellaneous

• I Don’t Have Time is a Myth (Donn Felker) - I love it. We have so many opportunities; we just need to take them.
• The Main Challenges of Building Machine Learning Tech (Donn Felker) - Very interesting article about AI.
• Why I won't be switching to VSCode any time soon - A geek with a hat (Swizec Teller) - I was surprised when I saw the title of this post, how could you not like VsCode? However, after reading it, I understand. Through preferences are personal, VSCode does a lot and needs a bit more than few minutes to be tame. I got also overwhelmed when I started using it. The secret is the documentation... and sometimes. Then it becomes whatever you want.

Reading Notes #299

Cloud

• Azure Log Analytics – meet our new query language (Noa Kuperberg) - This post shares great examples of simple, but useful query to get started.
• Azure Site Recovery powers new Managed DR offerings by Microsoft Partners (Mayank Nayar) - Nice DR option with well-known partners to keep our VM safe as our business.
• Five more reasons why you should download the Azure mobile app (Shankar Sivadasan) - This app is getting better and better every time I hear about it. Guess what I will install in a few...
• How to configure log4net on Azure App Service (Benjamin Perkins) - You prefer log4net because your App is also deployed on-premise, or because you are just doing a lift&shift, or any other reason, this post is for you, every little things are explained in details.
• Integrating Azure Advisor Into Your Workday (Timothy Warner) - The azure advisor is one of my favorite tools in Azure, always something nice to do with it... Well until you fix it.
• Query across resources (Noa Kuperberg) - Wow! This is a really good news.

Programming

• Server-side rendering a D3 chart with React 16 - A geek with a hat (Swizec Teller) - It's an interesting tutorial that shows how to optimize the refresh of your chart using React.
• Tabs vs Spaces - A peaceful resolution with EditorConfig in Visual Studio. Plus .NET Extensions! (Scott Hanselman) - I personally don't really care to use spaces or tab ( I will use what's already there) but that config editor... That's something that will save a few teams... This is a post to share!
• What’s brewing in Visual Studio Team Services: September 2017 Digest (Buck Hodges) - VSTS is so packed of features it's a must to every developer and team. This post does a tour of the new feature it will give you an idea of this gigantic tool.

Databases

• Yes to databases in containers - Microsoft SQL Server available on Docker Store - Docker Blog (Elton Stoneman) - Pretty convenient I think, looking forward to trying it.

Miscellaneous

• Why I won’t write code demos, articles or new talks in your interview process (Frédéric Harper) - Interesting thoughts about some hirering practices. Finding a good math it's hard on both side.

Reading Notes #297

Suggestion of the week

• How to uninstall Scrum (Erwin Verweij) - When you will read that post (because you must read it... Seriously), you will smile, giggle and maybe even laugh.

Cloud

• Azure Tips and Tricks Part 14 - Generate SSH public key to log into Linux VM with Cloud Shell (Azure Tips and Tricks Part 14 - Generate SSH public key to log into Linux VM with Cloud Shell was published on September 11, 2017.) - Doing a remote desktop on a Windows VM is trivial, but doing the same thing on a Linux machine required just a little more. After reading this post will be a walk in the park.

• Azure Tips and Tricks Part 16 - Deploy Jekyll Site Hosted on GitHub Pages to Azure (Azure Tips and Tricks Part 16 - Deploy Jekyll Site Hosted on GitHub Pages to Azure was published on September 13, 2017.) - I use Jekyll on Azure, and I love it. If you would like to try it, this post is all you need.

• Getting Started with Windows Containers (Alina Popa) - A cool tutorial that uses a few popular tech these days.

• Keep credentials out of code: Introducing Azure AD Managed Service Identity (Stuart Kwan) - Great post that explains what the new service is, and how it works.It also suggests a tutorial to learn how to implement it. Awesome!

• Why is Serverless Extensibility better than Webhooks? (Bobby Johnson) - A useful post that jumps right in the middle of the debate about the Webhook and serverless. Both are good but planning (as usual) is worth it.

Programming

• API Versioning with Azure API Management (Darrel Miller) - Great post that helps to find the peace, or at least make your ideas, about what kind of rules, you should follow.

• Microservices: The Good, the Bad and the Hype (Jennifer Riggins) - Nice post that explains some challenges when doing serversless. Because yes, it's a great architecture plan, but it's not magic.

• Microsoft Tech Summit is back – register for a free event near you! (Microsoft Azure team) - A big tour around the globe, check when they visit one of the fourteen cities near you.

Miscellaneous

• 3 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Selling to Small Businesses - Microsoft Partner Network (Carol Roth) - Interesting points to improve our skills.

Reading Notes #293

Cloud

• Announcing the Coco Framework for enterprise blockchain networks (Mark Russinovich) - You probably eared the buzz word blockchain before, but still not sure what it is exactly… Here is a good post to get started and in the meantime, you will know also an open-source framework to work with.
• Announcing the new and improved Azure Log Analytics (Ketan Ghelani) - Only one click and all those news features are yours.
• Introducing Azure Event Grid – an event service for modern applications (Corey Sanders) - Pretty awesome new feature. I’m looking forward to trying it.
• Managing your resources with Azure Cloud Shell (Corey Sanders) - My first thought about Cloud Shell was: cute. And then I was in a situation where … well, it really helped me. So yeah, definitely something to look at, and this post is the perfect starting point.
• On-premises data gateway support for Azure Analysis Services (Bret Grinslade) - A new connector in this very useful connection tool.
• Plan Backup and Disaster Recovery for Azure IaaS Disks (Sirius Kuttiyan) - This nice post briefly explains the different options with different pros & cons but untimely for the same results our safety.
• Rapidly Deploy Serverless Azure Functions Using PowerShell (Doug Finke) - Azure functions are so accessible it’s unbelievable. This post explains why and shows how to get our code/script deployed in the cloud in a snap.

Programming

• 5 Common Myths Around Moving to Docker (Megan Rees Ahigian ) - Nice post that answers some very frequent assumptions related to container and more particularly, Docker containers.

Reading Notes #291

Cloud

• App Service Environment v2 release announcement (Christina Compy) - That a really good news let's go full PaaS.
• Fast and Easy Containers: Azure Container Instances (Corey Sanders) - A very promising new service in Azure.
• Import Power BI Desktop files into Azure Analysis Services (Josh Caplan) - A quick post that shows how convenient is the new AAS.

Programming

• .NET Application Architecture Guidance (Cesar de la Torre) - This post is like an amazing trailer about all the great things that will be created in this blog... Stay tuned for more.
• Docker Basics, Part Zero: Why Should I Care about Containers (and Microservices) Anyway? (Michelle Gienow) - Great post with the best description of what are containers I have ever read.

Miscellaneous

• Announcing Ghost 1.0 (John O'Nolan) - Wow! So happy and proud to be part of the early adopter of this platform. It never stopped to get better, and it stayed free. Now I just need to upgrade.
• Follow-up: The Windows Insider Program has lost its way (studio384) - Interesting thoughts about different Microsoft programs.
• Passwords Evolved: Authentication Guidance for the Modern Era (Troy Hunt) - Amazing post again from Troy, things are evolving we must also change.

Reading Notes #290

Cloud

• Artificial Intelligence tunes Azure SQL Databases (Veljko Vasic) - Very interesting article that shares a real-life situation where a Microsft Partner used SQL Auto tuning capability of SQL Database in Azure to optimize all his databases.
• Azure For Developers – Part 2: Your First App Service (Jesse Liberty) - Great new series that just started. It's a good point for beginners whom would like to have an overview.
• How Azure Security Center helps protect your servers with Web Application Firewall (Hayden Hainsworth) - Tools exist guys... They aren't perfect, but they will cover your ... for a good part. Take two minutes and have a look.

Programming

• A Comparison of Docker GUIs (Chris Ward) - This post surprises me by his very long list of graphical interfaces for Docker. I only knew the default one, but I'm now very tented to try other ones.
• Setting up Raspian and .NET Core 2.0 on a Raspberry Pi (Dave) - This post is packed with tons of little advice and tips that will save us time and energy.

Databases

• Building MEAN Apps with Cosmos DB - Part 1 (John Papa) - Pretty awesome series of little videos that explain step by step how to build the Mongo Express Angular Node (MEAN) application.
• First release candidate of SQL Server 2017 now available (SQL Server Team) - SQL server 2016 was such a big release, that it's nice to see that the 2017 version will also be packed.
• Tableau and Azure SQL DB, a match made in the cloud (Joseph Sack) - Interesting post that lists few best practices.

Miscellaneous

• 13 hours debugging a segmentation fault in .NET Core on Raspberry Pi and the solution was... (Scott Hanselman) - Aaaah, damn it. We all have those moments where nothing seems to make sense... Thanks for sharing Scott.
• Installing Visual Studio 2017 Made Easy (Mayur Tendulkar) - Pretty awesome tricks to install tons of Visual Studio without killing your Internet bandwidth.
• Monospaced Programming Fonts with Ligatures (Scott Hanselman) - Pretty cool hack. I mean I knew those characters existed, but I didn't know they had a name, and that we had display options.