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 #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 #103

Suggestion of the week

• Architecture Patterns for Data Upload to Windows Azure (K. Dotchkoff) - Nice description of many patterns with their pros and cons. A post to read.

Cloud

• SQL Azure: Automated Database Export (Tara Shankar Jana) - Nice post that details all you need to know about the new Sql Azure Automated export: options, cost, etc.
  
• Cloud Service Fundamentals – Introduction into Fault-Tolerant Data Access Layer (AzureCAT) - Good post about the best practices.
  
• **Service Bus Error: The maximum entity size has been reached or exceeded for Topic (Ravi Verma) - Quick fix for a common error message. Be aware of the Default life time value.
  
• Meter and Autoscale Multi-Tenant Applications in Windows Azure (Bruno Terkaly, Ricardo Villalobos) - Great articles that explains how to setup diagnostics to be able to autoscale in a multi-tenant context. The article also refers different resources for more details and tools.
  
• Announcing the release of the Windows Azure SDK 2.1 for .NET (Scott Guthrie) - Learn more about all the enhancements and great new featured inside this last release.

Programming

• Just released: MvcSiteMapProvider 4.0 (Maarten Balliauw) - Sitemaps is a great tool, learn more about it and how easy it is to add why in your project.
  
• Don't fear the shell... - "Getting Started with PowerShell 3.0" jumpstart series - Mostly everything can be done with PowerShell, here a great list of tutorials to get started...
  
• Get started with some basic TFBuild Scripts - Great post that will gives you a new image about build scripts.
  
• Securing a Web API with Windows Azure AD and Katana (vibro) - Very complete post and tutorial that explains what is OWIN and project Katana (both in preview), and how to use it.
  
• July 2013 Release of the Ajax Control Toolkit - This post details all the great new features in the last release of Ajax Control Toolkit. So many useful tools...

Databases

• Fragmentation in SQL Azure! (Dilkush-MSFT) - Wow, a really interesting post that goes deeper than usual and explains database fragmentation in Azure.
  
• Take Control - Windows Azure SQL Database Application Life Cycle Management Made Easy! (Alexandre Brisebois) - The SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) is definitely a must for all projects with a database.

Miscellaneous

• When You Have Nothing Unique to Say… (Darren Rowse) - A little blogger's pep talk.
  
• 5 Tips for Launching a Product On Your Blog Without Annoying Your Readers (Darren Rowse) - Great post where the author share is experience about a product launch and how do it «the right way».
  
  

~Frank