Reading Notes #285

Cloud

• 10 tips for enterprise integration with Logic Apps (Toon Vanhoutte) - Nice list of integration / LogicApps best practices.
• Azure Automation Graphical Editor from a Coder’s Perspective (Brian Christopher Harrison) - Pretty cool post that explains how someone with PowerShell base could use the designer interface in automation.
• Azure CLI Samples for Azure Cosmos DB - Just a quick reference to see what's available today.
• Azure Logic Apps - Retry Policy (Sriram Hariharan) - This post explains how to customize a key feature to build successful integration solution in cloud programming.
• Microsoft Cognitive Custom Vision Service .Net Core Angular 4 Application (Part One) - With all those code snippets and screen captures, this tutorial is extremely well detailed.
• How to Serve Serverless with Examples in Azure (Jeremy Likness) - Nice post that decorticates the serverless using Azure Functions as an example.
• Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit version 2.0 - Super, new version of the toolkit.
• Top 5 mistakes when people talk about Azure (Saverio Guardato) - Yep, same here.All true.

Programming

• How to reference a .NET Core library in WinForms - Or, .NET Standard Explained (Scott Hanselman) - Nice explanation, very clear.

Suggestion of the week

• Solve Node.js issues faster with Application Insights for Node.js (Josh Gavant) - Awesome post that shares a lots of very useful tips and guidance.

Miscellaneous

• 10 strategies for beating “programmer’s block” (Madison Moore) - Interesting top ten.

Reading Notes #284

Cloud

• Azure TLS Certificates changes (Rashmi Jha) - Because security is always a big concern, I thought it would be nice sharing this post.
• Deploying Visual Studio 2017 Function Projects with VSTS (Donna Malayeri) - This tutorial explains in simple steps how to configure our build in vsts, a reel time saver.
• Docker for AWS and Azure: Secure By Default Container Platform - Docker Blog (Riyaz Faizullabhoy) - Like they say build it ship it run it.
• Kicking The Tires On This Serverless Thing (Rob Conery) - Very interesting post that introduces many different flavors of serverless.
• New sample model for Azure Analysis Services (Josh Caplan) - Nice little post that gives everything we need to get started.
• What is Azure PowerShell? How It Works, Installation, Best Practices, and More (Angela Stringfellow) - The perfect post to get started. It a really good source of references.

Programming

• .NET and Docker (Scott Hanselman) - Very interesting post that clarifies the purpose of all those dotnet container.
• Connecting Power BI to your Visual Studio Team Services Account (Charles Sterling) - It't always cool (and potentially useful to get better) to visualize our data like that.

Miscellaneous

• How to buy and read e-books in Windows 10 Mobile Creators Update (Cale Hunt) - Nice tips. However, I do read from tine to time books on my Surface, but I simply use the App from my e-book reader.
• Pomodoro Technique – the Good, the Bad and the Tomato | Rubik's Code on WordPress.com (Nikola Zivkovic) - Interesting method. Simple and yet efficient.
• The humble checkbox (OneNote Team) - Nice to see how a simple checkbox could change your work.

Reading Notes #283

Suggestion of the week

• Docker for .NET Developers (Part 2) - Steve Gordon's Blog (Steve Gordon) - Fantastic second part of a series of tutorials. This one focus on the building phase.

Cloud

• Create an Intelligent App With Google Cloud Speech and Natural Language APIs (Ashraff Hathibelagal) - A very nice tutorial that will help us to get started with Google API.
• Using Azure Automation with Multiple Subscriptions (John Knightly) - This post explains how to overpass a challenging barrier: executing a script in multiple subscriptions.

Programming

• Azure CLI 2.0: Make Bash Output More Readable (Chris Pietschmann) - Useful post.It not because we are using prompt that it must be difficult to ready the information.
• Azure CLI 2.0: Reset / Change Azure VM Password (Chris Pietschmann) - So simple when you know it...
• Choice amongst cross-platform .NET IDEs - VS Code, Visual Studio for Mac, JetBrains Rider (Scott Hanselman) - What I like the most is that you can now stay productive on different OS, because you are still using the same tools.
• Docker for .NET Developers (Part 1) - Steve Gordon's Blog (Steve Gordon) - This post is perfect for those who know nothing about Docker, and would like to understand the vocabulary before getting deeper.
• How a 650MB Node.js Image for Docker Uses Less Space Than a 50MB Image (Derick) - As unusual, the devil is in the details, and this post does an excellent job at explaining those details.
• Testing PowerShell with Pester (Adam Bertram) - I use Pester a little while ago and loved it. It's definitely a framework that worth a try.

Databases

• Azure Cosmos DB: Build a .NET application using the Table API (Benjamin Xue) - This post shares few tips to fix common issue when working with Cosmo DB.

Miscellaneous

• How to Build a Personal Brand and Reputation as a Software Developer (John Sonmez) - Nice article (chapter) that explains how to improve your life.

Reading Notes #282

Cloud

• Enhancements to Application Insights Smart Detection (Anton Fritz) - Really cool new service that will improve our way to detect problems.
  
• How to easily and silently obtain AccessToken (Bearer) from an existing Azure PowerShell session (Stéphane Lapointe) - Nice optimization of our environment and still be secure.

Programming

• Deploy Cognitive Toolkit model to Azure Web Apps (Ilia Karmanov) - Nice short demonstration, all the code is available on GitHub.
  
• Load Balancing Node.js Applications with NGINX and Docker (Bruno Krebs) - This is a really good tutorial that explains thing very clearly and simply.
  
• Using .NET and Docker Together (Rich Lander) - This post is a fantastic list of references to get started with .Net Core and Docker combination.
  
• Kubernetes in action: How orchestration and containers can increase uptime and resiliency (Brendan Burns) - Wow I was really impressed by how Kubernetes works and mange things effortless (for simple cases).

Let’s talk Hybrid Cloud with Clemens Vasters at a Special Montreal Event.

The summer is mostly here, and that usually mean a break for the community group, but the Azure Group of MSDevMtl still have one more surprise for you. Clements Vaster, the Microsoft's "Principal Messenger", driving global technical strategy for Microsoft's Azure Messaging platform services: Azure Service Bus, Azure Event Hubs, and Azure Relay, is coming to Montreal!

Join us on the Friday June 9th 2017, for a great talk about “Hybrid cloud”. These days most solution need to run by a combination of on-premises and public cloud assets. In this morning session, we will learn how those systems can be integrated. This perspective is, however, largely constrained to data-center like assets, and typically to the scope of one organization.

For this special event, we decided to remove the usual fee, so it's a FREE event!

Register quickly on the meetup site because the places are limited. Register here: https://www.meetup.com/msdevmtl/events/239731426/


See you there!

Reading Notes #281

Cloud

• 5 simple steps to create and test your first Azure Function App (Abhijit Jana) - It couldn't be simpler.
  
• Azure CLI 1.0 vs 2.0 Compared, Installation and Usage (Chris Pietschmann) - This is such a nice post. It compares side by side both versions.
  
• Upgrade classic Backup and Site Recovery vaults to ARM Recovery Services vaults (Aruna Somendra) - Nice post that shares a good overview of all the news related to vault.

Programming

• BUILD 2017 Conference Rollup for .NET Developers - Scott Hanselman (Scott Hanselman) - I'm sure we'll continue to see more of those MsBuild summaries, but this one is from Scott directly and focuses on .Net.

Databases

• Dear DocumentDB customers, welcome to Azure Cosmos DB! (Rimma Nehme) - This post explains where CosmoDB is coming from.
  
• Introducing Per Minute (RU/m) provisioning to lower your cost, increase your performance (Arnaud Comet) - Great post that explains the relation between RU/m and RU/s two very important notion in CosmoBD.
  
• Migrating to Azure Data Sync 2.0 (Joshua Gnanayutham) - I always found that tool useful, and I'm happy to see it continues to evolve.

Miscellaneous

• Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update, just don't (Troy Hunt) - A very interesting post about a painful situation, and user's obligations.
  
• Is There a Correct Way to Comment Your Code? - NDepend (Erik Dietrich) - Interesting post that tries to find the answer of the eternal question comment or not comment.
  
• Note-taking made easier for everyone—redesigning OneNote (OneNote Team) - Nice new features. To unload your Onenote, simply click on file (or th left arrow), then account, and finally the update button.
  
• Suggestions and Tips for attending your first tech conference - Scott Hanselman (Scott Hanselman) - I think I will do a copy of that one, and I will share-it with people who come with me on an event. Really nice.

Reading Notes #280

Cloud

• Announcing AzCopy on Linux Preview (Sercan Guler) - Fantastic news! One tool for everywhere.
  
• At Build, Microsoft expands its Cognitive Services collection of intelligent APIs (Microsoft Azure) - The Microsoft Build is always full of announcements, and this year wasn't an exception. Many novelties in the world of AI from new services to a new MVP category.
  
• Build a Serverless MBaaS with Azure Functions (shellmonger) - Nice tutorial that shows how to leverage Azure function with DocumentDB and node.js.
  
• What’s new for Serverless at Microsoft Build 2017 (Raman Sharma) - Another post that shares the novelties announced at Build, this time with serverless in mind.

Miscellaneous

• Login and Authentication for your ASP.NET Core Web API – The Big Picture (Jon Hilton) - Nice quick post about the different options regarding authentication and authorization for our API with also an explanation of the difference between them.
  
• Microsoft Flow + Azure Storage + WebJobs + MailChimp + Outlook (Troy Hunt) - Great post about a real life integration story.

From a Docker container to MySQL as a Service in Azure in 5 minutes

Hello MySQL! It's been a while eh? You were at version 3 something, I was just getting stated with my professional career. We had fun for years... Then you know things changed, and I did something else. I was really happy when Microsoft announced, at the MSBuild,  the availability of MySQL as a Servive in Azure.
 


Creating a MySQL database with the portal is extremely simple. As usual, you enter the server name, database name and the Admin's password. At the time I'm writing this post, it was not possible to use any CLI, but I'm sure it will be available shortly. For the ones who are not used at Database as Service in Azure, one thing you will need to do to get access to your database from your computer is white listed your IP. It's very easy to do from the Azure Portal, just select the Connection Security tab on the left menu and add your address. Oh! And don't forger to click the save button. ;)



During my tests, I've tried different applications (WordPress, Azure WebApp, custom on-premise app.) that use MySQL as backend database, I didn't notice any problem, and performance were great. It was just... simpler; no server to configure, no VM to configure, no update. The only "issue" I got was trying to connect Power BI Desktop to a MySQL, but I think it more related to the drivers since the service was still in early preview. I notified Microsoft, and I'm sure it will be available shortly.

Since it's been a while since I did some reel work with MySQL I didn't have any client install on my laptop. In fact, I had no idea which one I should take.

I knew we can run some CLI inside a Docker container with an interactive interface. So I decided to give it a try. A quick docker search mysql shows me that an image existed. Here are the steps to get setup.

First, let's download the image, and create an instance named mySQLTools of MySQL 8.0:

docker run --name mySQLTools --env "MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=Passw0rd" -d mysql:8

Then using the -it let's bring the bash prompt to our terminal.

docker exec -it mySQLTools bash -l 

Finally we connect to our client using the usual settings (note that you must have no space between -p and your password):

mysql -h _ServerName.database.windows.net_  -u _UserName@ServerName_ -p_MyPassword_ _DatabaseName_

Voila! That's all what it takes to get started. And by the way, it will also work great with a Azure SQL Database.

docker pull shellmaster/sql-cli 

docker run -it --rm --name=sqlTools shellmaster/sql-cli mssql -s ServerName.database.windows.net  -u UserName@ServerName  -p YourPassword -d DatabaseName -e

Reading Notes #279

Cloud

• 5 Tips for Successful Azure App Development (Alex Bennett) - Nice simple tips to get started on th good foot and get the best of cloud architecture.
  
• Deployment made easy with Zeit (Scott Hanselman) - Interesting podcast. I will definitely try both hyper console and that new deployment tool.
  
• Enabling Azure CDN from Azure web app and storage account portal extension (Manling Zhang) - Configuring a CDN as never been that easy. Awsome.
  
• In-order delivery of correlated messages in Logic Apps by using Service Bus sessions (Aprana Seth) - This post explains all the details on how to respect the message's publishing order when using LogicApp in your integration solution.
  
• Tactical Integration with Logic Apps (Michael Stephenson) - Interesting post about the advantages of doing integration using PaaS on Azure.

Programming

• Contributing to .NET for Dummies (Rion Williams) - Another post where the author shares his experience (I love those. That's the real life); this one about participating in an open-source project.

Databases

• Introduction to Azure PowerShell Modules for the SQL Server DBA Part 4 (Edwin Sarmiento) - Of course, things could be created outside of the Azure portal. This last post of the series puts all the pieces together... and even gives us the full script.
  
• Mashup: SQL Server on Linux in Docker on a Mac with Visual Studio Code (Julie Lerman) - Cool post where Julia shares with us the results of her "database in a container" experience.

Miscellaneous

• Reckon you've seen some stupid security things? Here, hold my beer... (Troy Hunt) - Ouf..... I'm not sure if I'm more scared or shocked.