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 #112

Suggestion of the week

• UNIT of Work Design Pattern (Shivprasad koirala) - Good post that explains an important design pattern.

Cloud

• **Easy Background Processing with WebAPI and Windows Azure (Erez Harari) - Great tutorial that gets you ready to make your apps.
  
• Big Data – Role of Cloud Computing in Big Data – Day 11 of 21 (Pinal Dave) - Interesting post about Big Data history.
  
• CSI: Re-enabling Remote Desktop with PowerShell after you've blocked it with your own firewall rule (Scott Hanselman) - Very useful tips.
  
• Winsmarts.com (Sahil Malik) - Short post about how to get setup and enjoy Azure PowerShell.
  
• Using web.config transforms with NLog configuration - | Gunnar Peipman - Programming Blog - Nice post that explains how to configure our config file so it will work with transform, NLog and Azure.
  
• Developing Windows Azure Mobile Services server-side - Very complete tutorial with a lot of details that cover also tests.
  
• Microsoft SQL Server Hybrid Cloud Blog Series (Madhan_Arumugam_Ramakrishnan) - A lot of good article references.

Programming

• **Time Saving Tips to Get Your Windows Phone App Started (Lori Lalonde) - Useful post that quickly summarizes all the options you have when starting a new phone project.
  
• IEnumerable VS IQueryable (More..) - Nice quick post that explains clearly with sample two often mismatch classes.
  
• Var VS IEnumerable (More..) - Nice post that shows some subtile differences that could have an unexpected impact.
  
• Difference betweeen ASP.NET WebForms and ASP.NET MVC (Imran Abdul Ghani) - Aaah! Loud and clear.
  
• Announcing the Release of Visual Studio 2013 and Great Improvements to ASP.NET and Entity Framework (asp.net) - You probably eared about the brand new Visual Studio 2013, but to know what new in it, this is the post to read.

Miscellaneous

• Enterprise Architecture: Reflections on My Journey of Becoming A Systems Thinking Enterprise Architect (Alan Hakimi) - I liked this post where the author share is experience on how he became an architect.

~Frank

Reading Notes #111

Cloud

• Dev and Test in the Cloud: Explained (Jonathan Rozenblit) - For dev and tests environment, windows Azure is a must.
  
• Quick Script: Copy All Blobs to New Storage Account Using PowerShell (Tyler Doerksen) - Nice and useful script.

Programming

• jQuery UI Demystified: Part 1 - Since jquery and jqueryUI are so often used use these days, avoid just doing copy-paste. Take few minutes and read this nice tutorials that explains how to use the jqueryUI widget.
  
• Tools: SlowCheetah - XML Transforms (Igor Zalmanovich ) - Definitively, a tool to have.
  
• Sorting with LINQ, Dynamically -- Visual Studio Magazine (Peter Vogel) - Nice quick tips to sort a grid by any columns dynamically.
  
• HTML5 Sparkline chart for data-intense, small-scale Data Visualization - Evangelism - Great tool, it looks easy to use and powerful enough for many different situations. Looking forward to trying it.
  
• How to Get Started with the Ignite UI Layout Manager - Interesting "UI organizer" and look simple to use.

Database

• ASP.NET MVC: Configuring ASP.NET MVC 4 Membership with a SQL CE Database - Nice tutorial that shows how to configure SqlCe to be used as a database for membership.
  
• Creating NONCLUSTERED INDEXES on Massive Tables in Windows Azure SQL Database - Nice post that demystify the indexes and explains why we should use them.
  
• SQL Server Compact 4 desktop app with simple Private Deployment and LINQ to SQL (ErikEJ) - Very complete tutorial that explains an easy deployment with SQLCE.

Miscellaneous

• Why You Should Be Able to Work from Home - Interesting thoughts about working from home and how it would be good for you, and your work.
  
• Stop asking people what they think! (and start watching what they do) - I agree. How many times did I ear don't give what the clients asks but what they needs.
  
• Have you seen Google Trekker? (Baffin Paddler) - Wow! Google always found a new way to impress me.
  

~Frank