Reading Notes #506

Good Monday, Already time to share my reading notes of the week. A list of all the articles, and blog posts, that catch my interest during the week.

If you think you may have interesting content, share it!

Cloud

• Introduction to Azure Chaos Studio (Paul Michaels) - This is a very interesting tool, looking forward to see more services included

Programming

• Asynchronous Programming in C# (Sukhrob) - A good post that takes the time to explain the why.Why we should complexify our code to make it asynchronous.
• ASP.NET Core CRUD with NoSQL: Part 3 (Matthew Groves) - We continue to learn, this time, a bit more about the sql+ and the create of the crud API.
• All Roads Lead Back to Infrastructure as Code (Joe Duffy) - From where it started to where it is going this very detailed post covers it all.
• Bringing code navigation to communities (Patrick Thomson) - This is really interesting... Looking forward to read more about it.
• Major update to the PowerShell Extension for Visual Studio Code (Sydney Smith) - Ok wow... I need a PowerShell script right now just to try that new version; it looks amazing!
• Visual Studio on an ultra-wide monitor - Visual Studio Blog (Mads Kristensen) - It's not a "problem" I particularly have because I used 2 regular monitors, but I heard about it. It's really nice to see that so many possibilities are available to us.

Podcasts

• Docker Desktop for Linux is Here! (DevOps and Docker Talk) - Great episode so much energy! Discussion about the brand new Docker Desktop for Linux, who to report bugs, ask for a new feature, and the DockerCon!
• Épisode 15 - Gengis Khan (Les Pires Moments de l'Histoire) - I keep those episodes very preciously as a threat, and this one was such a good one! It's in French and the topic is the biggest empire that ever existed... No, it's the Romain.
• How to Productively Show Off What You've Learned (Modern Mentor) - Nice episode. That's a good idea I should share what I think of books and posts I read! ;) I guess I'm not too bad.
• Comparing Infrastructure-as-Code with Chris Klug (.NET Rocks!) - Terraform, Pulumi, ARM, and Bicep... All those are mentioned because it's all about Infrastructure-as-Code. Interesting talk about the different options we have.

Miscellaneous

• Understanding the Role of a Developer Evangelist (Karl Hughes) - As a cloud advocate, I don't remember how often I explained what is my role. This 360-degree post covers all angles and provides a really good answer.

~frank

Reading Notes #259

Cloud

• 'But it works on my cloud!' – are your developers still making the same mistakes in a world of DevOps and PaaS services? (James Broome) - This post shares an interesting thought about the new situation of developers, who works with the cloud.
  
• Announcing Azure DevTest Labs support for creating environment with ARM templates (Xiaoying Guo) - Never heard of Azure Devtest lab? Well, you should! Now all your best formulas will be deployable with ARM, that's even better.
  
• Announcing general availability of preview features and new APIs in Azure Search (Liam Cavanagh) - Even if the 2015-02-28-preview is still supported, it will now be safe to change for something more ...recent.
  
• Azure App Service is really 2 services, not 4 (Chris Pietschmann) - This is an interesting post that explains how and why the Azure Apps are packages that way. Once you understand that you see that you will not be limited by your initial pick.
  
• Introducing: Time picker in Application Insights Analytics (Noa Kuperberg) - Nice little detail that will simplify our queries.
  
• Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer: November update and summer recap (Cristy Gonzalez) - Learn all the details about the new features and the old bug fixes in this post.
  
• Migrate a Storage Account to ARM (Alexandre Brisebois) - Important PowerShell tooling that we should ALL have... A least if you've been doing some Azure for a little while.
  
• Static Website Hosting in Azure Storage (Chris Pietschmann) - A website for 1$ by month yes, it is possible on Azure, but with some limitation.
  
• Step-By-Step: Multi-Site Azure VPN Revisited (Pierre Roman) - Great re-design of a network/ infrastructure in the cloud.
  
• Visual Studio Tools for Azure Functions (Andrew B Hall) - Since the day one of Azure Functions, this tool is requested by the community. The early adopter can now start using this first preview.

Programming

• Use Visual Studio Team Services As A Continuous Integration Platform for GitHub - These great tutorial shows how to realize a perfectly integrated CI solution between Github and VSTS.

Reading Notes #241

Cloud

• Announcing the release of the Azure Usage and Billing Portal (Chris Risner) - I have been waiting long time to get a tool like that. I will definitely clone it this week.
  
• Azure Infographic: Cloud Design Patterns - Wow! A fantastic infographic that shows many different patterns that should be used when developing with Azure.
  
• Azure Search Suggesters: Helping users to find search keywords - Nice demo that shows the power of suggesters and how to implement them.
  
• Create your first botframework bot in Azure! (Robin Osborne) - This post is a nice tutorial that gives a lot of ideas about what you could do with the botfrmework.
  
• Writing simple REST-client for Azure Search (Gunnar Peipman) - Quick demo to show how developing with Azure Search is easy.

Programming

• 5 Impeccable Reasons Node.js is Great for Startups (Keval Padia) - It all makes sense, but I didn't think about it before reading those five reasons.
  
• Visual Studio Code, your new Markdown editor - Another post that affirms how VisualStusio Code is great. It must be true... ;)

Miscellaneous

• 3 Significant Flaws in the Concept of Googliness (Melissa Burns) - Interesting point of view about what look first as good idea that could turn out as bad ideas...
  
• New Microsoft and Open Source Partner Community (Openness Team) - Nice ne community that just begins.
  
• The Anti-Meeting Culture (James Whittaker) - Very interesting thoughs about meetings and an even more interesting ways to make them more productive.

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 #222

Suggestion of the week

• Long Running Tasks in Logic Apps (Jeff Hollan) - This nice post explains how Logic App support natively long running task, and how to do it.

Cloud

• Deploying Nano Server to Microsoft Azure (Alexandre Brisebois) - Another great tutorial / recipe like we love them... with all the code then the explorations.
  
• Announcing more open options and choice on Microsoft Azure (Corey Sanders) - Cool announce that should satisfy Linux lovers.
  
• Leverage OCR to full text search your images within Azure Search (Liam Cavanagh) - Interesting post that shows options until OCR capability is integrated to Azure Search to extract texts for images.
  
• Upload a VHD to Azure Storage Using AzCopy (Alexandre Brisebois) - We all needed or will need this tool at one point in time... a post to remember.
  
• SQL Server AlwaysOn Cluster Template updated with internal listeners and optimized performance (Ninar Nuemah) - This post introduces a great infrastructure for high-performance solution without compromising the security.
  
• Annotations detail blade now available in Application Insights (Mike Gresley) - So much information at the tips of our fingers .
  
• Background tasks for your web site using Azure WebJobs (Jon Hilton) - Interesting post that introduces storage queues and webjob to manage background processes.

Data

• Introducing: Elasticsearch with Azure File storage (Hans Krijger) - Great tutorial that explains how to get started.

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 #210

Suggestion of the week

• Connect(); // 2015 - All keynotes, Q&A and the technical videos are here...

Cloud

• Load data into Azure Search with zero code required (Evan Boyle) - Great news the Azure Search team had been working very hard, and they give us a super data import tool.
  
• Deep Diagnostics for Web Apps with Application Insights (Merav Davidson) - This post does a very good summary of the announcement yesterday at the Connect about the role that play Application Insights into the ALM.
  
• Announcing the Azure SDK 2.8 for .NET (Brady Gaster) - This post explains all the new featutes that are included in the new SDK 2.8.
  
• Azure Diagnostics Integration with Application Insights (Harel Broitman) - Nice post that shows how Application Insights can help us to find the bottleneck while debugging, thanks to the new SDK upgrade.
  
• Using Azure PowerShell 1.0 to Deploy an ARM Template - Awesome post that gives a good example with the new Azure PowerShell v 1.0.
  
• Azure App Service Updates – November 2015 (Jeffrey Fritz) - This post shares the last news of azure app services.
  
• Using Azure Automation in Azure - everywhere (Gary Keong) - Interesting post that highlights the difference between different Azure cloud and how to adapt our scripts.
  
• Azure Mobile Apps November 2015 Update (Matthew Henderson) - Great news features are all explains in this post.

Databases

• Using Power BI with SQL Data Warehouse (Drew DiPalma) - Another nice example how to connect PowerBI to something else to get awesome results.

Reading Notes 193

Suggestion of the week

• Inside Azure Search: Chaos Engineering (Heather Nakama) - Great article about this really amazing way to test: chaos monkeys

Cloud

• Container Apps now available in the Azure Marketplace (Vybava Ramadoss) - Good news, marketplace just got a new "alley"...
  
• General availability: Azure Virtual Machine services in Azure Resource Manager - Great, ARM continue to grow.
  
• AzureSearchTool - the easiest option to query Azure Search! (Max Melcher) - This post introduces a very promissing tool, that is now available but in an early phase.
  
• Announcing the 1.0.0 release of Application Insights Windows SDKs (Joshua Weber) - Great new about this SDK, reaching an important milestone.
  
• My First Azure DocumentDB Account (Eitan Blumin) - Nice tutorial that explains how to create a new documentDB from scratch.

Programming

• Announcing Atom 1.0 - Woohoo. Version 1 finally makes it. Really happy.

Miscellaneous

• Windows 10 is coming...here's what to tell non-technical parent (Scott Hanselman) - Once again, really good video for non-technical people. This one explains how to get ready, and get your free upgrade.

Image from  Inside Azure Search: Chaos Engineering

Reading Notes #167

Suggestion of the week

• SQL Server to Azure Search Synchronization (Scott Klein)- Great demo with Liam C. This is a 15-minute video that you don't want t miss.

Cloud

• Now easier to create a sample Azure SQL Database and develop schema in Visual Studio (Sanjay Nagamangalam) - Wow, I cannot be easier than that. The post also contains a short video that shows how to do it.

• How to Sync SQL Server Data with Azure Search (Liam Cavanagh) - This post explains all the advantage to use Azure Search to implement a fulltext search in your application. It also shows how to do it.

Programming

• .NET Blog (Christiaan Rakowski, Linux Al, Ron, Nathan Dimitriades, Warren, EShy, Thomas Levesque, Svolo4, Jeremiah Gowdy, les, James S, Srigopal C Immo Landwerth [MSFT]) - Very interesting and complete post that explains the goals behind the .Net Core and how it is useful to us.

• Clean Code – Is my code always readable? - A simple but very efficient way to think when we a writing or re-factoring our code. I like it.

Books

DynamoDB Applied Design Patterns
By Uchit Vyas, Prabhakaran Kuppusamy
Publisher: Packt Publishing
Released: September 2014
ISBN 13: 9781783551897

This book takes you where you are and brings you directly in the cumulus. It starts gently by explaining the basic of the NoSQL, then move to DynamoDB fundamental: what is a data model and how to create a table.

Chapter after chapter, the book moves you to the next level by bringing new complexities and explains how to manage them with his simple but complete scenario. All the code samples are in Java and extremely well explained. With my .Net background, I always understood.

The book ends by presenting many best practices to get the best of DynamoDB, and compare it to other popular NoSQL databases.

I will definitely recommend this book to all people looking for a NoSQL database. DynamoDB is unavoidable when we are looking for a no-relational database, and this book is a must to have in our bookshelf.

Miscellaneous

• How to Ask for Feedback That Will Actually Help You - Interesting post about the importance of a good communication.

~Frank B

Reading Notes #153

Suggestion of the week

• Azure Virtual Machines Part 0: A VM Primer - This post is "the reference" about the Azure VM. It explains mostly... everything about them.
  
• Azure Event Hubs, Queues and Workers (Jeff Levinson) - Really great tutorial that put together many different components.

Cloud

• Azure Search Scenarios and Capabilities (Pablo Castro) - This post is a nice summary of the Azure Search.
  
• Getting Started With Microsoft Azure Search - This post describes how to start playing with the new Azure search feature. A nice library that wrapped the REST API call is also used and shared on Github.
  
• Mostly Cloudy–August 21st 2014 - Nice post that summarizes what's new about the Azure world and what's coming.

Programming

• New feature in Pester 3.0: Code Coverage metrics (Dave Wyatt) - Pester continues to evolve. This post introduces the code coverage feature in the new release.
  
• Introducing Gulp, Grunt, Bower, and npm support for Visual Studio (Scott Hanselman) - This post presents a very promising integration for VS14, if you are web developer read this.
  
• Playing with Roslyn (Ayende Rahien) - Interesting "test" to play around with Roslyn.
  
• Using Visual Studio 2013 with TFS and Git repositories on same project - Nice tips!

Miscellaneous

• 10 Vital WordPress Security Tips (Guest Blogger) - This post provides the perfect quick review of our security knowledge when blogging.

~Frank

Google Desktop pour développeur

Est-ce que vous utilisez Google Desktop?  Est-ce que vous connaissez?  Vous devriez, c’est merveilleux.  Comme son nom l’indique c’est un Google, mais pour le contenu de votre ordinateur.  Mais vous me direz:”Windows propose déjà un outil de recherche pourquoi je devrais en installer un autre?”.   Voici la réponse…