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 #75

Cloud

• Bulk Database Migration from On-Premise SQL Server to SQL Azure - Step 1: Bulk .bacpac Export - First post of a series about exporting many databases on-premise to move then in Azure with a script of course.
• Azure VMs - Managing, Resizing & Interacting with VHDs! (David Baliles) - Nice post, with some good tips and tricks about Azure VM.
• 3 best practices for Windows Azure SQL Reporting development (Craig Kitterman) - Simple rules easy to apply that will make your project to follow best practices.
• Windows Azure IaaS Webcast Series: Part Four Creating Virtual Machines with PowerShell (Michael Washam) - Good serie of webcast series (video) that cover a lot about Azure virtual machine.
• Migrating from a relational to a NoSQL cloud database - Good advices about things to think before doing a migration from relational database to NoSQL.
• Windows Azure Active Directory Supports JSON Web Tokens (Alex Simons) - Good news, more features with Windows Azure Active Directory.
• Updated: Known Issues for Windows Azure Storage Client Library 2.0 for .NET and Windows Runtime - Keep tracks of the changes on the library. The team is working hard to fix these issues.
• Amazon Redshift - The New AWS Data Warehouse - Learn more about the brand-new Redshift from Amazon and how this new AWS data warehouse could help you.
• Monitoring Windows Azure with Foglight (James Newton-King) - That looks like a really good tool. I must try it... Stay tune…
• I Could Sure Use Some Windows Azure Code Samples… (Buck Woody) - Learn more about all the tools and code samples easily (and freely) available for you.
• Windows Azure Active Directory: Making it easier to establish Identity Management in the cloud - Great news about Active directory that announce free features.
• Using existing database with Azure Mobile Services - Nice trick that gives the opportunity to works with Windows Azure Mobile Services and existent database.
• Welcome Windows Azure Insider - Learn more about a new Azure column in the MSDN Magazine and about its authors.
• Windows Azure Service Bus: Messaging Patterns Using Sessions - Great article that explains how to build a messaging application with the Azure Service Bus using Topic. A great complement to the Servise Bus Lab in the Windows Azure Training Kit (WATK).
• Azure table storage WCF custom transport channel (Dustin Metzgar) - Nice post with a full coded solution that explains how to use Azure storage with WCF.
• Managing Multiple Windows Azure Web Site Environments using Visual Studio Publishing Profiles - Nice post that explains how to get the maximum of the publish profiles of Visual Studio and Azure.

Integration

• worldwide integration alliance announced - Congratulation to Breeze, Codit and Matricis Informatique for this worldwide alliance. Long life to Impack Alliance!
• Exploring REST Capabilities of BizTalk Server 2013: Exposing REST Endpoints - Great tutorial that explores the REST features of BizTalk 2013 with synch and asynch processes.
• Exploring REST Capabilities of BizTalk Server 2013: Consuming REST Endpoints - Second part of a nice tutorial. This time exploring how to consume services (Get, Delete).
• BizTalk Summit 2012, Redmond–Experience (Saravana Kumar) - Quick summary of what happens at the BizTalk Summit this year. More to come...
• BizTalk Server 2013 Image Available on Windows Azure Virtual Machines - Hurray! It finally arrive! Quick go to Windows Azure portal.
• BizTalk Mapper Patterns: How to map values from a repeating node into a single node using conditions – Again a great post to improve our mapping skills. Most of the time the clients prefer that we keep using only the functoids. This post may gives you arguments to go other ways and get real performance.

Programming

• Full Tagging Support Now Available in the Readability API (David Sleight) - Yeah! It's time to update my script. More to come in a future blog post.
• Updating my Windows Phone App to Windows Phone 8 (Scott Hanselman) - Nice tutorial that highlight some key features that need to be addressed in order to build a nice Windows Phone 8 applications.
• Comparing two techniques in .NET Asynchronous Coordination Primitives (Scott Hanselman) - The logical following of the previous post ... in this one Scott is comparing different methods to do async.
• Announcing the ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 Release Candidate (Scott Gu)- Details on what's in the new Entity Framework EF 6 beta 2.
• Do You Really Want To Be Agile? (Marc Clifton) - A long but very complete post/story/tutorial about building an application using agile.
• SQL Server Data-Tier Application Framework (November 2012) Available - More details about what new or fixed in the new release of DACFx.
• ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 (Release Candidate) (Scott Hanselman) - Learn more about the new release of web tools that the asp.net team move to open source. And if you ever want to know why they’re doing that, this is the post to read.

Miscellaneous

• Big Data - Very interesting thoughts about what should be "smart application" today since the so much information is easily accessible thru Big Data.
• Try Meditation to Strengthen Your Resilience - If the resilience is good for our code, it should be good for ourselves too!? Nice post that tip-off how to improve our resilience.
• Windows Surface RT: Pros & Cons (John Brandon) - Interesting thoughts about popularity in the tablet device word.
• How to be a Consultant, Part 5: Verbal Communication Skills (David Pallmann) - Great add-on to the serie: How to be a Consultant. This post gives good tips to improve the communication skills. This is for everyone since nobody works alone in his basement without seeing someone once in a while.
• Painting the Walls, with IdeaPaint - What a nice idea! We always need more space on the dry board...

~Frank

Reading Notes #57

 

Cloud

• How to Assess Costs of using Windows Azure for your Applications (Himanshu Singh) - Quick post about a windows paper that provide all the information on Azure usual monthly charges.

Check out the paper.

• Hands-on Windows Azure Services for Windows (Maarten Balliauw) - M. Balliauw is asking a good question, that I ears often: Why should I do this?
• Windows Azure Visio Shapes - Yahooooo! I never enough Visio shape... Thanks Buck Woody!
• Service Bus for Windows server, the new features - Good post that introduces the new features of the service Bus and explains them quickly.
• Cloud Cover – Episode 84 - Windows Azure Storage Updates and a Preview of the Client Storage Library vNext - As usual nice video (shorter than last time ;) ). It reviews the new features available in Azure Storage, and show a preview of the Azure Storage libraries that will be release soon.

Programming

• ASP.NET Web API and Azure Blob Storage (Yao) - Super tutorial that show step by step how to manage your Azure Blob Storage by code, by doing a nice helper class.
• The 5 thing to immediately grab from EF Open Source - Good post that point out some place where you can see good code sample.
• When do you need a 3-tier architecture? - Good question! And this post is trying to answer it.
• Building an Offline HTML5 Application - Great tutorial about a well-structured HTML5 application that will also works offline.
• Entity Framework 5 and 6 Roadmap - The list of interesting features of the EF5 and some that are planned for the version 6.
• Beyond Agile Estimation Part I: Measuring Key Data Points - Nice post that summarize how to use some keys counters in order to have a better estimation of the project delivery date.
• CloudSurvey (Nathan Totten) - Nice work. A great sample to see how things are done.
• WCF - Top 10 Interview Questions (Imran Abdul Ghani) - Excellent post and excellent revision of what is WCF. Short and clear.
• Exterminating Common jQuery Bugs (Elijah Manor) - Wow what a great video. It goes through all most frequent mistake we make, explain why it doesn't works and fix it. Take a look at the tool he is using. An open source (soon) presentation framework. Very nice!
• 10 Application Performance Tuning Tips - Nice tips, simple and efficient.
• So you want to contribute to EF? Part 1: Introduction (Arthur Vickers) - Excellent series not only to kwon more about how to contribute with the Entity framework (EF) but with any kind of open source project.

Miscellaneous

• 5 Ways to Think Wisely in Development (Dimitrios Kalogirou) - Nice post that expose 5 ways to be a wiser developer.
• Sitting is Making You Fat and Killing You - Nice warning post that explains why say sit for a long period is bad and gives some tips to improve our comfort.
• Who Are You Really Mad At? (Peter) - This is about a life lesson: Pause. And like in the post you will be reward.
• Time to stop reusing your passwords - Nice reminder of the reason why we shouldn't reuse our e-mail.
• Get The Most Out of Your Mornings - Nice post that explain how to you could use your mornings to add 280 hours in your year.
• Time Management Tips #3 - Three Wins for the Week (JD Meier) - Simple tips from the book Getting Results the Agile Way that will help you to have a better week.
• 10 classic mistakes that plague software development projects (Justin James) - Nice post that make me smiling. I challenge you to pass through the list without thinking: oh yeah that's so true...
• True Secret to Success (It's Not What You Think) (Geoffrey James) - Suggest a very simple mental exercise to make your day more positive.
• I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here's Why. (Kyle Wiens) - I agree the grammar is really important, even if I’m not good as I want to be.
• 3 Interview Questions That Reveal Everything (Jeff Haden) - Nice post. I like the questions it's true that you should learn a lot from them even if the candidate is not "verbose".

~ Frank

Reading Notes #43

Cloud

• Readers: What’s Your Cloud Strategy? - Learn more about some cloud services offered and that are or will be open source.
• Return Empty Set Instead of ResourceNotFound from Table Storage (Wade Wegner) - Great catch. This little thing is easy to forget, but if you don’t want throwing exception when querying Azure Storage you should read this post.
• The Rising Value of Cloud Computing - Nice post that talk about the future of the cloud provider and what those companies needs to stay in the race.
• Microsoft's answer to Amazon's CloudSearch - The fight continue and this is good for the users. Its mean more products for cheaper.
• Outside-the-Box Pizza, Part 4: Social Integration with Twitter (David Pallmann) - I never thought that a pizzeria could be on Twitter or any social network. This post proved me wrong by explaining the why and the very simple how.
• Comparing IAAS and PAAS: A Developer’s Perspective - Nice post very clear. It explains all the differences between the two more popular cloud «as a service» model.
• What's New? Introducing AWS Marketplace - Nice this 1-click deployment button in the brand new AWS Marketplace.
• Logging in Azure: Part 1 (Tyler Doerksen) - Very nice post that show how to implement, with a simple twist, how to log with Log4Net (or transform an application using it) in an Azure Blob storage. Part 1 of a series.
• Logging in Azure: Part 2–Table Storage (Tyler Doerksen) - Second post of a series that explain how to implement a solution so that Log4Net write in an Azure storage table. This leverage the search for a particular type of error.
• Scale Data Applications with Sql Azure - Short post that hi-light the advantage of using SQL Azure and Sharding to scale out your application.

Programming

• Need A Cloud Monkey? Netflix Unleashes Simian Army - Monkeys is the name of all those programmes or applications that are used by Netflix to watch their system. This post report that Netflix announce they will give the code as open source.
• Outside-the-Box Pizza, Part 3: Mobility & Responsive Web Design (David Pallmann) - In this post all the CSS tricks to support the Responsive web design will be explains. The goal is to support the army of different mobile devices.
• Why you need to learn async in .NET (weblogs.asp.net) - Nice post with a code sample that illustrate the advantage of using the async framework. Let’s the code represents “the what” of what you want to do not “the how”.
• WCF-SQL Adapter and permissions - Well explain. I got this once, and I remember spending few minutes trying to understand this error message... It's a shame that it's not the good one that is display first...
• Lowering the Barriers to Code Generation with T4 - If you are not already using T4 or if you think code generation is only for "big project", this post is for you. This very nice tutorial shows how to use T4 to improve the quality, the stability and the readability of your code. A must for all serious .Net developer.

Miscellaneous

• Defining Your Personal Brand as a Developer (Part 1 of 2) (Jonathan Rozenblit) - Interesting, let’s see what append in part 2.
• Most Valuable Professionals? Give Me A Break. (Davy Brion) - It couldn’t be that bad! I agree that like in any sphere some people are lazy or surf on some appearance but I hope that not reflecting the majority.
• What Microsoft MVP means to me « Inviting Epiphany - I don't know if this post is the answer to the other one, but in my head this is more likely what is a real MVP.
• Introducing Iris: A Big Leap Forward in Drawing Meaning from the Web (Chris Dary) - I'm using Readability for a long time now. I but tools using their API. I ask them a lot of questions. And one thing keeps coming back: improved. They always answer my questions. They are listening the developers, trying to make the API or their tools better. A big thumb up to Readability. Try it by yourself you'll see.
• How to Attend a Conference as Yourself (Peter) - Interesting point of view. When you are at a conference, who are you?

Reading Notes #23

 

Cloud

• Implementing 5 important principles of REST using WCF Services (Shivprasad koirala) - Good post about the REST base.
  
• My Application Platform Quotes (Nikosan) - List of what you will need to start with Azure high performance computing (HPC)
  
• The cloud giveth and the cloud taketh away - The cloud sometime is hard with us, here a example: www.theshallowsbook.com
  
• Connecting BizTalk with a mobile app using Azure Appfabric ServiceBus Queues, REST and WCF (Magnus) - Nice implementation of the AppFabric service bus queues in a integration application.
  
• SQL Azure Reporting Server – Windows Azure platform (sqlblog) - First step to use the Azure Reporting Server - Creation of a server. This post is the first one of a series, more to come.
  
• How to integrate a BizTalk Server application with Service Bus Queues and Topics (msdn.microsoft.com) - Learn what needs to be done so you can use Azure Service bus queues with BizTalk, in this very (and i mean very) well done and detailed post.
  
• Connection Modes (msdn.microsoft.com) - Good post explaining the many Azure Service bus connectivity options.
  
• Windows Azure Best Practices: Affinity Groups (BuckWoody) - Quick tips about affinity groups.
  
• Completing the Trip with AppFabric Queues - Part 2 of 2 on a quick demo playing with the AppFabric queues.
  
• Unable to find assembly references that are compatible with the target framework ‘Silverlight,Version=v4.0, Profile=WindowsPhone71′ (wadewegner.com) - Useful tips on a very easy to have issue with NuGet
• Cloud Cover Show: Episode 66 - Using Windows Azure Storage from the Windows Phone -  A nice walks through the NuGet packages: Windows Azure storage and Windows Phone.

Programming

• Software Disasters: Recovery and Prevention Strategies - Dollars spent in prevention are worth more than dollars spent in recovery.
• oData Binding for Navigation Controls (ASP.NET AJAX) - UI control that support oData binding with the usual Telerik quality... nice
• Binding to oData with jQuery Grid - The Infragistics version of a grid using oData.
• Method chaining and lazy evaluation in Ruby (Jeff Kreeftmeijer) - Nice post. Give some good tips about structure.
• How To Write Plugin in jQuery (Shakeel Iqbal | 28 Nov 2011 | Unedited contribution) - Yet another tutorial about creating a jQuery plugin. What is nice in this one is that is doing by iteration, starting with an empty plugin then adding bit of code to finish with some really great.

Miscellaneous

• Guide to Freeing up Disk Space under Windows 7 (Scott Hanselman) - A nice reminder…
• Chatty’s Dream Design Project - This is looking good as a coop pet project... It could use the last Azure social game SDK... any one?
• Repaving your PC: the easier way(maartenba) - Very smart use of chocolate and PowerShell... I will use it.

~Franky

Reading Notes #22

Cloud

• Creating and Publishing a Web Application to Windows Azure in 15 Minutes (PubSec) - See how the last update really did boost vs2010.
• How to consume RESTful Services using jQuery and/or Javascript (BrunoTerkaly) - Nice sample/code snippet of JQuery to call a service using RESTful
• A few tips to get up and running with the Azure AppFabric Access Control Service - Save some pain, here are great tips about using AppFabric ACS.
• Sticky Azure WCF service roles (SailingRock) - Nice work around to connectivity issue when using Azure.
• Azure Service Bus Tester (Roman Kiss | 20 Nov 2011) - An amazing demo very well explain and detail about Azure Service Bus.
• Moving Channel9.msdn.com to Windows Azure - A real case: moving to the cloud. A great story.
• Securing AppFabric Service bus with ACS - Quick introduction to the new Access Control Service (ACS).

  Clemens Vasters recorded a great video describing all these capabilities in details.

• Resources to run Open Source Stacks on Windows Azure (blogs.msdn.com) - You can use many different languages with Azure (that why it's so great) here some resources for: java, apache. php. node.js  and ruby.
• Basic Patterns for Everyday Programming (laktek.com) - Five bests practices that should be in your day to day.
• What the Heck Are Document Databases? - Really interesting article, that explain not only what are NoSql database but what you can do with it and some differences between them.
  

  • MongoDB (mongodb.org)
  • CouchDB (couchdb.apache.org)
  • RavenDB (ravendb.net)

  An Alternative, Not a Replacement, for Relational Databases

• Federation Metadata in SQL Azure Part 1 – Federations and Federation Members (Cihan Biyikoglu - SQL Azure) - Great post to start to demystify where is the metadata when using federation with Azure Sql. sql code.
• Communication between Windows Azure Roles (Avkash Chauhan - MSFT) – Links on other nice post about communication in Azure. 

  Only role instances that are part of the same Windows Azure application can communicate with each other

• New Azure SDK, JLint, TFS, and guest host Martin Woodward - Nice podcast that review the actuality
• Partitions in Windows Azure Table - Good starting point to learn the basic and some best practices about partitioning.
• BlobShare Sample: ACS-Protected File Sharing (Vittorio Bertocci - MSFT) - Nice complement to the Cover Cloud Show (episode 63). This post explain how the access control service works with BlobShare by following a scenario.
• Implementing 5 important principles of REST using WCF Services (Shivprasad koirala) - Good post about the REST base.

Programming

• Ajax Control Toolkit November 2011 Release - Nice tooltips balloon and featured tabs are presented in this post.
• Ruby Golf - This post give some tricks to shortened your code, and introduce a competition... Dare you?
• Manage Project Libraries with NuGet - Everything you should know (and more) about the great NuGet
• Devenez un ninja avec Ruby #1 (SANCHEZ Benjamin) - Quick tips how to play with operators || and &&. In French.
• 6 Cool #VS2010 Quick Tips you should know when working with Visual Studio 2010 - VS2010 is a great tools, this post will show some great feature. May be like me one that you didn't know about!
• Introducing gem_git: tiny tools for working with gems’ code via Git (omgbloglol) - Really nice idea.

Miscellaneous

• Nico and Rory’s Stories (Chatty DM) - This is how we all should do. Bravo Chatty!
• 5 Unusual Ways to Become a Better Speaker (Jeff Haden) - How to level up your “preacher” skill

~Franky