Reading Notes #157

Suggestion of the week

• Microsoft Azure Web Site Cheat Sheet - Wow! I really think that ALL the information about Azure website is on this page, and it's super clear. Amazing job.

Cloud

• Soup to Nuts: From Raw Hardware to Cloud-Enabled Device - Excellent article that shows very exiting Raspberry Pi projects with Azure Services.

• Cloud, cloud, everywhere - This post makes me realize how many different cloud solution I'm using.

Programming

• Three steps to use jQuery UI in ASP.NET MVC 5 (Dhananjay Kumar) - Direct to the point. This is a good tutorial to not losing time and gets our solution correctly configured the first time.

• 3 Essential Sublime Text Plugins for Node & JavaScript Developers (Scott Smith) - Great! Life is so beautiful when we have the right tools.

• Inception-Style Nested Data Formats (Scott Hanselman) - What seem to be a good solution at one point could put you in a big problem tomorrow. This post explains one possible cause.

• WordPress -> Ghost -> Harp (Remy Sharp) - Great post about customizing a Harp blog (node.js).

• **The Ajax Control Toolkit are now maintained by DevExpress - Good news for a very nice library.

• Visualizing Security Information with Fiddler (Eric Lawrence) - This post explains how to customize the view in Fiddler to see security information.

• I was wrong about AngularJS - In this post, the author explains why after a difficult start, he now prefers AngularJS to BackBone.

• Implement Step-by-Step Generic Repository Pattern in C# - Nice post to know more about howto implent this important pattern.

Database

• Azure SQL Database Point in Time Restore (Tony Petrossian) - Nice post to know more about Azure SQL database backup.
  
• Let's play with Azure SQL Database backup and the Point in Time Restore (Frank Boucher) - A simple post to demistify the new Backup/Restore service in Windows Azure. ;)

Miscellaneous

• The most marketable skill in the job market: communication! - Nice advice for all new people on the market.

• Markdown Style Guide - This post gives some simple tips to keep our Markdown document easy to read when not converted.

• Announcing Windows 10 (Terry Myerson) - Great news about features in the next Windows...

• Windows 10: First Impressions - Get some idea of how it feels..
• How to create a Virtual Machine for run Windows 10 Technical Preview (Sara Silva) - This post is perfect if you want to try by yourself the new Windows 10, it will guides you to be all set.

~Frank

Reading Notes #147

Suggestion of the week

• What happened to Code Spaces could happen to you. On Amazon, Azure and any host out there. (Maarten Balliauw) - Great post that highlight today's security concerns and responsibilities.
  
• Day 12: Implement Search Using Inline Forms and AJAX (James Chambers) - Great tutorial to build a Ajax control in an Asp.Net MVC context.
  

Cloud

• Deploying WordPress on Azure and using MySQL in a VM (Chris) - Nice post where the author tells us his journey when he was looking for a new blog engine and how effortless it was to get it online.
  
• Microsoft #Azure – Where Should I Start? - This post is a great starting point for anyone looking for good references: books, e-books, podcast, websites, etc.
  

Programming

• NuGet Package of the Week: ASP.NET Web API Caching with CacheCow and CacheOutput (Scoot Hanselman) - Useful Nuget package to manage the cache.
  
• Day 8: Semi-Automatic Bootstrap – Editor Templates (James Chambers) - Nice post. simple and efficient. Day 10: HtmlHelper Extension Methods - Nice tutorial on how to create a Html Helper using Gravatar as context.
  
• CodeLens for Git improvements in Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate Update 3 RC (Real McCoy, Peter Jean-Marc Prieur) - Really amazing add-ons this CodeLens. I hope the next project I will work on will be on Git so I can try it. ;)
  
• ASP.NET Session State using SQL Server In-Memory (Ken Kilty) - Interesting introduction to a new feature that come with SQL Server 2014.
  

Miscellaneous

• Creating custom data graphics in Visio (Visio Team) - Nice tutorial that explains how to improve our diagrams very easily.

~Frank

Reading Notes #51

The Cloud Storage

Cloud

• Setting up a webfarm using Windows Azure Virtual Machines (Maarten Balliauw) - Nice post that explains how to build a web farm with a free load balancer using the brand new Windows Azure. This post pass-through all steps putting the emphasis on important notion to have a nice web farm up and running.

[…]Sysprep ensures the machine can be cloned into a new machine, getting its own settings like a hostname and IP address. A non-sysprepped machine can thus never be cloned.[…]

• GitHub for Windows Azure Websites (Maarten Balliauw) - This tutorial is very easy to follow and will help to to setup a Windows Azure Website that will use Git as sources instead of regular package.
• Windows Azure Service Management API Cheat Sheet with PowerShell (Michael Washam) - Nice PowerShell script sample that show how easy it is to manage the new Azure capabilities thru the API.
• Reintroducing Windows Azure, Part 1: The New Management Portal (David Pallmann) - Nice first post of a series of four this one introduce the new Azure portal with also a quick recap of the "stuff".
• Reintroducing Windows Azure, Part 2: Windows Azure Web Sites (David Pallmann) - This second post of the nice series presents all the new features around the Windows Azure Websites. Enjoy!
• Microsoft Gives Windows Azure Amazonian Facelift (Cade Metz) - After June 7, Windows Azure is definitely a cloud platform or cloud infrastructure or cloud... something that must be considerate if you planning to go in the cloud.
• Episode 83 - Windows Azure June 2012 Release - This is the longest episode of the Cloud Cover Show, but a great one! It talks about so many things... Find the time, it's a must.
• Updates to Windows Azure Storage – Reduced Transaction Pricing and Geo Replication (Gaurav) - Everything you need to know on Azure Storage and is geo replication feature (this post as been updated).
• 10x Price Reduction for Windows Azure Storage Transactions - Nice recap of all the novelties about Azure Storage.
• Thoughts on AWS (Arthur) - Nice post. A real AWS environment is break down to expose every part and the author gives is opinion about it.
• Can you use BizTalk in Azure Virtual machine for production use? (saravana) - Nice post that explain the details that you must know before using the cloud for your production environment. This is following this one.
• The cloud will cost you, but you’ll be happy to pay (Service Mesh Dave Roberts) - Very interesting post that explain the Jevons paradox and is application the cloud computing.
• Loading data to SQL Azure the fast way - Incredibly complete post. The perfect post to before you get started with massive data import into SqlAzure.
• Windows Azure Virtual Machines (Michael Washam) - Amazing post that wrap-up everything about the brand new Azure virtual machine and virtual network. All the features are deeply explains. A must for all it peoples.
• Reintroducing Windows Azure, Part 3: Virtual Machines (David Pallmann) - Third post in the series this one focus on windows VM. How to create, configure, connect and use them.
• Reintroducing Windows Azure, Part 4: Linux Virtual Machines (David Pallmann) - Same thing as the previous one except this one is about Linux VM.
• Windows Azure SQL Reporting is now available - That great news a good reporting tool is always important. More to come.

Programming

• Marked As Pertinent - The perfect post to read when looking for a NoSql (or a key/value store), because this post compare a lot of them.
• Nuno Filipe Godinho - Very nice feature. You don’t need any more to uninstall Azure SDK to install a new one! Even more you have a new dropdownlist that will act as a filter in visual studio when creating your new project.
• DFW Ajax Users Group - Nice post that presents the characteristics of the two main architecture of site (with sample) and explains why most actual sites are in fact hybrid.
• Using the Windows Azure Cache Preview with SDK 1.7 - Nice demo of Azure Cache preview and a quick fix on a potential problem you could have trying it with the emulator.

Miscellaneous

• 4 Things Great Leaders Do Better Than You (Les McKeown) - Inspiring post.
• What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast (Laura Vanderkam) - Nice post. I'm a morning guy since I was a teenager and I kept this morning habit. It’s incredible how many things we can do!

[…]Come up with a plan and assemble what you need, but whatever you do, don’t label this vision as impossible[…]

• How to Stop Sucking and Be Awesome Instead (Jeff Atwood) - Seriously not serious. download the slides...Awesome.

~Frank

Reading Notes #46

 

Cloud

• War in the Cloud ! (Pradeep) - Today few big players are fighting to get their part of the cake. This post try to found how could be the winner.
• Article: I’ve built a SaaS solution on Windows Azure: now, how do I know what to charge my customers? - Great idea. A tool to help monitoring our application.
• Preparation is key to a successful cloud deployment - This post gives some advice to prepare our cloud life
• 5 Reasons to Start Working with Windows Azure - Highlight some keys features of Windows Azure especially debugging tools.
• Automating Azure deployment with Windows PowerShell (adambird.com) - Quick intro and nice script to get started about using Azure PowerShell cmdlets to deploy.
• All Things Distributed (Werner Vogels) - Big announcement from AWS for the .Net community. Amazon is releasing is RDS for MSSQL and a tools kit for Visual Studio.
• Cloud is a corporate strategy, not a tactical solution (Switch Mark Thiele) - Nice post that will help you to focus on the good things and ask you the good questions when planning your cloud adventure.
• Is AWS or Windows Azure the Right Choice? It’s Not That Easy. - Really good question that compare AWS with Azure.

 

Programming

• Ajax Control Toolkit May 2012 Release - Great! The timing is perfect. One day after this new release some project arrived and they need exactly this new version of the upload control... thanks!
• Request Filtering, URLScan With Windows Azure Web Role (Avkash Chauhan - MSFT) - Simple script for start-up task to install URLScan since it's not there by default with IIS7.
• Create a Continuous Client Using Portable Class Libraries - Very nice article. By following the realisation of an application to solve a real world problem, the author introduces the client portable library “cpl” that gives the opportunity to easily write a cross platform application.

“there is, as Joshua Topolsky puts it, “a missing link in our computing experience” (engt.co/9GVeKl). “

• The key to AddOrUpdate (Arthur Vickers) - While waiting for the next release of EF this post explain very clearly how to implement an extension method to help use in a more generic context when we want the same functionality of the DbSet.Find in a AddUpdateEntity method.
• Mocking Dependencies != IoC (or at least it doesn’t have to) (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - Interesting tutorial that explains an alternative to mock without using dependency injection IoC by using the Lazy.

 

Integration

• Michael Stephenson - Tips on when not using BizTalk config file and reference on another post to more details.

"I wrote a blog post a few years ago around the options for where you could put configuration settings in BizTalk (Click here)."

 

Miscellaneous

• The Blog of Scott Hanselman - Interesting post here Scott explain how he did introduce Star Wars to is kids. I like the 20 minutes segment idea.
• The Myth of Informed Consent - I agree, how many times did you got a firewall or anti-virus popup asking to approve something that you really don't know about? That why we install them, so they should take the decision...
• The key to AddOrUpdate (Arthur Vickers) - While waiting for the next release of EF this post explain very clearly how to implement
• The Floppy Disk means Save, and 14 other old people Icons that don't make sense anymore (hanselman.com) - Really funny, if you are older than 30... So just for fun ask around to the junior people if they know about those techs.

~Frank

Reading Notes #45

Cloud

• 5 tips for surviving a cloud outage (Brandon Butler) - More focus in Amazon web services this post in fact is saying don't put all your eggs in the same basket.
• Say Hello to Windows Azure, The World’s Most Misunderstood Cloud (Cade Metz) - Azure is different. It represents the new Microsoft. This post relates two stories of companies that move from Amazon to Azure.

“Azure lets us focus on our product rather than focusing on how we need to scale the application”

• Windows Azure Storage for the ASP.NET Developer (Adam Hoffman) - What a nice post. Clear explanations, with great references and it come from a series.

“For a rich comparison of SQL Azure and Windows Azure Table storage, see Joseph Fultz’s MSDN Magazine article at: http://aka.ms/SQLAzureVsAzureTables.”

• Scale-First Approach to Database Design with Federations: Part 2 – Annotating and Deploying Schema for Federations (Cihan Biyikoglu) - Second part of a series about Azure SQL Federations, this post explain all the particularities of the database to know before deploying for a optimum results.
• Joining the dots in the cloud - Nice post about the new collection of cloud tools that will help you to connect services or applications together and the things you should be aware of.
• CloudDrive: Possible Data Loss when calling Create() or CreateIfNotExist() on existing drives - Hopefully the SDK 1.7 is coming soon and the "feature" will be fix. However this is a excellent workaround.
• Load Testing in cloud using Visual Studio (Vignesh C) - Good idea for a load test using Azure.

“This blog has three posts that give detailed explanation of how a test rig with Controller and Agents can be created in Windows Azure.”

• Networking in the Cloud–Understanding Windows Azure Traffic Manager - Great post to get started with the Azure Traffic Manager. Of course to master it you should do the lab, but this post will help to understand the high level concepts.
• Four Different Ways to Get Windows Azure Accounts and Services - I'm sure there one that fits you.
• Run the Azure worker role in elevated mode to register HttpListener - Nice workaround to be able to use Raven in an Azure worker role.
• Windows Azure Learning Path–Start Here (Brian H. Prince) - Preface of the great learn Azure post series and introduce a contest.
• Windows Azure Learning Path–Level 100 (Brian H. Prince) - First of a series that regroup a lot of information to get started on Windows Azure.
• Windows Azure Learning Path–Level 200 (Brian H. Prince) - Great exercises about storage
• Windows Azure Learning Path–Level 300 (Brian H. Prince) - Third of a series, this post regroup advanced exercises reference (level 300) about the Azure connectivity options.
• Part I of III - How to access an Azure OAuth v2 ACS secured service with Java (mbutler01) - First post of series of three about how to use oAuth v2 with Java using ACS.

“There does not seem to be any good working OAUTH v2 examples for Java using ACS”

• Windows Azure App Scaling to Need (Grigori Melnik, Julian Dominguez) - Very nice video about Wasabi the Windows auto-scaling Application block. A must.
• How to Use Windows Azure for a Small Web Site (avsol) - Good tutorial that give a lot of tips on how you could do you setup for a small web site.

Programming

• Introducing Workspace Reloader - A Visual Studio AddIn to save your open files across project reloads - Nice post about a little Visual Studio Add-in that will keep your files open when the solution is re-loaded.
• Ruby tricks: Array syntax (chatgris) - Quick post quick tricks... now I looking forward the next time I will try it.
• Ajax Control Toolkit May 2012 Release - Great! The timing is perfect. One day after this new release some project arrived and they need exactly this new version of the upload control... thanks!

Miscellaneous

• Thinking The Wrong Things About E-Book Pricing - Interesting topic: How much should cost a e-book?
• Trust Me, I'm Lying (Jeff Atwood) - Interesting post. Why lying is necessary.
• SlideShare and LinkedIn sitting in a tree… (rashmi) - Great new for both SlideShare and LinkedIn... A perfect match.

~Frank

Reading Notes #14

Azure

• HTML5 + Cloud = Elasticity² (David Pallmann) - In this post David Pallman continue is explanation of relation between frontend and backend by explaining how both of them need scalability today.
• Skipping Windows Azure Startup Tasks When Running in the Emulator - Quick clean and easy.
• Key Concepts Associated with Windows Azure Development - Nice post, explaining some important notions.
• Eight cloud computing risks, and how to quash them - Good post, that help having more element when answering some frequently ask questions about moving to the cloud.
• NuGet push... to Windows Azure - wow this “PoC” is impressive. It’s amazing what we can do we NuGet
• Use the Windows Azure CDN for Assets (Brian Hitney) - Nicely explain.
• Best Practices for Leveraging Windows Azure Service Bus Brokered Messaging API - A lot of info in this great post.
• Message-oriented Architectures (Updated) - Everything you should know about message oriented architecture.
• Scaling Facebook Applications in the Azure Cloud – A Success Story and Lessons Learned (allandcp) - 2 success stories
• Windows Azure and SQL Azure Tutorials - nice tutorial to implement oData in Azure project.
• Automating Azure 1.4 Packaging using MSBuild and CSPack - Continuous integration in Azure is not strait forward. This post will help to pass truth.

Programming

• Setting up a NuGet repository in seconds: MyGet public feeds - That could be very useful. Even more when your team is split across the globe.
• September 2011 Release of the Ajax Control Toolkit  (stephenwalther.com) - as usual great features like Gravatar control, Twitter Control and a better Date picker added by Stephen’s team.
• New Features in the Entity Framework June CTP - New features: enum now supported, table-valued function(TVF) kind of store procedure usable with Linq, multiple result from a store procedure and by able to cache a compiled version of the Linq query. Even the geo localisation reach the EF.
• Development Is Design - If you think that rounded window corners or cutesy animations are design... read this post. It's decoration. The development is design....
• Build Great Experiences on Any Device with OData - One of the best post I read about oData.

Ruby

• Large Ruby File Downloads Done Right! – Well done.

~Franky

Fenêtre de dialogue JQuery avec ajax

Un collègue m'a demandé de l'aider pour faire une fenêtre de dialogue pour une application web. Rien de plus simple avec JQueryUI, un simple .dialog() et... "Oui mais le contenu du dialogue doit être une page externe...".   Ah ah, voilà qui semblait compliquer les choses.

Normalement pour faire un dialogue c'est très simple:

   1: <div id="MyDialog">

   2:  <h2>Bravo!</h2>

   3:  <p>Vous avez affiché une boite de dialogue avec succès</p>

   4: </div>

   5: <script type="text/javascript">
   6:  $(document).ready(function(){
   7:   $("#MyDialog").dialog();  
   8:  });
   9:</script>