Reading Notes #195

Suggestion of the week

• Announcing the Azure SDK 2.7 for .NET (Brady Gaster) - Sooooo many new features, options, and tools in only one release!! This post reviews a lot of them.

Cloud

• Announcing Cortana Analytics Suite and New Partner Investments at WPC 2015 (Takeshi Numoto) - I'm looking forward to trying it out.
  
• How exactly does Event Hubs Throttling Work? (Dan Rosanova) - Thi post shares useful information about a frequent question.
  
• Three big areas of focus for Microsoft’s Canadian channel (Paolo Del Nibletto) - Interesting news about Microsoft's focus.
  
• Importing Data to DocumentDB Just Keeps Getting Better (Stephen Baron) - If you never ear about DocumentDB Migration Tool, this post is for you. It explains how you ca import documents, even from another NoSql database like DynamoDB.
  
• Why I got the MCSD Azure Solutions Architect Certification (Chris Pietschmann) - Really great work, thanks for sharing.
  
• Azure Logic Apps – monthly update July 2015 (Saravana Kumar) - The Azure Logic Apps team did their monthly release this week, this post tells all about the new features.
  
• Azure SQL Database Web and Business edition retirement September 12th, 2015 (Guy Haycock) - Time to upgrade, September is coming pretty fast.
  
• Can’t recover VMs in Azure with volumes greater than 1TB? Use Storage Spaces! (Anoob Backer) - Great tutorial to get super performance.

Database

• Available now – Cross-region Replication, Triggers, and Streams - Nice new feature.
  
• Azure SQL Database with direct connect – Microsoft Power BI Preview - Nice tutorial to explore our Azure database.

Programming

• Performance and Diagnostic Tools in Visual Studio 2015 (Dan Taylor) - This post is the perfect point to get started about all the great diagnostics tools available in VS2015 for everyone...because it's included in all versions.
  
• The Glimpse Team Joins Microsoft (Visual Studio Blog) - Great new, I really like Glimpse.

~ Frank

Reading Notes #68

Cloud

• Getting Database Connection Information in Windows Azure Web Sites - Great clarification about how to access connection string in Azure using PHP or Node.js
• Node.js specific diagnostics for Windows Azure - Great source of detailed information that will speed-up your next bug investigation.
• How To Create a Base Disk or Image in Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Share It Across Accounts (Stephen W. Thomas) - Great tutorial to prepare a master custom virtual image for Azure.

[…]Shan McArthur has a great blog post on the difference between an Image and a Disk. […]

• Trying Out the New Windows Azure Portal Support for Relay Services - Nice walk around of the new Windows Azure features focusing on the service bus capabilities.
• Jolicloud Pivots Again, Now As A Start Page For Cloud Services — Have they Cracked It This Time? (Mike Butcher) - I really like the idea being Jolicloud. I'm not sure I will use it that often, but it's a good idea.
• Readability Comes to Jolicloud (David Sleight) - Nice! Jolicloud is useful when on the road. Now I can keep track of me reading too.
• Announcing Public Availability of Service Bus for Windows Server (Service Bus 1.0) (Himanshu_Singh) - Great news. We will now be able to develop with the Service Bus for Windows server than switch, if we want, to Windows Azure Service Bus on prod, transparently!

[…]APIs exposed for developing applications are consistent with those of the public cloud service, making it easy to develop applications for either and switch between the two. […]

• Exporting and Importing VM settings with the Azure Command-Line Tools - Great idea! Very useful! I can easily see one or two script staying on my desktop waiting to be double click...
• .NET 4.5 now supported with Windows Azure Web Sites (Scott Gu) - Perfect timing, ready to upgrade and be able to use the last version of EF.
• Using Trace in Windows Azure Cloud Applications (Himanshu Singh) - Useful tips to get easily a nice trace from Windows Azure project.
• Windows 8 and Windows Azure: Convergence in the Cloud - Nice article from MSDN Mag. This tutorial explain how to build a windows 8 application that pull data from Windows Azure.

Integration

• BizTalk 2010 R2 CTP: Azure Service Bus Integration–Part 5 Sending messages to Service Bus Queues using Sessions (Kent Weare) - Nice demo using session, I like this alternative.

Programming

• What is SSDT? - Since I try this tool I can’t live without.
• Analyse : Différentes façons d'intégrer un script Javascript - Nice analyse I will bookmark it to use it as reference.
• CoffeeScript 1.4.0 Released, No Sign of Source Maps - Good news for Node.js user.
• Welcome to Windows 8! (Paul Laberge) - Know your options as developer.

Miscellaneous

• Bounce Rates High? Why? (Darren Rowse) - Nice post that explain how to understand your blog bounce rate.
• 3 Characteristics of Amazing Presentations (Margaret Heffernan) - Quick tips to improve easily your presentation.
• The Undercover Interview Technique (Jeff Haden) - Interesting point of view but I prefer the coffee meeting, where you meet few co-worker in a relax context.
• 5 Goals Every Blogger Should Set Up in Google Analytics - Nice post that explain clearly how to setup goals and their utility.
• Book review: Think Like a Programmer - <sigh> So let ready only the chapter one than...

~Frank

Reading Notes #62

Cloud

• David Pallmann Demonstrates azureQuery (Channel 9) (Brady Gaster Cory Fowler) - Nice video where the project azureQuery is introduced. A project to follow.
• Max Pool Size Setting and Federations in Windows Azure SQL Database - Nice quick tips with Azure Sql connection.
• Best Ways to Optimize Diagnostics Using Windows Azure – Part 1 - 5 tips from experimented user.
• Windows Azure Mobile Services Preview Walkthrough–Part 2: Authenticating Windows 8 App Users (C#) (Roger Jennings) - Nice demo in 2 parts with code and a lot of screenshots.
• Getting Started with SendGrid on Windows Azure - Well done tutorial. Building an application that send mail never locked that easy.
• Running a Windows Azure Virtual Machine Locally with Hyper-V or VMware 8 / VMware 9 (Stephen W. Thomas) - Nice... Exactly what I was looking for.
• Importing Azure Marketplace Data into Excel 2013 with Web Queries - Great tutorial that build a dynamic url to fetch data in Azure Marketplace.
• Cloud - Interesting post about the security of the data in the cloud.
• The Windows Azure Software Development Kit (SDK) and the Windows Azure Training Kit (WATK) (Buck Woody) - It's true that some people were mix matching those two. Re-share...

Programming

• EAI Bridge Message Sender and Queue Message Receive tool - Nice tool.
• Introducing ASP.NET FriendlyUrls - cleaner URLs, easier Routing, and Mobile Views for ASP.NET Web Forms (Scott Hanselman) - Gorgeous! Wow you can now so easily in web form do the routing like in Asp.net MVC only with one NuGet call!
• 5 points developers should know about WinRT / Windows 8 - Now that Windows 8 is there developers are starting to do more code using WinRT. So here some quick things about it.
• How to migrate your TFS Repository to GitHub - Nice, simple and quick tutorial to start using git and in the meantime try Chocolately. (a kind of NuGet but for Windows instead of Visual Studio)
• Your Colorful Visual Studio 2012 with the Color Theme Editor (VS2010 colors, too) (Scott Hanselman) - Great add in to Visual Studio that gives... Nothing except happiness.
• FREE: Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop (Scott Hanselman) - Ye! Visual Studio gets free for all kind of project! It makes more sense to do this when supporting open source community.
• ScottGu's Blog - Good promo, no obligation, no credit card, good product... until the September 18.

[…]Read this getting started tutorial to walkthrough how you can build (in less than 5 minutes) a simple Windows 8 “To-do List” app that is cloud enabled using Windows Azure Mobile Services. Or watch this video of me showing how to do it step by step.[…]

• Stop Validating Email Addresses With Your Complex Regex - I agree 100% I don't remember how many site told that my e-mail was invalid because tagged: frank+tag@sample.com.
• When Is a Set Better Than an Array in Ruby? - Great post, the Set are very useful and powerful but are also under know.

Miscellaneous

• Escaping from Desktop: Online Document Editing Tools for Bloggers (Guest Blogger) - Interesting review of different online text editor that compare the pros and cons of each of them. Check TeamLab.
• 10 free tools for admins on a tight budget (Jack Wallen) - Even if you may now some, you can also find a new precious tool.
• Automatically Backup your Gmail account on a schedule with GMVault and Windows Task Scheduler (Scott Hanselman) - Nice advice. The power of task scheduler, ignore you should not.
• Goodbye Fax, Hello Personal Cloud | Cloudline - A real nightmare, but do you think it will be ending soon? I hope so.
• 10 Tips for Giving a Kick Ass Keynote (Mitch Ditkoff) - 10 good tips that I will practice in my next presentation.
• Your resume vs. your LinkedIn profile (Thomas Wolff) - Nice advice about how we should use LinkedIn with our resume. They should complement each other not be the same.
• Turns out I’ll be writing a book - Nice idea. I hope this book will be published. I will love read this book.

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