Reading Notes #369

Cloud

• Improving Azure Functions Blob Trigger Performance and Reliability - Part 1: Memory Usage (Jason Roberts) - Interesting first post of a series about the Azure Functions.
• Improving Azure Functions Blob Trigger Performance and Reliability - Part 2: Processing Delays and Missed Blobs (Jason Roberts) - Second post of a series. This one focuses on a simple pattern to reduce the chances to have a blob to not be processed.
• Improving Azure Functions Blob Trigger Performance and Reliability - Part 3: Using Event Grid to Respond to New Blobs (Jason Roberts) - Great third post of a series this one introduces the event grid. Love it.
• Should I containerize my cloud app? (Mark Heath) - Excellent reflection on the containers frequently asked questions... A great post.
• How to use Azure DevOps open REST API with Curl (Jessica Deen) - A very cool demo that shows what the API can do.

Programming

• Converting an Excel Worksheet into a JSON document with C# and .NET Core and ExcelDataReader (Scott Hanselman) - That a little tool that we should all have in our toolbox...Who never had to work with Excell documents?! ;)
• Peacock - Late Night Coding FTW (John Papa) - I tried this extension and I cannot work without now...

Miscellaneous

• 3 Things You Can Do to Improve as a Developer (John Papa) - Great ways to improve, and not only as a developer.
• Late Valentine Day Gift: Version 4.0.0 of Microsoft Integration and Azure Stencils Pack (BAPI, AI, Office 365 and much more) for Visio is now available on GitHub (View all posts by Sandro Pereira) - Woot woot! Awesome.

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Reading Notes #351

Cloud

• Azure Functions Labs – Information and setup instructions (Bbenjamin Perkins) - Excellent post that explains how works Azure functions and why they works like that.
• Azure Functions: Choosing between queues and event hubs (Jeff Hollan) - Very interesting post that describes very well different possibilities of architecture.
• Deploying and Managing Containers on Azure (Mark Heath) - This post lists the topics covered in the tons of incredible course available on Plurasing... For free.
• How I built a dashboard in Azure Portal to track Gitflow feature branches (Utkarsh Shigihalli) - Pretty clever way to create dashboard in the Azure Portal.

Programming

• When and why to clean up your code: now, later, never (Itamar Turner-Trauring) - This is an interesting post that shares rules to improve or code management. Or at lease feel better with it.
• You might not need Kubernetes (Jessie Frazelle) - Nice quick post. Yep Kubernetes are great tool but not the tool for everything.

Data

• Best practices for alerting on metrics with Azure Database for PostgreSQL monitoring (Harini Gupta) - Nice post that covers the most important point to cover when monitoring a database (not only PostgreSQL).

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Reading Notes #263

Cloud

• Announcing: New Auto-Scaling Standard Streaming Endpoint and Enhanced Azure CDN Integration (Cenk Dingiloglu) - Great, now integrated.
  
• Azure Storage Queues New Feature: Pop-Receipt on Add Message (Sercan Guler) - This post shows how to use the new queue feature in a great demo.
  
• SoftNAS Cloud® on Azure - Cloud NAS Storage made easy (Lutful Khandker) - Interesting product that clearly fill-up a need in the online storage. Let's talk about it after the 30-day trial.

Programming

• Two-Factor authentication in ASP.NET Identity 3 using TOTP authenticator (Dominique St-Armand) - Excellent post, perfect to get started on 2 factor authentication.
  
• What .NET Developers ought to know to start in 2017 (Scott Hanselman) - Nice work from John and Scott... Sweet checklist for beginners and all the other too.

Databases

• Azure SQL Database is increasing read and write performance (Jan Engelsberg) - Perfect timing! Better performance for the same price.

Reading Notes #215

Cloud

• Azure Learning Paths (Laurent Duveau) - Did you know that the Azure documentation site has a set of 25 learning paths? I didn't, and it's awesome.
  
• Using Azure Storage Queues from .NET - Nice post that explores the Azure queues through .net, and feature th very useful cloud config...
  
• Advanced Use of Azure Virtual Machine DSC Extensions - Very nice tutorial about how to troubleshooting.

Programming

• Exploring the new .NET (Scott Hanselman) - This is the first post I read about the "dotnet compile" since the MVP Summit, and it looks at as much interesting as before.
  
• Why build scripts? (Amir Barylko) - This post changed my mind about F#, now I'm looking forward to try it.
  
• Signing into Windows 10 with your Face - Using an Xbox One Kinect with Windows Hello (Scott Hanselman) - I didn't think it was that easy to setup a XBox Kinect to a Pc...
  
• Visual Studio Shortcuts: Comment Selection / Uncomment Selection (Jeremy) - Time to learn some little time saving tips with this short post.
  
• Visual Studio Shortcuts: Format Document (Jeremy) - Recently, I have been surprised to learn that some people are still not aware of that very powerful feature o VisualStudio.

Data

• More Power BI Feature Updates: Power BI Desktop December Update and new Power BI service features - This post detailed the features of th December update.

Miscellaneous

• 12 Most Influential Books Every Software Engineer Needs to Read (roelljr) - Fantastic list of essential books to read. A must.
  
• Google Spotlight Story Special Delivery is a nice YouTube gift for the holidays (Jeff Causey) - Really interesting little animation movie in a 360 degree environment.
  
• First Update Released for Open Live Writer (Richard Hay) - Awesome new, and it works!
  
• Announcing Programmer Tools! (Henry Spencer) - We all need some little tools from time to time. This post lists many useful tools, and what's nice about them is that they are available from everywhere because they are online tools.

Reading Notes #199

Suggestion of the week

• First look at Application Insights (Andrei Dzimchuk) - Excellent post. Perfect to make your idea about why and how we should use Application Insights. Nice touch to the config.

Cloud

• Integration with Azure Service Bus (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - Great post that summarizes best practices and important tips related to Azure service Bus.
  
• Azure Backup update – New features in IaaS VM backup support (Trinadh Kotturu) - Very amazing backup services.
  
• Deploying Flynn Clusters on Azure - Promising deploying tool. A thing to follow.
  
• Using Azure CLI to Capture and Deploy a CentOS Virtual Machine - Another way to create an image of an Azure VM. Useful script that will work in any environment.
  
• Announcing the Azure SDK 2.7.1 for .NET (Brady Gaster) - This post describes the major new features in this release.
  
• Do-until looping in logic apps - Useful addition to the loops in Logic Apps.
  
• Getting started with Azure Backup (Viswanath Tata) - An essential tool for any production environment, backup is now very easy to setup and secure.

Programming

• On a Cloud: Queues (Jef King) - This post suggests two short videos that talked about queues and how to use them.
  
• Help, my diagram doesn’t fit on one page! - Interesting thoughts about how to “cut” diagrams.
  
• Deploy Jekyll Pages using Git and Travis CI - Interesting deployment setup that looks simple and efficient.

Databases

• Get the DocumentDB SQL query cheat sheet (Aravind Ramachandran) - Confuse sometime with the syntax of noSql, this post shared a cheatsheet that should be saved (or printed).
  
• Announcing Great New SQL Database Capabilities in Azure - Great announcement to the database world with this two new release described in this post.

Miscellaneous

• On Disconnecting - Choose your poison: workaholic, social addict or “paranoia”… Oh! Scott is definitely not alone.
  
• Building Trust with 100% Distributed Team & 100% Flexible Schedules (Brian Whipple) - Very interesting thoughts about trust and the place it should take between employees and companies.
  
• The Role of QA in Cloud DevOps - Interesting thoughts regarding the QA role and how it could change.

Reading Notes #190

Suggestion of the week

• Cloud Success Comes in Completing the Cloud Handshake (James Staten) - Great post that places different tools or services in context one to the other, that helps to get a better view of the big picture.

Cloud

• Testing Visual Studio on Azure (Alexandre Brisebois) - If you need to deploy a dev environment, this post explains how to leverage the AMR to do the quick and smart way.
  
• Locking a Virtual Machine Resource - Azure Resource Manager Template (Alexandre Brisebois) - A post to read, period.
  
• Azure Bits #3– Adding a Message to an Azure Queue (Rik Robinson) - Nice tutorial that shows how to interact with Azure Queues from an Asp.Net MVC web site.

Programming

• Visual Studio Online Wunderlist extension on GitHub (Clemens Reijnen) - Interesting idea of a VSO extension.
  
• Deploying an Azure Web Site using the new build system in Visual Studio Online (Charles Sterling) - This post shows ow easy it is to build & deploy a simple website using VSO.
  
• Visual Studio Web Development Tip - Add Chrome Incognito Mode as a Browser (Scott Hanselman) - The great tips are often the simpler! That should be in by default.
  
• Why to avoid fat controllers (Gunnar Peipman) - Interesting thoughts about different types of architecture and their testability.
  
• Historical Debugging, Profiling, New Diagnostic Tools in Visual Studio 2015 (Scott Hanselman) - Another good reason to start using VS2015.

Miscellaneous

• Write Once, Publish Anywhere (Jonathan Rozenblit) - An energizing post that shows here to find writting oportunities
  
• How to Build Your Blog’s Audience with Long Form Evergreen Content (Darren Rowse) - Interesting reflection on how the length of our post affects the traffic of our blog.

~Frank

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

Reading Notes #139

Suggestion of the week

• Refactoring your CSS with LESS in Visual Studio Web Essentials (David Paquette) - Web essentials is really essential! This post explains how easy it is to manage our CSS files with LESS.

Cloud

• Simple Web Site Backup retention policy with WebJobs (Eduardo Laureano) - That’s a really nice tutorial that explains how to use Azure webjobs.
• Basic Tier Virtual Machines (Kenai Kwa) - It’s time to save money. We need to change the type of our VM to be basic for all Azure VMs that don’t need load balancer or scalability.
• IIS Reset on Windows Azure Web Role (Value Maker) - Safe yourself sometimes and gray hair by reading this post before you got to do IISReset on an Azure VM…
• Cloud Power: How to scale Azure Websites globally with Traffic Manager (Scott Hanselman) - Great example of scaling a website with Azure.
• Managing your Azure Storage account with Zudio - This post introduces a very intuitive tool for when we want a quick and simple view of our stuff.

Programming

• Save Time, Money, and Your Sanity: Coded UI Testing for the Windows Phone - Part 1 (Lori Lalonde) - This post lists the prerequisites required to do a UI unit test that will be explains in a future post.
• What should I be looking for during Code Reviews? - Very interesting post that gives us a good idea of what we should think about when doing a code review.
• ASP.NET MVC Helper - MoreLessText (James Curran) - That’s a nice HTML helper simple and efficient, like all the best are.

Mobile

• Build Some Ears on Your App and then Listen! (Mark B Schramm) - This post lists the best practices about how we should take care of our apps once they are live.

Miscellaneous

• SonicAgile Now with Dropbox Integration - Nice new add-on to this great management tool.
• FREE Pluralsight video: “Get Involved” in community! (Scott Hanselman) - Excellent video that will help you to get started. You don’t have any excuse anymore since it’s free!
• VM Image PowerShell ‘How To’ Blog Post (Christine Avanessians) - Really useful post that gives a lot of code snipets with the explication on what they do. A must.

~Frank

Reading Notes #102

Suggestion of the week

• 3 Rarely Discussed, But Valuable, Uses for Cloud Object Storage - Very interesting post that gives good ideas of how to use the to storage at our benefits.
• Windows Azure Virtual Machines – Stopped doesn’t equal Stopped Deallocated (Stephen W. Thomas) - Very well explain. Now it's clear what need to be done to save money.

Cloud

• Turbo Charging Your Windows Azure Cloud Services - Interesting post where we can read about a real cost and performance optimization.
• Windows Azure July Updates: SQL Database, Traffic Manager, AutoScale, Virtual Machines - Great news. I'm looking forward to try these new features.
• Windows Azure Traffic Manager – High Performance, Availability & Resiliency - Nice tutorial to use the new Azure Traffic Manager.
• Windows Azure Traffic Manager Explained (Maarten Balliauw) - Nice post about the Traffic Manager that explains what it is and why we should care.
• SQL Azure: Automated Database Export (Tara Shankar Jana) - Nice post that details all you need to know about the new Sql Azure Automated export: options, cost, etc.
• Handling Azure Storage Queue poison messages (Pascal Laurin) - Interesting second post of a series this one explains why we shouldn't delete our error message.

Databases

• Database Versioning and Source Control (m kramar) - Interesting solution to a common situation.

Programming

• If you're not using Glimpse with ASP.NET for debugging and profiling, you're missing out - This post remembers me that I still didn't use this great tool, and I just have the perfect project to try it.
• 12 Lessons I learned using unit tests/TDD - Interesting post that promotes all the benefits of writing unit tests.
• Performance Tip: A few words on ASP.NET session state (Frédéric Rivain) - Interesting post to remember what we should have in mind to get the best performance.

UX

• Why People Don't Understand How to Use Your Software - Interesting thought about how to keep our clear vision.
• Making Readability More Responsive (Tyler Gaw) - Nice improvement on the user experience from this great tool. This post explains the reasons behind these change.

Integration

• Using SendGrid with BizTalk360 for Easy Emails on IaaS - It always good to see application that "works together" (that are so easily compatible) for our benefit.

Miscellaneous

• Touch: Where Microsoft Went Wrong (Frederic Lardinois) - Interesting thought about Microsoft and its moves to "touch". In my case, I really enjoy Windows surface. It's not perfect, but I like it.
• Write Less, Say More - Nice post that proof that once again the proverb quality not quantity rules.
• Pluralsight Summer Watch List - Nice suggestions to refresh our knowledge, or learn new things.
• The impact of a compliment (Scott Hanselman)- Interesting thought about compliment.format(ComplimentType.Professional).
• Choosing the right Portable Power Phone/Tablet/Gadget Battery Charger (Scott Hanselman) - Nice review so many options "just" for charging device's batteries.

~Frank

Reading Notes #77

 

Suggestion of the week

• Windows Azure 1.8 SDK– Queue to Queue Transfers (Kent Weare) - Very interesting post that uses one of the new features available in Windows Azure 1.8 SDK to illustrate the Fan In pattern.

 

Cloud

• Table Storage 2.0 – Queries (Tyler Doerksen) - Understand the power of the table storage library version 2.0, by seeing all the query capabilities.
• Migrate a Virtual Machine to Windows Azure with PowerShell (Michael Washam) - Nice script very useful to save time or in automating processes.
• Working with Windows Azure command line tools from within Visual Studio (Maarten B) - Nice post that explains who to use two great tools together.
• Using your free Azure VM to host Visual Studio 2012 - Two short video show how to install a full legit version of Visual Studio 2012 Express on Windows 8 VM for free.
• 10 Considerations When Transferring Enterprise Applications to the Cloud - Nice list of questions you should ask before going to the cloud. And one that is often forgotten: the licensing.
• Automating the cloud with Windows Azure Command Line Tools - Great scripting references sources.
• Using OS disk VHD to create a new Virtual Machine if OS VHD is still on lease in Windows Azure Virtual Machines (Avkash Chauhan) - Good catch! This is a recurring question. Here are all the solutions depending of what you’re trying to do.
• Upgrading Windows Azure Cloud Services to Server 2012 and .NET 4.5 (Michael Washam) - Nice walkthrough that explains how to upgrade your cloud services to a more recent version of the OS family and .Net framework.

 

Programming

• Fix for WordPress Plugin Update Issues on Windows Azure Web Sites (syntaxc4) - Clear explication of how the thing works and why the issue appends... and how to fix it in one click.
• How to keep your ASP.NET database connection strings secure when deploying to Azure from Source (Scott Hanselman) - Quick tip about protecting your connection string.
• Public service announcement: time to update your CSS3 (David Storey) - Be aware web developers and bloggers, it's time to check your css. And once it's done don’t forget to minify it...

 

Integration

• Error while deleting send port from party (Dieter Gobeyn) - Very useful fix method, but for advice users only.
• Parser Optimization in a Flat File Schema (Mathieu Vermote) - Good tips to be ready to write your next flat file schema in Biztalk.

 

Miscellaneous

• Backing Up WordPress? Don’t Make These 9 Mistakes - If you are a developer, you probably backup your machine and your code. That's good. Do you do the same for your blog? You should, here is how to do it the good way.
• iPad, Surface, Ultrabook: Are we there yet? (Scott Hanselman) - The comparison we were all waiting for. A MUST READ post. I’m a little sad that no Android device has been included. I think the Asus transformer could be confederates. a bit sad that any Android device was included. I think the Asus Transformer could be ferly confederated.
• 10 Easy Ways to Get More Done (Geoffrey James) - As always how achieve more with less.

~Frank