Reading Notes #345

Suggestion of the week

• How to securely connect to Azure from C# and run REST APIs (Benjamin Perkins) - Great post! This last piece put all the puzzle pieces together. And I love when author shared their mistakes... we learn even more.

Cloud

• How to audit an Azure subscription Role Based Access Control (RBAC) assignments (Stephane Lapointe) - Great new PowerShell script to help us keeping the control over our subscriptions.
• Introducing Azure DevOps (null) - VSTS just got a major update... It's now on called azure DevOps and is packed with tons of great features. Awesome!

Programming

• A complete containerized .NET Core Application microservice that is as small as possible (Scott Hanselman) - A great new part in the optimization journey of Scott and his Apps.
• Introducing Microsoft Learn (Microsoft Developer) - Nice short video that explains why the new Learn portal will be so great.
• NLog vs log4net vs Serilog: Compare .NET Logging Frameworks (Simon Timms) - Useful post that reviews three popular logging framework.
• Scripts to remove old .NET Core SDKs (Scott Hanselman) - Neet script! Thanks, Scott.

Miscellaneous

• Attitude Matters (When It Comes To Winning Users Over)! (Gaurav) - Interesting post that once again shows that communication is A great in both ways.
• When and Why Chatbots - The Wit and Ramblings of David Giard (David Giard) - Yes chatbot, are great... But not to all situation, learn more in the post why.
• Windows Virtual Desktop (null) - This week Microsoft announced what looks like a very simple way to get powerful environments without all the trouble to maintain them. More to come.

~

Reading Notes #338

Suggestion of the week

• Why Code Reviews Hurt Your Code Quality and Team Productivity - Simple Programmer (Lou Bichard) - A very interesting story that told us a huge change that a team implemented.

Cloud

• AWS Step Function Serverless Applications (Gerald Bauer) - What a great tutorial! Very interesting all the plumbing and toolings is explained in this Hello word AWS Lambda.

Programming

• 5 Essential Tips for Service Worker Development (Kezz Bracey) - Nice top 5.
  
• Containers - What Are They Good For? Running Our CI Builds (Jimmy Bogard) - Cool post that helps to avoid a lot of errors.
  
• Fritz and Friends present The Virtual Software Architecture Workshop (JeffFritz) - Wow, a very impressive achievement done by the man with a million hats Jeff. I'm still not done watching all that content. However, I can assure you that every bit is delicious.
  
• PowerApps Newbie – getting started (Jen Kuntz) - Nice first post of a promising series ;) To all the #powerusers of planet earth... you want to use PowerApps... so this is your chance to get started!

Miscellaneous

• The Ability Hacks: The story of two hackathon teams embracing the transformative power of technology (Jenny Lay-Flurrie) - An inspiring post that I'm sure is just a glimpse of what we will find in this book. This book definitely found his place at the top of my to-read stack.
  
• Chocolatey Package Manager and How I Use It (David Giard) - Chocolatey is a must tool to have to any developers or power user on Windows.
  
• Markdown View — Markdown Viewer for the Web, Windows 10, Android and everything (Alan Mendelevich) - It looks pretty cool and simple. I'll install it for sure.

Reading Notes #336

Cloud

• Azure Tips and Tricks Part 139 - Prevent AzCopy Uploads from maxing out Internet Connection Speed (Michael Crump) - Nice little cool trick.

• Quickly create VSTS Work Items for Application Insights Telemetry from Visual Studio (Abhijit Jana) - Can it be more DevOps than that? I don't think so.

Programming

• 7 best practices for building containers (Google) - This post helps us to improve our skill with containers. It also shares a lot of excellent more detailed references.
• How Postman Can Improve Your API Documentation (Abhinav Asthana) - With openAPI and Postman, our Apis will definitely be easier to consume.
• Using Elasticsearch with ASP.NET Core and Docker (Miroslav Popovic ARCHIVE TAGS) - Interesting post. I like how docker was used in this case.

Miscellaneous

• How to Lead When You’re Feeling Afraid (Peter Bregman) - A really interesting post that will help us, for sure, because we all leave this kind of situation one day or the other.
• Defeating Electron (Felix Rieseberg) - Pretty good is the chance that you are (just like me) using an application builds on top of electron. This post explains a little about what's it happening under the hood.
• Here's Why Your Static Website Needs HTTPS (Troy Hunt) - Definitely a post to read.
• How to Write a Catchy Hook and Title for Your Blog - This post can definitely help us getting inspired.

Does the Azure DevOps projects are worth it?

Imagine you just arrived at the office. You only took a sip or two of your coffee or tea. You look at the tasks that need to be done today (well yesterday based on the request): a new project is starting, and you need to configure everything the team needs to start building that web application. The need a repository, a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline, a place to deploy, monitoring tools, and of course you need to create an environment where they will be able to track their work. Should you panic? No, because you will use the new Azure DevOps Project available in Azure.

Let's Create the project

From the Azure portal (portal.azure.com) click on the plus button and search for "devops". Select DevOps Project, then click on the Create button. Then follow the five steps and Azure will create everything for you.

What is deployed

• Your application from many popular frameworks
• Automatic full CI/CD pipeline integration
• Monitoring with Application Insights
• Git Repository
• Tasks/ Bugs tracking board
• Deployment to the platform of your choice

In Video please!

Conclusion

The DevOps projects are really fantastic and are very useful. The fact that everything is all packaged together and automatically deployed is a considerable time saver. In short, are the Azure DevOps projects worth it? Oh yeah!

Reading Notes #324

Cloud

• Using Chocolatey with Azure VMs (Dan Patrick) - If you are on Windows you must know Chocolatey.
• Gartner recognizes Microsoft as a leader in enterprise integration (Microsoft Azure) - It's always interesting to see the Gartner Magic Cadran result every year.
• How to quickly refer all available Azure services? (Abhijit Jana) - Nice post that gives a few key places to view the list of services available in Azure.

Programming

• ASP.NET Core 2.1 Preview on VSTS (Adam Storr) - This post explains a nice quickfix for your VSTS build flow.
• Searching docs using a .NET Core global tool (Shayne Boyer) - I didn' t know that dotnet-doc project! It's not only pretty cool but it just got better now available globally!
• Using HTTPS with Azure Functions in local development (Christos Matskas ) - Pretty cool quick post that explains the local https feature of the Azure Function v2.
• Windows Template Studio 2.0 is now available! (Clint Rutkas) - This is the perfect post to know what happened under the hood of this new version.

Miscellaneous

• Do you have to know English to be a Programmer? (Scott Hanselman) - Interesting post... At the end, English may not be a blocker...but you need some base. Otherwise, how could you even read this post!
• Release Flow: How We Do Branching on the VSTS Team (Edward Thomson) - Really interesting post about the Git practice at Microsoft and why they are doing it that way.
• The Canadian Real Estate Association delivers a better house-buying experience in the cloud (null) - Nice post about a reel business going in Azure.

Books

Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time

Author: Brian Tracy

A short book that pushes to action. I really enjoyed it. A book to read and read again.

ASIN: B01MYEM8SZ

Reading Notes #314

Suggestion of the week

• The Modern Dev Team (Rob Conery) - What a great post. Maybe it's only me getting old ;) but I think we all have these thoughts one day or the other.

Cloud

• A great developer experience for Ansible (Corey Sanders) - This post announces the integration of Austin in the cloud shell and visual studio. It somewhere we can learn more about it. I didn't know about it, but I really want t use in my next DevOps tasks.
• Announcing IoT extension for Azure CLI 2.0 (Chrissie Chi) - This post gives you everything you need to know: what it does, how to install it, and even some sample!
• Announcing integration of Azure Backup into VM create experience (Trinadh Kotturu) - Fantastic news, better be prepared then sorry.
• Azure Cosmos DB + Functions Cookbook— static client (Matías Quaranta) - Nice first post of a promising series that shares recipes, gotchas, and examples about two very powerful tools.
• Azure Functions Proxies (Eric Williams) - Azure Functions are a very useful thing to have in your toolbox. With the addition of Proxies, it becomes a must read a few ways to use them in this post.
• Jenkins on Azure: from zero to hero (Pui Chee Chan) - Jenkins is an extremely popular build server. This post list all the features pre-package for you when you deploy it in Azure in a few click.Pretty awesome.
• Migrate your classic storage account to Azure Resource Manager using PowerShell Azure v5.0.x (Stephane Lapointe) - Nice tutorial that shows how to move all (except vhd) your storage in the new format.

Programming

• How I use VSCode, VSTS and GitHub to develop Azure ARM Templates (Eric Leonard) - From A to Z, this post explains all steps in an application life circle; using only three simple tools.
• Dockerizing .NET Apps with Microsoft's Build Images on Docker Hub (Elton Stoneman) - This post explains how to package your .Net app, so the only dependency is... well Docker.
• Scalable and Performant ASP.NET Core Web APIs: Load Testing (Carl Rippon) - A great post that introduces multiple tools to load-test our API with ease BEFORE going to production. A must to all developers.

Databases

• My Favorite SQL Prompt Features (MarlonRibunal) - If you never try SqlPrompt and you write SQL in your day to day, stop read this, and go downloading it, or at least read this post that gives you a glimpse of it's feature.

Miscellaneous

• 5 Essential Trello Boards Every Remote Team Needs (Leah Ryder ) - This is a nice little post packed with good advice for remote workers.
• My Blog Now Has a Content Security Policy - Here's How I've Done It (Troy Hunt) - Interesting post again from Troy, who once more makes us think.

Reading Notes #305

Cloud

• A technical overview of Azure Databricks - This new product/ feature looks very interesting... More to come.
• Improvements to Azure Functions in Visual Studio ( Justin Clareburt ) - Wow. Azure Functions may evolve quickly but the tools are following, and this is impressive. Check out all the features that would be included in the next version (currently accessible in preview).

Programming

• Azure DevOps Project – public preview (Gopinath Chigakkagari) - This new type of project looks awesome, looking forward to trying it.

Miscellaneous

• Why speed is the skill I’m most dedicated to improving (Alex Mathers) - An interesting post that talks about the balance between skills.
• 4 Realities of Blogging All Bloggers Need to Talk About (ep 214) (Darren Rowse) - Very good and encouraging talk about some daily facts in blogger's life.
• How to Create a Style Guide for Your Blog (and Why You Should) (ep: 216) (Darren Rowse) - Hmm. I thought I was consistent, and then I went backward in my archives.... Well things change in ten years.
• How to Leverage People Analytics (ep: 323) (Dave Stachowiak) - Interesting talk about what is and what's not analytics.
• Are we partners or competitors? Yes, we are - Microsoft Partner Network (Gavriella Schuster) - An interesting and inspiring post that talks of course about partnership how its build and what it means.

Reading Notes #304

Cloud

• Application Insights: VSTS dashboard chart widget now available (Mike Gresley) - Woohoo! Finally, it's there. I'm going to add it to all my projects right now.
• Monitor Azure services and applications using Grafana (Ashwin Kamath) - I didn't know that tool, but now it's definitely under my radar.
• Azure Durable Functions: Making Serverless Last (Mary Branscombe) - A great post that introduces the durable function and explains where it fits in the integration offer.

Programming

• Creating a Minimal ASP.NET Core Windows Container (Jeffrey T. Fritz) - This is an amazing post that shows how to optimize our containers. It may be about Asp.Net Core but it applies to any containers. It also shows one of the big improvements with .Net Core...
• WebOptimizer - a Bundler and Minifier for ASP.NET Core (Scott Hanselman) - This post shares a nice little tool available for Asp.Net Core.
• Why Is It So Difficult To Get Started Writing Automated Tests? (Matthew Jones) - So many very good questions are asked in this post, but what are the answers?

Databases

• Automatic tuning will be a new default (Veljko Vasic) - An important post t read and share to avoid any panic in January.

Podcast

• EntreLeadership #231: Renée Mauborgne—Move Beyond Competing (EntreLeadership Team) - A great episode with a few tools that look very interesting... And of course, a book reference that you should add to you to read list.
• Dotnet Rocks - 1491 Building VSTS using VSTS with Dan Hellem and Rogan Ferguson (Carl Franklin, Richard Campbell) - Great show about VSTS... If you using or think of using the tool... That's for you.

Miscellaneous

• I Don’t Have Time is a Myth (Donn Felker) - I love it. We have so many opportunities; we just need to take them.
• The Main Challenges of Building Machine Learning Tech (Donn Felker) - Very interesting article about AI.
• Why I won't be switching to VSCode any time soon - A geek with a hat (Swizec Teller) - I was surprised when I saw the title of this post, how could you not like VsCode? However, after reading it, I understand. Through preferences are personal, VSCode does a lot and needs a bit more than few minutes to be tame. I got also overwhelmed when I started using it. The secret is the documentation... and sometimes. Then it becomes whatever you want.

Reading Notes #299

Cloud

• Azure Log Analytics – meet our new query language (Noa Kuperberg) - This post shares great examples of simple, but useful query to get started.
• Azure Site Recovery powers new Managed DR offerings by Microsoft Partners (Mayank Nayar) - Nice DR option with well-known partners to keep our VM safe as our business.
• Five more reasons why you should download the Azure mobile app (Shankar Sivadasan) - This app is getting better and better every time I hear about it. Guess what I will install in a few...
• How to configure log4net on Azure App Service (Benjamin Perkins) - You prefer log4net because your App is also deployed on-premise, or because you are just doing a lift&shift, or any other reason, this post is for you, every little things are explained in details.
• Integrating Azure Advisor Into Your Workday (Timothy Warner) - The azure advisor is one of my favorite tools in Azure, always something nice to do with it... Well until you fix it.
• Query across resources (Noa Kuperberg) - Wow! This is a really good news.

Programming

• Server-side rendering a D3 chart with React 16 - A geek with a hat (Swizec Teller) - It's an interesting tutorial that shows how to optimize the refresh of your chart using React.
• Tabs vs Spaces - A peaceful resolution with EditorConfig in Visual Studio. Plus .NET Extensions! (Scott Hanselman) - I personally don't really care to use spaces or tab ( I will use what's already there) but that config editor... That's something that will save a few teams... This is a post to share!
• What’s brewing in Visual Studio Team Services: September 2017 Digest (Buck Hodges) - VSTS is so packed of features it's a must to every developer and team. This post does a tour of the new feature it will give you an idea of this gigantic tool.

Databases

• Yes to databases in containers - Microsoft SQL Server available on Docker Store - Docker Blog (Elton Stoneman) - Pretty convenient I think, looking forward to trying it.

Miscellaneous

• Why I won’t write code demos, articles or new talks in your interview process (Frédéric Harper) - Interesting thoughts about some hirering practices. Finding a good math it's hard on both side.

Lessons learned when deploying multiple databases to Azure with VSTS

It's had been a while since I worked into Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS), and it was a real pleasure to get back in that area. For the solution I was working on, we need to keep the current database up and running while deploying a new version. For this purpose, we decided to append the release number to database name (ex: MyDatabase363). In our Build and Release processes, we needed to identify which databases are from the last release. In this post, I will show what I did using an inline PowerShell script to get that number and set it as an environment variable so it can be accessible by other tasks.

To get started let's add a Azure PowerShell task to our build definition. In this post, I use a build process but of course this is also valid for release process. To find the task quickly, use the search text box. I will add two of those, one to get the number, the second to validate that this value is now set as an environment variable and readable from other tasks.


Now it's time to set the first task. Fill-out all the properties and select Inline Script as the Script Type. It should look like this.



Let's examine the code.

Get last Release Number

$matchingResources = Find-AzureRmResource -ResourceNameContains "mydatabase" -ResourceType "Microsoft.Sql/servers/databases"

$lastRelease = 0

ForEach($resource in $matchingResources)
{
    if ($resource.ResourceName -match '(\d)+$') {
        if($lastRelease -lt $matches[0]){
            $lastRelease = $matches[0]
        }
    }
}
Write-Output "The last release number is:  $lastRelease"
Write-Output ("##vso[task.setvariable variable=lastReleaseNumber;]$lastRelease")

On the first line, I use the Azure PowerShell commandlet Find-AzureRmResource¹ to get an array of all the databases currently online in my resource group that contains a specific string. In this case, it's the name of the database without the release number. Then I will loop through all returned resources and using a very simple Regex to extract the release number and keep the biggest one (the last release).

To close that script we have two outputs. The first one is to give feedback in the logs, because it's always good to have some information there. The second one look more complicated, but if you split it, it's easier to see what's happening. In fact, we are producing a VSTS (previously called Visual Studio Online this is why it's VSO) command to initialize a variable ##vso[task.setvariable variable=lastReleaseNumber;] And of course, assign to it our last release number $lastRelease

To validate that we really successfully found our last release number and assigned it to a variable, let's try to read it back but from another step. That will be easily done this code in the other step created:

Validate the last Release Number

$number = $env:lastReleaseNumber

Write-Output "Confirmation, the last Release Number is:  $number "

The only thing missing before we can run our test is to create that environment variable. To to it simply go in the Variables tab and add it there.



It's all set, run the build and you should see something similar in your logs.

References

1. AzureRM PowerShell 4.3.1 documentation ↩
   

Reading Notes #284

Cloud

• Azure TLS Certificates changes (Rashmi Jha) - Because security is always a big concern, I thought it would be nice sharing this post.
• Deploying Visual Studio 2017 Function Projects with VSTS (Donna Malayeri) - This tutorial explains in simple steps how to configure our build in vsts, a reel time saver.
• Docker for AWS and Azure: Secure By Default Container Platform - Docker Blog (Riyaz Faizullabhoy) - Like they say build it ship it run it.
• Kicking The Tires On This Serverless Thing (Rob Conery) - Very interesting post that introduces many different flavors of serverless.
• New sample model for Azure Analysis Services (Josh Caplan) - Nice little post that gives everything we need to get started.
• What is Azure PowerShell? How It Works, Installation, Best Practices, and More (Angela Stringfellow) - The perfect post to get started. It a really good source of references.

Programming

• .NET and Docker (Scott Hanselman) - Very interesting post that clarifies the purpose of all those dotnet container.
• Connecting Power BI to your Visual Studio Team Services Account (Charles Sterling) - It't always cool (and potentially useful to get better) to visualize our data like that.

Miscellaneous

• How to buy and read e-books in Windows 10 Mobile Creators Update (Cale Hunt) - Nice tips. However, I do read from tine to time books on my Surface, but I simply use the App from my e-book reader.
• Pomodoro Technique – the Good, the Bad and the Tomato | Rubik's Code on WordPress.com (Nikola Zivkovic) - Interesting method. Simple and yet efficient.
• The humble checkbox (OneNote Team) - Nice to see how a simple checkbox could change your work.

Reading Notes #268

Cloud

• Azure Application Insights JavaScript SDK: reliability and performance improvements (Beckylin Orooji) - That's a good news! Time to update our packages.
  
• Access on-premise SQL Server data from Azure Logic Apps via On-Premises Data Gateway (Eldert Grootenboer) - Nice tutorial that explains step by step how to connect securely our on-premises resources to Azure.
  
• Cognitive Services APIs: Speech - Wow! So many ideas to play with those services... But that would be in another post.
  
• Serverless Integration with Logic Apps, Functions and Cognitive Service API (Steef-Jan Wiggers) - Another good integration example leveraging services in Azure.
  
• Microsoft Integration (Azure and much more) Stencils Pack v2.4 for Visio 2016/2013 is now available (Steef-Jan Wiggers) - We are always searching for images do use in our diagram. Here is your chance to update your tool with a nice pack.

Programming

• Running Cross Browser Automated Testings in Visual Studio Team Services - Fantastic tutorial that explains how to have a real impact on our deployment's speed by automating our UI testing on VSTS.

Miscellaneous

• Considerations on using Microsoft Flow or Logic Apps to sync documents (Steef-Jan Wiggers) - This post answers a question that many people I meet asked. Very clear, and yet simple to understand.

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 #255

Cloud

• AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud Platform - I personally value this kind o post where different cloud providers are compared. It helps to see if the solution available and find the best one for our needs.
  
• Announcing Azure Analysis Services preview (Bret Grinslade) - Impressive new service part o the SaaS Azure solution is now available (in preview) .
  
• Google releases .Net APIs for Google Cloud - Good news, now that Google embraced the .Net developers and our tooling, we have even more cloud opportunity.
  
• PowerShell cmdlets to manage Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Virtual Machines (Felipe Senso) - Nice little tips to know, and so much more in all these cmdlets.

Programming

• Debugging PowerShell Script with Visual Studio Code (rkeithhill) - Awesome tutorial full of tips that will bring you to the next level with VSCode.
  
• Exploring ServiceStack's simple and fast web services on .NET Core - This post is a really nice introduction to an interesting alternative when building services.
  
• Free ASP.NET Core 1.0 Training on Microsoft Virtual Academy - Wow! A full three days of training for free! Don't miss that opportunity.
  
• Why the Command Line? Why Now? - Interesting conclusion about the actual situation.

integration

• An important milestone in enterprise integration – launch of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2016 (Frank Weigel) - Great post about the Microsoft hybrid integration platform containing, of course, the new BizTalk 2016 Server, but also Azure Logic App.

Miscellaneous

• Download Microsoft Ignite 2016 Sessions Using PowerShell (Alexandre Brisebois) - Finally... The classic and useful script is out. Enjoy the shows from anywhere.
  
• Ten things we announced today at Microsoft’s Windows 10 Event (Mollie Ruiz-Hopper) - Interesting presentation this week from Microsoft. Not only, they announced new products that look fantastic, but it might stimulate other to push further their limits.
  
• VSTS Sync Migration Tools | naked Agility - Expert in DevOps & Agility with Visual Studio, Team Services, Azure, & Scrum - This post presents a very useful tool to migrate your source control environment to VSTS, easily. And don't forget that under 5 user, VSTS is completely free.

Reading Notes #242

Cloud

• Amazon launches QuickSight, a cloud-based business intelligence tool (Jordan Novet) - This post announces a powerful tool in the BI world. It looks very nice.
  
• Azure Infographic: Cloud Design Patterns - Wow! A fantastic infographic that shows many different patterns that should be used when developing with Azure.
  
• Azure PowerShell support for Enterprise Integration pack features now available (Jon Fancey) - Quick tutorial that uses PowerShell to create LogicApp.
  
• Create the roadmap for your enterprise cloud strategy (James Staten) - A book based on the real-live situation and Microsoft best practices... Sounds really useful to me.
  
• Querying the VSTS Work Items API directly from Power BI - Very impressive work, I know few managers who will love that tool. And the good news is that it is entirely customizable.
  
• Release notes (Matt Farmer) - Easier than ever, no more need to dig to know what new in each release. Read what the Api Management team has cooked for us.
  
• Why Does My SQL Server Availability Group Need a Load Balancer in Azure? (Paul Burpo) - This post is the answer of a very common question and also explains how to do it correctly.

Programming

• Exploring dotnet new with .NET Core (Scott Hanselman) - I discover the different types in dotnet new command during Julie Lerman's talk at DevTeach and now this post shows a list of incredible opportunities.

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...
  
• The 3 Things Scrum Teams Get Wrong - Interesting post, how your team score?
  
• Why I Left Google Redux (James Whittaker) - Interesting article about Google's business model and few other things.

Reading Notes #234

Suggestion of the week

• Observations and thoughts on the LinkedIn data breach (Troy Hunt) - These data breach posts are always very interesting but also a bit scaring.

Cloud

• Logic Apps: How to add several actions inside a Logic App condition branch (Sandro Pereira) - Nice little trick with Azure Logic App.
  
• Announcing general availability of Azure DevTest Labs (Xiaoying Guo) - Wow that's great, if you still not have tried it, the dev test is really good for any temporary environment, or that have a short live.
  
• Azure Marketplace: WordPress - Yep! Another great application that is available in the Azure Marketplace.
  
• Easily bring your SQL Server licenses to Azure VMs (Khalid Mouss) - Great news that announces a much simpler way to see licensing.
  
• Check out Azure Test Drives in preview (Bryon Surace) - If you wanna test an application on Azure without subscription or anything... Look at test drives.
  
• Diagnose and resolve issues with Azure Troubleshooting (Ritesh Garodia) - Nice post that helps us to know the troubleshooting tools available in the Azure portal.

Programming

• GitHub Pages now runs Jekyll 3.1 - Good news, Jekyll is a really nice generator what works with Marrkdown.
  
• Developer Tools Benchmarking 2016 survey (Cliff Simpkins) - Still a chance to win.
  
• Continuous deployment/delivery with Jenkins and VS Team Services (Anand Gaurav) - Jenkins doesn't need more introduction. This tutorial explains how to get setup in VSTS step by step.

Miscellaneous

• OneDrive and OneDrive for Business now MERGED into ONE CLIENT (Nazmus Khandaker) - Good news less app running in background and better user experience.

Reading Notes #226

Microsoft Build 2016

• Keynote Presentation - Day 1 - The grand opening! All about us: developers.
• Keynote Presentation - Day 2 - The second day opening, with all the details about Azure and Xamarin!
• Build 2016 - So many great presentations, make your own schedule or download them all using the Alex's Script.
• Download All Sessions in SD Quality (Alexandre Brisebois) - With most of the big event comes the Alex's script... very useful!

Cloud

• Using PowerShell to manage API Connections (Kevin Lam _ Microsoft) - Quick tip to do some clean-up in our connections.
  
• Effective ways to delete resources in a resource group on Azure - I love it! Very clever trick to delete all resources in a group but not deleting the group. And so simple.
  
• Brand new Docker Machine for Azure (Ahmet Alp Balkan) - Important notice in this update since it is no backward compatible.
  
• Gartner names Microsoft Azure a leader in aPaaS (Nicole Herskowitz) - Good news, Azure PaaS identified as a leader by Gartner for the third year.

Programming

• Getting to Know #Azure Mobile App Part 2 - Nice post that explains how to setup VSTS and HockeyApp to deploy an Universal application.

Reading Notes #225

Cloud

• Reduce Cloud Data Costs and Improve System Performance in Azure (Marc Dugas) - Useful post that shares good tips to save more.
  
• Developer's introduction to Azure IoT (Olivier Bloch) - Great post that explains what is IoT and the strengths o the Azure flavor.
  
• Using PowerShell to manage API Connections (Kevin Lam) - Quick tip to do some clean-up in our connections.

Programming

• Conditional Workflows in Postman (ankit) - First post of a promising series, it sets the table listing the tools required to have a dynamic workflow.
  
• Using Web Deploy in Visual Studio Team Services Release Management (Jakob Ehn) - Nice post that demystifies MSBuild deployment on VSTS.
  
• Almost everyone is doing the API economy wrong (Ed Anuff) - Interesting point of view, if you do API, it's a must.

Databases

• Public preview: JSON in Azure SQL Database - Interesting, we will be able to do json query directly in the Sql Database.
  
• Simple and reliable data movement with Azure Data Factory Copy Wizard (Anand Subbaraj) - Since all cloud projects included data migration, any reliable tool is a good news. I'm looking forward to try this one.

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.