Developer Support
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SQL Server 2016 Express SP1 – Always Encrypted
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Manager, Chris Tjoumas who provides an overview of Always Encrypted with SQL Server 2016. Introduction In this post, I want to focus on the Always Encrypted security feature of SQL Server 2016 SP1, specifically with the Express edition. This post is motivated by a customer who was hoping to understand a bit more about the different encryption options, specifically column-level encryption, and whether or not the data remains encrypted when exported or backed up. Which Encryption Options are Available for SQL Server 2016 SP1 Express? As shown in the list of security...
Jump Start ASP.NET Core Application on Nano Server
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Manager, Linkai Yu who shares some tips to speed up ASP.NET Core Application dev on Nano Server.With the Nano server release from Windows 2016 Server, I’m excited to see the new application deployment practice to work with the thin and fast OS.If you are new to ASP.NET Core application deployment on Nano server, I hope this blog will help you get up and running quickly while avoiding wasting time on the old documentation.If you search “asp.net core app on nano server”, you will find some older documentation such as:ASP.NET Core on Nano Server | Microsoft DocsRunning Asp.Net...
Modernizing a Monolithic Application using Microservices and Azure
This post on modernizing your application for the cloud comes to us from Premier Developer consultant Najib Zarrari.ContextAs companies embark on their digital transformation journeys, pressure on IT organizations have been mounting to levels that have never been experienced before. Businesses have the following expectations, among others, from their IT organizations:To meet those expectations, not only do companies need to have the capabilities to build these kind of solutions, but also they have to build them faster than ever before. This is why many organizations are rethinking how they are archite...
Dissecting the pattern matching in C# 7
C# 7 finally introduced a long-awaited feature called "pattern matching". If you're familiar with functional languages like F# you may be slightly disappointed with this feature in its current state, but even today it can simplify your code in a variety of different scenarios. Every new feature is fraught with danger for a developer working on a performance critical application. New levels of abstractions are good but in order to use them effectively, you should know what is happening under the hood. Today we're going to explore pattern matching and look under the covers to understand how it is implemented. ...
TFVC Source Code Control in Visual Studio Code
In this post, Premier Developer consultant Wael Kdouh demonstrates how to integrate Visual Studio Code with your source control environment using Team Foundation Version Control. In this post I will be walking you through the Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) support within Visual Studio Code. I will assume that you are running on a windows machine and thus I will be using the TF executable that comes with Visual Studio 2017 (there is also a free, standalone "Visual Studio Team Explorer 2017" version that contains TF.exe). If you are running on a Mac OS or Linux you can use the Team Explorer Everywhe...
The Forgotten Roles in an Agile Transformation
This post is provided by App Dev Manager Tuan Nguyen who spotlights the importance of Agile roles and contributions across the business.Most of the organizations I have been involved with that adopted Agile tend to treat non-developers as an afterthought. This is not surprising as Agile is usually driven by the IT department but it can be detriment to the transformation. Organizational changes are hard enough, so you don’t want people feeling alienated. Make sure you don’t forget the people filling these titles and that they understand how they fit into the Scrum framework:Project ManagersScrum does not have a PM...
Developing an Azure AD B2C multi-tenant application
In this post from his blog, Premier Developer consultant Marius Rochon provides a demo application that illustrates how to use Azure Active Directory B2C for authentication in a multi-tenant application.The 'regular' Azure AD has build-in support for multi-tenant applications. In that case, a user from any Azure AD tenant can sign in to an application registered in another tenant. The application can then use the user's security context to give the user a view of data that is specific to that tenant.The goal of this article is to explore providing similar support using Azure AD B2C with one major difference: inst...
Using ADAL with Angular2–Part 2
In this post, Senior Application Development Manager, Vishal Saroopchand who follows up his first post to demonstrate how to pass and revalidate the JWT token. In my last blog posting, I explained how to use Adaj.js with Angular2 and demonstrated how to retrieve the JWT token from AAD. I also stated you can supply the JWT to your back end WebAPI services. This blank statement caused several inquiries on how to pass the JWT from client’s HTTP requests and revalidating on the WebAPI service. In this post, I have updated both the original source and added two WebAPI implementation that shows how to pass a...
Getting the most from your Premier Contract
This post is provided by Senior App Dev Manager, Mark Meadows who shares some tips on getting the most from your Premier Support for Developers contract.A Microsoft premier contract can be a very valuable asset to you and your company. You not only get access to a wealth of reactive and proactive engineers and services, but an advocate and partner within Microsoft working on your behalf. As an Application Development Manager (ADM) I work to build relationships with my customers, and genuinely help them maximize the value of our products and services. Having been in this role for many years, and ...