Developer Support
Advocacy and Innovation
Latest posts
Speed Matters – Turbo Charging Data Services with EF Core
Premier Developer consultant Rob Vettor brings us this post on performance of the new Entity Framework Core. Entity Framework Core (EF Core) has arrived and brings with it several long-awaited improvements. Officially released this past June, EF Core is a complete rewrite of the Entity Framework. While the high-level developer APIs (DbContext, LINQ queries, etc.) feel the same, its underlying engine and associated components are lightweight, highly-modularized and very fast. Despite its name, EF Core is not limited to the .NET Core platform. It integrates across the .NET Framework, including ASP.NET, UWP, WPF a...
Microsoft Security Risk Detection
In this post, Application Development Managers, Mike Batongbacal and Syed Medhi, introduce the Microsoft Security Risk Detection service formerly known as Project Springfield. Software Security is a Business Imperative In today’s world, the threat of security breaches in computer networks and business software is an all too real possibility. More than ever before, businesses are seeing application security as a business imperative. They have implemented strategies and processes to prevent and uncover potential security vulnerabilities and enable their applications to be more resilient to cyber-attacks. To hel...
Using PowerShell to implement a Farm-wide Global Navigation solution from the Managed Metadata Term Store in SharePoint 2013
In this post, Application Development Managers, Daniel Setlock and John Spinella demonstrate how to export the Managed Metadata Term Store via PowerShell to a SiteMap, and import that SiteMap into a multi-tiered dropdown into the Structured Navigation within SharePoint through a code-less method. We had a requirement at a customer to provide unified Global Navigation across their SharePoint 2013 farm, ideally that was fed through the Term Store they had already developed within the Managed Metadata Service. It was a struggle to find a solution that was easy enough to maintain, and provided the experience th...
Integrating Angular 4 Unit Tests with Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS)
Premier Developer consultant Wael Kdouh brings us this post on integrating Angular 4 unit tests into VSTS. One of the nice features of Angular 4 (and Angular 2 before it) is the introduction of the Angular CLI (command line interface). I like to think of it as a style guide coming straight from the Angular team. But more importantly, it takes care of all the ceremony that accompanies building an Angular application like setting up module bundlers with WebPack, setting up unit testing with Jasmine, setting up end to end testing with protractor, etc. One thing that Angular CLI doesn’t take care of though ...
To box or not to Box? That is the question!
Discussions on reddit, hacker news. Recently I've noticed that the Equal method from our ValueTuple (*) struct generates significant memory traffic (~1Gb). That was a bit of a surprise to me. This struct is well designed and was used pretty heavily in many performance critical scenarios. Here how the struct looks like: (*) Our ValueTuple was implemented way before the one that was shipped with VS 2017, and our implementation is immutable. So even today we can't switch to the implementation from the .NET Framework. Nothing special. Methods Equals and GetHashCode are overriden to avoid boxing allocation (...
From ASM to ARM – A real world migration
This post is provided by Senior Application Development Manager, Mark Pazicni, who walks us through an Azure migration exercise to move a legacy deployment in ASM to a modern deployment in ARM. Migrating from Azure Service Management (ASM) to Azure Resource Manager (ARM) can be a daunting task, but hopefully this post will outline some common pitfalls and help you plan a smooth migration. This post does not outline every issue that could occur so you still need to validate for your own migration. This is simply a starting point for a real-world migration scenario. For those that would like to explore outlined ...
On passing the Xamarin Mobile Developer Certification Exam
This post is from Premier Developer consultant Joe Healy who recently became a Xamarin Certified Mobile Developer. Congrats Joe! Microsoft likes us to have some technical certifications. Personally I enjoy the challenges of the tests. This year my goals were the Windows 10 UWP Developer exam ( Developing Mobile Apps 70-357 – https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/exam-70-357.aspx )and the Xamarin Certified Developer accreditation ( https://university.xamarin.com/certification ). Earlier in the year I passed the UWP exam, so up next was the Xamarin Cert. Cutting it short, I passed the X...
Resources to get started with Service Fabric Clusters in Azure or On-Premises
This post is provided by Application Development Managers, Mahendar Madhavaram and Guru Satish Piduru, who share some helpful resources to get started with Service Fabric Clusters. Service Fabric enables building and managing of scalable and reliable applications, composed of microservices and run at very high density on Service Fabric Clusters. It provides a sophisticated runtime to build distributed, scalable, stateless and stateful microservices applications and comprehensive application management capabilities to provision, deploy, monitor, and upgrade/patch deployed applications. Clusters for Service Fabri...
Facial Recognition and the Intelligent Kiosk App
This post is provided by Senior Application Development Manager, Rich Maines, who introduces us to the Intelligent Kiosk App using facial recognition and Cognitive Services APIs. I noticed this sign while running across the Brooklyn Bridge this past January. “Area Under NYPD Video Surveillance”Was the system actually analyzing pedestrians in real time? Was it be able to identify expressions? I can’t speak to this particular system and privacy implications aside, facial recognition technology, including the ability to distinguish between expressions, is advancing rapidly. Though the securi...