Developer Support
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Latest posts
AI with an Online College
Senior Application Development Manager, Justin Scott, launched a new podcast this month you will want to check out. AI exposed looks at the world of Artificial Intelligence-- discussing some of the latest trends, interviewing industry experts, and having fun in the process. In Episode#1, Justin Scott sits with one of our Microsoft data scientists, TJ Olojede, and discusses a fascinating project he was involved with for an online college. This show looks to discuss the overview of the project and some of the challenges his team faced. Episode #2 Justin has a brief talk with Premier Developer’s own, Bria...
Automating SQL Azure Server Firewall Rule Creation
For this installment of the Premier Developer Blog, Application Development Manager Herald Gjura shares some PowerShell scripts from his toolbox to help automate Azure SQL DB Server firewall rules. Problem to solve This is the problem I am trying to solve. I usually work with multiple Azure clients, who have granted me access to their subscriptions to do the work. Part of that work involves writing code that accesses various SQL Azure databases in a few SQL Azure servers. Also, all the .NET projects have test projects attached to them (including unit-tests, and integration tests, when necessary). From ...
Documentation in a DevOps World
In this post, Application Development Manager, Chris Mason discusses the challenge of keeping documentation up to date in this fast moving DevOps world. In addition, he spotlights DocFX and writes a build task extension which integrates it into your build pipeline. Overview We talk a lot about DevOps today and it represents a major strategy and focus for our developer platforms with Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) and Team Foundation Server (TFS). There are plenty of examples out there covering various aspects of application deployments in a DevOps world: deploying apps, database migrations, and coded...
.NET Core Overview
In this post, Senior Application Development Manager, Sash Kavalaparambil introduces .NET Core and many of the features that make it a powerhouse for cross platform development scenarios. It has been over 16 years since the first version of .NET framework has been released. In spite of its wide adoption among developer community, todays cloud first mobile first world demands lightweight, cross platform technologies for building applications. The .NET Core is the evolution of Microsoft’s .NET technology into a modular, cross platform, open source and cloud ready platform, which runs on Windows, Mac, Android, Io...
Thinking about moving to TFS 2017?
In this post, Application Development Managers, Sheldon Ledbetter and DeWayla White, share a few of their favorite things about TFS 2017. Thinking about moving to Team Foundation Server 2017? Here are just a few highlights regarding improvements to the latest release: One of the first things you’ll notice is the collection page has been improved with a more personalized experience displaying all of your favorites, projects, work and pull item requests. You will find this has immediate individual benefits for each developer based on his/her approach. Next, you’ll find the version control has been imp...
Microservices Application Architecture: One Customer’s Journey from Azure Cloud Services to Service Fabric
In this post, Senior Application Development Consultant, Greg Roe, shares insights from a cloud transformation using Azure Cloud Services and ultimately, Service Fabric. I love helping customer's optimize their Applications using Microsoft technologies such as Azure. In doing so, our team helps customers proactively vet architectural decisions, save development costs, and go to market faster. As an example, one customer I worked with had a long history of selling commercial and consumer hardware devices for homes and building use. They were in the process of transforming their business from hardware to...
How to use Azure Resource Health API to gain visibility into the health of a VM, Web App or SQL Database
In this post, Principal Application Development Manager, Rick Caudle, demonstrates how to use Azure Resource Health API to query the health of Azure services. As a developer, I am always interested ways to gain deeper insight into the health of the resources that my solutions are deployed to, especially if an API is involved! I mean, what developer wouldn't like this? Today, we are going to take a look at how to use the Azure Resource Health API to check the health status of a VM (you can also do this for other resources). Azure Resource Health is also exposed to you via the Azure Portal via the Resou...
SSRS and the Case of the Out-of-Order Report Tables
In this post, Senior Application Development Manager, Patrick King shares a SSRS tip to help control report item order when it differs from what you may see in VS designer. I recently worked with a customer developing a SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) report that was rendering in a different order than what appeared in the designer in Visual Studio 2013. The report designer had three tables that were arranged sequentially, similar to those shown below: When rendered in the designer preview, the tables were out of order, as shown here: And when exported to PDF, one table was superimpos...
Premier Support for Developers & Microsoft at Orlando Code Camp 2017
Orlando Codecamp is “a free, one day learning event for programming professionals and students with a focus on coding, databases and related technologies, concepts and practices.” Join us on Saturday, April 8, 2017, at Seminole State College in Sanford, FL, for Orlando’s 12th annual Codecamp. Several Microsoft employees will be presenting, including Brian Swiger and Kendal Van Dyke from Premier Support for Developers. Brian Swiger (@codebeing) will be presenting Migrating to Microservices with Azure Service Fabric: Many people are talking about adopting microservices and moving away from the monolithic ...