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Congratulations Visual Studio on 20 amazing years! Join the VS2017 Launch Event
If you were developing code back in ‘97, perhaps you remember the mind blowing concept of Microsoft delivering a single IDE that could do it all. Up to this point, developers were used to juggling debuggers, compilers, linkers, editors, and more to build integrated solutions. It was a special time to experience development technology coming together in a way that truly challenged the imagination. Here’s everything you need. What can YOU build? Calling Visual Studio ambitious would be an understatement. 20 years later, we’ve come a long way. Whatever the platform of choice, developers tend to agree – Visu...
Power BI–A case study to end homelessness
Keith Anderson, Senior ADM, shares a practical example of how Power BI quickly transformed a project using simple, out-of-the-box features to integrate data and provide visualizations. I had the opportunity recently to work with the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness (CCEH) on their yearly Youth Point-in-time (PIT) Count event. Microsoft worked with them on a pro-bono basis to create a mobile application using Xamarin. Microsoft Developer Experience engineers in collaboration with Nutmeg Consulting created a survey application that could be loaded onto devices running iOS, Android, or Windows through ...
The High Availability Conversation Part 1: Introduction
In this post, Senior Consultant, Bradley Ball discusses High Availability for SQL Server. In this latest blog post PSfD Consultant Bradley Ball begins the High Availability Conversation based off of a question on Twitter. He answers the questions what do the Three Bears have to do with HA planning and the business users and IT management. Let’s define a couple terms up front. HA in this case is High Availability. It is the capability for a database or data store to maintain availability and connectivity to a Graphical User Interface, Web Service, or some other data consuming application despite a localized...
Dissecting the new() constraint in C#: a perfect example of a leaky abstraction
Most likely you’ve heard about The Law of Leaky Abstractions coined by Joel Spolsky. Even if you never heard of it, you definitely faced it in your day-to-day job. The “law” is pretty simple: “All non-trivial abstractions, to some degree, are leaky”. And this is 100% true. But sometimes even not that complicated abstractions can leak their internal details. Let’s consider the following code snippet: Do you see any issues with it? Will it pass a thorough code review? Of course, you need to know the context. For instance, you need to know what the TNode types are, whether the constructor of those types can th...
[Service Fabric] Securing an Azure Service Fabric cluster with Azure Active Directory via the Azure Portal
In this post, Senior Consultant, Larry Wall demonstrates how to secure Azure Service Fabric Cluster using Azure Active Directory via the Azure Portal. To make sure appropriate credit is given to a great article on this topic, I did take some of the information for the steps below from this article https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-fabric/service-fabric-cluster-creation-via-arm. The article found at the link focuses on using an ARM template to do the deployment and secure setup. Using ARM would be the way you would want to set this up in a production environment. My post is going to be using...
Transpose Data Based on Repeating Pattern in a Column in Power Query
Senior Application Development Manager, Robert Reilly, walks us through an approach to transpose data based on repeating patterns in Power Query. You may run into a scenario where you receive data in say a CSV that needs to be transposed (Row become Columns). If you want to transpose a table it's pretty straight forward in Power Query. However, when you want to group the data in the rows by a numbered pattern like the same categories repeat every third row then it's not an out of the box operation you can do with the Power Query UI. This post will cover an approach I came up with to solve this problem. Rea...
HoloLens – How to Create Mixed Reality?
Rick McGuire, Senior ADM, provides an introduction to mixed reality development with a test drive using HoloLens, Unity, and Visual Studio 2015. With the invention of HoloLens, it is now possible to superimpose a virtual 3D world onto our exiting reality. HoloLens lets you create holograms, virtual objects that appear in the in the same space as our real world, and they seem like real objects! I am admittedly a geek and love Sci-fi, I always thought the idea of superimposing graphics/objects in our real-world space was intriguing. I believe that HoloLens is the first step towards making this a common oc...
ASP.Net Session Swapping – Why it happens and what can be done about it?
In this post, Senior Application Development Manager, Sanket Bakshi explains details behind the sometimes perplexing issue of Session Swapping and how to avoid it. Kernel Cache is a powerful and well-known feature introduced in IIS 7 and found in all later versions. It’s the highly performant server level cache that very efficiently delivers frequently used content. Since the cache is in kernel memory, it is served even before the request reaches the IIS pipeline and, hence, it’s lightning fast. The problem arises with ISAPI components if they are attaching session cookies on the content in Kernel cache, th...
Integrating Visual Studio Team Services with Microsoft Teams
In this post, Senior Application Development Manager, Mike Bolser demonstrates how to integrate Microsoft Teams and Visual Studio Team Services. Microsoft Teams the new chat-based workspace in Office365 offers several services to enable work group collaboration. One way of enabling work group collaboration for developers is through a built-in integration with Visual Studio Team Services. Microsoft Teams paired with Visual Studio Team Services provides a comprehensive chat and collaboration experience across your Agile and development work. Some of the features that enable this tight integration can allo...