Teach Yourself Azure in 4 Hours

Learning to use Azure:

1. Create Web Site - Check
   https://manage.windowsazure.com/?whr=live.com#Workspaces/All/dashboard
2. Create Database – Check
   https://manage.windowsazure.com/?whr=live.com#Workspaces/SqlAzureExtension/Databases
3. Upload Project to TFS – Check
   http://tfs.visualstudio.com/
4. Link TFS to Azure Web Site – Check
   http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/common-tasks/publishing-with-tfs/
5. Download Azure SDK for Visual Studio 2010 – Check
   http://www.microsoft.com/en-nz/download/details.aspx?id=15658
6. Download Web Site publication connection settings – Check
   http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/deployment/cse-curated-view-deploy-to-waws
7. Publish Web Site to Azure – Check
   (see above)
8. Create Visual Studio VM – Check
   https://manage.windowsazure.com/?whr=live.com#Workspaces/VirtualMachineExtension/vms
9. Synchronise Local Database Schema to Azure Database - Check.
   http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee730904.aspx
10. Synchronise Local Database Data to Azure - Check.
    http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/services/sql-databases/getting-started-w-sql-data-sync/

Not easy, but worth it.
Got inspired by Scott Guthrie’s session on Azure yesterday at Tech Ed 2013, Auckland, NZ.

Geek Post Monthly Newsletter Volume 2 Issue 11

Geek Post

Volume 2 Issue 11 November 2010

Hippolite Musings	Tena Koutou Katoa, In November, I: Conquered the Project Management tool which Telecom uses by entering 3 months actuals and 1 months forecast work for the 8 staff in my team.  I’m a trainee Team Lead! Attended another Vex Robotics Scrimmage. Received direction on how to maximise My Personal Performance (MPP) reporting.  This is corporate-speak for complying with my quarterly performance reviews. Fixed up WHEN library database in preparation for handing it over to somebody else.  Yippee! Sat and failed my Windows Communication Foundation exam.  Ah, well, there’s always next month! Studied (before and after exam) materials for said exam. Took final minutes as Secretary for Grenada Village Community Association at AGM.  Presented finances as acting Treasurer. Assisted Fiona to handover Membership Secretary duties of WHEN. Delivered one project.  Picked up three more.  Christmas is always busy (people trying to get stuff finished before the shutdown period). Blessings, James
Community Development	Grenada Village Online My former manager read last months blog; found out I needed training in how to give a logo a transparent background; sent me an email explaining how to do it; and now Grenada Village has a better look and feel.  Here’s how: Downloaded IrfanView. Load the graphic. Save As… Specify JPG Click on background Specify Transparent. Align Church Online Reorganised home page and master page so that Search Widget and Login Widget are both Web Parts in the right pane.  Implemented Top 5 News Items (as per Grenada Village Online). Reduced size of logo. Looks much better. Wellington Home Education Network Handed over Fiona’s Membership Secretary role. Still to hand over my Treasurer’s role. Wellington SQL Server Users Group We had Clive Trott come to show us Virtualisation, Unattended Installs and the Resource Governor. Wellington Dot Net Users Group We had Mark Clearwater from Intergen come to show us XAML, to the UI and Beyond. The Silverlight Group had  Andrew Tokeley from Xero come and show them Making a Great Silverlight Installations experience.
Developer News	Top Stories Show off your Azure skills using New Zealand Digital Content If you want a good incentive to learn more about Windows Azure then check out the "Best use of Windows Azure cloud computing services" category in the Mix 'n Mash competition that opened today. The competition is a chance to show the world what you can do with New Zealand digital content and data. All you need to do for a chance to win $1,000 is to build a mashup hosted on Windows Azure (there are other competition categories as well). PDC On Demand: The Future of C# and Visual Basic Technical fellow Anders Hejlsberg talks about the roadmap for C# and Visual Basic in vNext and beyond. Plus: Asynchrony in C# 5. Part II: Whence await. Part III: Composition. New Release: Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tools A set of extensions to Visual Studio Professional (and above) which improves developer productivity. In this third major release of the Power Tools we have made significant improvements to the Solution Navigator and the Tab Well to address our top customer requests. ASP.NET MVC 3 Release Candidate Backwards compatible with ASP.NET MVC V1 and V2, this release adds a ton of new functionality and refinements.
Training	Complete Conference Session Schedule Now Online! The virtual Microsoft Certified Career Conference is almost here, and it will be packed with valuable information you won’t want to miss! Join highly respected leaders in the industry for technical and career development sessions and network with other professionals during and after the event. Check out the Conference Schedule and Register today. Microsoft Certified Professionals can use the code MCP50 for a 50 percent discount. Add the MCT & Educator Virtual Summit to Your Calendar MCTs and registered academic educators can join us for the MCT & Educator Virtual Summit—a complimentary readiness event on November 17. To make sure you do not miss this event, add it to your Outlook calendar. Certification/Exams - Save up to 20 Percent on Microsoft Certification Exam Packs with Second Shots Get the certification you need to keep your career on track. Find guidance on the training you’ll need, chart your training course, and save up to 20 percent when you purchase Microsoft Certification Packs of two to five exams. Training - MOC/Courseware/Exams/Clinics - New Microsoft Official Courses Mean New OneNote Trainer Packs Eight new OneNote trainer packs are available—bringing the total number to 40. All are available at the MCT Download Center. Check them out today! New IT Fundamentals Course for Windows Server 2008/R2 Microsoft Learning is proud to announce the release of Course 6420B: Fundamentals of Windows Server 2008. This five-day course covers the fundamental concepts and skills of server administration, Active Directory, networking, and security of Windows Server 2008 servers (including Windows Server 2008 R2) for students who are new to IT.
Study News	As per last month, I finished studying Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 - Windows Communication Foundation.  I booked my MCTS exam 70-503 for Tuesday 9 November at Auldhouse.  I failed.  Now I’m doing the Skill Port on-line training (freebie offering via Telecom).  Will re-sit in the new year. What I have learned from this experience WCF is tricky, real tricky to get right.  And by virtue of its very nature, debugging it is hard, real hard.  For example, I had a real-life example to code.  I had a successful Web Service running inside an existing web site.  So I thought, “here’s a perfect candidate to switch over to WCF.”  Wrong.  I tried and failed for 3 days: First, I discovered that because the DEV & PROD servers are Windows Server 2003 and not 2008, that therefore I can’t use WsHttpBinding but have to use BasicHttpBinding. Then I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to decipher what combination of binding and address (HTTPS was not available to me) was giving me the really unhelpful “Service actively refused connection” error message. Turned out that I had altered my DEV code some time back from System.Oracle.Client to Oracle.Data.Client and the DEV server didn’t have the correct Oracle client installed.  Nowhere did WCF tell me this. I will keep trying.  I will succeed.  My success has merely been delayed.
Telecom News	Project Marley It’s no secret that a strategic decision has been made to bring in-house as much IT work as possible.  This was caused by a number of factors, not least because of the government’s Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) initiative will probably force structural separation of the Chorus business off from the rest of Telecom.  This will mean the requirement for some IT resources to be split off separately to Chorus. So, Project Marley is all about offering those HP staff who work exclusively on the Telecom account, to come over to permanent Telecom jobs.  This will be done sensitively, I have no doubt.  It doesn’t directly impact my small team, but what it does impact is that the appetite for increased permanent head count means my manager can now hire just about as many .NET developers as he would like.  So any of my Geek friends, if you’re reading this and desiring a change, let me know and I’ll see if I can arrange you an interview!
Situations Vacant	Lots See my paragraph above.
INETA News	A summary of Significant Dot Net User Group Chatter None - The hamster finally died. Linked-In had this: Scott Guthrie Talks Shop VII Developing testable web parts for SharePoint by Richard Fennel
PASS News	A summary of  Significant SQL Server User Group Chatter Ditto to the above. Linked-In had this: Top 10 Secrets of a SQL Server Expert SQL Server Security Concerns
Events Schedule	In this section, I highlight dates, times and venues of events either I am presenting at, or of interest to Geeks.  I’m available for bookings. Date Event Venue Speaker 1-Dec-2010 LINQ to Async: An Introduction to the Reactive Extensions Xero, Wellington Ivan Towlson 2-Dec-2010 SilverLight Firestarter Redmond or Online Lots 11-Dec-2010 SharePoint Saturday Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology Lots 12-Dec-2010 VEX Robotics Scrimmage Hutt Valley High School N/A 15-Dec-2010 MonoTouch and MonoDroid Xero, Wellington Nic Wise 12-13 Feb 2011 VEX Robotics Regional Competitions St Peter’s College, Palmerston Northq N/A April 2011 ALM Conference Wellington Various
Humour	Web Designers vs. Web Developers An infographic of the differences between them.

Who do you have to kill?

…in order to be nominated for an MVP award?

That was the tongue-in-cheek question I posed to a couple of MVP Leads, here at the Microsoft TechEd conference.

Background

I knew that it was awfully bad taste to go seeking this reward for oneself.  That it should be bestowed upon one by others who have recognized your contribution to the community through voluntary efforts.  However, after not being shoulder tapped (after many years of dedicated service, IMHO), I decided to ask the question.

Problem

Turns out, I’d been too generalist.  Which is natural for a New Zealander, but works against you in this case.  Because I’m both Web Dev and DB Dev, I’d been straddling the two streams, and contributing to both camps.  However, the MVP programme is structured along Product lines, and you must demonstrate in-depth knowledge, skill and dedication in that one area, in order to qualify.

Hence, I don’t qualify.

Solution

Question now is, do I want to bother refocussing on only one area?  Or am I basically happy to continue as I am, knowing that that particular gong is out of reach?

Thoughts and/or opinions?

As a matter of interest, the two areas that strike me as interesting, in which I feel I “had a shot” would be VB and/or SQL BI.

What on Earth have I been up to?

I’ve been busy:

Date	Title	Venue
02-Apr-09	WebCast: Intro to ORM for DBAs	PASS USA
16-Apr-09	What’s New in Microsoft SQL Services	Wellington SQL Users
30-Apr-09	Microsoft Certifications	Auckland SQL Users
14-May-09	How To: Design and Develop Applications to Ensure Quality	VUW
26-May-09	How To: Design and Develop Applications to Ensure Quality	Ellerslie .NET Users
14-Jun-09	Microsoft Sync Framework	NZ .NET Code Camp, Porirua
18-Jun-09	Microsoft Sync Framework	Wellington SQL Users
15-Jul-09	How To: Design and Develop Applications to Ensure Quality	Wellington .NET Users
30-Jul-09	Microsoft Sync Framework	Auckland SQL Users & Ellerslie .NET Users
04-Aug-09	Creation: Why I Believe	Malakai’s Care Group, Wellington Elim
20-Aug-09	How To: Design and Develop Applications to Ensure Quality	Software Quality NZ
13-Sep-09	Microsoft Certifications	NZ .NET Code Camp, Auckland
29-Sep-09	Creation: Why I Believe	Jeannie’s Care Group, Wellington Elim

I’m available for bookings!

I have moved my Blog!

Old Site: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/JamesHip/

New Site: http://JamesHip.blogspot.com/

Reason: I can now use Windows Live Writer to write my blogs, instead of manually creating an html page in Microsoft Visual Studio!  Also, the formatting was being automatically changed, thus rendering my final output almost illegible.

Method: I had to move each item manually!  I discovered how to make my past blogs appear as though they were written on their original post date, but I couldn’t make the comments appear that way.  It took me 7 days to do it, because there was 7 pages of blogs to move over; each page was about 20 blogs.

Result: This will be my final entry at GeekZone.  Thanks, Mauricio, for being a great service when I needed you.

Wellington Workgroup Solutions Team

James Hippolite, Senior .NET Developer	Martin Harris, .NET Developer
Megha Barpande, .NET Developer	Gary Saunders, Lead Developer

[dotnet] Test-Driven Development

Kiaora Zac,

I’m going to get ridiculed by true, OO developers like Owen, but I’ll give you my 10c. Having read the sum total of 1 MSDN article about it (and numerous Geek group discussions), I decided to give it a try. I found it easy to install and easy to use.  However, it didn’t fit my design methodology.  Let me elaborate. I use Strongly-Typed Datasets (instead of ORM) and don’t use MVC.  I like declarative programming and minimalist event-driven coding.  I code from the data model rather than the class definitions.  Maybe I should use MVC, but because I don’t, then I found TDD was of limited use to me. When I changed an interface (e.g. modified a stored proc), then TDD was very good at reminding me that I needed to flow through the changes to the BLL.  What it wasn’t any good at was helping me to pin-point everywhere in the Presentation layer where I’d used that ObjectDataSource (I guess Find All would do it). Having just read Owens response (I might have guessed he’d get in first), I agree that he’s top-down and I’m bottom-up.  I don’t have an issue with that.

Blessings,
James Hippolite
Senior .NET Developer – Workgroup Solutions Team

---

From: dotnet@dot.net.nz [mailto:dotnet@dot.net.nz] On Behalf Of Zac Seth
Sent: Thursday, 20 March 2008 1:07 p.m.
To: dotnet@dot.net.nz
Subject: [dotnet] Test-Driven Development -->

Hi All, I have an early Friday arvo question for you: Are you/your organisation:

1. Currently using Test-Driven Development (TDD),
2. Hoping/planning to use TDD,
3. Not planning to use or not interested in TDD.

For those of you that are using TDD, how are you finding it? What are the pros and cons that you find using it in your environment? Would you ever consider developing without it? How painful was it to transition into? If you have any other thoughts on the subject I’d love to hear them. Cheers, Zac Seth  |  Developer  |  Netfinity Limited
phone: +64 9 308 5494  |  mob: +64 21 310 308
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Level 1, 1 Augustus Terrace
Parnell, Auckland, New Zealand
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Web: www.netfinity.co.nz

Comp.Sci. vs Info.Sys

Hi,

I'm beginning to formulate an hypothesis, that I haven't designed any experiments for yet, so I can't call it a theory. It is this:

That Computer Science grads are taught C (C+, C#, whatever) and therefore have a "top-down" approach to software development. This top-down approach I define as being concerned with proper class definition, inheritence, polymorphism, etc. first, and the data layer takes care of itself, often via some Object Relational Mapper (ORM) tool.

Conversely, Information Systems grads are taught VB (and often SQL as well) and therefore have a "bottom-up" approach to software development. This bottom-up approach I define as being concerned with proper entity-relationship definition and the presentation layer is merely an extension of the database.

I do not believe either approach is superior in all circumstances: both may be better in certain instances.

It is less of a problem than the divide between Engineers and Developers. We really don't talk the same language!

I'd be interested in formulating debate around this topic, if anybody out there is also interested?

Minutes of Workgroup Solutions Team Day

WST Team Day

Tuesday 15 May 2007

Round Table - All

• Application Linker
  • Could be turned into a Vista Gadget?
• Working together
  • Can Tim help me with UPC?

Server Migration – David Bulog

• Budget $350K
  • 5 new boxes = “blade” servers
  • 3 old boxes = DR
• Can DR servers be set up with Replication?
  • No they can’t
  • Not allowed to be hot-swappable
  • Budget constraint
• Windows Server 2003
  • Is IIS6 standard?
  • Is IIS7 a Service Pack upgrade?
• Move DTS package from PROD to SSIS on DEV (can still push to PROD).
  • Send to Dave?

Word from the Top – Murray Mitchell

• Structural Changes
  • Wellington App Dev Manager role happening “soon” (2 weeks)
  • Capability (training) Manager also happening tomorrow
  • Identity and Access Management – Meta-directory (Novell product) project to maintain/synchronise identities. Now Sun product is option (Novell difficult to engage).
  • Peter Hill – service response reporting.
• Operating Model Reviews
  • PROBE – major problems
  • Meta-space
  • Mobile Devices
• Operational Separation
  • Is immanent
  • SAP teams will be hit hard
  • Has implications for our work for Wholesale
  • Shared Capability will remain as an entity with clear rules of engagement
• Engagement scores
  • Completed
  • To be released soon after analysis
• Very dependable team
  • no red flags
  • no head count issues
  • recruitment drive in the market generating considerable interest = 200 applications

WST Issues - Mike Owen

• Training – will be approved on a case-by-case basis
• Separation – will need to stay aware
• Tech Mahindra – will make ourselves available to assist them to assist us by explaining our needs for contract resources.
• Performance Reviews

Team Standards – Norman Close

• Database – Norman will create a document
• ASP.NET – James will create a document
• CMM – Team will not attempt to obtain an objective measure of standards, but will adhere to Best Practices as/when they become known

(Break for lunch)

New Stuff – Megha Barpande

• Use of Empty Data Template to present Details View embedded in Grid View
• Use of 3-tier – difficult to understand initially, but now very easy to implement and maintain.
• Grid View (design mode) will not show Enable Editing option, if the underlying Object Data Source doesn’t allow editing.
• Themes – for consistent look and feel

New Stuff – James

• SQL Migration Scripts
• Master Pages
• Forms Authentication & Authorisation
• Site Map, Site Navigation & Bread crumbs

.NET User Group "Lightening Talk"

(Am moving these next few entries over from Family Blog so my political and business interests do not drown out my family photos.)

Took part in kick-off of Dot Net User Group for 2007.

I gave a 5-minute presentation "Inside Telecom".

If you're interested, here's the PowerPoint Presentation

Who am I?

• Senior Developer – Microsoft Technologies
• MCP, MCSD, MCDBA, (MCT), MCAD
• Workgroup Solutions Team
• Applications Development, Maintenance & Support
• Shared Capability
• Technology and Enterprises

What do we do?

• Hunt, seek, destroy (Access)
  • Web front-end
  • SQL Server back-end
• Develop, maintain & support
• Workflow!

What do we want?

• Juniors – Web
• Intermediate – MCAD
• Senior – MCSD or MCPD
• Manager
  • Wellington Java (vacant)
  • Auckland .NET (filled)

What do you get?

• Unlimited Training
  • up to 20% of chargeable time per week
  • Exam/study/training budget
  • 1-2 weeks per annum courses
• MSDN Universal
• Reasonable salary
• Heaps of abuse!