The Morning Brew

Update: As highlighted in the comments (thanks James) I’m speaking tonight at the ChesterDevs Usergroup, giving a session on Web Sockets and SignalR. I believe all the spaces are taken for the event and have been for a while, which is why I’ve not really mentioned. Really looking forward to it – now if only I can convince the Windows Phone 8 emulator to work correctly on my laptop for one of the demos.

Update2: Yes, I broke the HTML, and everything went bold, should all be back to normal now

Software

• SQL Server 2014 – Another of the TechEd announcements this week was the announcement of the next version of SQL Server. SQL Server 2014 will include improved performance and availability over 2012 and will add in memory database capabilities along with improved backup and disaster recovery features
• dotTrace 5.5 EAP: Introducing Subsystems – The team over at JetBrains announce another Early Access Preview programme, this time for dotTrace 5.5. This new version includes subsystem analysis, bookmarking functionality, improved hotspot identification and integration with ReSharper 8 EAP. Check it out, and give feedback to the team.
• What’s New in Fiddler 2.4.4.5 – Eric Lawrence has been working away on Fiddler and announces the release of version 2.4.4.5 which contains some significant performance improvements, some useful improvements to the session list and timeline tab, Web Sockets support and much more.

Information

• An integer division identity – Eric Lippert takes a look at an algebraic identity, which is true in mathematics, and explores if that is the case in performing the same with integer arithmetic in C#, discussing some of the immediate possible failure cases, before looking at a specific case.
• The Top 10 Things to Know When Running SQL Server Workloads on Windows Azure Virtual Machines – Roger Doherty discusses the use of the Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks for running SQL Server instances, sharing a number of important things to be aware of when planning and working with SQL Server in such an environment.
• Building an HTML5 Web Sockets Server with Node.js – Dan Wahlin shares a look at the Node.js Web Sockets server capabilities, constructing a sample which sees a webpage calling to a node based Web Sockets server to retrieve images from Flickr.
• Barbarian Meets Knockout: Knockout.js Observables – Jaime González is on part 2 of a 13 part series looking at the various aspects of using the Knockout client side MVVM framework. This part digs into the use of the Observable type within knockout.
• Scripting .NET Applications with IronPython – Jerome Terry explores adding scripting capabilities to your applications using IronPython as the scripting language, looking at hosting the script engine and running scripts inside an application in this CodeProject article.
• Bing it on, Reactive Extensions! – story, code and slides – Andrei Rinea walks through the creation of the demo app from his recent talk on using the Reactive Extensions, providing a nice introductory sample, along with sharing the completed code and slides from his session.
• Keeping sensitive config settings secret with Azure Websites and GitHub – Phil Lee shares a technique for keeping configuration settings secret when working with GitHib hosted projects which are deployed to Windows Azure Websites

Community

• Skills Matter : Progressive .NET Tutorials May 2013 29-05-13 – All the session recordings from the Progressive .NET Tutorials are now available online, giving you access to some excellent sessions from some great speakers covering all aspect of the cutting edge development technologies, with a focus on single page applications.
• Build and Deployment – CraftyCoders – The CraftyCoders usergroup based in Bromsgrove are hosting an event on the evening of Thursday 20th June, where there will be three mini-sessions from group members sharing how they go about the build and deployment process.

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Software

• Visual Studio 2013, ALM, and DevOps & Visual Studio 2013, ALM, and DevOps – Somaseagar and Brian Harry announced Visual Studio 2013 at TechEd yesterday. This new relaese will be available as a preview at the //build conference, and will be shipping late this year. There is a significant focus on agile, TFS and DevOps in this new version
• dotCover 2.5 EAP is Open: Now with Hot Spots View` – JetBrains announce the openign of the Early Access Programme for dotCover 2.5, their code coverage tooling. This is a great opportunity to get hold of the newest features, and try them out, while being able to give feedback to the team.
• Windows Azure: Announcing New Dev/Test Offering, BizTalk Services, SSL Support with Web Sites, AD Improvements, Per Minute Billing & Windows Azure: Announcing Major Improvements for Dev/Test in the Cloud – Scott Guthrie serves up a double helping of new Windows Azure goodness, with a bunch of new features such as SSL on Websites, Active Directory improvements, along with account related things like per minute billing for running Virtual Servers and and improved free trial offer, and significantly a reduced rate to allow testing with MSDN licensed software in the cloud.

Information

• Why unhandled exceptions are useful – Simon Cooper discusses the up side of an unhandled exception in one of your applications, as an opportunity to improve your understanding of the problem, and address an assumption you have made in your code.
• (Un) Reliability in messaging: idempotency and de-duplication – Jimmy Bogard follows on from his discussions on ditching 2 phase commit with a look at some of the common strategies for dealing with unreliable messaging to ensure your application can cope in instances where what you send may not always get processed.
• Pushing ETW events through SignalR – Pablo M. Cibraro shares some code which works with the Event Tracing for Windows OS functionality, and allows you to hook messages and transmit them to a client using SignalR
• Loupe Agent for Entity Framework (Beta) – Also on the subject of logging, Kendall Miller discusses how the new logging hooks in Entity Framework have allowed them to create a nice integration for their Loupe product which can capture entity framework events.
• Using Web Platform Installer on a server without internet access – Benjamin Perkins takes a look at how you can still use the Web Platform Installer when your server does not have internet access.
• Supporting only JSON in ASP.NET Web API – the right way – Filip W. takes a look at two different techniques for creating JSON only services in ASP.NET Web API

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Update: Alois Kraus’ link today should have referred to Enterprise Library and not Entity Framework – thanks to Davide for letting me know via the comments.

Software

• jQuery 1.10.1 and 2.0.2 released – Dave Methvin announces the release of jQuery 1.10.1 and 2.0.2 which are bugfix releases which address issues with relative animations in the previous release
• A Sneak Peek at Internet Explorer 11 – Infragistics DevToolsGuy highlights some of the things which may be forthcoming in Internet Explorer 11, including improved touch support in desktop Internet Exploer and possible changes to the User Agent.
• Now on IE and Firefox: Debug your mobile HTML5 page remotely with weinre (WEb INspector REmote) – Olivier Bloch highlights the work carried out by the community to add support for Web Inspector Remote for Internet Explorer and Firefox

Information

• Taking Baby Steps with ScriptCS – Jan Van Ryswyck discusses his desire for a simpler .NET development story and looks at how ScriptCS may provide just that, showing how easily you can get up and running with the ScriptCS environment, and looking at spinning up NancyFx within it.
• MSDN Magazine June Issue Preview – Michael Desmond gives a taste of what is to come in this month’s MSDN Magazine, with publication to occur today (3rd June) at some point.
• Semantic Tracing For .NET 4.0 – Alois Kraus highlights the semantic logging support which has been made available in Entity Framework 6 Enterprise Library, looking at working with the Event Tracing for Windows functionality to get an understanding of what your application is doing under the hood.
• Hijacking the Visual Studio Build Process – Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi takes a look at how you can replace out the standard build process in Visual Studio with a custom MSBuild, sharing an example from some recent work on a Chrome extension
• Creating a Basic CRUD Application with Backbone.js Starter Kit (part 2) – Kazi Manzur follows on from his earlier post with more exploration of buildin a basic application using his Backbone.js starter template
• Thoughts on Queue Centric Workflow Design – Jason Short shares a collection of thoughts and experiences from working with enterprise customers on queue centric workflow pattern based systems
• How to troubleshoot Windows Azure Mobile Services – Jeff Sanders shares a number of useful tips to help in debugging issues with Windows Azure Mobile Services

Community

• Windows Phone Events – Mike Taulty highlights an event taking place this Saturday (8th June) in Shoreditch which will provide support in porting existing Windows Phone 7 applications to Windows Phone 8, and a second event on Saturday 15th June at Nokia, Paddington, London whcih focuses on getting new developers working with the Windows 8 platform.

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