_ How do you test that a feature in your application actually works? Or that it is actually being used? Usually, you’d perform lots of tests in separate environments, like a QA or Acceptance environment. Or you’d route a certain percentage of your production traffic to the new version of your site to test if and how usage of your new …
In order to release quickly and have stable application environments with minimal errors, it is of vital importance that developers work well with IT operations people and vice versa. To do this, they need to communicate well and sometimes work in the same team. Ideally, they work in the same environment. Makes sense right? This is called DevOps. DevOps is …
 Azure SQL Database is one of the most used services in Microsoft Azure, and I use it a lot in my projects. It is basically SQL Server in the cloud, but fully managed and more intelligent. There is another service in Azure that is kind of similar, but not quite: Azure SQL Data Warehouse. Azure SQL Data Warehouse uses a …
You can learn how the .NET ecosystem works on Stackify. It consists of runtimes (.NET Framework, .NET Core and Mono for Xamarin), class libraries, and a common infrastructure (runtime tools and languages). In this article, we are going to talk about the thing that makes the runtimes play well together and enables them to share code. Here, you’ll learn what .NET Standard is …
One of the main reasons for using .NET Core is that you can run it on multiple platforms and architectures. So you can build an app that will run on Windows, but also on Linux, macOS and on different architectures like x86 and ARM. This is perfect for lots of scenarios, including desktop applications. You can learn about other reasons …
The .NET ecosystem consists of runtimes: .NET Framework, .NET Core, and Mono for Xamarin. If you want to learn what these runtimes are and how they are different, you should read this article about the .NET ecosystem. In this article, we are going to focus on the tools and languages that make the runtimes in the .NET ecosystem work. These are …
When I think of .NET, I think of the .NET Framework and Visual Studio. The first production version 1.0 of the .NET Framework was released on February 13 in 2002. In technology years, this is light-years ago. Since then, new versions of the .NET Framework have been released and Microsoft has started efforts to keep .NET a viable development platform …
Working with containers provides a lot of benefits. They are a lot faster to spin up and shut down than virtual machines. They run everywhere, which gives you the benefit of having the exact same environment locally as in production. And because they run everywhere, you can run them in any cloud or on-premises, which prevents you from being locked …
Microsoft Azure is a great platform to use and it has many services and features. But how do you go about deploying your applications to the cloud and using them? There are several different options for deploying your applications in the Azure cloud and which one(s) you use and where you run them depends on the amount of control and …
Azure Event Grid is an awesome new service in Azure, which connects applications together through event messaging. This way of working decouples application components, which enables more scalability, maintainability, and extensibility. The image below illustrates this. Orders are written in and Azure Cosmos DB database. Event Grid reacts to each new order and publishes that as an event and the …
I’ve always dreamt of being able to do facial recognition in one of my apps, but it always seemed too difficult to do. Facial recognition is complicated, it is something that much smarter people than me come up with. Now, with Azure Cognitive Services, I can easily add facial recognition to my app by just calling an API. Plus, I …
Microsoft Azure is huge! There are so many services that it is sometimes hard to determine which ones you should use when. This is also true when it comes to storing your data in Azure. There are many different services in Azure that you can use to store your data in, but which one is right for you? Obviously, the …
The Microsoft Azure cloud offers a lot of services for almost every scenario that you might need. You can categorize these services into cloud computing types like IaaS, PaaS and SaaS to determine the amount of control and responsibility you have versus the time you can spend on building things that matter. Let me explain these types a bit further: …
ASP.NET Core is the latest version of ASP.NET. It is built from the ground up using .NET Core, the lightweight, composable new .NET Framework. Some people love it, some don’t. However, this is the future. Microsoft will move forward with .NET Core and in the future, the regular, full-fledged versions will go away. I like ASP.NET core a lot. It …
DevTest Labs is one the best – and probably least – used features on Azure. It is similar to creating virtual machines on Azure but provides some specific features and advantages we will review. Here are the following topics we are going to cover: What is Azure DevTest Labs? Test Environments Dev Machines in the Cloud What is Azure DevTest Labs? …
One of the major benefits of using the cloud is scalability. With Azure autoscaling, you can scale up and out like you couldn’t do with your own hardware, as much as your wallet allows. But more importantly, you can scale down and in when you don’t need the resources, thereby saving money. This is something you wouldn’t be able to …
The Azure Portal is the go-to place to manage your Azure resources. I spend a lot of time in the portal. I’m sure a lot of you do the same. Here are some tips that will hopefully help you to make the most out of your time in the Azure portal. 1. Change Themes Double-click on any open space on the …
Troubleshooting application problems are difficult. It takes a lot of time. I would argue that it might be the thing that we developers spend most of our time on in the cycle – write some code – F5 – find out why it didn’t work – fix – F5…. And that’s just troubleshooting locally on your own machine. When your …
Azure App Services are extremely useful for developers. It offers Web Apps, API Apps, Mobile Apps and Function Apps (that run Azure Functions). These apps are incredibly powerful and can literally get you up and running in minutes. They provide a host of amazing features like (auto)scaling, easy authentication, offline sync (for Mobile Apps), hybrid connections and much, much more. …
