Microsoft 70-487: Implement data storage in Azure

Exam Objectives

Access data storage in Azure; choose data storage mechanism in Azure (blobs, tables, queues, SQL Database); distribute data by using the Content delivery network (CDN); handle exceptions by using retries (SQL Database); manage Azure Caching

Quick Overview of Training Materials

Exam Ref 70-487 - Chapter 1.4
[PluralSight] Windows Azure Storage In-Depth
[MSDN] Introduction to Microsoft Azure Storage (complete docs)
[MSDN] Storage Queues vs Service Bus Queues
[MSDN] Azure SQL Database Documentation
[MSDN] Azure Redis Cache FAQ
[MSDN] Azure Redis Videos
[MSDN] Azure Storage Client Library Retry Policy Recommendations
[MSDN] Transient fault handling
[MSDN] Retry Guidance for Specific Services
[MSDN] Overview of Azure CDN
[MSDN] What is the Azure SQL Database service?
[MSDN] Microsoft Azure Table Storage - Not Your Father's Database
[MSDN] Azure Storage Table Design Guide
[MSDN] Using Azure PowerShell with Azure Storage
[Channel9] Windows Azure Tables and Queues Deep Dive

Microsoft 70-487: Implement caching

Exam Objectives

Cache static data, apply cache policy (including expirations); use CacheDependency to refresh cache data; query notifications

Quick Overview of Training Materials

Exam Ref 70-487 - Chapter 1.2
[MSDN] System.Runtime.Caching
[MSDN] Detecting Changes with SqlDependency
[CodeProject] .NET 4.0 MemoryCache with SqlChangeMonitor
[CodeProject] Query Notification using SqlDependency and SqlCacheDependency

My GitHub Sample Code
70-486: Design a caching strategy

Microsoft 70-487: Manipulate XML data structures

Exam Objectives

Read, filter, create, modify XML data structures; Manipulate XML data by using XMLReader, XMLWriter, XMLDocument, XPath, LINQ to XML; transform XML by using XSLT transformations

Quick Overview of Training Materials

Exam Ref 70-487 - Chapter 1.6

[MSDN] XML Documents and Data
[MSDN] XML
[MSDN] Understanding XML
[MSDN] XPath Reference
[MSDN] What is XSLT?
[MSDN] XSLT Reference
[Hanselminutes] XML Tools and Technologies
[Hanselminutes] LINQ to XML
A Really, Really, Really Good Introduction to XML
[PluralSight] XML Fundamentals
[PluralSight] XML Processing in .NET Applications
[W3C] XML 1.1 Recommendation (Spec)
[W3C] Namespaces in XML 1.0 3rd Ed. (Spec)
[W3C] XSLT Recommendation (Spec)
[StackOverflow] JSON and XML comparison
[YouTube] XML and XSLT Transformation Explained
[YouTube] Using XSLT to Transform Your XML

My code samples on GitHub

Microsoft 70-487: Create and implement a WCF Data Services service

Exam Objectives

Address resources; implement filtering; create a query expression; access payload formats (including JSON); use data service interceptors and service operators

Quick Overview of Training Materials

Exam Ref 70-487 - Chapter 1.5

[Teched] Best Practices: Creating OData Services Using WCF Data Services (High Quality WMV)
[MSDN] Practical OData (2010 Article)
[Channel 9] Practical OData (2015 Conference talk)
[MSDN] WCF Data Services 5.0 Overview (Complete Docs)
[MSDN] How to: Create a Data Service Using the Reflection Provider
OData Version 4.0 URL Conventions Specification
[MSDN] Interceptors (WCF Data Services)

Microsoft 70-487: Choose data access technologies

Exam Objectives

Choose a technology (ADO.NET, Entity Framework, WCF Data Services, Azure storage) based on application requirements

Quick Overview of Training Materials

Exam Ref 70-487 - Chapter 1.1
[Teched] Data Development GPS: Choosing the Right Data Access (slides)
[Teched] Building OData Services with ASP.NET Web API
[Teched] Microsoft Azure Storage Overview

[MSDN] Summary of Data Access Guidance
[StackOverflow] Entity Framework VS LINQ to SQL VS ADO.NET
[StackOverflow] Are there good reasons not to use an ORM?
[StackExchange] Is Entity Framework Suitable For High-Traffic Websites?
[StackOverflow] When to use WCF data services and when not?
[StackOverflow] Why would you not use WCF Data Services for querying data?
[StackOverflow] What is the need of OData when I have JSON?
[MSDN] WCF Data Services 4.5
Azure Storage Service landing page
Introduction to Microsoft Azure Storage
Azure Storage 5 Minute Overview (video)
ASP.NET Data Access - Recommended Resources
[Channel9] All Data/All Day Dive into .NET Data Access
[Channel9] OData Overview (2015)
Why Entity Framework Can Be Your Best Friend
[MSDN] Storage queues vs Service Bus queues

Pluralsight Courses:
ADO.NET Fundamentals, Introduction to OData, Anything by Julie Lerman

How To Create an On-Prem Windows Build Agent for Visual Studio Team Services

Motivation

I've been working on migrating our code repositories from CVS into git hosted on Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS)... formerly Visual Studio Online.  While I've reduced the CVS migrations to running a single script, I also wanted to start exploring some of the other CI functionality VSTS offers.  Many of our projects are Maven projects, and while Maven builds are supported, I ran into a snag trying to connect to our on-prem Nexus repository.  Using the VSTS "hosted" build agents would involve one of a couple of bad work arounds:

• expose an endpoint in IIS to talk to the Nexus repo outside our firewall.  While a one-off point to point fix might solve this issue... the scenario is likely to recur, especially when I start looking at deployments
• open a vpn connection from the hosted build agent to the network.  Eww.  This would feel like a clunky solution, assuming I could get it working at all.  I could see authentication being a real obstacle for this route

The obvious solution was a private (i.e. on-prem) build agent running within our network.  I shied away from this approach at first because I didn't want to deal with the server configuration (rightly so, yuck!), but it rapidly became clear that this actually was the simpler solution. The final straw was after I tried to create a Hudson job and ended up fighting with git the whole time (couldn't find the installed binary, installed it again, long file names choked, couldn't get authentication working... quelle nightmare!)

Microsoft 70-487: Query data by using LINQ to Entities

Exam Objectives

Query data by using LINQ operators (for example, project, skip, aggregate, filter, and join); log queries and database commands; implement query boundaries (IQueryable vs. IEnumerable); implement async query

Quick Overview of Training Materials

Exam Ref 70-487 - Chapter 2.3
PluralSight - Querying the Entity Framework (Julie Lerman)
PluralSight - LINQ Fundamentals with C# 6.0 (Scott Allen)
PluralSight - Practical LINQ (Deborah Kurata)
PluralSight - More Effective LINQ (Mark Heath)
[MSDN] - LINQ to Entities
[MSDN] - DbExtensions Methods
[MSDN] - Enumerable Class
[MSDN] - Queryable Class
[MSDN] - ObjectQuery Class
StackOverflow - Returning IEnumerable<T> vs IQueryable<T>
Entity Framework: IQueryable vs. IEnumerable

My post on Basic LINQ

LINQ Basics by Example

While working on my 70-487 study guide I wrote up a looong section on basic LINQ operators that, while certainly germane, was not really the subject at hand.  So I'm refactoring that stuff into it's own post.  I look at the LINQ extension methods provided by Enumerable and Queryable (basically the same operations, just different underlying behavior), with lots of example code and console screenshots.  All the code samples can be found on my Github page for the study guide examples.

Microsoft 70-487: Query and manipulate data by using Data Provider for Entity Framework

Exam Objectives

Query and manipulate data by using Connection, DataReader, and Command from the System.Data.EntityClient namespace; perform synchronous and asynchronous operations; manage transactions (API); programmatically configure a Data Provider

Quick Overview of Training Materials

Exam Ref 70-487 - Chapter 2.2
[MSDN] EntityClient Provider for the Entity Framework
[MSDN] Entity Framework Code-Based Configuration (EF6 Onwards)

My post: Query and manipulate data by using ADO.NET

MIT 6.005 - Software Construction (edX)

The resources for MIT's "Software Construction" class are distributed between several disparate sources.  There is an entry for 6.005 on the MIT Open Courseware page, where it is called "Elements of Software Construction", and there are two classes on edX: 6.005.1x "Software Construction in Java" and 6.005.2x "Advanced Software Construction in Java".

I'm hoping that working through this class will sharpen my understanding of general software engineering concepts.  The emphasis of the class is writing bug free code that is easy to understand and easy to change, which is certainly something you can never be too good at, am I right?

Microsoft 70-487: Create an Entity Framework data model

Exam Objectives

Structure the data model using table per type, table per class, table per hierarchy; choose and implement an approach to manage a data model (code first vs. model first vs. database first); implement POCO objects; describe a data model by using conceptual schema definitions, storage schema definition, mapping language (CSDL, SSDL, MSL), and Custom Code First Conventions

Quick Overview of Training Materials

Exam Ref 70-487 - Chapter 2.5
Programming Entity Framework: Code First - Chapter 5
Programming Entity Framework - Chapter 14
[MSDN] Walkthrough: Mapping Inheritance - Table-per-Hierarchy

[MSDN] Walkthrough: Mapping Inheritance - Table-per-Type

[MSDN] Configuring/Mapping Properties and Types with the Fluent API
[MSDN] Specification for CSDL, SSDL, MSL

Inheritance Modelling Patterns with EF6 Code First

Inheritance with EF Code First: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
[MSDN] Entity Framework Custom Code First Conventions (EF6 onwards)

[MSDN] Entity Framework Model-Based Conventions (EF6 onwards)

PluralSight Courses:
Getting Started With EF6, EF in the Enterprise

Instantiating an object in Java without calling a constructor

The Scenario

This isn't a cliche...

I was working on a Java project that talks to a web service with a custom "Client" class that was written internally.  In my project, the client is pulled in from a hosted maven repo as a dependency, so I didn't have access to the source (at least not from this project).  I'm trying to be better about writing characterization tests for existing code before I go in and change anything (if nothing else it's a good way to feel out the code). But I had a problem...

The Client has a single constructor, which takes an endpoint, a username, and a password. Calling this constructor tries to connect to the endpoint (and crashes if it fails).  Because this was the only defined constructor, subclassing wasn't going to help me.  It doesn't implement an interface, so that avenue was also closed down.

So there was no obvious way for me to create a test double to pass in to the code I was actually interested in testing.  How in the hell was I going to get around this???

Proxy Windows Authentication with a WCF Relay Service

Motivation

The problem I'm going to address here is pretty specific, and the solution I came up with isn't terribly intuitive, but it works.  I ran into a situation where we were trying to integrate web services with a vendor product.  This is a .NET app running on IIS, and we wanted to authenticate using Active Directory by passing in a username and password to a "UserLogin" soap action (this action returns a security token that is used to make other calls).  While initially we thought this worked, it turned out that it wasn't behaving the way we thought it should.  Any request was getting a security token, even if the username and password were garbage.

Yeah... not what we were going for...

MIT 6.046 - Design and Analysis of Algorithms

6.046 is described by Eric Demaine as the final undergraduate algorithms class, with more advanced and more specialized algorithms classes being at the graduate level.  I've had my eye on the advanced data structures and advanced algorithms classes for a while, and this class is a fundamental prerequisite for those.  Now, being that it's my MO to totally overdo it, naturally I had to find overlapping classes from some of my other favorite providers and watch everything.  Had I limited this to one overlapping class it probably wouldn't have been that bad... but I found three other classes: Berkeley CS170, Georgia Tech CS6505, and Stanford CS261.  All four classes are what I would call "intermediate" level algorithms courses, with significant overlap in concepts covered:

I probably would have been done a month ago if I hadn't gone so crazy with watching everyone's lectures...

How to convert a CVS repo to git

Doing this conversion basically requires a Linux environment. My first attempt was in Windows using the various Unix tooling and I just could never get everything to work the way it needed to. It was less work to just spin up a VirtualBox vm with Ubuntu Server and do everything in bash. This document is going to assume you have access to a suitable Linux environment (this will have a Debian-esque flavor being Ubuntu, but any major distro should work).

I’m also assuming you have zero prior CVS knowledge (like me), so I’ll explain a few of the basics around CVS.

Exploiting the YOP Poll WordPress plugin

Somewhere in the vast expanses of the wild internet, there is a site I sometimes frequent that likes to put surveys in their blog posts.  Quite by accident, I discovered that if I reload the page in an incognito window, I could vote in these surveys multiple times.  Being hopelessly curious about what's going on behind the curtain, I ventured down the rabbit hole that led me to spammy scripts and purple underwear (No, seriously...).

Legacy Berkeley course material pulled over accessibility

One of the earliest sources of free education materials I stumbled upon was webcast.berkeley (right up there with MIT OCW).  Seeing these institutions of higher learning release their lectures and course content free, to the masses, made me envision a time when the entire education system could be transformed.  Today, with Coursera, Udacity, and edX, we are well on the way to that revolution.  But despite these (arguably more sophisticated) offering, I always found myself returning to that well.  No more...

Making assertions with jUnit against log4j console output

I will open by saying that making assertions against your log output is probably a bad idea.  Probably violates every rule of good testing.  That said, I found myself writing characterization tests against some legacy code and I wanted to make sure I didn't break the logging.  So I decided to write some flakey, brittle unit tests.  It was several hours of pain, and I figured it would be a good idea to document my pain so you can avoid some of it (hopefully by not following in my footsteps at all... sigh)

Advanced CSS Concepts (edX)

Last summer I enrolled in a class on edX called "Advanced CSS Concepts".  It was delayed until November because of technical issues on their end, and I put it off until a week ago because Google.

"Oh, advanced ey?  That should be interesting" I thought.  Boy was I in for a disappointment.

My Google Interview Journey

The Hook

It's mid November and I'm minding my own business, when out of the blue I get a message on LinkedIn.  It's a technical recruiter from Google, we'll call her "K" (you know, like in The English Patient), and she says she was impressed by my HackerRank badge for Algorithms.  She wants to have a chat and learn a little bit about my background, she says.  Of course this blew my mind, in a sort of "glitter and confetti shooting out my ears" sort of way.  I've had recruiters hit my up on LinkedIn before, but this was Google!  I allowed myself to glow in it for a little while, but I tried to keep myself in check too.  At this stage, it was just one phone call with a recruiter.