Microsoft 70-486: Design and implement a WebSocket strategy

Exam Objectives

Read and write string and binary data asynchronously (long-running data transfers), choose a connection loss strategy, decide a strategy for when to use WebSockets, implement SignalR

Quick Overview of Training Materials

Exam Ref 70-486: Developing ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Applications - Objective 1.6
Programming ASP.NET MVC 4 (OReilly) - Chapter 11
OReilly - Websockets

Start Using HTML5 WebSockets Today
The HTML5 WebSocket API (Slideshare)

Channel 9 - Building real-time web apps with HTML5 WebSockets - 1 hour video, Client side
MSDN - WebSockets: Stable and Ready for Developers
Channel 9 - Building apps with WebSockets using IIS, ASP.NET and WCF - 1 hour video, Server side
Channel 9 - Web Dev Futures Day Session 5: Building real-time apps with WebSockets
Channel 9 - Building Real-Time Applications with ASP.NET SignalR
Channel 9 - Damian Edwards and David Fowler Demonstrate SignalR
Microsoft Virtual Academy - Lighting Up Real-Time Web Communications with SignalR
Simple server implemtation in C# EchoHandler.ashx.cs

Tutorial: Getting Started with SignalR 2
Introduction to Scaleout in SignalR

My Post - Microsoft 70-480: Implement a callback (WebSockets)

Microsoft 70-486: Design a caching strategy

Exam Objectives

Implement page output caching (performance oriented), implement data caching, implement HTTP caching, implement Azure caching

Quick Overview of Training Materials

Exam Ref 70-486: Developing ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Applications - Objective 1.5
Programming ASP.NET MVC 4 (OReilly) - Chapter 12
Understanding Caching in Asp.Net MVC with example
Using VaryByCustom With OutputCache in ASP.NET MVC
MSDN - Caching Multiple Versions of a Page (How tos)
Output Caching in MVC 4 Explained
MSDN - OutputCacheAttribute Class, OutputCacheParameter Class
Output Caching Actions Gotcha in ASP.NET MVC 3
Donut Output Caching in ASP.NET MVC 3
Asp.net MVC4 – Donut Caching & Donut Hole Caching
Donut Hole Caching In ASP.NET MVC
Cache Exploration in ASP.NET MVC 3

MSDN - Walkthrough: Using ASP.NET Output Caching with SQL Server
A Beginner's Tutorial for Understanding and Implementing Caching in ASP.NET MVC
MSDN - Walkthrough: Caching Application Data in ASP.NET
Buffering Exploration in ASP.NET MVC 3 - Data Caching

Asp.net - Data caching in ASP.Net applications

Tutorial - ASP.NET Data Caching (Object Caching)
How to use the System.Web.Caching.Cache Object – ASP.NET Data Caching

MSDN - MemoryCache Class
Caching Data in an ASP.NET Web Pages (Razor) Site for Better Performance

How do I add site-wide no-cache headers to an MVC 3 app
A Beginner's Guide to HTTP Cache Headers, W3 Header Spec
Google Developers - HTTP caching

MSDN - Introducing the Microsoft Azure Caching Service
MSDN - Azure Managed Cache Service
Lap around Azure Redis Cache (video) (MSDN Azure Redis Cache)
MSDN - Which Azure Cache offering is right for me?
How to Use Azure Managed Cache ServiceAzure Documentation - Cache

Build an HTML5 Offline Application with Application Cache, Web Storage and ASP.NET MVC

MVC and the HTML5 Application Cache
MSDN - Application Cache API ("AppCache")
Html5 Offline Cache Integration with ASP.NET MVC Bundle
Application Cache is a douchebag

Microsoft 70-486: Configure state management

Exam Objectives

Choose a state management mechanism (in-process and out of process state management), plan for scalability, use cookies or local storage to maintain state, apply configuration settings in web.config file, implement sessionless state (for example, QueryString)

Quick Overview of Training Materials

Exam Ref 70-486: Developing ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Applications - Objective 1.4
Programming ASP.NET MVC 4 (OReilly) - Chapters 2, 12
Pro C# 5.0 and the .NET 4.5 Framework - Chapter 34
MSDN - <sessionState> Element
Session-less Controllers in ASP.NET MVC 3 RC
MSDN - How to: Add Items to the Cache
MSDN - Caching in .NET Framework Applications

MSDN - ASP.NET Caching: Techniques and Best Practices
MSDN - Cache Class
MSDN - ASP.NET Application State Overview

MSDN - ASP.NET State Management Overview and Recommendations

StackOverflow - I just discovered why all ASP.NET websites are slow...

MSDN - Underpinnings of the Session State Implementation in ASP.NET

MSDN - ASP.NET Cookies Overview

MSDN - HttpRequest.QueryString Property
State Management and Scalability

Fast, Scalable, and Secure Session State Management for Your Web Applications
Web Development Best Practices (Building Real-World Cloud Apps with Azure)

Two Ways of Passing HTML5 Web Storage Data to ASP.NET

Writing a data-centric oriented web application using HTML5 local storage???MAYBE
MSDN - ASP.NET Cookies Overview
Dive Into HTML5: Local Storage
MSDN - sessionState Element and profile Element
Developing stateless (session-less) web apps

avoid hitting DB to authenticate a user on EVERY request in stateless web app architecture?

ASP.NET MVC Unit Testing Part 4: The Tests and What Was Learned

So, now that the project is refactored with interfaces, I have fake data, and a fake environment, it's time to run some unit tests! Whoohoo!  I'll go over some of the basic tests and also cover what I learned over all throughout the unit testing process.

ASP.NET MVC Unit Testing Part 3: Faking the Environment (HttpContext)

So I have my fake data, but I also need to address additional dependencies that are not as obvious.  These dependencies arise from the use of User and Request, which are properties of the HttpContext.  Because you apparently can't assign HttpContext directily, you have to create a fake ControllerContext.

ASP.NET MVC Unit Testing Part 2: Faking the Database

Now that the production code is all set up, it's time to create the fakes that I'll inject for my unit tests.  Rather than connecting to the production database, I want my unit tests to use an in memory dataset so they will run lightning fast.  There are limitations to using in memory data (in effect substituting LINQ to Object for LINQ to Entities) which I will address in another post.

ASP.NET MVC Unit Testing Part 1: Set up

So, a little background here first.  I'm pretty new to .NET programming, having only started my first developer job just this past March.  My one and only performance management goal was to implement some unit testing.  Simple right? Well my first feeble attempts involved trying to add unit tests to a traditional ASP.NET program... come to find out unit testing code behind files is a fools errand.  Did manage to test come CRUD on a service class, but all in all it wasn't that useful.  I was also attached to a new development project called Education Assistance (EA around the water cooler) that was using MVC.  I'd read that MVC was much easier to unit test so I figured that would be a possibility at some point.  Of course, first I had to learn a little about MVC.  I worked through a few tutorials, a couple of which actually covered unit testing.  So now I knew just enough to get myself in trouble.

Microsoft 70-486: Design and implement the Azure role life cycle

Exam Objectives

Identify and implement Start, Run, and Stop events; identify startup tasks (IIS configuration [app pool], registry configuration, third-party tools)

Quick Overview of Training Materials

Exam Ref 70-486: Developing ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Applications - Objective 1.3
MSDN - Channel 9 Cloud Services Tutorial
MSDN - Channel 9 Windows Azure Jump Start (03): Windows Azure Lifecycle, Part 1, Part 2

MSDN - Use AppCmd.exe to Configure IIS at Startup
MSDN - Windows Azure Start-up Tasks Part 1, Part 2
MSDN - Run Startup Tasks in Azure, Best Practices
MSDN - RoleEntryPoint Methods
MSDN - The Right Way to Handle Azure OnStop Events
MSDN - Azure Cloud Service Tutorial

Microsoft 70-486: Design a distributed application

Exam Objectives

Design a hybrid application (on-premises versus off-premises, including Azure), plan for session management in a distributed environment, plan web farms, **integrate web services

Quick Overview of Training Materials

Exam Ref 70-486: Developing ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Applications - Objective 1.2
Programming ASP.NET MVC 4 (OReilly) - Chapters 7 (Web API), 2 (State mgmt)
How to add Web API to existing MVC 4 project
MSDN - WCF Services and ASP.NET

Web API Study: The Benefits of APIs in the App Economy
Web API Design : Crafting Interfaces that Developers Love 
MSDN - .NET On-Premises/Cloud Hybrid Application Using Service Bus Relay

MSDN - Getting Started with the Azure Tools for Visual Studio

MSDN - ASP.NET State Management Overview

MSDN - ASP.NET Session State Overview, Session-State Modes
MSDN - Technet - About Server Farms, Server Affinity Page
Make an ASP.NET MVC application Web Farm Ready
Out-of-Process Caching in ASP.NET

MSDN - Azure Cache

MSDN - Differences between On-Premises AppFabric 1.1 Caching and Azure Managed Cache Service

Comparing ASP.NET MVC tutorials: OdeToFood, Nerddinner, and MVC Music Store

I worked through three ASP.NET MVC tutorials: NerdDinner, OdeToFood, and MVC Music Store.  All had their pro's and con's, and I definitely learned much from them.  The pluralsight tutorial OdeToFood was, far and away, the best put together tutorial of the bunch, and if you had to pick one, that would be the one to do.  NerdDinner wasn't bad but is showing it's age as it was developed using MVC2 (though I thought I saw something about updates...). The MVC Music Store tutorial also had a lot of interesting stuff but I would have to consider it the weakest of these three tutorials.

Microsoft 70-486: Plan the application layers

Exam Objectives

Plan data access; plan for separation of concerns; appropriate use of models, views, and controllers; choose between client-side and server side processing; design for scalability

Quick Overview of Training Materials

Exam Ref 70-486: Developing ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Applications - Objective 1.1
Programming ASP.NET MVC 4 (OReilly) - Chapters 5, 8

MSDN - ASP.NET Data Access Options

ASP.NET MVC 4 Models and Data Access

MSDN - Demystifying Entity Framework Strategies: Model Creation Workflow

MSDN - Entity Framework (EF) Documentation
MSDN - Guiding Principles For Your ASP.NET MVC Applications
Implementing the Repository and Unit of Work Patterns in an ASP.NET MVC Application
MSDN - The Unit of Work Pattern and Persistance Ignorance
What is ASP.NET MVC? 80 minute technical video for developers, building NerdDinner
MSDN - Action Filters in ASP.NET MVC
Pros/cons between emphasizing client-side or server-side processing
Performance and scalability techniques 101
Looking back: How I'd build a large-scale web app today versus how I did it 10 years ago

Upgraded Lenovo Ideapad Z570 to 16GB Ram

According to Lenovo the Z570 only supports up to 8GB, but after doing a little research I found multiple instances of folks upgrading to 16GB, so I took a leap of faith and tried it with mine. Success! (How-to video on YouTube helped with installation)

I had a bit of a hard time finding a US supplier for the ram sticks. Crucial's helper application stuck with the Lenovo documentation and would only recommend up to 8GB, but this is the EXACT kit that I used:

Crucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2) DDR3 1333 MT/s (PC3-10600) CL9 SODIMM 204-Pin 1.35V/1.5V Notebook Memory Modules CT2CP102464BF1339

[UPDATE 12/28/2017]
Someone pointed out in the comments that this particular model is no longer available (not surprising given the age of this post).  Amazon recommends another kit, CT2KIT102464BF160B, which has the same specs as the memory currently recommended by Crucial for the z570.  I can't say from personal experience how well this memory would perform in practice, but it seems like a safe substitute:

Crucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2) DDR3/DDR3L 1600 MT/S (PC3-12800) Unbuffered SODIMM 204-Pin Memory - CT2KIT102464BF160B
[END UPDATE]

This Lenovo forum had several users also state that they could use 16GB, and was a key factor in my decision to make the leap.

Here is a screenshot of System Monitor (I'm running Fedora on this machine).  I have 6GB allocated to a Win7 VirtualBox VM, which is why the usage is so high.

Google GovDevChallenge Hackathon

Participated in my first ever Hackathon this weekend (5/17/2014), what an experience that was! The idea behind this Hackathon was to give hackers a chance to make government more efficient and transparent. Colorado and Wyoming worked with Google and Galvanize down in Denver to put the event on, and I went down with four other developers from ETS to compete. We didn't win but we learned a lot and booked some serious overtime haha.

MVA Course: Developing ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Applications Jump Start (Modules 7 & 8)

Covered deploying to Azure, SignalR, and new features in Visual Studio 2013.

MVA Course: Developing ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Applications Jump Start (Modules 5 & 6)

Covered JavaScript and Web services in these two modules.

MVA Course: Developing ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Applications Jump Start (Modules 3 & 4)

Cover writing controllers and views.  Visual Studio has a lot of tools to help make this very easy. With some practice should be possible to deploy applications very fast with scaffolding and templates and such.

MVA Course: Developing ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Applications Jump Start (Modules 1 & 2)

Basic overview and ASP.NET MVC, with an emphasis on quickly getting into the code. First couple modules were relatively short (30-45 minutes) and easy to follow.

SICP - Storage Allocation and Garbage Collection

Last lecture in the series, talk about garbage collection. Apparently LISP uses a mark and sweep algorithm. Or maybe a related algorithm developed by Minsky in the sixties. Toward the end of the lecture Sussman talks about the halting theorem, basically proving that there is not procedure that can generally check whether or not a given procedure is safe to run. Interesting stuff.

SICP - Register Machines

In this lecture Sussman covers register machines, and we walk through the operation of a couple of very simple programs. We look at an embedded register machine language.

SICP - Compilation

Shorter lecture on the way a compiler for LISP might function.