Hey Developers! This article kicks off a new initiative to share dev news and knowledge within the company. Plus, at the same time, it would be a crime to not share this with you all.
So, let's get started!
Helpful Links
The first link I want to share is a To-do list of how to boost the SQL Server performance running it as an Azure Cloud Virtual Machine: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn133149.aspx
The other practical link is http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org/developerdocs.com Edmundas' team used it to calculate geo location coordinates for given addresses in one of our recent projects.
Additionally, Ignas Sakalauskas shared an S3 bucket policy example https/gist.github.com/alicial/3716433 with the Amazon S3 Bucket Policy configuration to prevent hot linking. You can apply this policy with the S3 Browser application http://s3browser.com.
Azure Cloud Updates
In the last month, Microsoft has made a lot of great updates to Azure Cloud. The AB (8 Virtual cores and 56 GB of RAM) and A9 (16 virtual cores and 112 GB of RAM) Virtual Machines instances are now generally available. New instances also include a 50-Gbit/s InfiniBand network that provides remote direct memory access (RDMA) technology for the maximum efficiency of parallel Message Passing Interface (MPI) applications.
It was also announced that the Managed Cache Service is now available–giving you access to a security-enabled, dedicated cache that's managed by Microsoft. A cache created using Azure Cache Service is accessible from any application within Azure that's running on Azure Web Sites, Cloud Services, or Virtual Machines.
Furthermore, a new Redis Cache service was introduced. At the moment, it is in public preview. Azure Redis Cache is a distributed, in-memory, managed cache that helps you build highly scalable and responsive applications by providing super-fast access to your data. Azure Redis Cache is based on the popular open-source Redis. It gives you access to a security-enabled, dedicated Redis cache that's managed by Microsoft. A cache created using Azure Redis Cache is accessible from any application within Azure. Azure Redis Cache is available via the new Azure Preview portal https://portal.azure.com/.
The Visual Studio
For those of you who use The Visual Studio you may find the following link interesting:
The syntactic line compression enables you to make better use of your screen's vertical real estate. It shrinks lines that contain neither letters nor numbers by 25 percent vertically, allowing more lines to be displayed in the editor.
.NET
At the TechEd North America conference Microsoft announced the latest set of innovations that are part of the next generation of .NET. The biggest of those is ASP.NET vNext, which is an updated version of ASP.NET that is optimized for cloud web development. The .NET Compiler Platform ("Roslyn") was announced with new C# and VB compilers and a preview of the new language features being considered for C# 6. For more detailed information, check out the following links.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdev/archive/2014/05/13/asp-net-vnext-the-future-of-net-on-the-server.aspx
If you want to try these latest innovations yourself, you'll need to install Visual Studio "14" CTP (Community Technology Previews) from http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/downloads/visual-studio-14-ctp-vs, but be careful and do it on a clean machine or VM. Alternatively you can also use Visual Studio "14" CTP in a pre-built Azure virtual machine. For more information, see Visual Studio "14" CTP, now available in the Virtual Machine Azure Gallery.
That's all for now but stay tuned for more information!
Written by Paulius Maciulis
