Posts

Building Bots with The Microsoft Bot Framework - Part 1

May 05, 2017 · 6 min read

In this series Introduction Adding Dialogs and State to your bot Using Form Flow Adding intelligence to your bot using LUIS Publishing your bot I decided to spend some time learning the Microsoft Bot Framework. I am going to write a series of blog posts to share with you what I learn so that we can go through this learning exercise together. This is the first post in the series with a few more to go.

#azure #bot-framework

Hi, Visual Studio 2017! Pleased to Meet You!

Mar 26, 2017 · 6 min read

Visual Studio 2017 is currently the best IDE that is in-line with the Microsoft’s strategy of embracing non Microsoft platforms and operating systems. I am a web developer, therefore, following is my outline of the most compelling features of Visual Studio 2017. Setup Experience Visual Studio no longer asks you to select options from a long list of checkboxes. It presents a more easy to comprehend list of workloads that are segregated by categories.

#tools & gadgets #programming

Deploying Guest Executables to Azure Service Fabric

Mar 09, 2017 · 7 min read

One of my most popular blog posts on this site is Hands-on with Azure Service Fabric Reliable Services. Referring to the blog post, many readers asked me about guidance to deploy various types of applications as Guest Executables on Service Fabric. In this post, I will try to answer most of those questions by demonstrating the process in a simple manner. The Application We previously built a simple node.js application that uses Azure SQL Database as data store.

#azure #service fabric

Ignite Australia 2017 - Architectural Patterns for Hyperscale Service Fabric Implementations

Mar 04, 2017 · 2 min read

Last week @Namit and I were at Ignite Australia. We had a great time interacting with technology enthusiasts from across Australia. We presented a lot of demos built using Service Fabric, Hololens and Congnitie Services to the attendees and received thrilling feedback. The event was well worth our investment of time and effort. We would deliver many more such presentations in future. Microservices with Azure We did an interview with SSW TV, in which we talked about the advantages of using Service Fabric as a platform to host microservices.

#presentation #service-fabric

Use Support Backed Tedious Driver for Your Node Applications with SQL Database

Jan 03, 2017 · 7 min read

I don’t know how popular Node.js still is, but it is always fun to learn new programming languages. If you have previously worked with relational databases such as SQL database with Node.js, you must’ve noticed that there are several node packages available to enable application integration with SQL database. However, while building commercial applications, developers always want to use packages that are backed by professional support and a lively community. One such module is Tedious which we will discuss today.

#programming #compute

Use ElasticSearch and Kibana to Monitor Your Service Fabric Application Logs

Dec 06, 2016 · 8 min read

How good is your logging provider’s search experience? Now, you can leverage the same set of services that power search on Facebook, eBay and tons of other websites to index and query the logs of your Service Fabric applications. Let’s discuss how you can integrate ElasticSearch with your Service Fabric application to index and query the diagnostic logs generated by your application. Before we set out to discuss ElasticSearch and Service Fabric integration, I would like to call out that you can build an ElasticSearch listener for your WebApps as well (even for those that are built with .

#azure #service fabric

Patterns for Asynchronous Services: Producer-Consumer Pattern

Nov 22, 2016 · 3 min read

Let’s take our discussion forward to discuss the Producer and Consumer problem. According to the definition, the problem describes two processes, the producer and the consumer, who share a common, fixed-size buffer used as a queue. The producer’s job is to generate data, put it into the buffer, and start again. At the same time, the consumer is consuming the data (i.e., removing it from the buffer), one record at a time.

#cloud-patterns

Patterns for Asynchronous Services: Dynamic Property Value Reader

Nov 21, 2016 · 4 min read

Next in our series of patterns, we will discuss a problem that almost all of us have encountered and solved in a less than desirable manner almost every time. Today, we will talk about using reflection. Most of the applications use reflection to read values out of an unknown type of object. I will present you with a utility that helps you do just that with little performance implications using input that you can store in configuration files or your application’s database.

#cloud-patterns

Patterns for Asynchronous Services: Compiled Expressions

Nov 20, 2016 · 4 min read

Previously we discussed the Buffer Fill Pattern which can help eliminate bottlenecks in your applications. Let’s tackle yet another challenge stopping you short from building your next flexible service that runs on distributed systems. The pattern that we are going to discuss today has little to do with distributed systems and is rather about component decoupling. This pattern will add flexibility to your system which you can manage through configurations stored in your application’s database.

#cloud-patterns

Patterns for Asynchronous Services: Buffer Fill Pattern

Nov 17, 2016 · 4 min read

Most of the times when working on distributed systems that involve asynchronous communication, you need to solve certain common problems. In this multi-part series, I would walk you through some common design challenges and their solutions backed with sample code that you can refer to while working on your projects. Buffer Fill Pattern Example Scenario This pattern comes in handy in systems where a module is responsible for collecting data from multiple sources and forwarding the collated data in batches to some other module for processing.

#cloud-patterns