At Build 2013, Microsoft made a number of Windows Azure announcements including the availability of Windows Azure Mobile Services and Websites. Read the team blog here for more detail.

Mobile Services makes it fast and easy to create a mobile backend for every device.  Mobile Services simplifies user authentication, push notification, server side data and business logic so you can get your mobile application in market fast.  Mobile Services provides native SDKs for Windows Store, Windows Phone, Android, iOS and HTML5 as well as REST APIs.

Windows Azure Web Sites is the fastest way to build, scale and manage business grade Web applications.  Windows Azure Web-Sites is open and flexible with support for multiple languages and frameworks including ASP.NET, PHP, Node.JS and Python, multiple open-source applications including WordPress, Drupal and even multiple databases.  ASP.NET developers can easily create new or move existing web-sites to Windows Azure from directly inside Visual Studio.

To see how you can build modern applications that utilize these services, watch Build keynotes.  Note: Day One Keynote covers Windows 8.1. Day Two Keynote covers Visual Studio 2013 Preview and Windows Azure.

Wer schon immer wollte, dass die Standardseite von ASP.NET Projekten anders aussieht hat jetzt die einfachste Möglichkeit:

http://bootswatch.com

Hier gibts einen haufen CSS Sheets, die einfach auf das Projekt geworfen werden können :)

Title: Customizing deployment of a new store.

AX2012 comes with a lot of predefined A and N jobs that can be used to push data when deploying a new store or updating
existing stores. These jobs works very well for small or medium data volume stores.

For stores with high volume of data it can be necessary to customize the jobs that are used to deploy a new store.

The job that requires most execution time and push most data is the A-1040 - Products, prices, and bar codes.

To deploy a new store we can use the ‘Retail POS deployment checklist’, found on the System Administration page
under Setup/Checklists.

The ‘Retail POS deployment checklist’ uses a predefined series of A and N-Jobs to deploy a store.

The jobs used by the checklist is created when the Retail part is initialized by using the ‘Initialize’ on the Retail
parameters form.

 
 To customize the jobs that is used by the checklist a few application modifications is needed.

Application changes:

Go to the AOT, open the forms node, find the form called: RetailConnSchedulerJobTable

Expand the data source node:

Right click on the RetailConnScheduleJobTable, and select ‘Open in new window’

Expand the fields node.

Then expand the Designs node of the form:

Drag the ‘Redeployment’ folder from the

To the Group ‘General1’

Move the new group (Redeployment) to the end – Mark ‘Redeployment’, then press and hold ALT and use ARROW DOWN

Save the form.

 Go to Retail Area page->Setup->Retail scheduler->Scheduler job

Find the A-1040 job and uncheck ‘Required to deploy POS’

Copy the A-1040 to a new and called it A-1040-1. 

In the Sub job section:

Disable the following sub jobs:

For each of the disabled sub jobs, create a new job, name the jobs A-1040-X where x is next number from 1, so A-1040-2,
A-1040-3 etc.

Make sure to enter the channel schema, job execution class and the redeployment option

When all jobs have been created, it’s time to test.

Launch the ‘Retail POS redeployment checklist’, select a store, execute in batch.

On high data volume stores, one can see improvement up to 30% meaning that it’s 30% faster to deploy a store.

Author: Steen Rabol

Publisher: Kim Truelsen

Date: 30/6- 2013

Hi,

Wie einige ja wissen baue ich zusammen mit Patric Boscolo (http://blogs.msdn.com/patricb) und Olivia Klose zur Zeit die Livestreaming Show Anykey (http://aka.ms/Anykey) auf. Wie üblich war das eine Idee, an die wir ganz spontan rangegangen sind ohne wirklich zu wissen was wir tun. Deshalb hier mal ein paar der Keylearnings:

1. Gute Kameras haben kein USB Out:
   Wir arbeiten mit eine Sony NXCAM die in 1080p aufnehmen kann, nur leider war direkt das erste Problem, dass man das Bild nicht so einfach wie gedacht rausbekommt. Bei semi-professionellen Kameras ist es leider so, dass diese über USB maximal in Minibild live hergeben, ansonsten ist HDMI der richtige Ausgang. Und da geht das Spaß dann los, man natürlich ein Gerät mit HDMI Eingang benötigt um das entgegenzunehmen. Um das mit einem PC zu tun benötigt man etwas aus der Produktpalette von Black Magic Design (http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/). In unserem Fall ist das eine Decklink 2 Studio Karte.
2. CPU Power ist das wichtigste:
   Da das Video entsprechend convertiert werden muss und an den jeweiligen Anbieter (ustream, livestream, twitch, etc.) gesendet werden muss, hat der Rechner viel zu Arbeiten. Hier ist für HD Streaming mindesten etwas in der Größenordnung eines HP Z420 notwendig (4-Kerne, 16 GB RAM). Optimal ist aber wohl eher etwas in der Richtung 6-8 Kerne. (Der Z400 den wir nutzen läuft für gewöhnlich bei einer CPU Auslastung von 80-90% wärend des 720p Streamings).
3. Green Screens brauchen Platz und sind Arbeit
4. Licht ist manchmal anders als man denkt:
   Lange hatten wir rumprobiert wie wir grünes Licht vom Greenscreen aus dem Gesicht der Moderatoren bekommen, bis wir sie von hinten statt von vorne angestrahlt haben ;)

So viel zum ersten, ich denke da werden sicher noch ein paar Learning kommen. In der Zwischenzeit schaut doch mal auf http://aka.ms/Anykey vorbei und nehmt an unseren interaktiven (soll heißen wir beantworten da auch Fragen) Livestreams teil :)

This post describes the Arabic subtending marks and discusses how their editing and display could be significantly improved by using a mathematical layout engine instead of using a complex-script shaping engine. Unicode has a set of six Arabic subtending or enclosure characters located at U+0600..U+0604 (؀, ؁, ؂, ؃, ؄, respectively) and the End-of-Ayah mark U+06DD (۝). Proper display of these characters when followed by a sequence of Arabic-Indic digits U+0660..U+0669 (٠,١, ٢, ٣, ٤, ٥, ٦, ٧, ٨,٩) is to extend them under the digit sequence, or for ۝ to enclose the digit sequence. The following table displays the character codes along with a numeric example.  

The layouts here are made with the Arabic shaping engine used by Uniscribe and DWrite. The digits are drawn with a reduced font size and the subtending mark is overlaid on top. Due to limitations in the shaping engine, a maximum of four digits can be used with the subtending marks except for ؂ and a maximum of three with ۝. ؂ is displayed as an enhanced underline and is drawn by the ؂ glyph followed by glyph pairs consisting of a digit with an underline. Hence the number can have arbitrary length.

Another difficulty occurs with selection.  Except for ؂ , it’s tricky to figure out where to place the caret for an insertion point or the selection color rectangles for a nondegenerate selection.

Now consider how enclosed or decorated expressions are displayed using a math display engine like LineServices. Such constructs include accents, rectangles, and brackets. The expression can contain arbitrary mathematical text, let alone Arabic-Indic digits, and can be arbitrarily large. The math display engine measures the ascent, descent, and width of the expression, chooses a glyph assembly of the correct size, and then positions that glyph assembly as need be for the construct in question. Examples are given in the following table along with the linear format input used to generate them. 

Selection works as desired. You can select any part of the expressions, subject to the rules of mathematical selection (see also).

We see that treating the Arabic subtending and End-of-Ayah mark constructs as mathematical objects could significantly improve their editing and rendering.

My friend Antonio Cisternino recently pointed me to FSCL - a compiler from F# to OpenCL.

Here is the abstract from the documentation for the compiler: https://t.co/vHQPzsxE0O. The project currently seems to live here: https://github.com/GabrieleCocco/

Nowadays, OpenCL is one of the most popular programming frameworks for high-performance computing over multicore and many-core devices. Thanks to OpenCL,different parallel architectures coming from an heterogeneous set of brands and companies can be programmed in an homogeneous, standard way. Nevertheless, OpenCL lacks of some aspects and facilities characterizing high-level parallel programming frameworks and, more generally, high-level languages, which makes parallel programming still difficult, error-prone and hardly portable. In the last few years there have been many activities toward raising abstraction over OpenCL, introducing facilities to write parallel code and enhancing portability of features and performances. In this document we present FSCL, an F# to OpenCL open compiler aimed at raising abstraction over OpenCL programming allowing programmers to express OpenCL kernels inside F# with all the benefits of integrated development, code completion and error reporting. Moreover, working over a Virtual Machine (VM) allows to automatize most of the effort. OpenCL programmers must spend in coding the host-side part of parallel computations, which means creating context, devices, buffers and coordinating the execution of the computation on the device.

I believe the project will also be able to make good use of the improved debugging information in F# quotations we're introducing in F# 3.1.

Cheers

Don

Continuing the Imagine Cup's tradition of empowering women in science and technology, Microsoft is proud to announce the second annual Women's Innovation Dinner, sponsored by Avanade, to be held at this year's Imagine Cup Finals in St. Petersburg, Russia.

A joint venture between Microsoft and Accenture, Avanade connects companies around the world to the latest in Microsoft technology solutions, providing focused consulting for everything from business agility to customer loyalty. For Pamela Maynard, General Manager at Avanade UK/Ireland and the host of the Women's Innovation Dinner, that vantage point requires a strong base of women in technology and the sciences.

"We believe there is a direct connection between a company’s diversity and its success," Maynard says. "To achieve this, it is crucial that we motivate girls to pursue careers in the technology sector – so women can continue to be represented at all levels within companies and institutions. Having women in leadership positions is one way the girls of today can have the confidence to aspire to become leaders themselves."

Imagine Cup has proudly championed that very mission over the years, and this season’s Women's Empowerment Award and Women's Athletics App Challenge will put a specific spotlight on rewarding woman-first teams and technology solutions. Since Avanade counts Imagine Cup participants among its global staff, Maynard, who has served as Avanade General Manager since 2008, can speak directly to the power of technology innovations in expanding opportunities for women in her field.

"As companies begin to redesign work processes to incorporate consumer technologies into the workplace, it becomes even easier for them to encourage diversity in the workplace," Maynard says. "Technology is catalyzing an increasingly greater capacity to offer flexible working initiatives, which helps both men and women achieve greater balance in their personal and professional lives." Maynard also points to statistics about staff diversity driving higher profits, customer acquisition, and "the ability to make employees happier and enable them to have a greater emphasis on creativity and greater problem-solving capability."

The dinner, taking place on the evening of July 9 at the Park Inn Hotel, will feature Maynard and other women innovators speaking about their early careers, the obstacles they've overcome and the importance of networking. We invite all students, faculty and Imagine Cup Finals attendees at worldwide finals to celebrate a growing group of innovators and, of course, enjoy a fantastic meal with some of the smartest people in the world. See you at the Women's Innovation Dinner! 

Hugh Samuels
Imagine Cup Correspondent

Resources (Videos, whitepapers) for Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services:

Videos:

Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services License Sizing Estimator
http://youtu.be/9oRqnTA4-h4

Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services Customization Analysis Service
http://youtu.be/6iyOTHWbT08

Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services Upgrade Analysis Service
http://youtu.be/nxB6g-JYZlg 

Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services Overview
http://youtu.be/pNZ3jPyiqR8   

Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services Business Process Modeler
http://youtu.be/T_FDn1DxhYk 

Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services System Diagnostic Service
http://youtu.be/vopziR-rU4g 

Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services Issue Search Service
http://youtu.be/ZyiFk2MYT3E

Task Recorder Hotfix:

You can download the Hotfix from:
https://mbs2.microsoft.com/Knowledgebase/KBDisplay.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;2863182

Task Recorder Documentation:

Installation & Configuration guide for the Task Recorder update:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=310185

BPM Service Documentation:

Business process modeler (Lifecycle Services) [AX 2012]:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=306500

Be brave. Defy the odds. Face the competition. Complete all 4 challenges of the Developer Summer Quest by September 15th 2013 and win a Surface Pro! At each stage you can catch extra prizes, and even better: all 4 challenges are open as from today. Check them out and start right now!

Hungry for more? All 4 challenges are open. Double your chances and get summer goodies for doing what you love to do.

There was a vast amount of content presented at //Build 2013 for Windows Phone. All of this is now available online for you to view at your leisure on demand via MSDN Channel 9.

The following are some of the available resources to help you master development for Windows Phone 

 Foundational

• Windows Phone: Introducing App Development, Sam George
• Windows Phone: Design for Developers, Corrina Black
• Windows Phone: App Foundation, Thomas Fennel
• Windows Phone: Building UI in XAML, Shawn Oster
• Windows Phone Game Development Basics, Joao Lucas Guberman Raza
• Windows Phone: Using Native (C++) Code in Your Apps, Tim Laverty

Key Developer Scenarios

• Windows Phone: Tiles, Lock, & Notifications, Thomas Fennel
• Windows Phone: Building a Camera App, Presented by Nokia, Berthier Lemieux, Nokia
• Windows Phone: Maximizing App Revenue, Bernardo Zamora
• Windows Phone: Networking, Peter Torr
• Windows Phone: App-to-App Communications, Sean McKenna
• Windows Phone: Building the Best Mapping Apps for Windows Phone Using the Here Platform, Mike O’Malley

Best Practices

• Windows Phone: Developer Best Practices & How to Maximize Performance, Stefan Wick
• Real Talk: Sharing Code Between the Windows & Windows Phone Platforms, Matt Hidinger
• The Story of Bringing Nokia Music from Windows Phone to Windows 8, Matthew Cooper, Craig Pugsley, Nokia
• Windows Phone: Learn from the Winners, Bryan Tomlinson, Winners
• Windows Phone: Low Mem & Hardware Constraints, Andrew Whitechappel
• Windows Phone: This App Is Brought to You by MVVM– Hulu Case Study, Matthias Shapiro, Zachary Pinter (Hulu)
• Quickly Add and Enhance Capabilities to Windows Phone Apps Thru Partner Offerings, Jean-Christophe Cimetiere

Videos:

Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services License Sizing Estimator
http://youtu.be/9oRqnTA4-h4

Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services Customization Analysis Service
http://youtu.be/6iyOTHWbT08

Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services Upgrade Analysis Service
http://youtu.be/nxB6g-JYZlg

Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services Overview
http://youtu.be/pNZ3jPyiqR8

Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services Business Process Modeler
http://youtu.be/T_FDn1DxhYk

Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services System Diagnostic Service
http://youtu.be/vopziR-rU4g

Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services Issue Search Service
http://youtu.be/ZyiFk2MYT3E

Task Recorder Hotfix:

You can download the Hotfix from:
https://mbs2.microsoft.com/Knowledgebase/KBDisplay.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;2863182

Task Recorder Documentation:

Installation & Configuration guide for the Task Recorder update:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=310185

Ever wonder when to choose Websites over Web Role or vice versa for your application, here we will discuss some differences between them and features from Websites perspective. To set context on what we are discussing, following screen shot from https://manage.windowsazure.com illustrates the scale choices for Websites and in this case a dedicated VM instance of size Small and instance count 1 is shown as chosen.

High Availability:

 This is one of my favorites about Websites service, though least talked about. With Websites hosted even on 1 single dedicated instance, you can get almost same availability as if having 2 instances of Web Role. In fact it is recommended to have at least 2 instances for Web Role or Worker Role hosted services to get decent availability. On Websites though the service takes care of relocating your Website to a healthy VM very quickly and sometimes the clients doesn’t even realize the switch over (it may not be that quick always, but very close). 

Developer Experience:

If I ever get unsolicited appreciation about a service, that would be about how easy it is to deploy a web application to Windows Azure Websites. Developers explain as if they got liberated, because Websites made it so damn easy to move their web application to cloud.

• No source code change needed - from running app on premise to Azure Cloud
• Familiar and same deployment options work for Websites on both on premise and Azure cloud: FTP, Web Deploy, Visual Studio Publishing, GIT, TFS etc. work exactly as it works for IIS – no special packaging and service definitions (.CSPKG or .CSDEF) needed like it is needed for Web Role
• Portal support for configuration updates like: app settings or update connection strings or enable tracing can be updated right from the portal without redeploying your app 

Easy Scale Options:

The only solution available out there right now to simply go from Shared to Multi Instance Shared to Dedicated VMs is Websites Service. Makes at most business sense to start at the shared level pay very less COGS for your service and only pay more if your service gets more usage and when it does – all you have to do is move a slider: no code change or deployment needed. You can also scale down as easily as you scaled up, so long as you reduce the site usage and file contents to be within the down level quota. 

You may still want to choose Web Role:

• If you have a webapp
  • That requires full control over a VM
  • Does lots of calls which might otherwise be considered threatening or not very secured in a shared hosting environment
  • Needs to install many custom software to run
  • Wants to open and operate on different ports other than standard http ports
  • Has to be always ON even without client requests because of timer and scheduled based operations etc.
• Though in my opinion – if your webapp needs so many of the above, though you are calling it as a web application (meaning presentation layer component) – you are trying to do more than that and the app has combined different tiers of your solution into one app or something like that, in which case use Web Role. 

Note from author:

 Please consider sharing your own experiences, pain points about migrating and running apps on Windows Azure Websites in the comments section. I will consolidate and try to address them in the next blog post. – Ravi C Kolandaiswamy, Windows Azure Websites.

[Reference] Setting Manager Attribute from Text-File MA:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/18228.reference-setting-manager-attribute-from-text-file-ma.aspx