こんにちは。Surface 法人サポート担当の沖です。

Surface Pro with LTE Advanced モデルが発売されてから多くのお客様にご利用いただき、いくつか LTE に関してご質問をいただいております。

この記事では、その中で特にご注意いただきたい点をまとめさせていただきますので、ご参照いただけますと幸いです。

Surface Pro LTE モデルにて APN 設定を手動で作成する場合には [APN の種類] を [インターネットおよびアタッチ] としないと、インターネット接続できないことがございますので、[インターネットおよびアタッチ] を選択してください。

尚、APN の設定方法については以下の公開情報でもご紹介しておりますのでご参考までにご案内差し上げます。 

Windows 10 の携帯ネットワークの設定

https://support.microsoft.com/ja-jp/help/10739/windows-10-cellular-settings

“APN を追加します” をご覧ください。

Azure Stream Analytics (ASA) on IoT Edge empowers developers to deploy real-time analytical intelligence closer to IoT devices so that they can unlock the full value of device-generated data. Today we are happy to announce that Visual Studio tools for ASA now supports development of ASA on IoT Edge, in addition to development of cloud jobs. These tools can greatly simplify the experience for developing ASA Edge jobs.

With these Visual Studio tools, you can easily author an ASA Edge script with IntelliSense support, test it on your local machine against local data inputs and then create a corresponding job in the cloud for deployment on the IoT Edge.

Below we take a look at some of the key features available, or you can quickly get started by following the tutorial.

Script Authoring

As with ASA Cloud project you can start with creating an ASA on IoT Edge project. This lets you create and open queries in the editor that understand IoT Edge syntax and offers several cool features including keyword completion, error marker and syntax highlighting. These features can save editing time as well as help you correct compilation errors as early as possible.

Local testing

Since we released Visual Studio tools for ASA cloud jobs in 2017, local testing has become the most popular feature among users. The tools encapsulate a single-box local runtime which allows you to run the query solely on the local machine. In this way you can focus on verifying the query logic even in a disconnected mode before deploying to devices.

Submit an ASA Edge job

When the local development and testing is done, you can submit an ASA Edge job to Azure and then use IoT Hub to deploy it to your IoT Edge device(s).

If you encounter any issues, please contact ASAToolsFeedback@microsoft.com .

You are also very welcomed to share your feedback at https://feedback.azure.com/forums/270577-stream-analytics

[原文发表地址] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2018/03/14/build-time-improvement-recommendation-turn-off-map-use-pdbs/

[原文作者] YongKang Zhu [MSFT]

[原文发表时间] 3/14/2018

映射文件是一个纯文本文件，其中包含有关链接器生成的二进制文件中存在的某些名称和符号的信息。它还包含二进制文件中的所有段的详细信息（代码，数据等）以及每个符号定义在哪个OBJ / LIB中。Windows调试器（如windbg.exe）可以使用映射文件来帮助定位程序崩溃的位置。映射文件是一种古老的技术：使用MSVC工具集的现代版本，PDB（程序数据库）文件可以完成所有映射文件的工作。

生成一个映射文件需要很长时间。如果你不需要映射文件但却在构建时看到了链接器选项/MAP，你应该移除它加快构建速度。最近我们已经完成了加速生成映射文件的工作，但是生成映射文件仍是一个缓慢的过程。

如果你是少数需要映射文件的人之一（例如，为了快速检查感兴趣的函数集或数据是否按照预期的或正确的二进制顺序排列），请放心，我们不会移除它。但是，以下几点将说明为什么您应该关闭/ MAP并使用PDB：

• 关闭映射文件生成可以缩短构建时间。虽然我们最近在完全链接场景中提高了映射文件生成的吞吐量，但链接器还是无法增量更新先前链接生成的映射文件，因为这会影响增量链接吞吐量。跟PDB文件不同的是，在增量链接期间可以通过链接器精准的更新PDB文件。
• 与PDB文件不同，二进制文件与其对应的映射文件之间没有紧密的绑定。跟踪哪个映射文件对应哪个版本的二进制文件是很困难的。
• 与PDB文件不同，符号服务器不支持映射文件。
• PDB文件中的信息是映射文件中的内容的超集。实际上，几乎所有的版本都会默认生成PDB文件。

最后，我们已经发布 DIA API ，人们可以使用它来编写自己的工具来从PDB文件中检索当前在映射文件中可用的所有信息。

最后

我们知道构建的吞吐量对于开发人员非常重要，我们正在继续改进我们的工具集的吞吐量性能。你可以阅读我们最近发布的博客 Visual Studio 2017 吞吐量的改进和建议 来了解更多我们为提高吞吐量所做的事情。记住检查你的构建选项看看你是否在生成不必要的映射文件!

如果您对我们有任何意见或建议，请告诉我们。您可以通过在下方评论，通过电子邮件（visualcpp@microsoft.com ）与我们联系，您也可以通过产品中的 帮助>报告问题 或通过 开发者社区提供反馈。您还可以在Twitter（@VisualC ）和Facebook（msftvisualcpp ）上找到我们。

Looking for ways to easily bring technology in your classroom? What to connect your students globally and provide them with unique learning opportunities? Then look no further than Skype in the Classroom! This amazing resource is available for free on our Microsoft Educator Community.

New to Skype in the Classroom? 

Follow these 3 simple steps to get started

Step 1: Register on the Microsoft Educator Community and Complete your Profile.

Step 2: Take the Intro Course

Step 3: Request a Skype Activity

Already using Skype in the Classroom? 

Become a Skype Expert by completing this simple learning path

To become a Skype in the Classroom Expert simply complete the four courses below:

Introduction to Skype in the Classroom

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Skype collaborations

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Join the Community: Follow @SkypeClassroom

Tweets by SkypeClassroom

Sandbox環境からプライベートAOSマシン(PAOS)が削除された理由に関しては、

下記のドキュメントをご参照ください
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/unified-operations/dev-itpro/deployment/cloud-deployment-overview#frequently-asked-questions

<日本語訳>
使用しているTier 2からTier 5の複数のサンドボックス環境から、プライベートAOSマシンが無くなったのはなぜですか？

プライベートAOS は、これまでAOSとBIマシン間のセキュアな通信のために必要でした。
最近のアップデートにより、全てのAOSとBIマシン間の通信は、直接セキュアな通信が行えるようになりました。
このため、プライベートAOSマシンを介する必要なくなり、プライベートAOSマシンの削除を順次実施しております。
この変更は、機能やセキュリティに影響を及ぼしません。

[原文发表地址] Linux C++ Workload improvements to the Project System, Linux Console Window, 同步 and Attach to Process

[原文发表时间] 2018/03/13

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<SupplementalLaunchOptions>
    <AttachOptions>
      <AttachOptionsForConnection AdditionalSOLibSearchPath="/home/user/solibs">
        <ServerOptions MIDebuggerPath="C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual StudioPreviewEnterpriseCommon7IDEVCLinuxbingdb7.9x86_64-linux-gnu-gdb.exe"
ExePath="C:tempConsoleApplication17ConsoleApplication17binx64DebugConsoleApplication17.out"/>
        <SetupCommands>
          <Command IgnoreFailures="true">-enable-pretty-printing</Command>
        </SetupCommands>
      </AttachOptionsForConnection>
    </AttachOptions>
</SupplementalLaunchOptions>

IoT Hub のデータ保持期間についてのご質問と回答をご案内します。

Q. IoT Hub は Stream Analytics などにデータを送信できない場合は内部にデバイスからの情報を溜め込むようになっているようですが、この情報の保持期間はどのくらいになるでしょうか？また保持期間が存在する場合、保持期間は1日といった日単位になるのかそれともデータ容量によって溜め込む期間がきまるのでしょうか？

A. IoT Hub はデバイスから受け取ったメッセージデータを 1 日単位で保存しています。IoT Hub のデータを保存する期間を「リテンション期間」と呼んでおり、こちらは既定で1日となっています。なお、データの量には影響されません。データの保持期間は最大で7日まで保持するよう設定いただくことが可能です。この情報は下記資料にも公開されています。

・デバイスからクラウドへのメッセージを組み込みのエンドポイントから読み取る

https://docs.microsoft.com/ja-jp/azure/iot-hub/iot-hub-devguide-messages-read-builtin

***上記資料より抜粋***

リテンション期間

このプロパティは、IoT Hub によってメッセージが保持される期間を日数で指定します。 既定は 1 日ですが、7 日間に増やすことができます。

************************

上記の内容がお役に立てば幸いです。

Azure IoT 開発サポートチーム 津田

今回は、ファイルシステムミニフィルタ ドライバのサンプル Minispy File System Minifilter Driver をご紹介します。

このサンプルは、システム上の任意の I/O を監視しログに記録する方法を示すサンプルです。

Minispy は、ユーザーモード アプリケーションの minispy.exe とカーネルモード ドライバの minispy.sys で構成されています。Minispy.sys が、様々なI/O に対応するコールバックを、フィルタマネージャに登録します。このコールバックが、システム上の任意のI/O を記録します。ユーザーが、この記録された情報を要求した時に、minispy.sys がminispy.exe にその情報を渡し、minispy.exe が画面上に出力、またはファイルにログしていきます。

あるデバイス上のI/O を監視するためには、minispy.exe を使って、明示的に minispy.sys をそのデバイスにアタッチする必要があります。あるデバイス上の I/O の監視をやめる場合もminispy.exe を使います。

今回は、このサンプルをWindows 10 (1709) x86 にインストールして、C ドライブ上で監視した I/O の情報がコマンドプロンプトやファイル上に出力されるところをお見せしたいと思います。サンプルをビルドする、開発側のPC はWindows 10 (1709) x64 にVisual Studio 2017 とWDK for Windows 10 Version 1709 がインストールされています。

1. サンプルの入手

Minispy File System Minifilter Driver サンプルは、以下のサイトの右側の緑色の [Clone or Download] ボタンを押すと表示される [Download ZIP] ボタンでWindows-driver-samples-master.zipをダウンロードすると、Windows-driver-samples-masterfilesysminiFilterminispy のフォルダにあります。

https://github.com/Microsoft/Windows-driver-samples

2. サンプルのビルド

このフォルダのminispy.sln を、Visual Studio 2017 で開きます。Filter の方がminispy.sys、User の方が minispy.exe のプロジェクトです。

[ソリューション ‘minispy’] を右クリックして [構成マネージャー] をクリックします。

今回は、[アクティブソリューション構成] を [Debug]、[アクティブ ソリューション プラットフォーム] を [Win32] とします。

また、minispy.exe 側でVisual C++ Runtime (VCRUNTIME14D.dll) のインストールを省略するために、User フォルダの下のプロジェクトminispy を右クリックして [プロパティ] を開き、[構成プロパティ]-[C/C++]-[コード生成]-[ランタイム ライブラリ] を [マルチスレッド デバッグ(/MTd)] に変更します。

[ソリューション ‘minispy’] を右クリックして[ソリューションのリビルド] をクリックします。

これで、minispy.sys とminispy.exe ができます。

次のステップに必要なファイルと場所は以下です。

3. サンプルのインストールと動作確認の準備

上記のファイルをWindows 10 (1709) x86 の環境にコピーします。例えば、C:minispy というフォルダを作って、そこに置きます。minispy.inf を右クリックして、[インストール] をクリックすれば、インストールできます。

インストールしても、以下のようにまだこのサンプルドライバはロードされていません。(fltmc.exe の使い方の詳細は、以前の記事「fltmc.exe の使い方」<https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jpwdkblog/2013/02/27/fltmc-exe/> をご参照ください。)

そこで、以下のコマンドでこのサンプルドライバをロードします。

これにより、以下のようにminispy がロードされています。ただ、まだインスタンス数が 0 であることから、ボリュームへのアタッチはされていません。

なお、上記まで行わないと、minispy.exe の実行時に以下のエラーが出ます。

上記のminispy.sys のロードを行うことで、minispy.exe を以下のように実行できるようになります。

最後の行の指示通り、Enter を押すと、コマンドが入力できるようになります。

? を入力して、どのようなコマンドがあるか見てみます。

オプションを表にすると以下の通りです。

コマンドモードについては以下の操作ができます。

・Enter を押せばコマンドモードに入ります。

・go またはg を入力すれば、コマンドモードから抜けます。

・exit を入力すれば、minispy.exe を終了します。

ここまでを理解したら、コマンドモードのまま、以下を実行して、C ドライブにアタッチしてみましょう。

実際、/l オプションを実行したら、C ドライブにアタッチできている(Status がAttached) と出力されます。

4. サンプルの動作確認

以上で準備ができたので、動作確認として、C ドライブ上で監視した I/O の情報がコマンドプロンプトやファイル上に出力されるところをお見せしたいと思います。

コマンドモードのまま、g を入力して、スクリーン上にログを出力します。

上記は、出力のヘッダの部分と、最初のログの一行を抜粋しています。実際には、全部一行で表示できるようにコマンドプロンプトの設定を調整するか、ファイルに出力して、ヘッダの行とログの行の各項目の対応関係がわかるようにした方が、わかりやすいと思います。

上記の例を表にすると、以下のようになります。

続いて、ファイルに出力してみます。/f の後にファイル名を指定して実行後、g を入力します。

ファイル出力をやめるために、Enter を実行してコマンドモードにし、/f を入力します。(ファイル出力を止めない状態でログを開こうとすると、別のプロセスが使用中というエラーになります。)

ログファイルを開いてみます。以下のように上記と同じログがありつつも、コマンドプロンプト(スクリーン) 上に表示されるよりも多く記録されていました。

上記の内容が、ファイルシステムミニフィルタドライバを開発される方のお役に立てば幸いです。

WDK サポートチーム 津田

今回は、LUIS App を作成する例を、以下の公開ドキュメントに沿って 2 つご案内いたします。

1. 1. Create your first LUIS app の手順に沿って、「Home Automation」のLUIS App を作ります。(手順 7 ～15)

2. 2. Create an app 以降の手順に沿って、「TravelAgent」のLUIS App を作ります。(手順16 ～ 23)

手順1 ~ 6は共通です。

手順

＝＝＝＝＝

1. 1. Azure ポータルで LUIS のリソースを作成します。

1-1.      Azure ポータル(https://portal.azure.com/) にログインします。

1-2.      左側のペインより[リソースの作成] - [AI + Cognitive Services] - [Language Understanding] をクリックします。

1-3.      Name、サブスクリプション、場所、価格レベル(今回は例としてF0)、Resource group を適宜入力し、[作成] をクリックします。

2. 2. Azure ポータルで1-3 で作成した Name のリソースをクリックします。

3. 3. 以下の画面で、[Language Understanding Portal] をクリックします。

4. 4. https://www.luis.ai/home が表示されるので、[Login/Sign up] をクリックします。

5. 5. Azure ポータルの時と同じアカウントを選択します。

※ログインできない場合は以下のブログ記事をご参照ください。

- LUIS ポータル (www.luis.ai) にサインインできない場合の対処方法

< https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jpcognitiveblog/2018/03/14/cannot-sign-in-luis-portal/ >

6. 6. https://www.luis.ai/applications が表示されますので、[Create new app] をクリックします。

以降の手順では、例として、以下の2 つの LUIS App を作ります。ご都合の良い方をご利用ください。

1. 1. Create your first LUIS app の手順に沿って、「Home Automation」のLUIS App を作ります。(手順 7 ～ 15)

2. 2. Create an app 以降の手順に沿って、「TravelAgent」のLUIS App を作ります。(手順16 ～ 23)

7. 7. Name に Home Automation と入力し、[Done] をクリックします。

8. 8. 左側のペインの一番下の [Prebuilt Domains] をクリックし、右側の検索ボックスでHome を入力し、表示された [HomeAutomation] の [Add domain] をクリックします。

[Remove domain] と表示されたら完了です。

9. 9. 左側のペインの [Intents] をクリックすると、HomeAutomation の domain の intents が以下のように登録されていることを確認できます。

10. 10. HomeAutomation.TurnOff の intent をクリックすると、以下のように登録済みの utterance の一覧が確認できます。

11. 11. 右上の[Train] をクリックして、学習させます。学習が完了すると、赤色から緑色に変わります。

12. 12. [Train] の右側の [Test] をクリックします。

13. 13. “Type a test utterance” と書かれたテキストボックスに、例として turn off the lights と入力します。HomeAutomation.TurnOff が 0.99 というスコアで選ばれたことがわかります。

14. 14. 画面上部の [PUBLISH] タブをクリックし、[Publish to production slot] をクリックして、このHome Automation アプリを Publish します。

15. 15. Publish に成功したら、同ページの下部に、エンドポイント URL が表示されます。

16. 16. 次の TravelAgent アプリを作るために、画面上部の [My apps] をクリックし、[Import new app] をクリックします。

17. 17. LUIS のサンプル App travel-agent-sample-01.json のJSON を< https://github.com/Microsoft/LUIS-Samples/tree/master/documentation-samples/Examples-BookFlight > からローカルに.json
        ファイルとして保存します。

18. 18. 以下の画面で、17. の.json ファイルを選択し、[Done] をクリックします。

19. 19. 左側のペインの[Intents] や [Entities] をクリックし、サンプルの内容が登録されていることを確認します。

20. 20. 右上の[Train] をクリックし、学習させます。

21. 21. 右側の[Test] をクリックし、”Type a test utterance” と書かれたテキストボックスに、book a flight to seattle と入力すると、BookFlight のintent が 0.79 のスコアで選ばれたことが確認できます。

22. 22. 画面上部の[PUBLISH] タブをクリックし、[Publish to production slot] をクリックします。

23. 23. Publish に成功したら、同ページの下部に、エンドポイント URL が表示されます。

以上で2 つのLUIS App が作成できました。

上記に関連するご質問と回答です。

Q1. 日本語のサンプルはありませんか？

A1. 現時点で弊社よりご紹介しているサンプルはございません。

Q2. (1) の例で使用している Prebuilt Domain は、日本語のLUIS App を作成すると出てきません。英語でも Preview なので、日本語では未実装ですか？

A2. はい、現時点では、日本語では未実装です。

Culture-specific understanding in LUIS apps

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/luis/luis-supported-languages

Prebuilt entities であれば、利用可能なものの一覧が、以下のドキュメントの表に記載されています。

Prebuilt entities reference

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/luis/luis-reference-prebuilt-entities

上記がお役に立てば幸いです。

Cognitive Services 開発サポートチーム 津田

Here’s what to expect and how to sign up!

What is the Microsoft Education Roadshow?

The Microsoft UK Education Roadshow will help fulfil our mission to empower the students and teachers of today to create the world of tomorrow. With over 100 events taking place across the UK in 2017 and 2018, this is the perfect opportunity for educators to see first-hand how Microsoft technologies can enhance teaching and learning.

Events are completely FREE and perfect for those at the very beginning of their digital transformation journeys. All events will involve hands-on training workshops led by our specialist Microsoft Learning Consultants and/or Microsoft Training Academies, and will focus specifically on how Office 365 and Windows 10 can help transform learning.

Agenda:

• Opening Keynote
• Microsoft Educator Community
• Microsoft Teams
• Office 365
• Windows 10
• Paint 3D
• Digital Skills Program
• Survey and Feedback
• Closing Keynote and Networking to explore device offerings

What to expect and how to sign up?

The events hosted around the UK will aim to give delegates a hands-on workshop experience where they can interact within an Office 365 tenancy on Windows 10 devices to experience Microsoft in Education in action. With sessions led by Microsoft Learning Consultants who are also teachers there is plenty of opportunities for Q & A to get real-life experiences. In addition, network with Microsoft Education partners and discuss device offerings and programs available. Simply click on the links below to register for our upcoming events or visit our UK Roadshow page for updated information

Where we’re going?

Scotland and Wales

18/04/2018 Fort William: SIGN UP HERE

Lochaber High School, Camaghael

19/04/2018 Inverness: SIGN UP HERE

STEM HUB, University of the Highlands and Islands, An Lochran, 10 Inverness Campus IV2 5NA

01/05/2018 Dundee: SIGN UP HERE

Harris Academy, Perth Road

30/05/2018 Aberdeenshire: SIGN UP HERE

The Gordon Schools, Huntly AB54 4SE

North of England

24/04/2018 Cumbria: SIGN UP HERE

Yarlside Academy, Redoak Avenue, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbira LA13 0LH

South of England

17/04/2018 Surrey: SIGN UP HERE

St Hilary's School, Holloway Hill, Godalming. GU7 1RZ

19/04/2018 Hertfordshire: SIGN UP HERE

Jupiter Community Free School, Jupiter Drive, Hemel Hempstead, HP2 5NT

25/04/2018 Oxfordshire: SIGN UP HERE

Manor School, 28 Lydalls Cl, Didcot

27/04/2018 Weston: SIGN UP HERE

Weston College, Winter Gardens (Italian Gardens Entrance), Royal Parade, Weston-Super-Mare BS23 1AJ

04/05/2018 Milton Keynes College: SIGN UP HERE

Chaffron Way Campus, Woughton Campus West, Leadenhall MK6 5LP 

Microsoft Training Academies

Alternatively we also host specialist events in our 6 Microsoft Training Academies located around the UK. Our Microsoft Showcase schools provide opportunities for you and your staff to go into a Microsoft in the Classroom environment and experience hands on learning in Microsoft Education with a teacher who has first-hand experience of using it within the classroom.

Click on the links below to register for the events at our Microsoft Showcase School Training Academies:

St Joseph's Primary and Nursery School in Derbyshire

Danesfield School in Marlow

Shireland Collegiate Academy in Smethwick

Ribblesdale High School in Clitheroe

Treorchy Comprehensive School in Treorchy

Microsoft Training Academy in Paddington at Microsoft HQ

Address: 2 Kingdom Street, Paddington, W2 6BD – to book your personalised session with one of our Microsoft Learning Consultant's at Microsoft's HQ in London, please send an email to mstrainingacademy@microsoft.com with details of the institution, your digital transformation journey, and a range of dates. Our events usually run from 10am-3pm, are tailored for the needs of your individual institution, and refreshments and lunch are provided on the day!

Our Microsoft Learning Consultants can provide expert advice and training to Microsoft Schools around the UK. If you would like to speak to a Learning Consultant, or even arrange for one to come and visit your school, please email MTAsupport@microsoft.com.

In Part 1 we saw how we can capture the LastFM data from the API.  This of course just gives me some raw data on an Azure Storage Account.  Having data stored on a storage account gives us a wide range of options to process the data, we can use tools like Polybase to read it into Azure SQL Data Warehouse, connect directly from Power BI or when the dataset needs pre-processing or it becomes too large to handle with traditional systems we can use solutions like Azure Databricks to process the data.

In Part 2 we will focus on processing the data, so we can build beautiful dashboards in Power BI.  Note that we are going to focus on Azure Databricks even though I do realize that the dataset is not huge, but we are learning remember?

Prerequisites:

• An export of the LastFM data you are interested in
• Azure Databricks account
• Power BI

Azure Databricks is an easy to use Spark platform with a strong focus on collaboration.  Microsoft and Databricks collaborated on this offering and it truly makes using Spark a walk in the park.  Azure Databricks went GA recently so we are working in fully supported environment.

First, we'll create an Azure Databricks Workspace which is simple, all you need is a name, location and the Pricing tier.  Azure Databricks is secured with Azure Active Directory which is of course important to align your efforts around identity in the organization.  After about a minute you will be able to launch the Workspace.  Just push the big "Launch Workspace" button to get started!

Once you launch the Workspace you will see the Azure Databricks welcome page.  There are links immediately on the page to help you get started, and the navigation is on the left side.

The first thing we need to do is create a cluster as we need a place to process the code we are going to write.  So let's go ahead and click Clusters - + Create Cluster.  For the "Cluster Type" you will have two choices, Serverless or Standard.  A serverless pool is self-managed pool of cloud resources that is auto-configured, it has some benefits like optimizing the configuration to get the best performance for your workload, better concurrency, creating isolated environments for each notebook, ....  You can read more details about serverless pools here.  We are however going to choose for Standard just because Serverless Pools are currently in Beta.  Creating a cluster takes a couple of arguments like the name and the version of the Databricks runtime and Python.  Now comes the interesting part which is choosing the size of the nodes to support your cluster, this comes with a couple of interesting options like auto scale where you can define the minimum and maximum workers.  From a cost perspective it is very useful to enable Auto Termination if you know you will not be needing the cluster 24/7, just tell Databricks after how many minutes of inactivity it can drop the cluster.  You can also assign some Tags for tracking on the Azure part, override the Spark configuration and enable logging.

While the cluster is provisioning let's go ahead a start writing code.  We'll go back to the Welcome Page and click Notebook under New.  I'm going to give my notebook a name and choose the default language, here I'm going for Scala because @nathan_gs was my Spark mentor and he's a Scala fan.

Now we can start to crunch the data using Scala, I'll add the code to the GitHub repo so you can replicate this easily.
Azure Databricks allows you to mount storage which makes it easy to access the data.

We can also do visualization right inside the notebook which is a great addition while you are doing data exploration.

Now we have done some of the data wrangling we can start visualizing the data to get some of the insights and answer the question if my father has influenced me, and whether I am influencing my daughter.  Connecting Power BI to Azure Databricks is documented here.

We can see a couple of interesting things now that we have visualized the data.  It looks like there is quite some overlap between what I'm listening and what my father is listening.  On my side I have not been successful in convincing my father of System Of A Down though.  I am very happy to see that at least I am having some impact on my daughter too, although she hasn't been able to convince me of Ariana Grande.  I am quite proud if you look at some of the top songs my daughter has in her list. 

Power BI also allows you to import the data into its own in-memory model which obviously makes sense from a performance point-of-view (given your dataset is not in the terabytes ranges of course).  A neat thing you can do if the data is in memory is use Q&A to get insights.  This way you can just ask questions to your data instead of building your visualizations with drag & drop.

Both Azure Databrick and Power BI have a lot more interesting capabilities obviously, but my post would be endless if I had to dive into all of this.

In Part 3 we will look at how we can use Serverless solutions to automate the deployment of the Docker containers to Azure Containers Instances.

Azure Automation

For Azure IAAS enthusiasts, Microsoft has provided a platform to automate all the azure services using powershell. The language is tweaked and used as “powershell workflow”.

Why to Use

• Reducing Manual Effort and help in consistent testing
• Managing resources (deployment/VM’s etc)

How to Use

• Create a powershell workflow in azure web portal and execute it.

Runbook

• Deployment and execution of tasks written in PowerShell.
• Provisioning/Deployment/Maintenance/Monitoring.

Things to know!

Automation Account – A dedicated account to perform runbook design/execution/management.

Asset – Global resources used by runbooks to assist in common tasks and value specific operations

Windows PowerShell Workflow – Implementation of azure automation using PowerShell Workflows. Workflow is a group of individual steps performing an action.

Management Certificates – Authenticate azure resources for azure automation in an azure subscription.

Tips to remember!

• An automation account name is unique per region and per subscription. Multiple accounts are possible. Max 30 per subscription in different region.

Sample One: Creating a runbook to Connect Azure Subscription using Azure AD

Create Automation Account

1. Goto https://portal.azure.com

2. Click Browse and select Automation Accounts.

3. Click Add in the Automation accounts.

4. Fill details in Add Automation Account and click Create.

5. Automation Account is created.

6. In Automation Resources, Select Runbooks.

7.  Click Add Runbook. Enter details and click create.

8. Runbook is created. Authoring status is New.

9. Click Edit in the Runbook details page.

10. Create an Azure AD User to the subscription and set it as a co-administrator. Add the user to the asset as credential type.

11. Edit the Runbook with the below code and Save the runbook.

12. Test the runbook by clicking Start in the Test Pane.

13. Test is passed.

14. Publish the runbook by clicking publish in the Runbook detail page.

15. You can schedule the run book based on the Recurrence/Date etc.

We're pleased to announce the March update of the Developer Preview. We have been working hard on improving the capabilities of the toolset as well as fixing incoming issues reported by you. Below you can see the changes that we're announcing for this update. The preview is already available if you sign up for the Ready to Go program. Read more at http://aka.ms/readytogo.

After April 2^nd the build will become public and you can get it through http://aka.ms/bcsandbox.

Please note, that the improvements announced in this blog post are not available in Dynamics NAV 2018 and the following cumulative updates of Dynamics NAV 2018.

Static Code Analysis

Specifying "al.enableCodeAnalysis": true in your settings will enable static code analysis for AL projects.  Three analyzers have been implemented that will support general AL coding guidelines, AppSource, and per-tenant extension analysis. Analyzers can be individually enabled by specifiying them in the al.codeAnalyzers setting.

"al.enableCodeAnalysis": true,

"al.codeAnalyzers": [

"${CodeCop}"

]

You can customize how the diagnostics generated by the analyzers are reported by adding a custom ruleset file <myruleset>.ruleset.json to the project and specifying the path to it in the “al.ruleSetPath” setting.

“al.ruleSetPath” : “myruleset.ruleset.json”

Using the snippets truleset and trule will get you started quickly.

For more information, see Using the Code Analysis Tool.

Help for new pages

When creating new Pages, Reports, and XMLPorts in Extensions V2, it is now possible to specify the help link that will be used when the user presses the Help button in the user interface.

You can do this by using the property HelpLink on Pages, for example:

page 50100 MyPageWithHelp
{
HelpLink = 'https://www.github.com/Microsoft/AL';
}

And by using the property HelpLink on the request page of Reports and XmlPorts:

report 50100 MyReportWithHelp
{
requestpage
{
HelpLink = 'https://www.github.com/Microsoft/AL';
}
}

For more information, see Adding Help Links.

Creating Role Center Headlines

You can set up a Role Center to display a series of headlines, where headlines appear one at a time for a predefined period of time before moving to the next. The headlines can provide users with up-to-date information and insights into the business and their daily work.
For more information, see Creating Role Center Headlines.

Improved experience for event subscribers

We improved the snippets and IntelliSense around event subscribers, for both the attribute arguments and the method parameters. This is now working for trigger events, integration and business events. In case of business and integration events, the suggestion of the method parameters is made based on the attributes of the event publisher in order to know if the global variables and/or the sender should also be suggested.

Here is what it looks like to subscribe to an integration event when using the snippets:

Here is what it looks when writing the event subscriber from scratch:

Working with data?

You can now inspect the contents of a table when you publish an AL project (F5 and Crtl+F5) from Visual Code. Simply modify the launch.json file of the project to include the "startupObjectType="table" and "startupObjectId"=" settings, replacing with the ID of the table that you want to see. The table will display in client as read-only.

From the client, you can also view a specific table by appending the URL with "&table=", such as:
https://businesscentral.dynamics.com/?company=CRONUS%20Inc.&table=18

For more information, see Viewing Table Data.

Choose your cue layout on Role Centers

We now offer a wide layout option for cues. The wide layout is designed to display large values and gives you a way emphasize a group of cues. When set to the wide layout, a cue group will be placed in its own area, spanning the entire width of the workspace.

For more information, see Cues and Action Tiles.

As usual we encourage you to let us know how you like working with these additions and keep submitting suggestions and bugs. You can see all the filed bugs on our GitHub issues list (https://github.com/Microsoft/AL/issues).

For a list of our previous blog posts, see the links at the end of this post.

NAV Development Tools Preview - February 2018 Update

NAV Development Tools Preview - Anniversary Update

NAV Development Tools Preview - December 2017 Update

NAV Development Tools Preview - November 2017 Update

NAV Development Tools Preview - October 2017 Update

NAV Development Tools Preview - September 2017 Update

NAV Development Tools Preview - August 2017 Update

NAV Development Tools Preview - July 2017 Update

NAV Development Tools Preview - June 2017  Update

NAV Development Tools Preview - April 2017 Update

NAV Development Tools Preview - March 2017 Update

NAV Development Tools Preview - February 2017 Update

NAV Development Tools Preview - January 2017 Update

Announcing the Preview of Modern Development Tools for Dynamics NAV

こんにちは、Visual Studio サポート チームです。

今回は、Visual Studio でソリューションをビルドする際のリビルドの動作に関して、ご留意いただきたい内容をご紹介します。

現象

プロジェクト参照 (*1) を含むソリューションを Visual Studio で開き、ソリューション構成 (Debug/Release など) を切り替えてビルドを行うと、プロジェクトに変更が加えられていなくてもプロジェクトがリビルドされる場合があります。

(*1) "プロジェクト参照" とは、あるプロジェクトから、同一のソリューションに含まれる別のプロジェクトを参照する参照方法であり、被参照側プロジェクトに変更があると、そのプロジェクトだけでなく参照側のプロジェクトもビルドが必要とみなされます。複数のプロジェクトを 1 つのソリューションで同時に開発する場合に便利な参照形式です。

これに対し、DLL を直接参照する "アセンブリ参照" は、サードパーティから提供されている DLL や、社内共通の共通ライブラリとして提供されている DLL など、対象のプロジェクトと被参照 DLL が別々に開発される場合に利用される参照方法です。

原因

本現象は Visual Studio の想定された動作に基づく制限事項です。

プロジェクト参照を含むソリューションでは、Visual Studio がビルドの要否を判断するロジックの制約から、直前にビルドされたソリューション構成から変更が生じた場合に、プロジェクトを参照している側のプロジェクトに対してリビルドが行われます。(*2)

なお、"直前にビルドされたソリューション構成" の情報は、Visual Studio の起動中は Visual Studio 内に記憶され、Visual Studio の終了後は .suo ファイル (*3) に保持されます。ここで、.suo ファイルが存在しない状態では、"直前にビルドされたソリューション構成" としては既定の設定 (Debug) が適用されるため、.suo ファイルが存在しない状態で Release 構成のビルドを行うと、常に、"直前にビルドされたソリューション構成から変更が生じた" 状態と判断されるため、プロジェクト参照しているプロジェクトに対してリビルドが行われます。

このため、特に、直前に Release 構成でビルドを行った状態を保持した .suo ファイルが存在しない状態で、Visual Studio のコマンドライン ツールである devenv.exe を利用して Release 構成でソリューションのビルドを行うと、毎回、リビルドが行われてしまうといった状況が起こりえます。

(*2) 本動作は Visual Studio 2017 より前のバージョンの Visual Studio で確認されています。Visual Studio 2017 では IDE 上からのビルドでは本動作は改善されています。

(*3) .suo ファイルは、Visual Studio の終了時に自動的に出力される隠しファイルで、ユーザーによる設定などの情報を保持しています。Visual Studio 2013 の場合は ***.v12.suo、Visual Studio 2015 の場合は拡張子のみで .suo といった形で、バージョンによってファイル名が異なります。

<実行例 : .suo ファイルなし>

devenv.exe で Release 構成を指定して 2 回続けてビルドを行っていますが、更新不要とならずにビルドが実行されています。

対処策

対象のソリューションを、一度、Visual Studio で開いて Release 構成でビルドし、Visual Studio を終了して .suo ファイルが出力された状態とすることで、devenv.exe を使用して Release 構成でビルドを行う場合でも、不要なリビルドを避けることができます。

<実行例 : Release 構成でビルドして終了した際に出力された .suo ファイルあり>

プロジェクトの規模が大きくできる限り不要なリビルドを避けたい場合など、上記内容がお役に立てましたら幸いです。

Recent Releases and Announcements

• Introducing Windows Server 2019 – now available in preview
  • Windows Server 2019 will be generally available in the second half of calendar year 2018. Starting now, you can access the preview build through our Insiders program.
  • Windows Server 2016 is the fastest adopted version of Windows Server, ever!
  • In Windows Server 2019, Shielded VMs will now support Linux VMs.  We are also extending VMConnect to improve troubleshooting of Shielded VMs for Windows Server and Linux. We are adding Encrypted Networks that will let admins encrypt network segments, with a flip of a switch to protect the network layer between servers.
  • In Windows Server 2019, our goal is to reduce the Server Core base container image to a third of its current size of 5 GB.
  • Kubernetes support is currently in beta, and in Windows Server 2019, we are introducing significant improvements to compute, storage, and networking components of a Kubernetes cluster.
  • And much more!
  • https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/windowsserver/2018/03/20/introducing-windows-server-2019-now-available-in-preview/
• Cumulative Update #5 for SQL Server 2017 RTM
  • https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4092643/cumulative-update-5-for-sql-server-2017
• Cumulative Update #8 for SQL Server 2016 SP1
  • https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4077064
• Cumulative Update #11 for SQL Server 2014 SP2
  • https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4077063
• SSMS 17.6 is now available: Managed Instance and many bug fixes
  • https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2018/03/20/ssms-17-6-is-now-available-managed-instance-and-many-bug-fixes/
• Gartner reaffirms Microsoft as a leader in Data Management Solutions for Analytics
  • https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/gartner-reaffirms-microsoft-as-a-leader-in-data-management-solutions-for-analytics/
• Announcing general availability of Azure database services for MySQL and PostgreSQL
  • https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-general-availability-of-azure-database-services-for-mysql-and-postgresql/
• Announcing the general availability of Microsoft Azure Data Bricks
  • With the general availability of the Azure Databricks Service comes built-in support for Azure SQL Data Warehouse. This enables any data scientist or data engineer to have a seamless experience connecting their Azure Databricks Cluster and their Azure SQL Data Warehouse when building advanced ETL ... for Modern Data Warehouse Architectures or accessing relational data for Machine Learning and AI.
  • https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/unlock-your-data-s-potential-with-azure-sql-data-warehouse-and-azure-databricks/
  • https://databricks.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/databricks-delivers-microsoft-azure-databricks-addressing-customer-demand
• The need for a Digital Geneva Convention
  • https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2017/02/14/need-digital-geneva-convention/
• International Women’s Day: Three simple ways we can all #PressforProgress for women in STEM
  • https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/03/07/international-womens-day-three-simple-ways-can-pressforprogress-women-stem/
• Free Azure credits for students
  • For students looking to try out cloud computing, but who don't have access to a credit card, there's a new way to get access to Azure. Microsoft now offers a free Azure account to students in 140 countries, with free access to dozens of services — plus $100 in Azure credits for everything else.
  • http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2018/03/free-azure-credits-for-students.html
• DISA has released the Microsoft SQL Server 2016 STIG Version 1. The STIG is available at https://iase.disa.mil/stigs/Pages/index.aspx
• Migrate your databases to a fully managed service with Azure SQL Database Managed Instance
  • We’re excited to announce the preview of Azure SQL Database Managed Instance
  • Coming soon, you will be able to migrate your SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages to Azure in a managed environment within Azure Data Factory to increase productivity and lower total cost of ownership.
  • https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/migrate-your-databases-to-a-fully-managed-service-with-azure-sql-database-managed-instance/
• ONNX Models to be Runnable Natively on 100s of Millions of Windows Devices
  • Today Microsoft is announcing the next major update to Windows will include the ability to run Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) models natively with hardware acceleration.
  • ONNX is an open source model representation for interoperability and innovation in the AI ecosystem. We helped start ONNX last September, added support from many other companies, and launched ONNX 1.0 in December.
  • https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/machinelearning/2018/03/07/onnx-models-to-be-runnable-natively-on-100s-of-millions-of-windows-devices/
• Introducing SQL Information Protection for Azure SQL Database and on-premises SQL Server!
  • https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/introducing-sql-information-protection-for-azure-sql-database-and-on-premises-sql-server/
• Power BI for Mixed Reality app now available in Preview
  • This app makes it easy to access your Power BI content while using HoloLens, allowing you to view and interact with report pages and dashboards on top of your real-world environment.
  • https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-for-mixed-reality-app-now-available-in-preview/
• Power BI Report Server Update – March 2018
  • We’re pleased to announce the release of a new version of Power BI Report Server that contains several new features customers have been anxiously waiting for, including bookmarking, syncing slicers, and quick measures.
  • https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-report-server-update-march-2018/
• R 3.4.4 released
  • This update improves automatic timezone detection on some systems, and adds fixes for some unusual corner cases in the statistics library.
  • http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2018/03/r-344-released.html
• Released: Public Preview for SQL Server Management Packs Update (7.0.3.0)
  • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlreleaseservices/released-public-preview-for-sql-server-management-packs-update-7-0-3-0/
• Share your Power BI content with anyone by email
  • I’m excited to announce the ability to share content with users using their personal email accounts, making it easier to share data with people outside of your organization. Previously, you could only share content to other users with work email addresses.
  • An invite email is sent to the provided email address. The recipient needs to be in your organization’s Azure Active Directory (AAD). If the recipient isn’t in AAD, they’ll be prompted to create an AAD account.
  • https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/share-your-power-bi-content-with-anyone-by-email-2/
• Python in Visual Studio Code – Feb 2018 Release
  • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/pythonengineering/2018/03/08/python-in-visual-studio-code-feb-2018-release/
• Announcing Persistent Filters in the Power BI Service
  • All Power BI reports will now automatically retain the filters, slicers, and other data view changes that you have made. That’s right – you no longer need to spend your valuable time slicing and dicing your report and repeating the same steps each time you return to the service.
  • If at any point you want to return to the author’s published version, just click on the “Reset to default” button and hit yes to the dialog below – your report should be back to original.
  • https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-persistent-filters-in-the-service/

Troubleshooting and Issue Alerts

• Critical: Do NOT delete files from the Windows Installer folder. C:windowsInstaller is not a temporary folder and files in it should not be deleted. If you do it on machines on which you have SQL Server installed, you may have to rebuild the operating system and reinstall SQL Server.
  • http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlserverfaq/archive/2013/04/30/do-not-delete-files-from-the-windows-installer-folder.aspx
• Critical: Please be aware of a critical Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 runtime pre-requisite update that may be required on machines where SQL Server 2016 will be, or has been, installed.
  • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlcat/2016/07/28/installing-sql-server-2016-rtm-you-must-do-this/
  • If KB3164398 or KB3138367 are installed, then no further action is necessary. To check, run the following from a command prompt:
  • powershell get-hotfix KB3164398
  • powershell get-hotfix KB3138367
  • If the version of %SystemRoot%system32msvcr120.dll is 12.0.40649.5 or later, then no further action is necessary. To check, run the following from a command prompt:
  • powershell "get-item %systemroot%system32msvcr120.dll | select versioninfo | fl"
• Important: If the Update Cache folder or some patches are removed from this folder, you can no longer uninstall an update to your SQL Server instance and then revert to an earlier update build.
  • In that situation, Add/Remove Programs entries point to non-existing binaries, and therefore the uninstall process does not work. Therefore, Microsoft strongly encourages you to keep the folder and its contents intact.
  • https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3196535
• Important: You must precede all Unicode strings with a prefix N when you deal with Unicode string constants in SQL Server
  • http://support.microsoft.com/kb/239530
• Important: Default auto statistics update threshold change for SQL Server 2016
  • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/psssql/2016/10/04/default-auto-statistics-update-threshold-change-for-sql-server-2016/
  • SQL Server 2016:  Default is new threshold if database compatibility level is 130.  If database compatibility is below 130, old threshold is used (unless you use trace flag 2371)
• Audit SQL Server stop, start, restart
  • This article outlines an approach for determining the domain identity of a user who has initiated a stop, start, or restart request on SQL Server services. These steps were used to help resolve an issue with TFS where collection databases were not coming online following a service restart.
  • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/skeeler/2018/03/audit-sql-server-stop-start-restart/
• Heuristic DNS detections in Azure Security Center
  • We have heard from many customers about their challenges with detecting highly evasive threats. To help provide guidance, we published Windows DNS server logging for network forensics and the introduction of the Azure DNS Analytics solution
  • The benefits of examining DNS is its ability to observe connections across all possible network protocols from all client operating systems in a relatively small dataset. The compactness of this data is further aided by the default behavior of on-host caching of common domains.
  • https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/heuristic-dns-detections-in-azure-security-center/
• How to configure tempdb in Azure SQL Managed Instance(preview)
  • One limitation in the current public preview is that tempdb settings are not maintained after fail-over. If you add new files to tempdb or change file size, these settings will not be preserved after fail-over, and original tempdb will be re-created on the new instance. This is a temporary limitation and it will be fixed during public preview.
  • However, since Managed Instance supports SQL Agent, and SQL Agent can be configured to execute some script when SQL Agent start, you can workaround this issue and create a SQL Agent job that will pre-configure your tempdb.
  • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/03/13/how-to-configure-tempdb-in-azure-sql-managed-instance/

Recent Blog Articles

• Self Joins…ROW_NUMBER()…LAG()! … Oh My!
  • In this post by our US based Senior PFE, Susan Van Eyck goes through different query patterns to achieve cumulative data while keeping the query performant.
  • https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatform/2018/03/01/self-joinsrow_numberlag-oh-my/
• Using Microsoft AI to Build a Lung-Disease Prediction Model Using Chest X-Ray Images
  • https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/machinelearning/2018/03/07/using-microsoft-ai-to-build-a-lung-disease-prediction-model-using-chest-x-ray-images/
• What is Azure SQL Database Managed Instance?
  • Managed Instance is a new managed database service that represents fully-managed SQL Server Instance in Azure cloud. It shares the same code with the latest version of SQL Server Database Engine and has the latest features, performance improvements, and security patches. This service is currently in public preview.
  • It has most of the SQL Server 2017 features (excluding some on-premise Windows features such as Windows logins or potentially harmful features such as extended stored procedures) and enables you to put almost any database that you have in on-premises SQL Server instance.
  • There is no public IP address dedicated to the Managed Instance. Only applications in customer network can access Managed Instance.
  • Managed Instance is fully Platform as a Service database offer.  OS patching and database upgrades are handled automatically and do not require any action.
  • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/03/07/what-is-azure-sql-database-managed-instance-2/
• Modernize index maintenance with Resumable Online Index Rebuild
  • Fit rebuild operations into limited maintenance windows: ALTER INDEX [ix_CustomerIDs] ON [ContosoSales].[ConstosoTransactionData]  REBUILD WITH (ONLINE = ON, RESUMABLE = ON, MAX_DURATION = 30 MINUTES); GO
  • Pause an index rebuild to free up resources for another high priority task:  ALTER INDEX ix_CustomerIDs ON [ContosoSales].[ConstosoTransactionData] PAUSE
  • Resume an index rebuild after failure:  ALTER INDEX ix_CustomerIDs ON [ContosoSales].[ConstosoTransactionData] RESUME
  • Perform a large index rebuild without using large log space.  With ROIR (Resumable Online Index Rebuild), you can perform a large index rebuild without using a large amount of log space. ROIR prevents log truncation and out-of-log errors.
  • https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/modernize-index-maintenance-with-resumable-online-index-rebuild/
• Pixel-level land cover classification using the Geo AI Data Science Virtual Machine and Batch AI
  • https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/machinelearning/2018/03/12/pixel-level-land-cover-classification-using-the-geo-ai-data-science-virtual-machine-and-batch-ai/
• Inside Distribution Cleanup Watermark
  • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/repltalk/2018/03/08/inside-distribution-cleanup-watermark/
• Demystifying Docker for Data Scientists – A Docker Tutorial for Your Deep Learning Projects
  • https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/machinelearning/2018/03/15/demystifying-docker-for-data-scientists-a-docker-tutorial-for-your-deep-learning-projects/
• How to configure network for Azure SQL Managed Instance
  • Configuring network environment has the following steps: (1) Configure Virtual Network where Managed Instance will be placed. (2) Create Route table that will enable Managed Instance to communicate with Azure Management Service. (3) Optionally create dedicated subnet for Managed Instance (or use default one that is created when the Virtual Networks is created) (4) Assign the Route table to the subnet. (5) Double-check that you have not added something that might cause the problem.
  • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/03/14/how-to-configure-network-for-azure-sql-managed-instance/

Recent Training and Technical Guides

• R data concepts, for Excel users
  • Excel users starting to use R likely have some established concepts about data: where it's stored, how functions apply to data, etc. In general, R does things differently to Excel (or any spreadsheet, in fact). In a useful guide, Steph de Silva from Rex Analytics explains the concepts of data management in R and how they differ from Excel.
  • http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2018/03/r-data-concepts-for-excel-users.html
• Demo – Azure SQL Database Managed Instance in action
  • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/03/14/demo-azure-sql-database-managed-instance-in-action/
• Power BI Desktop March Feature Summary
  • We are making several of our most popular connectors generally available, including SAP HANA. Bookmarking is also now generally available.
  • We are also previewing a powerful feature, report page tooltips, that lets you use visuals in your own custom designed tooltips.
  • https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-desktop-march-2018-feature-summary/
• Power BI Service and Mobile February Feature Summary
  • We’ve now made it easier for you to distribute Power BI apps within your organization by allowing you to push apps to end users.  This option can be found in the app publishing workflow
  • Organizational custom visuals, now in preview, allow Power BI administrators to manage and even deploy proprietary custom visuals for report authors to import into their reports on Desktop.
  • We shipped a new, enhanced version of the on-premises data gateway. New features in this release include: ability to refresh queries combining data from on-premises and cloud data sources, [and more]
  • You can now share reports directly from your mobile app on any platform.
  • https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-service-and-mobile-february-2018-feature-summary/
• Azure Strategy and Implementation Guide – free download
  • https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-strategy-and-implementation-guide-free-download/
• Cloud data and AI services training roundup
  • https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2018/03/06/february-cloud-data-and-ai-services-training-roundup/

Script and Tool Tips

• How Three Lines of Code and Windows Machine Learning Empower .NET Developers to Run AI Locally on Windows 10 Devices
  • https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/machinelearning/2018/03/13/how-three-lines-of-code-and-windows-machine-learning-empower-net-developers-to-run-ai-locally-on-windows-10-devices/
• SQL Data Discovery & Classification in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 17.5
  • (1) Download the latest version of SSMS (2) Connect to your instance (3) Right click on your database, select tasks and pick, Classify Data (4) Select all/some or none the recommendations (5) Click Save.  It's that simple!
  • https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatform/2018/03/13/sql-data-discovery-classification-in-sql-server-management-studio-ssms-17-5/
• PowerTip: Build simple HTML with PowerShell
  • https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/2018/03/15/powertip-build-simple-html-with-powershell/
• Python in Visual Studio 15.7 Preview 1
  • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/pythonengineering/2018/03/13/python-in-visual-studio-15-7/
• How to export multiple databases from SQL Server to Bacpac
  • https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/azuresqldbsupport/2018/03/22/lesson-learned-32-how-to-export-multiple-databases-from-sql-server-to-bacpac/

Fany Carolina Vargas | SQL Dedicated Premier Field Engineer | Microsoft Services

In this post, App Dev Managers Robert Schumann and Ben Hlaban, introduce us to Blazor – an experimental web UI framework based on C#, Razor, and HTML that runs in the browser via WebAssembly.

This journey started from a blog by Daniel Roth. Other than the YouTube of Steve Sanderson’s prototype demo at NDC Oslo, this wasn’t much information to draw from.

A few days later I mention Blazor to my colleague Ben, and he starts asking a bunch of rapid-fire questions. Whoa! Time-out. With coffee top-offs, we start a Skype call, launch Visual Studio, git clone repo, and intrigue quickly ensued.

This blog is about getting started with Blazor. We’ll provide setup guidance, develop a cursory ToDo List application using the MVC pattern, and even do some unit testing. A second blog is intended to delve into E2E testing the application using Selenium and demonstrate how to position the project for CI/CD.

Pre-requisites*

• .NET Core SDK (>2.1.4)
• At command prompt type “dotnet --version”
• Download: https://www.microsoft.com/net/learn/get-started/windows
• Node.js (>8.3)
• At command prompt type “node -v”
• Download: https://nodejs.org/en/
• Visual Studio (>2017)
• Download: https://www.visualstudio.com/thank-you-downloading-visual-studio/?sku=Community&rel=15
• · Blazor.VSExtension.VSIX
• Download: https://github.com/SteveSanderson/Blazor/releases/download/v0.3.1/Blazor.VSExtension.vsix

* If you had to install any of the above please do cursory system reboot

Setup

• Launch Visual Studio Installer
• Make sure Visual Studio is up-to-date
• Make sure “ASP.NET and web development” is enabled
• Make sure “.NET Core cross-platform development” is enabled
• Install Blazor project template
• Double-click previously downloaded file Blazor.VSExtension.VSIX
  or
• At command via VSIXInstaller.exe Blazor.VSExtension.VSIX

Here we go…

• In Visual Studio 2017, select File | New Project | Visual Studio | Web | Blazor application
• Name this new project “HelloBlazor”. Click OK button.
• Press CTRL + F5 to make sure the default baseline project works. IIS Express should spin-up. The project eventually loads and is a typical Visual Studio templated SPA with Home, Counter, and Fetch Data features OTB.

• Right-click HelloBlazor project | Add | Class | Name = “Todo.cs” | OK

namespace HelloBlazor
{
   public class Todo
   {
      public string Description { get; set; }
      public bool IsComplete { get; set; }
   }
}

• Right-click HelloBlazor project | Add | Class | Name = “TodoComponent .cs” | OK

using Blazor.Components;
using System.Collections.Generic;
namespace HelloBlazor
{
   public class TodoComponent : RazorComponent
   {
      public IList<Todo> Todos = new List<Todo>();
      public Todo NewTodo = new Todo();
      public void AddTodo()
      {
         if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(NewTodo.Description))
         {
            Todos.Add(new Todo { Description = NewTodo.Description, IsComplete = NewTodo.IsComplete });
            NewTodo = new Todo();
         }
      }
   }
}

• Right-click HelloBlazor project | Add | New Item | Web | ASP.NET | Razor View | Name = “TodoList.cshtml” | OK

@using HelloBlazor
@inherits TodoComponent
<h1>Todo List (@Todos.Count(todo => !todo.IsComplete))</h1>
<ul style="list-style: none">
   @foreach (var todo in Todos)
   {
      <li>
      <input @bind(todo.Description) />
      <input type="checkbox" @bind(todo.IsComplete) />
      </li>
   }
   <li>
   <input @bind(NewTodo.Description) />
   <input type="checkbox" @bind(NewTodo.IsComplete) />
   <button @onclick(AddTodo)>Add</button>
   </li>
</ul>

• Finally, let’s add a menu link to the new page
• Double-click or open the file Shared/NavMenu.cshtml
• Add a new list item to the existing unordered list;

<ul class='nav navbar-nav'>
   . . .
   <li>
      <a href='~/TodoList'>
      <span class='glyphicon glyphicon-th-list'></span> Todo List
      </a>
   </li>
</ul>

• Press CTRL + F5 to make sure the modified project works. The new page should be available on the left navbar from the “Todo List” link.

Unit Testing

• Right-click HelloBlazor solution | Add | New Project | Installed | Visual C# | Web | .NET Core | MSTest Test Project (.NET Core) | Name = HelloBlazor.Test | OK
• Right-click Dependencies | Add Reference | Projects | Solution | HelloBlazor | OK
• Right-click UnitTest1.cs file | Rename | Name = TodoComponentTests.cs | Yes
• Within the TodoComponentTests class rename TestMethod1 to AddToDo

using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting;
namespace HelloBlazor.Tests
{
   [TestClass]
   public class TodoComponentTests
   {
      [TestMethod]
      public void AddTodo()
      {
         //arrange
         var todoComponent = new TodoComponent();
         var description = "this is a test";
         var isComplete = false;
         //act
         todoComponent.NewTodo.Description = description;
         todoComponent.NewTodo.IsComplete = isComplete;
         todoComponent.AddTodo();
         //assert
         Assert.IsTrue(todoComponent.Todos.Count == 1);
         Assert.IsTrue(todoComponent.Todos[0].Description == description);
         Assert.IsTrue(todoComponent.Todos[0].IsComplete == isComplete);
      }
   }
}

• Press CTRL+R,A to run all tests.

References

• Steve Sanderson’s Blog
  http://blog.stevensanderson.com/
• Microsoft ASP.NET
  https://www.asp.net/
• Blazor on Git
  https://github.com/aspnet/blazor
• Introduction to Razor Pages in ASP.NET Core
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/mvc/razor-pages/?tabs=visual-studio

Premier Support for Developers provides strategic technology guidance, critical support coverage, and a range of essential services to help teams optimize development lifecycles and improve software quality.  Contact your Application Development Manager (ADM) or email us to learn more about what we can do for you.

Here are top stories we found in our streams this week related to DevOps, VSTS, TFS and other interesting topics.

Top Stories

• How Microsoft Does DevOps - Dave Harrison
  An excellent write-up of an interview by Dave Harrison of Aaron Bjork with links to Aaron's excellent Agile at Microsoft talk and other content about how Microsoft does DevOps.
  
• Clean up your Team Project Collection prior to migrating to VSTS - Jesse Houwing
  Some hard won advice from Jesse Houwing from his experiences moving from TFS to VSTS - it goes a lot quicker if you only move the stuff you want to keep. Jesse shows you how to get rid of the stale data before migration.
• Setting wild card branch policies in VSTS - Gorden Beeming
  Gorden shares a very neat trick he learnt from Jeremy Epling - you can use wildcards to set branch policies for branches matching a naming convention (such as release/*)
• A quick look at the new SonarQube tasks for TFS and VSTS - Matteo Emili
  Matteo shows us around the hotly anticipated and newly released SonarQube tasks for VSTS. Gone are the /d days with handy options to integrate with MSBuild, Gradle or standalone and provide your own properties file.
• Git with Unity - Edward Thomson
  Edward has been digging into Unity and applying his years of history with Git to figuring out the best configuration when building on the platform.
• Giving Feedback - Brian Harry
  Finally, Brian Harry used his first day of his sabbatical to write up an excellent post on giving feedback.

Podcasts & Videos

• How Windows, Windows Store, Xbox & Surface streamlined their planning and centralized on VSTS - Donovan Brown
  A very in-depth interview with Jill Campbell a Group Program Manager who works in the Windows and Devices Group (WDG) in Microsoft. Jill describes how Windows moved from various tools to a unified process powered by VSTS, and how VSTS scales for them along with the flexibility and customizability which enabled them to be successful in managing over 11 million work items, across 33,000 users (across all of Microsoft) and with teams varying in processes ranging from Agile through to Waterfall.
• Radio TFS 157: Getting into the Groove
  Josh and Paul catch Greg up on the MVP Summit and while they can't share the content, sounds like they can share some of the colds they caught. Lots of news including TFS updates and TFS to VSTS migration tips.

If you have feedback or would like to see a story included in next weeks round-up then please leave a comment below or use the #VSTS hashtag on Twitter

Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) is a software component developed by Microsoft that can be installed on Windows Server operating systems to provide users with single sign-on access to systems and applications located across organizational boundaries. It uses a claims-based access control authorization model to maintain application security and implement federated identity.

OAuth 2.0 is an open standard created by the IETF for authorization and is documented by RFC 6749 (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6749). Generally, OAuth provides to clients a "secure delegated access" to server resources on behalf of a resource owner. It specifies a process for resource owners to authorize third-party access to their server resources without sharing their credentials. Designed specifically to work with Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), OAuth essentially allows access tokens to be issued to third-party clients by an authorization server, with the approval of the resource owner. The third party then uses the access token to access the protected resources hosted by the resource server.

Starting from Windows Server 2012 R2 ADFS (Version 3.0) supports OAUTH 2.0 authorization protocol, and this post tries to clarify what this means. OAUTH 2.0 define various authorization grants, client and token types. ADFS started with the support of a subset of these, and  increased this support over time with Windows Server 2016 and his ADFS Version 4.0.

Authorization Grants

Client Types

Oauth confidential client authentication methods:

• Symmetric (shared secret / password)
• Asymmetric keys
• Windows Integrated Authentication (WIA)

Token Types

ADFS issues access tokens and refresh tokens in the JWT (JSON Web Token) format in response to successful authorization requests using the OAuth 2.0 protocol. ADFS does not issue SAML tokens over the OAuth 2.0 authorization protocol.

Further information

•  https://technet.microsoft.com/ru-ru/library/mt617220(v=ws.11)
•  https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/maheshu/2015/04/28/oauth-2-0-support-in-adfs-on-windows-server-2012-r2/
•  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/identity/ad-fs/overview/ad-fs-scenarios-for-developers
•  https://medium.com/@robert.broeckelmann/saml2-vs-jwt-understanding-oauth2-4abde9e7ec8b

Video credits: Greenwood Campbell at CherryBot Launch

YOLO "You only look once" by Joseph Redmon

A state of the art real-time object detection system that works using what I can only describe as magic: https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.08242

If you've seen any of the youtube.com videos demonstrating it, you may be curious to setup a development rig and play with it yourself.  However, setting up an environment isn't that simple as there are quite a few dependencies, all evolving at different cadence - depending on what you've already got installed on your machine you can end up in a bit of a mess and scratching you head as to why it's not working.

I spent a couple of hours this week setting up my Surface Book (with GPU) to experiment with YOLO.  However, after doing so could only get Tiny YOLO to work as kept hitting CUDA out of memory errors.  Then had a dawning moment, why don't I just use Azure's Deep Learning Virtual Machine (DLVM) with GPU?  Here is a guide to getting your own DLVM setup working with YOLO.

Note: There are numerous guides out there to walk through setting up a development environment for YOLO.  I strongly encourage you to read the following first: https://pjreddie.com/darknet/ and https://github.com/AlexeyAB/darknet/blob/master/README.md.

Solution

In the Azure Portal, create a Deep Learning Virtual Machine (DVLM) NC-Series GPU on Windows (Linux also available).  Once provisioned, remote in:

Dependencies

The DVLM has a bucket load of tools already installed on it.  However, there are a few updates and additional libraries you need to install to get YOLO up and running.

• Update the Visual Studio Installer
• Update Visual Studio Community 2017 (currently v15.6.4)
• Add the VC++ 2017 version 14.4 v14.11 toolset (for side by side MSVC toolsets: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2017/11/15/side-by-side-minor-version-msvc-toolsets-in-visual-studio-2017/)

• Download OpenCV 3.40 (not higher as it won't work: https://github.com/AlexeyAB/darknet/issues/402) and extract to the path c:opencv_3.0
• Install CUDA 9.1 https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloads (Windows 2016 version for DLVM)

Environment setup

• Your environment variables should look like the below including CUDNN (as per: https://github.com/AlexeyAB/darknet/blob/master/README.md#how-to-compile-on-windows) which is already installed on the DLVM at the path C:NVIDIAcuda

• Tweak the c:program filesNVIDA GPU Computing ToolkitCUDAv9.1includecrt host_config.h file to update it with the latest VS version:

• Clone the darknet repo: https://github.com/AlexeyAB/darknet.git
• Copy the C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual StudioPreviewCommunityVCAuxiliaryBuild14.11 props file to the darknetbuilddarknet solution folder eg:

• Edit the darknet.vcxproj file to include the v14.11.props file copied above (again ref: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2017/11/15/side-by-side-minor-version-msvc-toolsets-in-visual-studio-2017/)

• Open the darknet.sln solution - retarget the project

• Build (Release x64 bit)
• Open the solution/x64 output directory and you should see darknet.exe
• Copy the OpenCV dependencies into the output directory above:

• Download the YOLO9000 weights: http://pjreddie.com/media/files/yolo9000.weights
• Run solution/x64/darknet_coco_9000.cmd

Enjoy.