Good materials / resources to start on Windows Azure [closed] - azure

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Closed 10 years ago.
I've begun the migration of an ASP.NET MVC website to Windows Azure
I've already found some tutorials :
Windows Azure and SQL Azure Tutorials
Windows Azure - .NET Developer Center (Create your first application)
But I would like to have a more academical background, a general knowledge of the whole plateform.
Do you have some good books, websites, blogs or any other support to recommend ?
Thank you in advance

The patterns and practices group has several books available that give an overview of Windows Azure technology from different perspectives.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2011/08/17/microsoft-patterns-amp-practices-books-offer-guidance-on-adopting-windows-azure.aspx
I have been through the book Moving Applications to the Cloud book in particular. It is written to consider the perspectives of the business person, the IT pro and the developer. It was good to see the technology decisions from different points of view.
Buck Woody has a nice summary on his blog on when to leverage the different service platforms available in the cloud.

If you are very new to Windows Azure the following articles will create a knowledge base for you:
Intro to Windows Azure
Understanding Cloud Storage
Hybrid Cloud Solution
After that you would be ready to start developing you application and as you showed interest in .net development I would say visit the link below for all the .net related resources at once single place:
Windows Azure .net Develop Center
In the same page above, look for left side section name "How to Guide" for a list of common steps you are going to use in your daily development.

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Is SharePoint ready for the average IT Department? [closed]

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Closed 9 years ago.
I think this one might get shut down, but hopefully I can get some meaningful responses if it does.
My employer is about to upgrade our WSS 3.0 Intranet site with SharePoint 2013 Standard. I have trawled Stack Overflow for SharePoint positives and negatives and I must admit that I saw a LOT of people negative towards it because it is needlessly complicated to work with and modify. Many of these were related to 2007 though, but I still saw them with 2010.
Are there many people who have used 2013 in a production environment and have feedback about how the product has grown over the past few iterations as far as front end usability and back end expandability goes? Is SharePoint's current version ready for the average business who do not have teams of developers to modify it?
First, decide if you really need all that sharepoint has to offer beyond the ability to store and retrieve documents on a central server.
If you need any of the following:
Create online applications, self-serve forms.
Use it as your company intranet.
Integration with anything that is not an Office product or .NET friendly.
Then you will need specialized support - or at least dedicate a person to train and develop on it. Also consider the cost implications of supporting it in the long term; check with your organization if they have an enterprise agreement which will help offset some of the costs.
The best option if you want to use sharepoint is to have Microsoft run it for you. This way you can do a fair evaluation before you decide to commit to it.
From a usability perspective - it is by far the most user friendly thanks to it built-in integration with Office. This is perhaps its best killer feature, and one that every sharepoint competitor tries to emulate.
The web interface was also greatly improved in 2013, however keep in mind that most of the features are Internet Explorer 8+ specific. This might run afoul of your corporate policies.

New technologies (CouchDB, Node.js) for first major website [closed]

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Closed 10 years ago.
So it's my first time actually making a website and hosting it online--most of what I've done has been tutorials and class work. Now a friend and I want to make something professional and maybe evolve into a business.
1.) I want to be planning long-run but am kind of afraid of being committed to something I have rudimentary knowledge of. What do you think about starting with these technologies (CouchDB, Node.js)? The long-run goal is that it will be social networky and use search, hence noSQL. Will be using Linux + RoR. Node.js is still a bit elusive to me though I've read a lot about it.
2.) Do most web hosting services support these technologies or do I have to find specialized hosting services or host them myself?
3.) What about Cloudant and Nodejitsu/CloudOne--should I consider using these? Other suggestions much appreciated.
I would most certainly recommend a well established PAAS provider. Like maybe Heroku or AppFog. They will make sure you only have to worry about developing your next cool app rather than being a sysadmin.
Heroku also supports deployment by git which is nice. Another big advantage is If your application actually kicks off and you need to scale, scaling with these PAAS providers is often as simple as playing with a few sliders!
1 . There are a lot of noSQL databases available MongoDB and CouchDB are pretty good. They have good documentation. But make sure they fit your exact need before choosing either. RoR is again a great framework. Notably used by twitter. And of course leave the actual server administration to PAAS providers!
2. Checkout Heroku or AppFog. Both of them support RoR and are well reputable with good documentation and community available.
3. I would recommend using Node.js if you plan to build an app which handles a lot of concurrent connections. Like a chat app for example this is basically where Node.js shines.
And finally, Don't think too much into what the hip technologies are. Choose what you are familiar and comfortable with. And most importantly choose what fits your exact need.

Books recommended for a beginner SharePoint architect [closed]

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Closed 10 years ago.
I am a recent graduate and got a job as a junior SharePoint developer few months ago. For the last few months, I have been working on SharePoint development, e.g. webparts, .Net Forms, K2, Lists, Features, for Moss and a little bit for SharePoint 2010 as well...
Now because I made a future plan to become a SharePoint architect, I am not sure what way I need to follow to become what I want to, As there are so many things to learn in SharePoint, I am looking for Book or a series of Book that will help me gain knowledge as a SharePoint Architect has.
I am a bit confused with SharePoint architecture as well, like If I want to develop a new SharePoint Solution, What hardware e.g. Servers, Do I need + Software, e.g. We use .Net Forms, but are they better then using Info-Path forms ?
Thanks (I know its not a Coding question but I think its somehow related to Programming so please dont close it.. Cheers)
There is a huge amount to learn in order to "become" an architect for SharePoint. Do not forget that you will need to learn how the SharePoint content database works, especially how documents are stored. You will also need to figure out the infrastructure part of the equation, especially how virtualised environments will affect server performance.
Essentially, there is not enough space to list all the books that could be useful.
You have set yourself a long term task, so go hard with the curiosity. Whenever you run across a subject that you do not know the details of, hit google and find out.
For example, the difference between .NET forms and Info path forms maybe available in a book, but you are going to learn more quickly and thoroughly by creating some Infopath forms and having a look at how both are implemented.
There is no real shortcut around the hard graft required to learn SharePoint (except perhaps finding someone who already is good at this and learning from them directly).
A free ebook downlodable from msdn :
Developing Applications for SharePoint 2010
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff770300.aspx
It's a good starting point.

Why isn't there higher penetration of Adobe Flex or other RIAs? [closed]

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Closed 12 years ago.
I'm building a web app and starting to feel the pain developing slick UI features -- I tried iPhone/Android programming and it's so damn simple. Why is it that everyone still settles for the hacked-together tools that comprise web programming, instead of gravitating towards RIAs?
I want to program the app with an RIA but...the most popular websites are suspiciously not using them.
Thanks!
There's a couple of drawbacks to RIA... I'm mostly speaking to Flash/Silverlight and the like, as Ajax RIA is a bit different. The drawbacks:
Vendor lockin... once you develop a platform using RIA you are locked into whichever vendor supports the RIA. You are at the mercy of their support, upgrade paths, etc. Using standard web technologies you won't fall into this.
Search engine indexing... Search indexing of RIA is relatively new, so there might be issues getting your content known.
Performance/interoperability issues... Everyone knows about Apple's rejection of Flash. Writing your web application adhering to the standards guarantees your application is accessible to any standards compliant browser. A company like Apple can't just pull the plug on you.
Accessibility issues... It might not be as easy to program for 508 compliance using Flash/Silverlight as it would be with plain-old HTML. 508 compliance is a must for any big website.
You mentioned phones... (Android/iOS) Obviously people don't target mobile phones using Flash/Silverlight for the aforementioned reasons. For phones, generally it makes more sense to create a mobile application as you get more native features then you would if you were creating a mobile website. However, creating a mobile website requires you to write your application once whereas you would need to write your application for each phone you wish to target if you went the mobile application route.
Flex feels slow and non-native.
RIAs running on the desktop generally have to feel native on at least two very different operating systems. You then have to deal with issues on the users machine and the whole nightmare of versioning and upgrades. Web apps only have to work on your server configuration.
RIAs running in the browser feel even slower because all that slickness has to be transferred to the client. They also break the way people expect websites to work.
They are useful for some applications, but normal HTML/JS/AJAX serves most web applications better.
Phones are a different environment entirely and make more sense for the RIA model in many ways.

What is the biggest new feature/improvement in SharePoint 2010? [closed]

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Closed 10 years ago.
This is really a question for the 7400 people (!) at the SharePoint Conference 2009. Of all the new features and improvements in SharePoint 2010, which one (or area or feature set) do you think will have the biggest impact on the world of SharePoint development?
I haven't had a chance to do anything with it yet, but the new BDC (Business Data Catalog), the BCS (Business Connectivity Services), looks really promising - and something that people may actually use as more than a last resort this time around.
Edit: Now that I have had the time to play with the BCS - I can tell you that it is a HUGE improvement over the BDC in terms of both flexibility and ease of use - it is going to be the center of a ton of big-business custom development work to come.
Development support on Win 7 / WS08R2
You no longer have to do your development on Windows Server. You can use Win 7, Vista, or WS08R2.
It may sound stupid, but I would say sound compatibility with Firefox is the comforting thing to know. It not because I am a big fan of Firefox, but it shows a big step of MS towards openness.
For me? The fact that I can now publish my access applications to the web. Here is a video of me playing with ms-access, and about half way through this short demo I switch over to running the application in a browser. I tested this in FireFox, and it also runs 100% perfect...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU4mH0jPntI
I liked the BDC but was disappointed at the lack of tools to quickly bring an existing SPList from another site or site collection in as a external list. It can be done, but it is a very manual tedious process. I would have liked to see a point and proxy sort of API.
Having lived through some SharePoint application upgrade disasters, I would say that I am very favorable to the new Feature Versioning and Feature Upgrade capabilities. The ability to define an upgrade path for content types and lists as well as move existing file URL's is great. With the new event and FeatureUpgrading method on the SPFeatureReceiver you can do just about anything in upgrade.
More on the Feature Upgrade...
I have been playing with Business Conectivity Services and i'm very impressed. this is the tool that will make sharepoint the bridge in a business.
Out of the box Global Navigation Components no longer use tables. I know it's really not way up there on the list of improvements, but I was super excited when I read this.
SharePoint 2010 Changes in Rendering
2 biggest improvements:
1 - Dev tools support - You can throw away WSPBuilder, SharePoint Manager, and all the other hodge-podge tools you used to develop SharePoint Solutions.
2 - Taxonomy/MetaData - You can add a metadata column to any content type and query that information accross farms. Leverages the new service application infrastructure which gets rid of SSP's

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