Where is my solution https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/whereismysolution/feed.xml Shop here your solution, no pun intended. Wed, 06 Jun 2018 09:38:30 GMT en-US hourly 1 [Last Week Dev Bits 1] https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/whereismysolution/last-week-dev-bits-1 Wed, 06 Jun 2018 09:38:30 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/whereismysolution/?p=875
  • Bringing custom icons to your VSCode projects. See how:
  • Trying to figure out how to deploy your business logic code to an IoT Edge device using Azure Functions? Read more
  • Say goodbye to custom steps - Microsoft just launched build status notifications for VSAppCenter! Read here.
  • Hear from Elijah Manor & Burke Holland about 5 VS extensions that'll make your life a bit easier.
  • New keyboard shortcuts make it easier to run Python code in the terminal! Get the latest extension for code now. Check it out here.
  • You can now master Nodejs with this free Opensource eBook on Github! Start building today.
  • Learn how to build immutable infrastructure for Azure using VisualStudio Team Services as CI/CD and popular Open Source tools from Hashi Corp and Red Hat. Great Tutorial on it here
  • What about bring AI to your data with Machine Learning services in SQL Server, cool right? Watch how
  • React expert Randy Morgan joins John Papa and explains how React handles local state, state flow, props on an all new episode of FiveThings! Watch here.
  • Check out at EdXOnline for an in-depth look at developing NoSQL apps in super-scalable Azure CosmosDB. Great stuff. Find it here.
  • Exponentially Difficult Debugging - Debugging in the age of AI – an interesting read.
  • Easily create customizable CI/CD pipelines in Azure with VSTS. Learn how with our 5-min quickstarts. Real good stuff! Here.
  • Want to assign a work item to a group of Devs? You can do that. Extend VSTS project templates...here's how.
  • Designing apps for the Xbox or TV? Read about everything you need to keep in mind. Learn how.
  • From spinning up containers to tapping Microservices, Microsoft is simplifying the developer experience. Check out the Q&A at Redmond to learn
  • Check out new hands-on Kubernetes labs. Follow step-by-step examples to create containerized and distributed apps in Kubernetes & Kubeless, using Azure cloud services to put them into production.
  • Catch bugs before your users do with VSAppCenter service test. Learn how
  • Learn to containerize your Golang code by following the step-by-step examples in this free eBook.
  • Building Java applications on ServiceFabric: A look under the hood with Pavan Kunapareddy! Watch here.
  • Start working with Git in Visual Studio! Create a local repo for your project and learn how to use the code editor, debugger, and other Git-related features. All you need here.
  • Ensure your AzureSQLDB has the resources it needs and makes the most of those resources. Download the free eBook to learn how
  • Take a look at our .NET Application Architecture Guidance site for a collection for free e-books, videos and code samples. Find it here.
  • This is SO cool! Use Azure AD to login to Azure Linux virtual machines
  • Speed up R w/ parallel programming in the cloud. Here's @David Smith's presentation complete w/ slides & all the references you need. And its really good.
  • If you couldn’t attend Microsoft Build 2018, now is your opportunity to do so online with Microsoft Build Live 2018. Learn about the Cloud, AI, IoT, and much more. Check out all the content organized into a playlist. 
  • Integrating SQLServer Data Tools in your DevOps pipeline makes it easy to develop and manage your database. Learn how
  • Node.js & Cloud-native apps are changing the way devs build. Download the free E-book to learn how to create a WebApp on Linux and more
  • How to use the Apache Kafka interface of Azure Event Hubs with Spring Cloud Stream. Find it here. 
  • Install and configure Ansible to manage your Azure virtual machines in five minutes! Learn how
  • Using asynchronous programming helps your app stay responsive when it does work that might take an extended amount of time. Learn more.
  • Got 10 minutes? Then you have time to learn how to run the SQLServer 2017 container image with Docker. Learn here.
  • OpenSource dotNET Core runs basically everywhere - even on on ARMv7/ARMv8 chips like the RaspberryPi. See what Hanselman has done with it now. Watch it here.
  • Have you checked out the new AzureStack developer features? No? Have a look
  • The latest version of the Service Fabric tools, part of VS2017 v15.7, includes new container tooling for .NET Framework & dotNET Core apps. Check 'em out here
  • Tutorial: learn how to set up CI/CD for Azure using Terraform, Ansible and VisualStudio Team Services. Read more.
  • Know where to find the best Web Dev and Design tutorials! Get the help you need for front end development with these 15 resources
  • Announcing Windows Community Toolkit v3.0.
  • Now you can predict and analyze the sentiment of your website's comments with Machine Learning! This tutorial shows how to use API to create a sentiment classifier through a .NET Core console application using C# in VisualStudio!
  • Couldn't make it there live? Let's visit one of the MSBuild Breakout Sessions:  Get in the Zone w/ VS2017 Productivity Enhancements. Really a great session on Productivity. Watch it here.
  • Sweet news from the dotNET Team: Just released... .NET Core 2.1, including improved support for real-time web communication w/ SignalR, Web & Data Stacks, compatibility w/ .NET Framework. Read more.
  • Setting up a new machine...installed code and wanted it to be how I'm used to it. Get you setup. Learn how.
  • New feature...Now in VS2017 v 15.7, IntelliTrace automatically takes snapshots on exception events, breakpoints & debugger steps. Read here.
  • Discover how integrating SQLServer 2017 into your DevOps pipeline can help you build better apps. Read more
  • Matthew walks us all of the great new features that developers can get right now! Another Great Xamarin Show Episode.
  • Mixed Reality + Azure = ? | #ifdef WINDOWS. Watch it here
  • Check out the Azure IoT Edge Connector for Kubernetes. Code here.
  • Get a look at all the new features and an awesome overview in the VisualStudio Tools for Unity we’re building to improve your productivity in this MSBuild Theater Session Replay here.
  • Meet Mert Coskun, dev behind Azure ServiceFabric State Manager. Tune in to the latest GoingDeep. Watch here
  • Like GoLang? Want to containerize your code? Check out this free eBook from OReilly
  • Dive into the research to see how Microsoft's @tavianator is speeding up the Barnes-Hut algorithm.
  • Just released the ASPNET Providers Connected Service VisualStudio Extension, a one-stop shop for installing & configuring Azure-ready ASPNET providers. Check it out
  • It's a cookbook! A cookbook!!! No, really. Grab this free Ebook all about Azure Serverless Computing and you'll be on your way to mastering Azure Functions
    • Here we go. HTH]]>         .NET Core 2.1 RC 1 released https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/whereismysolution/net-core-2-1-rc-1-released Wed, 16 May 2018 07:04:34 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/whereismysolution/?p=855
  • .NET Core 2.1 RC 1 SDK (includes the runtime)
  • .NET Core 2.1 RC 1 Runtime
    • ASP.NET Core 2.1 RC 1 and Entity Framework 2.1 RC 1 are also releasing today. See announcement here HTH]]>         How to use reserved port in netTcpBinding and basicHttpBinding in a WCF Application https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/whereismysolution/how-to-use-reserved-port-in-nettcpbinding-and-basichttpbinding-in-a-wcf-application Fri, 11 May 2018 09:36:16 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/whereismysolution/?p=835 netsh int ipv4 add excludedportrange protocol=tcp startport=57069 numberofports=20 Seems ok, right? Not... After reserving the ports, they started getting below error from WCF application however they were able to consume same port from Powershell command: System.ServiceModel.AddressAlreadyInUseException: HTTP could not register URL https://+:57069/ because TCP port 57086 is being used by another application. ---> System.Net.HttpListenerException: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process at System.Net.HttpListener.AddAllPrefixes() at System.Net.HttpListener.Start() at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SharedHttpTransportManager.OnOpen() To provide some context, below where their working Powershell command $listener = [system.net.sockets.tcplistener]57069 $listener.Start() Based on the above lets start discussing the troubleshoot done. First we tried to isolate the failure, and for that we used Powershell :-) . The initial step was trying to reproduce the issue that we were seeing on the WCF Application using Powershell only. And we found out that if we used below commands, we will get the same error as we got from the WCF application. netsh int ipv4 add excludedportrange protocol=tcp startport=57069 numberofports=1 PS C:\Windows\system32> $httpPrefixUri = New-Object System.Uri("https://localhost:57069/CalculatorService/") PS C:\Windows\system32> $httpListener = New-Object System.Net.HttpListener PS C:\Windows\system32> $httpListener.Prefixes.Add($httpPrefixUri) PS C:\Windows\system32> $httpListener.Start() And below was the error: Exception calling "Start" with "0" argument(s): "The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process" At line:1 char:1 + $httpListener.Start() In the Event Viewer we were seeing the following error:

    Log Name:      System Source:        Microsoft-Windows-HttpEvent Date:          4/17/2018 5:37:32 PM Event ID:      15005 Task Category: None Level:         Error Keywords:      Classic User:          N/A Computer:      srv2k16 Description: Unable to bind to the underlying transport for [::]:57069. The IP Listen-Only list may contain a reference to an interface which may not exist on this machine.  The data field contains the error number.

    Looking at this information with some attention we clearly understand that the issue is being caused by the fact this "Listen-Only" list wasn't present in the system. So, obvious solution would be adding it for all addresses that we wanted to use, that will solve our issue. Steps to Resolve We had ran below Powershell command: PS C:\Windows\system32> netsh http add iplisten 0.0.0.0 IP address successfully added The above command adds registry subkey as below: Note: Adds a new IP address to the IP listen list. This does not include the port number. The IP listen list is used to scope the list of addresses to which the HTTP service binds. "0.0.0.0" means any IPv4 address and "::" means any IPv6 address. After implementing the fix, we tested again using below Powershell command: PS C:\Windows\system32> $httpListener = New-Object System.Net.HttpListener PS C:\Windows\system32>  $httpListener.Prefixes.Add($httpPrefixUri) PS C:\Windows\system32> $httpListener.Start() PS C:\Windows\system32> netstat -ano | select-string -Pattern 57069 And voila, problem solved.. TCP    0.0.0.0:57069          0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING       4   HTH]]>         Release of the .NET Framework 4.7.2. https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/whereismysolution/release-of-the-net-framework-4-7-2 Tue, 01 May 2018 08:05:46 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/whereismysolution/?p=815 Today, Microsoft announce the release of the .NET Framework 4.7.2. It’s included in the Windows 10 April 2018 Update. .NET Framework 4.7.2 is also available on Windows 7+ and Windows Server 2008 R2+.  ]]> Using Face Recognition as Authentication or the CNTK vs Cognitive APIs Discussion https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/whereismysolution/using-face-recognition-as-authentication-or-cntk-vs-cognitive-apis Wed, 21 Mar 2018 09:09:47 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/whereismysolution/?p=805 geeks have by the water cooler, I has pulled in to this discussion around using  "Face Recognition" in an app (i.e. validating user in front of the camera) to ensure the right user is using the application. I saw all this argue about what approach should be used. The argument were involved around the following. Should be better using "Cognitive APIs"? Should the "CNTK (Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit)" approach be used? Cool discussion, right? That's what we, developers, like to do, discuss cool tech stuff. However looking a this hard fought battle of the paladins of this two factions, I could not help my self that, in this case, they should be discussing rather the concept itself and tackle the true issue there. And for me this was: "Should we consider these technologies around "Face Recognition" accurate enough for authentication?" and in my opinion, we should not. Of course, that I agree that using these new sexy "Face Recognition" technologies as first step or enhancer of the user experience is a good thing. But we need to think about the following. Once the user is authenticated with face recognition what kind of resources can he access? Is face recognition using domain username and password? Can face recognition unlock certificate or PIN number from TPM on laptop? Rightful concerns, right? So, as a first step let me start by saying that we shouldn’t use the word “Authentication” to describe what this facial recognition does. This isn’t authentication. Cognitive APIs vs CNTK, as a second form, maybe. Even then, one could argue it’s a weak form. In fact, if I can print your photo from Facebook, walk in front of the camera and get myself authenticated, then we have a problem. This is why Windows Hello or iOS aren’t relying just on RGB input. I know that, for example, Windows Hello is a very good and safer approach, but still is not 100% reliable, we should use MFA and not solely rely on facial recognition. Same problem with speaker recognition (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/speaker-recognition) which despite of what that page says, it really does not perform authentication. The metric I should be use is FAR (False Acceptance Rate) and it is very low for Hello – 0.001%.  For many apps and customers, that is good enough. For others, they may want to use a second factor. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/windows-hello-face-authentication You may also want to check out the keyword “Adversarial Attacks” – one vulnerability of DNN. https://e4c5blog.wordpress.com/2017/11/16/favercial-recognition-adversarial-attack/ https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.01944 This could be another layer that we would need to consider when we are taking these technologies for authentication.  Let alone how we would tell if the image taken from the camera is photo or real. These, while very real, are in my opinion a bit theoretical.  In reality you need to “train” the bad examples before you present them to the network. So if falsified images can be inserted between the camera and the neural network in real time (to the rate of 24-60 per second), without being detected then yes, this becomes real. I know that this feels far fetched… even if it is conceivable. But someone has to hack the system quite a bit. Might as well just hack it and penetrate the system without hacking the facial recognition system. Also, there are ways to train systems to discriminate the liveliness of an image (given enough training data, as always), or augment with infrared signals (like Windows Hello and FaceID on iPhone). Now getting back to the discussion they were having about "CNTK" over "Cognitive APIs" :-), well CNTK is a general purpose SDK for deep learning. To use it for face recognition, you would have to develop and train your own model based on it. While Cognitive Services Face API is a ready-to-use model which has been trained by Microsoft.
    So if you want to get something up and running quickly, then you can use Face API. But if you have no control to the model used behind it and the data used to train it, and if you have the expertise and want to develop and tune your own model with your own data, then you should go with CNTK.
    Hope that helps]]>         New Xamarin Docs WebSite https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/whereismysolution/new-xamarin-docs-website Wed, 14 Mar 2018 13:22:41 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/whereismysolution/?p=795 OneStop learning resource. Xamarin Documentation Hope that helps]]> Does System.Net.WebSockets include a keepalive mechanism which automatically takes care of Ping/Pong control frames? https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/whereismysolution/does-system-net-websockets-includes-a-keepalive-mechanism-which-automatically-takes-care-of-pingpong-control-frames Mon, 12 Mar 2018 08:47:20 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/whereismysolution/?p=785 WebSockets. In fact, if you look at the RFC of the WebSocket protocol (see below) you can see that it specifies exactly the case of the Ping-Pong mechanism. When a communication partner sends a Ping the client has to respond (as fast as possible) with a Pong message. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6455 (see section 5.5.2 and section 5.5.3), in there you can read:
    “NOTE: A Ping frame may serve either as a keepalive or as a means to verify that the remote endpoint is still responsive.”
    So, there should be no questions around this, right? ... Wrong. This is really important, usually in the scenario where your client loses the network connection (and that will definitely happen from time to time) and for some security aspects (or any other aspect) you might need to get a notification pretty quick (lets say 3 seconds) when the client is no longer available. From my experience, normally the developers follow the pah of setting the keepAliveInterval of the HttpListenerContext or sending “Dummy” messages every second, this of course will help on the server side to be informed when a client is no longer accessible. However, most of times, when you have a running connection and you simply unplug the network cable at the client side it takes up to 30 seconds till the WebSocket.ReceiveAsync method fails. This is could be OK or could be unacceptable. Usually here resides the point of frustration of a lot of developer teams, this delay of 30 seconds to get the notification that the client is not there anymore. So, basically we need to clarify the following : Is there any way to force the Websocket-implementation to send a Websocket-Ping to the clients? I will try to elaborate a little bit on this. First, to be clear, System.Net.WebSockets includes indeed a keepalive mechanism which automatically takes care of Ping/Pong control frames. These frames are the same as a regular frame but have a special opcode for ping and pong. To specify the interval, you need to specify the keepalive argument in the client and/or the server. The client side is quite easy, by means of WebSocket.CreateClientWebSocket: public static WebSocket CreateClientWebSocket(Stream innerStream, string subProtocol, int receiveBufferSize, int sendBufferSize, TimeSpan keepAliveInterval, bool useZeroMaskingKey, ArraySegment<byte> internalBuffer) For the server side it’s a little different. You do it in the AcceptWebSocketAsync method of HttpListenerContext: public Task<HttpListenerWebSocketContext> AcceptWebSocketAsync(string subProtocol, TimeSpan keepAliveInterval) When a ping is sent, a pong must be received or else the connection will be closed. The default keepalive is set to 30 seconds, which would be the reason why most of the developers see the wait ~30 seconds before detecting something went wrong with the connection. So, to address this delay, as referred above, you just need to specify the keepalive argument in the client and/or the server that fits your needs. Hope that helps  ]]>         Update 6 of Visual Studio 2017 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/whereismysolution/update-6-of-visual-studio-2017 Wed, 07 Mar 2018 10:31:34 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/whereismysolution/?p=775
  • Release Notes
  • Build 15.6.27428.01
  • Downloads
    • Now go get it!  ]]>         Desktop Developers, how do you interact with your data? https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/whereismysolution/desktop-developers-how-do-you-interact-with-your-data Wed, 28 Feb 2018 14:33:14 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/whereismysolution/?p=755 Did you know Microsoft is seeking feedback from developers about  how do you interact with data? You can see this announcement here. Please fill out the survey below we can learn more about what you currently use, your biggest challenges, and your future plans. It should only take 5 minutes to complete!  

    Take the survey now!

    We appreciate your contribution!

    ]]>         Xamarin.Forms using plugins vs. Native UI (Part 2) https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/whereismysolution/xamarin-forms-using-plugins-vs-native-ui-part-2 Mon, 26 Feb 2018 08:41:27 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/whereismysolution/?p=735 It’s never either/or, but both/and. Here’s a little diagram that might help. The arrows indicate the UI your app uses. It could be Xamarin.Forms for part of your app, and you can work directly with the underlying UI toolkits for others. A Xamarin.Forms Button is rendered on iOS as a UIButton. An Xamarin.iOS you make a UIButton. Same. For a reference of handy plugins for all Xamarin apps, this is a good list to begin. https://github.com/xamarin/XamarinComponents And just a quick search of NuGet will turn up many other options. ALSO we have an effort underway to consolidate many of these most commonly used libraries/plugins/components/things into an official package which would then be made a default part of Xamarin solutions. Any Xamarin project would have them at the ready and reduce the need to go plugin hunting. Does this help clarify these relationships and how you would choose or recommend mobile development strategy? Hope it does.  ]]>