August 2019
Volume 34 Number 8
A Special Announcement from Microsoft and MSDN Magazine
[.NET Core]
Cross-Platform IoT Programming with .NET Core 3.0
.NET Core 3.0 offers a raft of exciting features, including support for cross-platform IoT apps. Dawid Borycki shows how Web developers can use their existing skills to create compelling IoT apps, by showing how to remotely control and get sensor readings from a Raspberry Pi with the SenseHAT add-on, using a standard ASP.NET Core Web API service.
[Data Points]
Cross-Platform EF6 with .NET Core 3.0!
Even if you don’t want to mess with your stable Entity framework 6 production code, you might like to port it from .NET to .NET Core 3.0 to take advantage of the many benefits of .NET Core -- especially its cross-platform talents. To demonstrate, Julie Lerman creates a new ASP.NET Core 3.0 API with EF6.3 on her MacBook, in macOS, using Visual Studio Code, and then deploys it to a Linux-based Docker container.
[Blockchain]
Secure Your Supply Chain with the Azure IoT and Blockchain Cloud
IoT and blockchain technologies can help overcome the limitations of traditional supply chain management. They can introduce devices to automate the collection of metrics at any stage of the supply chain, and enable a distributed digital ledger for storing transaction logs in an immutable way.
[Test Run]
The UCB1 Algorithm for Multi-Armed Bandit Problems
The multi-armed bandit scenario corresponds to many real-life problems where you have to choose among multiple possibilities. James McCaffrey presents a demo program that shows how to use the mathematically sophisticated but relatively easy to implement UCB1 algorithm to solve these types of problems.
[Azure DevOps]
Introducing Azure Deployment Manager
Azure Deployment Manager is a new set of features for Azure Resource Manager that provides improved monitoring, control, and management of distributed Azure deployments. David Tepper explores how ADM can produce safe, reliable deployments and yield high availability for your environment.
[Don't Get Me Started]
Change of Plan
Pigs are flying. Hell is freezing over. And Microsoft is telling users they don’t need to change their passwords anymore. David Platt explains why this is a good thing.
[Azure]
Affairs of State: Serverless and Stateless Code Execution with Azure Functions
Explore the limits of the consumption and premier tiers of Stateless Azure Functions, and learn how Azure Functions go beyond mere stateless code execution to support complex scenarios with Durable Functions.
[Editor's Note]
The Feynman Technique
Ask MSDN Magazine authors why they write for the magazine, and they’ll tell you that it helps them master new technologies and concepts. It’s an approach reminiscent of the Feynman technique, which offers a simple trick for mastering complex topics: Try and teach it to a child.