News For Dev-ops

AWS Lambda now improves the responsiveness for configuring Event Source Mappings (ESMs) and Amazon EventBridge Pipes with event sources such as self-managed Apache Kafka, Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (MSK), Amazon DocumentDB, and Amazon MQ. This enhancement allows changes—such as updating, disabling, or deleting ESMs or Pipes—to take effect within 90 seconds, an improvement from the previous time frame of up to 15 minutes. Post Updated on February 29, 2024 at 10:59PM

There are several places in the Windows API where a parameter is used only under certain conditions and is otherwise ignored. A customer wanted to know what to pass for an unused parameter. "I know that it says that the Format­Message function ignores the lpSource parameter if neither FORMAT_ MESSAGE_ FROM_ HMODULE nor FORMAT_ MESSAGE_ FROM_ STRING is passed. So what should I use if I'm not passing either of those flags?" This is the developer version of "The computer says to press any key, but I don't have a key called Any ." Instead of asking the customer to contemplate whether a parameter that is never used makes a sound, I just answered, "Just pass nullptr ." You sometimes see this recommendation in the Windows documentation. "Under condition X, the parameter is not used and should be zero." Sometimes it's easier to just give an answer than to engage in a philosophical discussion. Post Updated on February 29, 2024 at 03...

We’re excited to announce the release of Dev Proxy v0.15, with new features that allow you to spend more time building your app and less time on things you won’t be shipping. In this updated version: Simulate CRUD APIs secured with Microsoft Entra Simulate OAuth flows Improved monitoring URLs Add multiple instances of the same plugin More flexible simulating throttling Improved support for CORS Choose how to start Dev Proxy Extend Dev Proxy with custom commands Get notified about new beta versions ...and more! Simulate CRUD APIs secured with Microsoft Entra Using the CrudApiPlugin Dev Proxy, you can simulate CRUD APIs. This is invaluable when you build apps while the underlying APIs aren’t available yet. In this version, we extend the CrudApiPlugin with support for simulating APIs secured with Microsoft Entra. When building enterprise apps, the APIs you connect to are secured with Microsoft Entra. This feature allows you to easily simulate secured APIs without having to sp...

This blog post summarizes changes to the vcpkg package manager as part of the 2024.02.14 release and changes to vcpkg documentation throughout February. This month’s vcpkg release was mainly minor bug fixes, while several new documentation articles were added. Some stats for this period: There are now 2,396 total libraries available in the vcpkg public registry. 22 new ports were added to the open-source registry. A port is a versioned recipe for building a package from source, such as a C or C++ library. 388 updates were made to existing ports. As always, we validate each change to a port by building all other ports that depend on or are depended by the library that is being updated for our 13 main triplets . 19 contributors submitted PRs, issues, or participated in discussions in the main repo. The main vcpkg repo has over 5,800 forks and 21,000 stars on GitHub.   vcpkg changelog (2024.02.24 release) The Arm64 for macOS community triplet (arm64-osx) was promote...

Today, AWS announces the general availability of multi-container jobs for AWS Batch. The multi-container jobs feature makes it easier and faster for you to run simulations when testing complex systems like those used in autonomous vehicles and robotics. With the ability to run multiple containers in a job, you can benefit from the advanced scaling, scheduling, and cost optimization capabilities of AWS Batch without rebuilding your system into a complex monolithic container. Instead, you can use multiple smaller, modular containers that each represent different system components like a 3D virtual environment, robot perception sensors, or a data logging sidecar. Post Updated on February 28, 2024 at 10:50PM

We are happy to announce that AWS Glue , a serverless data integration service, is now available in the AWS Canada West (Calgary) region. Post Updated on February 28, 2024 at 06:05PM

One of the responses to my discussion of how to give away a COM reference to yourself at destruction was roughly "The crazy convolutions required to accomplish this demonstrate how COM is a disaster." Well, some people may feel that COM is a disaster, but at least this specific piece of COM isn't a disaster. In a non-disastrous language, say, C++ with the standard library,¹ if somebody asked you, "How do I run some code when my shared_ptr reference count drops to 1?", the answer is simple: You can't do it! C++'s shared_ptr does not give you that level of access to the internal reference count. You can peek at the reference count by asking for the use_count() , but that is necessarily just an approximation due to multithreading. Even knowing that the use count is 1 doesn't prove that you have the last shared_ptr . The reference count might go back up to 2 due to a race against a weak_ptr::lock() , and your attempt to detect when the reference cou...

Introduction We are delighted to present a new experience for exploring space-time tradeoffs recently added to the Azure Quantum Resource Estimator. Available both as Azure Quantum Development Kit (VS Code extension) and a Python package, it adds a new dimension to estimates. Resource estimation doesn't just yield a single group of numbers (one per objective), but rather multiple points representing tradeoffs between objectives, such as qubit number and runtime. Our recent update of the Azure Quantum Resource Estimator adds methods for finding such tradeoffs for a given quantum algorithm and a given quantum computing stack. We also provide a visual experience to navigate alternatives with an interactive chart and supplementary reports and diagrams: This chart illustrates tradeoffs between qubit numbers and runtimes required for running the same algorithm across multiple projected quantum computers. See estimation-frontier-widgets.ipynb for steps to learn how to generate ...

You can now use private endpoints for your Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB vCore clusters to allow hosts on a virtual network (VNet) to securely access data over a Private Link . The cluster's private endpoint utilizes an IP address from the virtual network's address space, ensuring that traffic between hosts on the virtual network and the database nodes passes through the Microsoft backbone network. This setup eliminates exposure to the public Internet and allows applications within the virtual network to connect to the database nodes seamlessly, using the same connection strings and authorization mechanisms as they would under standard conditions. You have the option to select private access during the cluster creation process, and it is possible to switch from public to private access at any point. Why Azure Private Link for Azure Cosmos DB? Azure Private Link provides a secure bridge between your virtual network and Azure services, such as Azure Cosmos DB, via a private endp...

Amazon Location Service has released authentication libraries for iOS and Android platforms, simplifying the integration of Amazon Location Service into mobile apps. Along with the existing Javascript library, these provide a consistent authentication experience across web and mobile platforms. Post Updated on February 27, 2024 at 06:14PM

When you set up a numeric PIN with Windows Hello, the system will immediately sign you in with that PIN once you enter the correct number of digits, saving you the trouble of having to press Enter . For example, if you set up an 8-digit PIN, then once you enter the eighth digit, the PIN validation process begins. An attacker can use this behavior to discover the length of the PIN: Try to sign in once with some initial guess like "all ones" and see how many ones can be entered before the system starts validating the PIN. Is this a problem? Well, the length of the PIN isn't really a tightly-guarded secret, because anybody who watches the screen while you sign in can count the dots that appear, or (if they have sharp ears) listen to the number of clacks of the keyboard. The security team have done their own cost-benefit analysis of this behavior and and have tuned the system so that the convenience does not come at a significant loss of security: Through a combination of...

A while ago, it became possible to create multilingual copilots in Microsoft Copilot Studio. It's easy to enable the setting and have multiple languages in your copilot, but do you know how to translate your copilot into a different language? In this blog, I will show you how it can be done! This blog is part of a multi-part series on the Power Platform CLI. The following blogs appeared in this series: Part 1 - Getting Started with the Power Platform CLI Part 2 - Streamline your solution development with the Power Platform CLI: Create a solution from scratch Part 3 - Getting Started with Power Platform CLI and Power Pages Part 4 - Create multilingual copilots with the Power Platform CLI and Microsoft Copilot Studio (This blog) 🤖 Create a copilot First things first: let's create a copilot by using the creation dialog. In this case, I'm using the conversational boosting capabilities, but this is not necessary for this scenario. What is important is the language y...

AWS WAF has extended support of the ‘ruleMatchDetails’ field in the logs to include Regex rules. Customers use logs to further investigate the requests that are inspected by AWS WAF. The ‘ruleMatchDetails’ log field gives visibility into the part of a request that matched a rule or rule group.  Post Updated on February 26, 2024 at 10:54PM

Introduction An overwhelming majority of Java developers work on Windows devices. Developers, IDE and cloud service providers are constantly looking for ways to enhance efficiency and reduce build times. Microsoft Dev Drive is a tool specifically designed to optimize the development environment on Windows, including significant performance improvements for Java development. What is Microsoft Dev Drive? Microsoft Dev Drive is a novel storage solution, built upon Resilient File System (ReFS).  ReFS is a Microsoft file system format designed to maximize data availability, scale efficiently to large data sets across diverse workloads, and provide data integrity.  It's engineered to optimize file system performance, providing Java developers with increased control over storage volume settings and security. You can read more about ReFs here: Resilient File System (ReFS) overview | Microsoft Learn Benefits of Using Dev Drive for Java Development Dev Drive has been rigorously tes...

The Word JavaScript API 1.7 requirement set was released to production and is now available. These APIs extend and enrich the following new Word document UI experiences: annotation support, checkbox content control support, and custom XML support. Annotation support We’ve introduced new APIs so Word add-ins can insert annotations for specific text within a document. Additionally, events associated with annotations can be captured for additional processing. For example, a grammar checking add-in can show correct grammar suggestions after catching the event of selectinguser hover on annotated text. Checkbox Content Control support You can now add, update, or delete Checkbox content controls. Custom XML for InsertFileFromBase64 InsertFileFromBase64 is enhanced to support custom XML and properties. When using insertFileFromBase64, you can keep the setting for odd and even pages for header and footer from the inserted document. For more information, please see Word JavaScript API req...

AWS Lambda now supports creating serverless applications using .NET 8. This runtime is based on the latest long-term support release of .NET 8. Developers can use .NET 8 as both a managed runtime and a container base image, and AWS will automatically apply updates to the managed runtime and base image as they become available. Post Updated on February 22, 2024 at 10:45PM

本篇翻译于.NET Team 的 Our Vision for .NET 9 。 欢迎来到 .NET 9 ！继几个月前成功发布 .NET 8 之后，我们又进入了一个新年度发布周期。 我们建议开发人员将他们的应用程序迁移到 .NET 8 。在这篇文章中，我们将分享我们对 .NET 9 的初步设想 ， 它将于年底在 .NET Conf 2024 上发布。我们最关注的领域是云原生和智能应用程序开发。 您可以期待我们在提升性能、生产力和安全性以及整个平台的改进方面进行的巨大投入 。   今天，让我们来看看我们计划与 Microsoft 合作伙伴团队合作交付的 .NET 9 重点领域和补充集成。 我们的目标是提高使用 Visual Studio 、带有 C# 开发工具包的 Visual Studio Code 时 .NET 的 开发效率，并且在使用 Azure 服务时，可以更轻松地进行云部署。 我们将继续与 Canonical 和 Red Hat 等行业合作伙伴密切合作，以确保 .NET 在您使用的任何地方都能正常工作 。   .NET 9 正在成为该平台向前迈出的又一大步。 我们今天发布 .NET 9 Preview 1 ，欢迎您对 我们发布 的所有新功能 提供反馈 。   面向云原生开发者的平台   在过去的几年里，我们一直在努力构建 强大的云原生基础 ，例如 运行时性能 和 应用程序监控 。 我们将继续这一努力。我们还将重点转向为当前流行的生产基础设施和服务铺平道路，例如在 Kubernetes 中运行并使用托管数据库和 Redis 等缓存服务。 我们将在 .NET 堆栈的多个层提供这些改进。这些功能全部与 .NET Aspire 结合在一起，这大大降低了构建云应用程序的成本和复杂性以及缩短了开发和生产之间的距离 。   我们一直在开发 Native AOT 和应用程序 修剪 ， 作为优化生产应用程序的关键工具。 在 .NET 8 中，我们针对修剪和 AOT 优化了 Web API 应用程序（使用 webapiot 模板）。 在 .NET 9 中，我们正在努力对其他应用程序类型执行相同的操作，并改进所有 ...

Jordan Bean explores how to visualize Semantic Kernel & Azure OpenAI plans using Mermaid. Using the function calling ability of Semantic Kernel/OpenAI is very exciting from an application development point of view. Instead of hard-coding paths though the system, Semantic Kernel & OpenAI can decide for themselves what plugins to call, the order of operations, parsing input & output, etc. However, it can be challenging to understand  why  the system decided to go down a path & all of the operations, prompts, function calls, etc. that occurred. Semantic Kernel provides a  ChatHistory  class that records “most” of the calls made, the associated role & the order of operations. We can use this to generate a  SequenceDiagram  in Mermaid to visualize the system. Here is how I visualized my OpenAI call plans for my Semantic Kernel sleeping bag example app (see the  previous blog posts  about how this example app works). Mermaid I us...

John Folberth explores various configurations, decisions, and pros/cons that should be evaluated when deciding how your DevOps environment will deploy code into Azure. About This post is part of an overall series on  Azure DevOps YAML Pipelines . The series will cover any and all topics that fall into the scope of Azure DevOps Pipelines. I encourage you to check it out if you are new to this space. Introduction When an organization is trying to configure their Azure DevOps (ADO) environment to deploy into Azure, they are immediately met with the dilemma on how their DevOps instance will execute the deployment against their Azure Environment. This article will go over the various configurations, decisions, and pros and cons that should be evaluated when deciding how your DevOps environment will deploy code into Azure. This article will not talk about the nitty gritty details on how to configure the connection. This is covered in  MS documentation . Nor will we discuss which...

AWS Supply Chain now allows demand planners to input factors (demand drivers) that could influence forecasted demand. Demand Driver Based Forecasting is an adaptive approach that enables machine learning models to capture influence factors that improve forecast accuracy. Post Updated on February 22, 2024 at 07:13PM

Amazon DynamoDB zero-ETL integration with Amazon Redshift is now available in limited preview in the US East (Virginia) region. This zero-ETL integration enables customers to run high performance analytics on their DynamoDB data and has no impact on production workloads running on DynamoDB. As data is written into a DynamoDB table, it is seamlessly made available in Amazon Redshift, eliminating the need for customers to build and maintain complex data pipelines for performing extract, transform, and load (ETL) operations. Post Updated on February 22, 2024 at 07:15PM

Today, Amazon Neptune announces the support for Neptune’s data APIs in the AWS SDKs. This launch provides developers access to Neptune’s 40+ data plane APIs using the AWS SDK. You can now utilize Neptune to perform tasks such as data loading or query execution with SDKs in Gremlin and openCypher query languages.  Post Updated on February 22, 2024 at 07:02PM

Today, we are announcing the general availability of Amazon Neptune I/O-Optimized, a new configuration for Amazon Neptune Database that provides improved price performance and predictable pricing for customers with I/O-intensive applications. With Neptune I/O-Optimized, there are zero charges for read and write I/O operations—you only pay for your database instances and storage usage, making it easy to predict your database spend up front. Neptune I/O-Optimized offers up to 40% cost savings for I/O-intensive applications where I/O charges exceed 25% of the total Neptune database spend. Post Updated on February 22, 2024 at 07:04PM

As a part of a community that thrives on innovation and growth, WinForms developers are often pushing boundaries to create new possibilities. Our developers are also responsible for the maintenance of mission critical line of business software, often well over a decade in the making. We value your trust and your passion for creating excellent software solutions with our tools. As you may be aware, the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit in Visual Studio 2022 has resulted in some complexities. We are aware that these changes are causing some speed bumps along your development journey, and we want to clarify these issues by pointing out workarounds already available and our additional plans to address them. Embracing 64-bit: A Change for the Better The decision to switch to a 64-bit platform is far more than a simple upgrade. It's a major improvement that helps Visual Studio work better in several ways. One of the biggest benefits is the ability to use more memory. In the 32-bit versi...