News For Dev-ops

Bringing AI into enterprise applications has never been more relevant or more complex. Developers today are tasked with delivering intelligent experiences that work with sensitive business data, meet compliance requirements, and create real value for users. But doing so often involves navigating tradeoffs between agility, security, and governance. The Microsoft 365 Copilot APIs offer a new approach. They allow you to build solutions that are grounded in your organization’s content, context, and permissions, without needing to relocate or duplicate data. And everything runs securely within the Microsoft 365 trust boundary. Whether you're creating agents, automating workflows, or building for compliance, the Copilot APIs give you structured access to core capabilities such as content retrieval, meeting summarization, interaction audit, and conversational integration. What can you build today? We’re excited to launch the first wave of Copilot APIs at Build 2025. Each API is designed ...

At Microsoft Build 2025, we're excited to announce general availability of search capabilities for Azure Cosmos DB, including full-text and hybrid search, enabling developers to build highly performant, scalable, and intelligent applications. We're also introducing new preview enhancements such as multi-language support and fuzzy search, further enriching search accuracy and flexibility across the globe. To streamline developer productivity, we're announcing improved developer tooling, featuring Entity Framework integration and robust LINQ support for Azure Cosmos DB search capabilities. Additionally, Filtered Vector Search with DiskANN has been optimized for reduced latency and enhanced cost efficiency. Finally, our new Azure Logic Apps Document Indexer simplifies turning operational documents into searchable insights, accelerating your journey toward building sophisticated, AI-driven solutions. Let's review these new features in more detail. Note : These features are ...

Here's another entry in the extremely sporadic series of secret passages on Microsoft main campus. ( Part 1 , Part 2 .) The Building 83 loading dock is attached to the Building 84 parking garage by a vehicle tunnel, but the tunnel is now blocked off by bollards. My guess is that the tunnel was originally intended to allow service vehicles from Building 84 convenient access to the Building 83 loading dock, but it had the side effect of allowing employees to drive between Building 84 and Building 83, and the unwanted traffic may have created problems, so they just erected bollards to close it off to vehicle traffic. However, pedestrians can easily pass between the bollards. (Bicycles slightly less easily.) This creates a walkable/bikeable path from the southwest corner of the Building 84 parking garage on level P1 and the Building 83 loading dock on level P2, continuing up the ramp to level P1 and the Building 83 parking garage main entrance. If you combine this tunnel with the ex...

Microsoft Build 2025 Is Almost Here — Here’s How to Make the Most of It Virtually It’s that time again— Microsoft Build is just around the corner! Microsoft Build 2025 kicks off next week (May 19–22)—and now’s the perfect time to get your plan in place. The best part? You don’t have to be in Seattle to experience it. This year, Build is more accessible than ever. Every keynote, breakout session, demo theater, and even our hands-on labs are available to stream— live or on-demand —completely free. No travel. No ticket. Just you, your browser, and some of the best developer content of the year. I’ve had the privilege of working alongside our Product Managers and Engineering teams to help bring these new experiences to life. And I can confidently say—this year’s lineup is comprehensive, with something for every Visual Studio user. From deep dives into .NET and GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio, to lightning-fast demo theaters and hands-on labs powered by the Microsoft Skillable platform,...

Semantic Kernel: Package Previews, Graduations & Deprecations We are excited to share a summary of recent updates and continuous clean-up efforts across the Semantic Kernel .NET codebase. These changes focus on improving maintainability, aligning with the latest APIs, and ensuring a consistent experience for users. Below you’ll find details on package graduations, deprecations, and a few other improvements. Graduations Plugins.Core Package Graduated to Preview The Microsoft.SemanticKernel.Plugins.Core package has been moved from "alpha" to "preview" status, reflecting its maturity and readiness for broader use. This change does not introduce new features but signals increased stability for those relying and building on these core plugins. PromptTemplates.Liquid Package Graduated The Microsoft.SemanticKernel.Liquid prompt template package has also graduated, with package validation enabled to ensure quality and compatibility. Spring Cleaning – Deprecatio...

The Windows thread pool lets you declare that your callback is long-running. Depending on which interface you are using, this could be by calling Set­Threadpool­Callback­Runs­Long , or by calling Callback­May­Run­Long , or by passing the WT_ EXECUTE­LONG­FUNCTION flag to Queue­User­Work­Item . If you mark a callback as long-running, does it still count against the thread pool thread limit? Yes. A long-running thread pool callback still runs in the thread pool and still counts as a thread pool thread. Marking a flag as long-running is a hint to the thread pool manager that if it has other callbacks that are due, and it's hoping that this callback will be finished soon so that it can use the thread to run those other callbacks, well, maybe it shouldn't wait and should just go ahead and create another thread (assuming that the thread limit has not been reached). We saw a demonstration of this some time ago where we showed that marking a callback as long-running informed the ...

The operating systems in the Windows NT lineage have supported multiple processor architectures for nearly all of its existence. There was a brief period of darkness when Compaq ceased production of Alpha AXP systems and before Intel released its Itanium processors. But even during that period, the Alpha AXP systems were still being used, just not in ways visible to the public: They were being used to develop 64-bit Windows . So there was never a period of time where Windows developers weren't developing for multiple processor architectures. How did this work? Did every developer have a machine of every architecture in their office to validate their work on every processor? No, it didn't work that way. Most developers had an Intel-class system as their primary machine, and another Intel-class system as their test machine. Some developers had a second test machine which was one of the other architectures. And some developers were all-in and had a non-Intel-class system as the...

Apple as a social identity provider, generally available! Hello everyone! I'm excited to announce that "Sign in with Apple" is now generally available for external tenants in Entra External ID. The feature has been in public preview since February, and many customers have already integrated Apple as an identity provider for their applications. By configuring Apple as an external identity provider, you can add Apple as a social provider to your user flows. Then, users can sign up and sign in to the associated applications using their Apple ID accounts through a simple "Sign in with Apple" option. An additional advantage is the ability to publish your social login-enabled mobile apps in the Apple App Store. As required by Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines (section 4.8), if your applications offer third-party login options, it must include "Sign in with Apple" in addition to all your other identity providers. With Entra External ID, you can publish...

In Visual Studio 2022 17.14, we are introducing the /forceInterlockedFunctions[-] switch, which generates and links with out-of-line atomics that select Armv8.1+ Large System Extension (LSE) atomic instructions based on CPU support. This switch is on by default for Armv8.0 and off for Armv8.1+. Outlining is necessary in Armv8.0 because this version's interlocked intrinsics use exclusive instructions— LoadExcl / StoreExcl —that do not guarantee forward progress. This can cause performance issues due to intermittent livelocks. See Arm Architecture Reference Manual for A-profile architecture , section "B2.17.5 Load-Exclusive and Store-Exclusive instruction usage restrictions" for examples of when the LoadExcl / StoreExcl loop may not make forward progress. Below is an example of code that was previously generated when using the _InterlockedAdd64 intrinsic. You can see the ldaxr and stlxr instructions being used. Main.cpp Main.asm snippet #include <intrin.h...

Starting with the 2505.09 release of PIX on Windows, new metrics have been added to help you optimize your title on battery powered devices such as tablets and Windows handheld gaming devices.  With these counters, you can see whether performance issues in your game can be correlated with power-related events, such as a change in CPU C-state, or a device going into power saving mode, for example. These metrics are available in System Monitor, and in the Metrics, Comparison, and Budgets layouts in Timing Captures.  The following metrics are provided: System Power Status Metrics AC Power Status . Indicates whether AC power is plugged in. A value of 1 indicates power is plugged in. A value of 0 indicates power is not plugged in. Battery Life Percentage . A value of 0-100 indicating the current percentage of batter life remaining. Battery Saver Status . Indicates whether the device is in battery saving mode. Game performance will be impacted when a device is in this mode, as ...

With the launch of custom integrations in Claude , developers and enterprises can now extend Claude’s capabilities by connecting their own hosted Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers as native integrations. This capability allows Claude and any of its agents to perform complex tasks by invoking a variety of APIs exposed through MCP servers. Developers might wonder - how do you ensure the available tools and data are connected securely, especially when dealing with sensitive or enterprise information? This post introduces a production-ready approach to building secure Claude integrations using Azure API Management (APIM) as your OAuth 2.0 gateway, powered by Microsoft Entra ID . If you're new to MCP or want a detailed primer on how Azure API Management supports remote MCP servers, start with our recent blog post: Azure API Management: Your Auth Gateway for MCP Servers Claude + MCP: unlocking custom tooling Claude uses MCP to interact with local or remote MCP servers and their to...

Software development is changing fast, and Java developers are right in the middle of it - especially when it comes to using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their apps. This report brings together feedback from 647 Java professionals to show where things stand and what is possible as Java and AI come together. One of the biggest takeaways is this: Java developers do not need to be experts in AI, machine learning, or Python. With tools like the Model Context Protocol (MCP) Java SDK, Spring AI, and LangChain4j, they can start adding smart features to their apps using the skills they already have. Whether it is making recommendations, spotting fraud, supporting natural language search or a world of possibilities, AI can be part of everyday Java development. The report walks through real-world approaches that Java developers are already using - things like Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), vector databases, embeddings, and AI agents. These are not just buzzwords - they help teams buil...