Blog

Carmel has recently released an exam tips course on preparing for the AZ-204 exam: Developing solutions for Microsoft Azure! The course gives an overview of the syllabus, some tips on what you'll need to know for each section, and some examples of common question types.

Thinking of data as the new soil is useful in highlighting the key elements that enable a successful data and analytics initiative.

Learn how code generation can build on System.Text.Json and JSON Schema to create a great experience for C# developers.

TL;DR - Using Azure Synapse SQL Serverless, you can query Azure Data Lake and populate Power BI reports across multiple workspaces.

Explore data with Azure Synapse's interactive Spark notebooks, integrated with Pipelines & monitoring tools. Learn how to add tests for business rule validation.

Power BI deployment pipelines manage collaboration, change management, and testing of reports, enabling DevOps for analytics solutions.

Some of my thoughts inspired whilst helping out on the farm over the weekend. What is the future of work given the increasing presence of machines in our day to day lives? In which situations can AI deliver greatest value? How can we ease the stress of digital transformation on people who are impacted by it?

The first in a series on Azure Functions configuration — what IConfiguration, environment variables, and the runtime give you out of the box, with a sample.

Discover Azure Data Factory's null-safe operator for referencing activity outputs that may not always exist. Learn to use it effectively.

Trigger an Azure Synapse pipeline run from C# code in an Azure Function using the Azure.Analytics.Synapse.Artifacts SDK — parameters, PipelineClient, auth.

Summary of key themes from the Doing Data Together conference hosted virtually by The Scotsman newspaper and Edinburgh University in November 2020. The conference agenda was pivoted to focus on the use of data to help tackle the Covid-19 pandemic. It provided a fascinating insight into the lessons learned.

Get started with Mattermost on Azure using the Mattermost on AKS quickstart from the Azure CNAB Quickstart Library.

Modern analytics requires a multi-faceted approach, which can cause integration headaches. Azure Synapse's Swiss army knife approach can remove a lot of friction.

The proxy pattern controls access to an underlying object: restricting callers, adding caching, enabling lazy loading, or representing remote resources through a local stand-in.

Learn to automate Power BI data source credential updates using RSA-OAEP encryption and .NET SDK helper classes for on-premises data sources.

Learn how to import .NET packages from NuGet into PowerShell and utilize their classes/methods, while avoiding PowerShell NuGet provider pitfalls.

C# 9.0 enhances pattern matching, but new operators like 'and', 'or', 'not' tempt overuse. Ian Griffiths shows when expressive intent beats clever mechanism.

CodeOps enables you to layer standards, automation, and governance to your source control repositories, decreasing manual effort and increasing productivity.

This blog is part of a series around design patterns. This post focuses on the facade pattern. The facade pattern provides an interface into a complex system, in order to simplify access to the functionality.

Data insights are useless, and even dangerous (as we've seen recently at Public Health England) if they can't be trusted. So, the need to validate business rules and security boundaries within a data solution is critical. This post argues that if you're doing anything serious with data, then you should be taking this seriously.

This post describes the reasons for choosing specific & immutable dependency versions in your software.

Enabling C# 8's nullable references feature often produces a lot of warnings. Avoid the temptation to make some go away by initializing properties to empty strings.

Fix the "You need permission" error in Azure Synapse Analytics with this guide, addressing its causes and solutions for Data Engineers/Developers.

Assign roles in Synapse Studio for Azure Synapse Analytics devs using Azure CLI. Accessible by Owners/Contributors of the resource.

Investigate the decorator pattern in this blog post, a design pattern used to dynamically enhance object functionality.