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No-code/Low-code is software DIY - how do you avoid DIY disaster?

No-code/Low-code is software DIY - how do you avoid DIY disaster?

James Broome

No-code/Low-code democratizes software development with little to no coding skills needed. But how do you evaluate if software DIY is the right choice for you?
Architecture Decision Records

Architecture Decision Records

James Broome

Explore the benefits of Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) in technical design, with real-world examples applied to different scenarios.
Using Cloud CI/CD in Zero Trust Environments

Using Cloud CI/CD in Zero Trust Environments

James Dawson

Performing certain deployment operations from a cloud-based CI/CD agent against resources that are only accessible via private networking are problematic. The often-cited solution is to use your own hosted agents that are also connected to the same private networks, however, this introduces additional costs and maintenance overhead. This post discusses an approach that combines the use of cloud-based CI/CD agents with 'just-in-time' allow-listing as an alternative to operating your own private agents.
Creating Pester Unit Tests in PowerShell

Creating Pester Unit Tests in PowerShell

Charlotte Gayton

Why you should make writing unit tests a regular practice and how they will improve your code. This blog explains how to write unit tests in PowerShell using Pester.
Adventures in Dapr: Episode 5 - Debugging Containers with Visual Studio

Adventures in Dapr: Episode 5 - Debugging Containers with Visual Studio

James Dawson

Explore Dapr for cloud migration & use Visual Studio container tools to debug containerized services.
Adventures in Dapr: Episode 4 - Containerising with Visual Studio

Adventures in Dapr: Episode 4 - Containerising with Visual Studio

James Dawson

Explore Dapr for cloud migration & simplify containerized dev inner-loop using Visual Studio with the Dapr Traffic Control sample application.
Adventures in Dapr: Episode 3 - Azure Storage Queues

Adventures in Dapr: Episode 3 - Azure Storage Queues

James Dawson

If you're interested in the Distributed Application Runtime (Dapr) and how it can simplify migrating existing workloads to use cloud platform services, then this series might be for you. In this post, we continue modifying the excellent Dapr Traffic Control sample application by swapping the MQTT-based messaging with Azure Storage Queues. We will also look at how you can use the Dapr programming model as an alternative to cloud-provider SDKs.
Computer Networking Essentials for Developers: the Web - Part 2

Computer Networking Essentials for Developers: the Web - Part 2

Liam Mooney

We're constantly using computer networks and the internet, especially as developers. The Web is the most important application on the Internet; this is the second of two posts aiming to explain the basics of the Web.
Adventures in Dapr: Episode 2 - Azure Key Vault

Adventures in Dapr: Episode 2 - Azure Key Vault

James Dawson

Explore DAPR's role in migrating workloads to cloud services, focusing on integrating Azure Key Vault for secrets management.
Computer Networking Essentials for Developers: the Web - Part 1

Computer Networking Essentials for Developers: the Web - Part 1

Liam Mooney

Discover the major application often misidentified as the Internet - the World Wide Web, building on our previous networking post.
Computer Networking Essentials for Developers: Networks and the Internet

Computer Networking Essentials for Developers: Networks and the Internet

Liam Mooney

Explore the basics of computer networks & internet for developers in this post, simplifying the complex world of networking for better understanding.
Adventures in Dapr: Episode 1 - Azure Service Bus

Adventures in Dapr: Episode 1 - Azure Service Bus

James Dawson

Explore Dapr for migrating workloads to cloud services. Learn to enable PaaS Pub-Sub with Azure Service Bus using the Dapr Traffic Control sample app.
Adventures in Dapr: Episode 0 - Introduction

Adventures in Dapr: Episode 0 - Introduction

James Dawson

Explore Dapr's role in simplifying cloud migration using Azure services, based on the Dapr Traffic Control sample app.
Design patterns in C# - The Proxy Pattern

Design patterns in C# - The Proxy Pattern

Carmel Eve

Explore the proxy pattern in this blog post, a design pattern used for controlling access to underlying objects and remote server communication.
Design patterns in C# - The Facade Pattern

Design patterns in C# - The Facade Pattern

Carmel Eve

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.
Design patterns in C# - The Decorator Pattern

Design patterns in C# - The Decorator Pattern

Carmel Eve

Investigate the decorator pattern in this blog post, a design pattern used to dynamically enhance object functionality.
The Public Health England Test and Trace Excel error could have been prevented by this one simple step

The Public Health England Test and Trace Excel error could have been prevented by this one simple step

James Broome

Despite the subsequent media reporting, the loss of 16,000 Covid-19 test results at Public Health England wasn't caused by Excel. This post argues that a lack of an appropriate risk and mitigation analysis left the process exposed to human error, which ultimately led to the loss of data and inaccurate reporting. It describes a simple process that could have been applied to prevent the error, and how it will help if you're worried about ensuring quality or reducing risk in your own business, technology or data programmes.
Does Azure Synapse Link redefine the meaning of full stack serverless?

Does Azure Synapse Link redefine the meaning of full stack serverless?

James Broome

Explore Azure Synapse Link for Cosmos DB's impact on 'full stack serverless', No-ETL, and pay-as-you-query analytics.
Design patterns in C# - The Adapter Pattern

Design patterns in C# - The Adapter Pattern

Carmel Eve

Explore the adapter pattern in this design patterns series, enabling use of incompatible classes within your solution's interfaces/architecture.
Where are you going wrong when choosing to buy, not build?

Where are you going wrong when choosing to buy, not build?

Carmel Eve

Often when building software we need to outsource part of the solution to a third party. Common examples include authentication, payment, and email, but there are many others. When first designing a solution the decision around which provider to use can be difficult to tackle. At endjin we have developed a system for answering the question "which provider should I use?".
How to fully initialize types in their constructor with C# nullable using the async factory pattern

How to fully initialize types in their constructor with C# nullable using the async factory pattern

Carmel Eve

Explore a pattern for async initialization, enabling readonly object construction & leveraging nullable references for fully instantiated classes.
Azure Synapse Analytics: How serverless is replacing the data warehouse

Azure Synapse Analytics: How serverless is replacing the data warehouse

James Broome

Serverless data architectures enable leaner data insights and operations. How do you reap the rewards while avoiding the potential pitfalls?
Azure Synapse for C# Developers: 5 things you need to know

Azure Synapse for C# Developers: 5 things you need to know

James Broome

Did you know that Azure Synapse has great support for .NET and #csharp? Learning new languages is often a barrier to digital transformation, being able to use existing people, skills, tools and engineering disciplines can be a massive advantage.
Does Azure Synapse Analytics spell the end for Azure Databricks?

Does Azure Synapse Analytics spell the end for Azure Databricks?

James Broome

Explore why Microsoft's new Spark offering in Azure Synapse Analytics is a game-changer for Azure Databricks investors.
Recording of Azure Oxford talk on combatting illegal fishing with Azure (for less than £10/month)

Recording of Azure Oxford talk on combatting illegal fishing with Azure (for less than £10/month)

Carmel Eve

Jess and Carmel recently gave a talk at Azure Oxford on Combatting illegal fishing with Machine Learning and Azure - for less than £10 / month. The recording of that talk is now available for viewing!The talk focuses on the recent work we completed with OceanMind. They run through how to construct a cloud-first architecture based on serverless and data analytics technologies and explore the important principles and challenges in designing this kind of solution. Finally, we see how the architecture we designed through this process not only provides all the benefits of the cloud (reliability, scalability, security), but because of the pay-as-you-go compute model, has a compute cost that we could barely believe!
Wardley Maps - Explaining how OceanMind use Microsoft Azure & AI to combat Illegal Fishing

Wardley Maps - Explaining how OceanMind use Microsoft Azure & AI to combat Illegal Fishing

Jess Panni

Wardley Maps are a fantastic tool to help provide situational awareness, in order to help you make better decisions. We use Wardley Maps to help our customers think about the various benefits and trade-offs that can be made when migrating to the Cloud. In this blog post, Jess Panni demonstrates how we used Wardley Maps to plan the migration of OceanMind to Microsoft Azure, and how the maps highlighted where the core value of their platform was, and how PaaS and Serverless services offered the most value for money for the organisation.
An experimental approach to software development

An experimental approach to software development

Carmel Eve

Endjin applies scientific experimentation to software development for validated solutions, using hypotheses for confident designs.
An Overview of the Azure CNAB Quickstarts Library

An Overview of the Azure CNAB Quickstarts Library

Howard van Rooijen

The Azure CNAB Quickstarts Library helps you get up and running with CNAB and Porter. We've built quickstarts covering solutions like WordPress, Ghost, Mattermost, and data platforms like Apache Airflow, SQL Server AlwaysOn clusters and Kubernetes features like an nginx ingress controller and an Azure AD enabled OAuth2 Proxy. We've condensed all our learnings from the past 9 months of working on the project and turned them into a 10 minute video which explains all the key concepts. We hope this video helps accelerate your own CNAB & Porter epiphanies!
Introducing the Azure CNAB Quickstarts Library

Introducing the Azure CNAB Quickstarts Library

Mike Evans-Larah

In partnership with Microsoft, we have released Azure CNAB Quickstarts Library on GitHub. CNAB (Cloud-Native Application Bundle) is a new specification designed for facilitating the packaging, installation, upgrading and uninstallation of cloud-native solutions in the cloud, on-premise or on the edge. We've created a number of quickstarts covering Apache Airflow, Azure Kubernetes Service, Ghost, Kubeflow, SQL Server Always On and Wordpress to help demonstrate the power of CNAB and Porter.
Exposing legacy batch processing code online using Azure Durable Functions, API Management and Kubernetes

Exposing legacy batch processing code online using Azure Durable Functions, API Management and Kubernetes

Jonathan George

Discover how Kubernetes, Azure Durable Functions, and Azure API Management transform legacy batch processing code into a RESTful API.
NDC London Day 1

NDC London Day 1

Ian Griffiths

In this post, Ian describes some of the highlights from the NDC London conference
Azure Analysis Services - integration options using .NET, REST APIs and PowerShell

Azure Analysis Services - integration options using .NET, REST APIs and PowerShell

James Broome

Explore Azure Analysis Services in custom apps using SDKs, PowerShell cmdlets & REST APIs. Learn to choose the right framework in this guide.
Building a secure data solution using Azure Data Lake Store (Gen2)

Building a secure data solution using Azure Data Lake Store (Gen2)

Carmel Eve

In this blog we discuss building a secure data solution using Azure Data Lake. Data Lake has many features which enable fine grained security and data separation. It is also built on Azure Storage which enables us to take advantage of all of those features and means that ADLS is still a cost effective storage option!This post runs through some of the great features of ADLS and runs through an example of how we build our solutions using this technology!

Speaking at NDC London: Combatting illegal fishing with Machine Learning and Azure

Carmel Eve

In January 2020, Carmel is speaking about creating high performance geospatial algorithms in C# which can detect suspicious vessel activity, which is used to help alert law enforcement to illegal fishing. The input data is fed from Azure Data Lake Storage Gen 2, and converted into data projections optimised for high-performance computation. This code is then hosted in Azure Functions for cheap, consumption based processing.

Survey: Expression Trees use cases in .NET

Howard van Rooijen

Expression Trees are one of .NET's super powers; but they are hugely overlooked and misunderstood. They can be used for on-the-fly code generation; building DSLs, and producing high performance computational algorithms. I'm trying to gather evidence about how you are using them, to make a case for future investments in the Expression Tree subsystem in .NET Core / .NET 5.0
Long Running Functions in Azure Data Factory

Long Running Functions in Azure Data Factory

Jess Panni

Explore Azure Durable Functions as an alternative to long-running operations, overcoming HTTP Triggers' 230s limit in Azure Load Balancer.
Design patterns in C# - The Composite Pattern

Design patterns in C# - The Composite Pattern

Carmel Eve

This blog is part of a series around design patterns. This post focuses on the composite pattern. The composite pattern is often used in situations where you want to me able to treat groups and individuals in the same way during processing.
Secure Azure Function-to-Function authentication without the need for credentials

Secure Azure Function-to-Function authentication without the need for credentials

Carmel Eve

Explore how to build secure solutions on Azure using Azure Functions and Managed Identities, eliminating the need for storing credentials.
Design Patterns in C# - Factory Method and Abstract Factory

Design Patterns in C# - Factory Method and Abstract Factory

Carmel Eve

Investigate the differences between factory method and abstract factory design patterns in this first blog of our series.
Incorporating software architecture into agile projects

Incorporating software architecture into agile projects

Carmel Eve

Software architecture and Agile project planning are often seen to be at odds. However, here at endjin we think that the way in which they intersect solves a lot of the common issues surrounding architecture. The key to successful architecture is constantly keeping the drivers in mind and having a tight communication loop as the architecture is implemented. These concepts are ones which are key to agile project management, and the combination of these two disciplines can be extremely powerful and successful when applied correctly.
Agile Architecture: Painting by Numbers

Agile Architecture: Painting by Numbers

Howard van Rooijen

Creating a architecture in an iterative and incremental solution delivery is challenging. I've evolved an approach akin to Painting By Numbers, and am inspired by a quote from the artist and film maker Dave McKean.
Snowflake Connector for Azure Data Factory - Part 2

Snowflake Connector for Azure Data Factory - Part 2

Jess Panni

Snowflake Connector for Azure Data Factory - Part 1

Snowflake Connector for Azure Data Factory - Part 1

Jess Panni

Explore the lack of a native Azure Data Factory connector for Snowflake and discover alternatives for integration between these popular platforms.
A code review with NDepend Part 2: The initial review

A code review with NDepend Part 2: The initial review

Carmel Eve

At endjin we have a high quality bar when it comes to our code. As part of this we carry out regular code reviews. One of the tools we have used for these code reviews is NDepend. This is the second in a blog series written as we carried out that process. This post focuses on the insight you can quickly gain just by glancing at the NDepend UI.
A code review with NDepend Part 1: Quality metrics

A code review with NDepend Part 1: Quality metrics

Carmel Eve

At endjin we have a high quality bar when it comes to our code. As part of this we carry out regular code reviews. One of the tools we have used for these code reviews is NDepend. This is the first in a blog series written as we carried out that process. This post runs through the different metrics used by NDepend, and the reasons that each of these can be an indication of code quality.
Rx operators deep dive Part 5 – Thank you for joining me on this journey

Rx operators deep dive Part 5 – Thank you for joining me on this journey

Carmel Eve

This is the final blog in a series which delves into how the Rx operators work under the covers. This series aims to provide a greater understanding of Rx and its operators. This post focuses on the JOIN operator.
Avoiding deployment locking errors by running Web and Functions Apps from packages

Avoiding deployment locking errors by running Web and Functions Apps from packages

Carmel Eve

Fix DLL locking errors in Azure Function deployment by using "deploy from package" option. This runs the function from a package file, resolving issues.
Rx operators deep dive Part 4: A window into scheduling in Rx

Rx operators deep dive Part 4: A window into scheduling in Rx

Carmel Eve

Fourth in a series, this blog post explores the inner workings of the Rx WINDOW operator for better Rx understanding.
A conversation about .NET, The Cloud, Data & AI, teaching software engineers and joining endjin with Ian Griffiths

A conversation about .NET, The Cloud, Data & AI, teaching software engineers and joining endjin with Ian Griffiths

Ian Griffiths

When he joined endjin, Technical Fellow Ian sat down with founder Howard for a Q&A session. This was originally published on LinkedIn in 5 parts, but is republished here, in full. Ian talks about his path into computing, some highlights of his career, the evolution of the .NET ecosystem, AI, and the software engineering life.
Rx operators deep dive part 1: Where observables meet LINQ

Rx operators deep dive part 1: Where observables meet LINQ

Carmel Eve

Explore the workings of Rx operators in this series. This first post delves into the WHERE operator for a deeper Rx understanding.
Overflowing with dataflow part 2: TPL Dataflow

Overflowing with dataflow part 2: TPL Dataflow

Carmel Eve

Explore TPL dataflow in this second blog of our series. Learn how this .NET library simplifies parallel data processing with a pipeline model.
Overflowing with dataflow part 1: An overview

Overflowing with dataflow part 1: An overview

Carmel Eve

This is the first blog in a series about dataflow. The series focuses on TPL dataflow, but this post gives an overview of dataflow as a whole.The crucial thing to understand when using dataflow is that the data is in control. In most conventional programming languages, the programmer determines how and when the code will run. In dataflow, it is the data that drives how the program executes. The movement of data controls the flow of the program.
Whose package is it anyway? Why it's important to minimise dependencies in your solutions...

Whose package is it anyway? Why it's important to minimise dependencies in your solutions...

Carmel Eve

This is a post about the importance of reducing your dependencies as much as possible when designing solutions.If as much as possible is under your own control, there is far less room for synchronization errors and update conflicts.
Thoughts about .NET, The Cloud, AI, ML, and teaching software engineers

Thoughts about .NET, The Cloud, AI, ML, and teaching software engineers

Howard van Rooijen

Ian Griffiths recently joined endjin as a Technical Fellow. We had a long fireside chat, which has been broken down into a 5 part series covering .NET, the Cloud, AI, ML, teaching software engineering, and why he joined endjin.
Kickstart your API proposition with the API Maturity Assessment

Kickstart your API proposition with the API Maturity Assessment

Howard van Rooijen

Explore the importance of API strategy, governance, security, and design in Digital Transformation projects.
How to plan your cloud transformation journey

How to plan your cloud transformation journey

Howard van Rooijen

We've been helping customers adopt Microsoft Azure since 2010, we have produced a lot of thought leadership to help people think about the steps required, the risk involved and how to plan a successful adoption.
Azure Tech Selector - 2017 Edition

Azure Tech Selector - 2017 Edition

Matthew Adams

We've just released an updated version of our Azure Technology Selector poster - helping you to choose the right Azure service, based on your use-case.
AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud Platform - Mobile Services

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud Platform - Mobile Services

Jess Panni

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud Platform - Analytics & Big Data

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud Platform - Analytics & Big Data

Jess Panni

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud Platform - Database

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud Platform - Database

Jess Panni

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud Platform - Compute

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud Platform - Compute

Jess Panni

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud Platform

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud Platform

Jess Panni

The 100 Year Start-up: Embracing Disruption in Financial Services

The 100 Year Start-up: Embracing Disruption in Financial Services

Howard van Rooijen

Hymans Robertson was set up in Glasgow in 1921 and is one of the longest established independent firms of consultants and actuaries in the UK. Hymans Robertson soon realised that the computational requirements of their models exceeded the capacity of their on-premise datacentres and that the most cost effective solution would be to use the cloud to perform their Big Compute. But before they could harness the cloud to help them solve their Big Data problems, the business needed to understand the ramifications of moving to the cloud; everything from regulatory, risk and compliance concerns,  to how their internal Ops team would need to evolve and adapt, and how to deal with moving data from on-prem into the cloud.
An experiment to automatically detect API breaking changes in .NET assemblies and suggest a Semantic Version number

An experiment to automatically detect API breaking changes in .NET assemblies and suggest a Semantic Version number

Howard van Rooijen

Exploring the creation of a tool to detect accidental .NET API changes for accurate SemVer in NuGet packages.
Azure Batch - Time is Money in Big Compute

Azure Batch - Time is Money in Big Compute

James Broome

Consumption based pricing is a one of the USPs of Cloud PaaS services, but the default settings aren't necessarily optimised for cost. Significant savings can be made from understanding your workload.
Generating and using a certificate to authorise Azure Automation

Generating and using a certificate to authorise Azure Automation

Alice Waddicor

Explore how to use Azure Automation for running VMs during office hours. Learn to create runbooks for automated tasks at pre-defined times.