A .NET Developer’s Dive into Riak

We are co-hosting this session with the Brisbane .NET User Group to bring this topic to a wider audience.

Session: A .NET Developer’s Dive into Riak
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
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Overview: .NET developers often find that exciting technologies are out of reach due to infrastructure and technology stack constraints. Exciting movements in languages, platforms and data stores aren’t always readily available for use as a result.

Thankfully recent work by Basho Technologies has changed the landscape a little. Riak, their Open Source, highly-available, fault-tolerant, distributed key-value store, is now able to run on Azure!

In this talk I will dive into Riak and attempt to explain what it is, how bits of it work, and why it’s a good fit for certain types of problems. We’ll be looking at examples using CorrugatedIron, the fully-featured Open Source .NET driver for Riak.

Presenter: OJ Reeves is a polyglot geek with long-term roots in the professional Microsoft and .NET circuits. He’s active participant in many a UG and an ex-organiser of the local Functional Programming and NoSQL groups here in Brisbane. He’s one of the authors of CorrugatedIron, the #1 .NET client for Riak, and has had a passion for Riak since he first discovered it in early 2009.

Please RSVP to ensure we order the right amount of tasty pizzas, beer and wine!

Newsletter #01

This is the start of a regular newsletter that will cover events, training and promotions related to Windows Azure, Windows 8 and Windows Phone.

Windows Azure

• Dev Camps are happening in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane in March. There are plans to run them more broadly across the country in the coming months.
  Melbourne – Friday 15th March
  Sydney – Friday 22nd March
  Brisbane – Thursday 28th March
• 6 weeks of Azure continues – with Boot Camps also happening throughout March
• Apps for Asia competition is hotting up! Final entries are due this month, so don’t miss out on the opportunity to reach an immediate market, and go to India to showcase your application.

Windows 8

• YOUR APP HERE: Microsoft have partnered with Lifehacker to bring to life a great opportunity for all developers who haven’t quite finished that App, to finish it with help, and be rewarded for the quality of the app.
• Over the next few weeks, we’ll be featuring success stories, talking about top tips, and holding Virtual #Appfests to support all the developers out there who are building apps. If you know (or are) a developer who’s gaining success through Application development, we’d love to hear all about it!
• Virtual #Appfests: Kick off Tuesday 12^th March from 7pm.
  If you’re still looking for help to get an app finished and into the store for publication, then come along for an extra helping hand. It’s a two-hour open virtual session, that allows you to ask all the questions you want to ask, leap any coding hurdles, and get your app published.The Virtual #Appfest will be a weekly event, so check LaLaNinja for scheduling. The first event on Tuesday 12 March will be led by Nick Hodge, and will feature two platforms in two hours.

Six Weeks of Azure

Hey guys, have you seen this new Azure mentoring program being offered by Microsoft?

http://6weeksofazure.azurewebsites.net/

It’s a structured 6 week program where Microsoft architects & selected partners will help you and your company design, build & deploy a real solution into Azure.

Check it out if you’re interested – it’s a great service.

Dean

Windows Azure Blob Storage – A Deep Dive

Hello everyone,

Welcome back from the holiday break – I’m sure you’re all pumped for Azure in 2013! 🙂

What better way to warm back into it than with a ‘soup to nuts’ walk-through of the Azure blob storage by the irrepressible Paul Bouwer!

Windows Azure Blob Storage – A Deep Dive

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Overview: Join us as Paul dives into the inner workings of Windows Azure Blob Storage. We’ll be covering the basics and diving into some of the advanced and performance based topics. We’ll look at the various security schemes and get intimate with Fiddler to understand the REST based API that is used to communicate with Windows Azure Blob Storage.

Speaker: Paul Bouwer from Mexia

As usual we’ll have tasty pizzas, cold beer & wine , so we hope to see you all there 🙂

Dean

Achieve Infinite Scale with Hadoop & Re-Platforming Your Virtual Machines

Session #1: Achieving Infinite Scale with Microsoft SQL Server and Hadoop

Overview: The traditional approach to database scalability has been to simply buy a bigger box.  However with the ongoing data explosion that is occurring in organisations today there is a need to re-think how to achieve scalability for the database platform.  In this session we will explore how to extend the scalability of Microsoft SQL Server by using Hadoop and how to achieve scalability as a Hybrid solution using the Azure platform.  With nothing more than a credit card and the Azure platform you will see how it is now possible to create highly-available, infinitely scalable SQL Server environments that support automated deployment and elastic scale.

Speaker: Peter Ward & Phil Jones from WardyIT

Session #2: Re-Platforming Your On-Premises Virtual Machines to Windows Azure

Overview: Creating new virtual machines in Windows Azure is easy, but what if you want to upload a virtual machine image that you already have?  What if you have a number of VM’s that are dependent on each other (i.e. web + SQL)?  Is it easy to upload them as a set?  What changes do I need to make to the application or the OS image? What steps do I need to take to get them up in the cloud?

All of these questions and more will be answered, giving you the knowledge to move your own mission-critical applications into the Windows Azure platform.

Speaker: Dean Robertson from Mexia

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Please RSVP so we order the right about of pizza & beer, and please bring a colleague along 🙂

Introduction to Windows Azure Web Sites

UPDATE: The slides and demos are now available to download.

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Hi everyone,

This is an experimental lunchtime session for the Brisbane Azure User Group, with the hope that the day time events might be more suitable to those members who might not be able to come at night.

REGISTER HERE

Session #1: Introduction to Windows Azure Websites

Overview: Windows Azure Web Sites is a simple and powerful hosting platform that allows developers to easily build and rapidly deploy web applications on Windows Azure using their favorite languages, frameworks, and tools. This presentation explains how you can use this new technology to build, deploy, and run everything from classic ASP sites to modern ASP.NET MVC 4 web applications using both new and familiar tools including Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio 2012, and WebMatrix.

Speaker: Dean Robertson, Technical Director, Mexia

Please RSVP to ensure we order the right amount of pizzas!

Cheers,

Dean

StreamInsight in Azure & Introduction to Azure Websites – 17th Oct 2012

—UPDATE—-

Sorry everyone but the Hadoop session has been moved to November because one of the presenters is unavailable.  So I’ll re-present on Azure Web Sites to fill the spot, and we’ll all get to enjoy the Hadoop session next time.

Dean

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Hi everyone,

This month will be two fantastic sessions on building BigData solutions in the cloud. BigData is the hottest term in IT at the moment so come along to see how Microsoft are tackling this challenge from two different perspectives.

REGISTER HERE

Session #1: Introduction to Windows Azure Websites

Overview: Windows Azure Web Sites is a simple and powerful hosting platform that allows developers to easily build and rapidly deploy web applications on Windows Azure using their favorite languages, frameworks, and tools. This presentation explains how you can use this new technology to build, deploy, and run everything from classic ASP sites to modern ASP.NET MVC 4 web applications using both new and familiar tools including Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio 2012, and WebMatrix.

Speaker: Dean Robertson, Technical Director, Mexia

Session #1: Achieving Infinite Scale with Microsoft SQL Server and Hadoop

Overview: The traditional approach to database scalability has been to simply buy a bigger box.  However with the ongoing data explosion that is occurring in organisations today there is a need to re-think how to achieve scalability for the database platform.  In this session we will explore how to extend the scalability of Microsoft SQL Server by using Hadoop and how to achieve scalability as a Hybrid solution using the Azure platform.  With nothing more than a credit card and the Azure platform you will see how it is now possible to create highly-available, infinitely scalable SQL Server environments that support automated deployment and elastic scale.

Speaker: Peter Ward & Phil Jones from WardyIT

Session #2: Extracting Realtime Business Value with StreamInsight

Overview: StreamInsight is Microsoft’s complex event processing platform that allows business value to be derived from the raw data that typically flows through all systems. StreamInsight is available on-premises and via private CTP on the Azure platform (StreamInsight “Austin”). In this session Paul will introduce StreamInsight and its core concepts and demonstrate how it may be utilised in various scenarios.

Speaker: Paul Bouwer is a Consultant for Mexia and co-organiser of the Brisbane Azure User Group. Paul’s experience in the IT industry spans 15 years and numerous technologies. He has worked in the following industries: Internet Service Provider, Airline, Travel, Telecommunication, Health, SaaS (Software as a Service) and Gaming.  He is excited about Azure as a cloud platform and its feature set. Paul tweets at @pbouwer and blogs at blog.paulbouwer.com.

Windows Azure Service Bus and NServiceBus

Hi guys,

This month will be two fantastic sessions on building integration solutions in the cloud.  If you have some of your software systems running on-premises and some in the cloud, this is the session you do not want to miss.

REGISTER HERE

Session #1: Introduction to Windows Azure Service Bus

Overview: The Windows Azure Service Bus provides a hosted, secure, and widely available infrastructure for widespread communication, large-scale event distribution, naming, and service publishing.  In this session Dan will provide an overview of the Service Bus and it’s features, and explain how easy it is to use both the “relayed” and “brokered” messaging capabilities.

Speaker: Dan Toomey is a Consultant for Mexia, a Microsoft Certified Azure Developer, and a Microsoft Certified Technical Specialist in BizTalk Server. During his 12 years of experience in the IT industry, Dan has helped a number of large private and government organisation solve their enterprise integration problems using Microsoft technologies. He founded the Brisbane BizTalk User Group in 2005 and has presented at many of its sessions since then. He’s also presented at numerous Barcamps in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast.

Session #2: Introduction to NServiceBus

Overview: NServiceBus is an open-source service bus for .NET, with v3.0 now supporting the Windows Azure Service Bus for it’s transport layer.  Based on state of the art patterns from SOA and proven object-oriented practices, NServiceBus enables parallel service layer development, version tolerant message schemas, as well as fluent business-process unit testing.

Speaker: Jimmy Pelletier is an NServiceBus trainer, consultant and organiser of the Alt.Net user group in Melbourne.

As usual, please RSVP so we get the right amount of food & beer, and please BRING A COLLEAGUE with you!

Windows Azure SQL Database and SQL Reporting for Developers with Dr. Greg Low

Hi guys,

Sorry for the lack of blog post here before the event, but at least here are the slides from the night for you.

Slides – Windows Azure SQL Database and SQL Reporting for Developers

Thanks again to Greg for a fantastic session.

Dean

Using Azure for Game Development & Implementing Dotnetnuke on Azure

Hello all,

We’ve got a blockbuster night lined up for the next Brisbane Azure User Group meeting, with TWO big sessions on real-world Azure usage.

REGISTER HERE

Session #1: Using Azure for Games Development

Overview: As more and more games move into a social medium, games have an ever increasing need for online services. Drawing on his experiences as a server developer and systems architect, James will talk about his numerous steps and missteps into the world of Cloud Computing using Microsoft Azure technologies, and their integration with third party services and platforms. From integration with Apple push notifications, to Facebook posts, Azure provides the backbone of Defiant Development’s online solution. Using a combination of hosted services, table storage, blob storage and SQL federations, Defiant Development has delivered a product to close to a million users worldwide.

Speaker: James Bowling is an experienced .NET developer who made the leap into game design and development. By applying his C# skills into game server development and integration with the C# powered Unity3D game engine, James has created well engineered and flexible solutions for mobile and independent games. Working at Defiant Development, he helped develop the action role playing game ‘Heroes Call’, focusing on server development and client integration.

Session #2: Implementing Dotnetnuke (DNN) on Azure

Overview: DotNetNuke is the leading Web Content Management Platform (or CMS) for Microsoft ASP.NET, powering over 700,000 production web sites worldwide. The flexible DotNetNuke open source CMS platform is a powerful web application development framework allowing developers, designers and users of all levels of ability to design and deploy feature-rich business websites.

This session will cover:

• a quick overview of Dotnetnuke and its architecture
• how quickly you can deploy Dotnetnuke on Azure using the Dotnetnuke Accelerator
• how to administer and upgrade your Dotnetnuke site on Azure.
• how to customise your Dotnetnuke site to leverage features of Azure (Storage, CDN, ACS)
• tips and tricks

Whilst the session is focused on Dotnetnuke, the techniques used will be very relevant to all dynamic, data driven ASP.NET sites.

Speaker: Ian Sampson, is the Technical director and co-founder of Glanton Solutions – a specialist consultancy dedicated solely to implementing, developing and supporting Dotnetnuke platforms for Enterprise and Corporate customers.

With nearly 10 years of working with Dotnetnuke and the Dotnetnuke community, Glanton is proud to be one of the select few Dotnetnuke Gold Partners who offer global coverage, have an internal team with a wide range of Dotnetnuke specialist skills and have strong relationships with the global network of experts who make up the Dotnetnuke ecosystem.