Calling WCF client proxies in Azure Functions

17th of April, 2017 / / 2 Comments

Azure Functions allow developers to write discrete units of work and run these without having to deal with hosting or application infrastructure concerns. Azure Functions are Microsoft’s answer to server-less computing on the Azure Platform and together with Azure ServiceBus, Azure Logic Apps, Azure API Management (to name just a few) has become an essential part of the Azure iPaaS offering.

The problem

Integration solutions often require connecting legacy systems using deprecating protocols such as SOAP and WS-*.… [Keep reading] “Calling WCF client proxies in Azure Functions”

Azure API Management Step by Step – Use Cases

23rd of September, 2016 / / No Comments

jorge-fotoUse Cases

On this second post about Azure API management, let’s discuss about use cases. Why “Use Cases”?                  

Use cases helps to manage complexity, since it focuses on one specific usage aspect at the time. I am grouping and versioning use cases to facilitate your learning process and helping to keep track with future changes. You are welcome to use these diagrams to demonstrate Azure API management features.

API On-boarding is a key aspect of API governance and first thing to be discussed. … [Keep reading] “Azure API Management Step by Step – Use Cases”

Azure API Management Step by Step

9th of September, 2016 / / 3 Comments

jorge-fotoIntroduction

As a speaker and cloud consultant, I have learned and received a lot of feedback about Azure API management platform from customers and community members. I will share some of my learnings in this series of blog posts. Let’s get started!

apim-image

APIs – Application programming interfaces are everywhere! They are already part of many companies’ strategies. But how could we consolidate internal and external APIs? How could you productize and monetize them for your company?… [Keep reading] “Azure API Management Step by Step”

Connecting Azure Mobile Apps and Web Apps to existing on-premises infrastructure using Azure Hybrid Connections

31st of August, 2016 / / 2 Comments

This article describes a very easy and secure way of connecting your Azure Mobile Apps and Azure Web Apps to your existing on-premises infrastructure. The option is called Hybrid Connections and is a feature of Azure BizTalk Services. The feature does not require any VPN configuration or opening Inbound ports on the Firewall. After completion of a few simple configuration steps in the Azure Portal and installation of so-called Hybrid Connection Manager(HCM) program on your on-premises servers, you are ready to consume your on-premises services from your Cloud App right away.… [Keep reading] “Connecting Azure Mobile Apps and Web Apps to existing on-premises infrastructure using Azure Hybrid Connections”

Connecting to and Using the Azure MFA Web Service SDK Server SOAP API with Powershell

16th of August, 2016 / / 10 Comments

Background

A colleague and I are validating a number of scenarios for a customer who is looking to deploy Azure MFA Server. One of the requirements from an Identity Management perspective is the ability to interact with the MFA Server for user information. That led us on the exploration of what was possible and how best to approach it.

The title of this post has pretty much given it away as to how. But why ?… [Keep reading] “Connecting to and Using the Azure MFA Web Service SDK Server SOAP API with Powershell”

SharePoint Web Service Caching using WCF Custom Channel

16th of June, 2013 / / 1 Comment

The New SharePoint App Architecture

To be honest, I’ve had this code for a while now sitting in the blog cupboard. It was originally intended to be used as part of a global content management system delivering content from a single SharePoint authoring point to many distributed content delivery systems. Since then, events have conspired to bring it back out of the cupboard but for a slightly different purpose. As I said in my previous blog, two things have happened in the world of SharePoint:

  • SharePoint went “Online” which means it is hosted centrally in a data centre (most likely) far-far away.
… [Keep reading] “SharePoint Web Service Caching using WCF Custom Channel”

SharePoint Online Web Service Authentication using WCF Client-side behaviour

24th of March, 2013 / / 9 Comments

With the release SharePoint in 2013 and the ever increasing numbers taking up the SharePoint Online offering, it’s a good time to start looking at some of the challenges when moving to these platforms.

SharePoint has traditionally been a presentation technology with its own unique SharePoint development model utilising SharePoint designer and custom Web Part development. With the latest release, SharePoint 2013 that development model has been challenged by a new autonomous development model where the complexities and constraints of SharePoint as a development and deployment platform has been replaced by a service oriented integration platform for multiple independently hosted applications.… [Keep reading] “SharePoint Online Web Service Authentication using WCF Client-side behaviour”

Build a RESTful Router using WCF (Browse Azure Table Storage with Excel)

9th of November, 2012 / / 11 Comments

In the Visualise Azure Table Storage with Excel and Fiddler I described how to use Fiddler as a handy proxy that can be used to inject the protocol differences between standard oData and the non-standard oData supported by Azure Table storage. While Fiddler is a handy desktop tool to illustrate the solution, it is not really appropriate as a part of a system architecture. A simple request to host the same Azure Table Storage to oData functionality as a hosted service lead me down a long and windy road in the world of WCF, but one worth documenting.… [Keep reading] “Build a RESTful Router using WCF (Browse Azure Table Storage with Excel)”

Add oData Paging to Azure Table Storage

23rd of September, 2012 / / 2 Comments

After reading my previous blog, one of my Kloud colleagues raised a good point:

“What about continuation tokens?”

“Hmm, not sure, let me check. They should just pass through.”

Not so much.

Continuation tokens are used by the Azure Table Storage API as a way to move through a result set which may be larger than the maximum (1000) or has been limited using a $top parameter. Sure enough, a quick check shows that the previous solution is limited to 1000 rows in Excel.… [Keep reading] “Add oData Paging to Azure Table Storage”

Visualise Azure Table Storage with Excel and Fiddler

19th of September, 2012 / / 6 Comments

Today I came across an interesting problem;

I’m a big fan of Table Storage but its potential is yet to be realised because the tool support just isn’t a match for databases. We’ve got a solution which lays down a lot of data into Azure Table storage but the options to view that data is limited. There are plenty of available viewers including Visual Studio, Azure Storage Explorer and others. The problem with all of these viewers is they are limited to plain old tablular data views.… [Keep reading] “Visualise Azure Table Storage with Excel and Fiddler”