In this episode of Azure Friday, Estefani Arroyo joins Scott Hanselman to talk about and demo Azure Cosmos DB desktop tools for developing, querying and testing your applications. The Azure Cosmos DB Linux Emulator provides a high-fidelity emulation of the Azure Cosmos DB service. The Azure Data Studio Cosmos DB API for Mongo DB extension enables you to connect to your Mongo resources and query your data using the mongo shell.
In this episode of Azure Friday, Jeremy Likness shows Scott Hanselman how to use Entity Framework (EF) Core with Azure SQL DB and Azure Cosmos DB. EF Core is a lightweight, extensible, open source, and cross-platform version of the popular Entity Framework data access technology.
[0:00:00]– Overview [0:01:43]– Using Entity Framework Core with Azure SQL DB (existing) [0:10:23]– Sidebar: Resolving a demo hiccup [0:15:07]– Using Entity Framework Core with Azure Cosmos DB (new) [0:22:09]– Wrap-up
In this episode of Azure Friday, Kirill Gavrylyuk joins Scott Hanselman to go over two important updates to Azure Cosmos DB: Free Tier and Autopilot. Free Tier enables you to run small applications using Azure Cosmos DB free of charge for as long as you like. Autopilot enables developers to only pay for the Azure Cosmos DB usage they need and not worry about predicting throughput.
Earlier this week I noticed that Microsoft launched the Azure Apps Demo Map website, a centralized way to see a some awesome resources available by Microsoft for building enterprise applications that leverage Azure technologies..
Most of the scenarios include an interactive user experience to explore the solution – including solution diagrams, live demos, source code and additional resources.
When exploring a scenario you can click on sections to see what technologies were used for that particular application. In the case of the Rewards application, it uses Azure Functions, Logic Apps, and App Service.
After exploring the interactive model you can head over to the GitHub project to download and run the code so that you can dig really deep in how the solution was built.
Let’s take a brief look at each of the projects.
Projects
Currently the Azure Apps Demo Map contains four applications as listed below.
Tailwind Traders
Tailwind Traders is a fictitious retail company showcasing the future of intelligent application experiences. These reference apps are all powered by the Azure cloud, built with best-in-class tools, and made smarter through data and AI.
SmartHotel360 is a fictitious smart hospitality company showcasing the future of connected travel. Their vision is to provide an intelligent and personalized experience to the guests.
The geek version of the classic game. This sample shows a multilanguage application running on AKS with a front-end developed in Blazor and integrated with Azure Machine Learning and Azure Cognitive Services. Start the battle and find if you can beat our bot! VISIT PROJECT
Contoso Air is a fictitious airline company. This lab shows how to create a website application that runs Node.JS Server that stores customer booked flights in an Azure Cosmos DB.
Unfortunately this project has no diagram and has been archived. However this project still contains valuable information for building a Node.JS + Cosmos DB application and running it on Azure.
This is a great resource to learn how Azure can be used for an end to end solution for your business.
They have a feedback link so if you found the resource useful or you have suggestions please let them know. It would be cool to see this resource be expanded to include other applications that include Power BI, Power Apps, Azure DevOps, Dynamics, etc.
With each release of Visual Studio it’s getting easier to connect your application to Azure services. To access Visual Studio Connected Services, go to your projects Overview which can be accessed by right clicking on your project and select Overview.
Then select the Connected Services tab on the left to show the list of Connected Services available in your Visual Studio instance. More connected services can be installed from either the Visual Studio Marketplace or from within Visual Studio by going to the Tools –> Extensions and Updates… menu item.
To configure a particular Connected Service, just click on it and follow the prompts to wire up the desired Azure service.
Connected Services
With the announcement of what’s new in for Azure Development in Visual Studio on May 30 2018, support for three more Azure services were made available:
Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer is a cross platform client tool built on Electron that allows you to easily work with Azure Storage data on Windows, macOS and Linux. This tool also provides preview support for Azure Cosmos DB and Azure Data Lake Store.
I find this is a great tool to use when working with Azure Functions locally and you want to work with Azure Storage Accounts, both locally or in Azure.
Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer was updated on April 16 2018 to version 1.0 and is a big update with log of new features, bug fixes, and some breaking changes, so be sure to checkout the release notes on what is new and fixed.
Breaking Changes
It’s worth pointing out the following breaking changes:
Storage Explorer has switched to a new authentication library. As part of the switch to the library, you will need to re-login to your accounts and re-set your filtered subscriptions
The method used to encrypt sensitive data has changed. This may result in some of your Quick Access items needing to be re-added and/or some of you attached resources needing to be reattached.
The Flying Maverick 