AZUREUG.SG July 27th Meeting @ Microsoft 7:00pm

(Light Refreshments will be served before the session)

Claim based authentication @ Windows Azure

Ma Qi (Sam), Solutions Architect @ NCS

During this session you will learn about the major investments in claims-based identity in Windows Azure Platform. He will discuss the new identity architecture, learn about all the components and how to manage and operate them. In addition, He will go over the design decisions you will need to make as you plan the interop between Windows Azure and external systems/Web services. During this session sam will show as a demo how to convert traditional RBAC ASP.NET application into CBAC application.

Profile :

Ma Qi (Sam) is currently working in NCS as .Net Application Architect. Since graduated from Xi’an Jiao Tong university in China, Sam started his IT career as software developer in 1997. In 2000, Sam moved to Singapore to pursue career development. During the period, Sam worked in various technology companies with different roles such as Software Developer, System designer, IT Consultant, System Analyst, Application Architect. In the past 5 years, Sam had successfully executed 2 enterprise .Net projects. Besides career, Sam received his MSc (Information Studies) from Nanyang Technological University in 2007.

Must-Have Tools for Windows Azure

K.Mohamed Faizal, Lead consultant @ NCS

Any platform, by its own nature, creates an ecosystem for third-party tools and helpers. Windows Azure is no different. In this session we look at a variety of the third-party tools available in the Windows Azure ecosystem. Included are tools for both developers and IT professionals. We look at tools that will help manage storage and resources, migration, scaling, diagnostics and software components that will help you build cloud applications.

Profile : 

Faizal  is an Lead Consultant with Chief Architect Office, NCS (P) Ltd.  Faizal spends his days serving as a consultant or architect helping clients succeed with the Microsoft development platform. He has over a decade of experience in Information Technology with a focus on enabling portals, Internet & Intranet application development. His area of specialization includes but is not limited to evaluate & develop migration strategies for Cloud Computing (Windows Azure) as well as for SharePoint Server technologies.  Faizal spends most of his spare time reading technology blogs and exploring new development technologies. Part of community work Faizal is active speaker in SharePoint User group.  Faizal and Wely (MVP) founded AzureUG.SG User groups in Singapore and they meet every month last Wednesday night at Microsoft Singapore to discuss, share knowledge and experiences on development and Windows Azure architecture.

Windows Azure boot camp training

14^th & 15^th July 2011 we have completed 4^th Intake of our Windows Azure boot camp training. (Only for NCS). around 21 NCS people attended our session and learn about Windows Azure, SQL Azure, AppFabrics.

Presenting : Explore and Implement SharePoint Security: Permissions, Identities, and Objects @ NCS SharePoint CoP Group

 

On 21st July i am presenting Explore and Implement SharePoint Security: Permissions, Identities, and Objects  @ NCS SharePoint CoP group. This a NCS Internal user groups which meet every two months once to share experience and present various technical topics in SharePoint Server and Application development.

During this session i will be discussing about Portal End to End to Security.

The SharePoint security model can be confusing, with its deep hierarchy of securable objects, granular permissions and policies, and clunky user and group management interfaces. This session demystifies SharePoint security by dissecting each of these components and presenting best practices for implementing and managing security. Learn when and why it makes sense to leverage Active Directory groups or use SharePoint groups, and take away options for new permission levels and settings that address common business requirements.

Request.ApplicationPath not supported in Web Role

 

ApplicationPath not supported on Windows Azure. Recently we need to migrate existing .NET 2.0 project to Windows Azure. We upgrade the code to .NET 4.0 and run application locally there is no issue. When we migrated to Windows Azure we discover that the ApplicationPath not working the reason from MSDN forum is….

ApplicationPath is only valuable when you have multiple virtual directories under the IIS web site. But on the cloud machines, each web role (and even each instance) is hosted on a separate virtual machine. Each IIS will contain only one web site with no virtual directories. All web pages are stored under the root web site. So ApplicationPath will always return /, with no meaning on the cloud. 

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsazure/thread/9f0c1f8e-cc6d-4d07-9dcd-93db179d3703/

Windows Azure AspProviders error on deployment

 

When you deploy AspProviders (Azure Table Storage) on Windows Azure  you may encounter following error.

Configuration Error

Description: An error occurred during the processing of a configuration file required to service this request. Please review the specific error details below and modify your configuration file appropriately.
Parser Error Message: Could not load type 'Microsoft.Samples.ServiceHosting.AspProviders.TableStorageSessionStateProvider'.

 

To overcome above issue, make sure that you have Added AspProviders project as a  References to your web project.

TOGAF Certified Enterprise Architect

Recently obtain TOGAF Enterprise Architecture certification, during the course  enrolment the university (NUS ISS) challenge me with following questions.

1) Why we should accept you into this programme? 

A huge part of Enterprise Architect in general is communicating and selling ideas and vision.  The main area that I work in is the evaluation of IT offerings (i.e. Cloud Computing) against the business processes and business requirements and selecting the strategic applications and middleware to meet those requirements. AS an Enterprise Architect I should analysis the current state and the strategic for ?to-be? architectures which includes looking at the as-is architecture and what exists today and making decisions on what the strategic architecture should look like in future.

As an Enterprise Architect. In my mind there are four technology specialties which coincidently match how Business, Applications, Infrastructure and Data. I hope that these course would allow me learn more about these four key areas and provide better consulting for our clients.

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2) Educational qualifications and professional experience:

I am holding a Bachelor?s degree in Business Administration from the Annamalai University, Tamil Nadu, India (1999), and a Master?s degree in Business Administration from the Central Queensland University (CQU) Australia. (2006).

I am having, 14+years? experience in information systems, understand the business process and formulating, propose design/system architecture, developing and managing application, Design site maps, process maps, prototypes, provide online service, managing security access level, data protection, end-user consulting, risk management, Plan & Monitor and control project schedules, project management and he successfully migrated applications from Lotus Notes to .NET / SharePoint portal.

After 7 full days of training, project work, assessment and presentation NUS ISS and TOGAF awarded me  

 

http://www.opengroup.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_Architecture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Architecture_-_Building_Blocks

Windows Azure Video Tutorials Now Available

Quick introduction to a variety of topics,including how to connect enterprise assets with Windows Azure roleswith a new feature called Windows Azure Connect, how to synchronize SQLServer data with SQL Azure, how to authenticate users with Access   Control Services (ACS), and how to migrate ASP.NET applications toWindows Azure. We've also included a 5-part series on how to apply the Microsoft Software Development Lifecycle (also known as SDL) to developing applications for Windows Azure.  Most of videos are five minutes or less and include related code samples.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/videos/