We’ve had ongoing issues when deploying web and functions apps involving the locking of DLLs during the deployment. The specific case I’m going to talk about focuses on Azure Functions, but you can also run Web Apps from a package (though the Azure Pipelines tooling currently only works for functions, so you would need to […]

TLDR; There is a lot of hype around AI & ML. Here’s an example of using ML.NET & Azure Functions to deliver a series of micro-optimisations, to automate a series of 1 second tasks. Applied to business processes this is what the 4th Industrial Revolution could look like. We’re in the 3rd major hype cycle […]

So, this week we are looking at the Buffer and Window Rx operators. (If you have no idea what I’m on about, I suggest you start at the beginning!) There are a few different implementations of these operators, and we are going to focus on the time-based versions. In order to do this, we need […]

We were recently looking for a way to run a script on an Azure Virtual Machine that already existed (i.e. not executing it at provisioning time). Whilst there are ways to do this remotely (using PowerShell remoting, for example), these tend to require updating the VM’s networking configuration to open up ports or allow traffic […]

After a brief foray into Azure AD, we’re back onto Rx! (If you missed part 1 and 2 then might be worth having a quick read – going to gloss over some of the stuff common to both) OnNext(The GroupBy operator) This week we’re looking at the GroupBy operator. This one’s a bit more involved, […]

So, another year, another random blog topic change! This time we’ve left the world of Rx, and done a hop, skip and leap into Azure! Specifically, Azure AD, permissions and all things service principal. As part of a recent project we needed an Azure Functions App to have access to various Azure resources, including CosmosDB […]

Most people are publishing lists to mark the passing of yet another year. I need a few more weeks to reflect on 2018 @ endjin, but I do have a list of the books (both technical and non-technical) I’ve bought in 2018. The first one is technically a cheat, as I’ve just pre-ordered it. After […]

In September I joined endjin a Technical Fellow (an entirely new branch in endjin’s career pathway to accommodate me – more on that later). I’ve has been involved with endjin since 2011, as an Associate, helping to deliver some of our most technically challenging projects (and if you go even further back, I attended Cambridge University with endjin co-founder […]

There’s been a little bit of a gap since my last Rx blog, I’ve been pretty busy with keeping up with Advent of Code in any spare time (and I’m sure there will be a blog along those lines at some point in the near future). But, for now, it’s time for a deep dive […]

A big part of endjin’s apprenticeship is the structured training each apprentice has to undertake. Time is set aside during the working day to do this training – we aren’t obliged to complete our training outside of our contracted hours, unlike what I’ve heard from some of my friends who work in certain financial institutions… […]

We’re currently building a Data Governance Platform product that enables UK Financial Services organisations to discover and manage the life-cycle, usage, risk and compliance requirements of data assets across the organisation. Much of the core functionality is delivered using Cosmos DB’s Gremlin API to model data lineage and other relationships best represented by a graph […]

In case you missed it… Here’s a link to my last blog on understanding Rx (luckily this blog has an internal buffer so if you’re just tuning in now, you’ve not missed your chance)! OnNext(Understanding of the Rx operators) Now one of the most exciting things about Rx is that it has its own implementation […]

Use-case Here’s the background to this blog: I’ve always found getting csv files into a SQL Server instance much more convoluted than seems necessary. The manual tools provided in SSMS have caused me hours of pain in the past, trying to match-up data types from source and sink. I never seemed to get it right. […]

This has been sitting in my “blogs” folder for some time, with little more in it than a first sentence about the fact that I haven’t written this blog yet. Whilst going over C#, reactive extensions have been one of the things that I have struggled to get my head around the most. I think […]

Edit: In case you missed it! Here’s a link to part 1, a general overview of dataflow as a processing technique! The specific implementation of dataflow that I want to talk about is the TPL dataflow library. The task parallel library is a .NET library which aims to make parallel processing and concurrency simpler to […]

In a recent project, I was asked to produce a tool for importing a fairly large amount of data at once, this data then needed to be processed and exported. After much refactoring, I achieved a solution I was satisfied with which used TPL dataflow to execute the processing in parallel. Before I talk specifically […]

Last week I attended Microsoft Future Decoded in London. There were a huge range of speakers, and I thoroughly enjoyed being immersed in the world of tech. However, an issue that was at the forefront of my mind as I wandered around the expansive halls of the Excel centre was the ongoing conversation surrounding women […]

When I am learning something new and it’s programming related I normally find the best way to learn is to write my own implementation. I have been reading a lot about dependency injection so I thought it would be worthwhile to create my own DI framework so I could see how it actually works. I […]

Asynchronous code has many traps for the unwary. In fact, it has plenty of ground that’s treacherous even for pathologically careful coders. For example, certain ways of using asynchrony can reduce the control you have over concurrency and ordering. This can result in subtle bugs, particularly when the asynchronous work operates on shared underlying resources. […]

(TL;DR This month I learnt a lot about the importance of package management, maintenance and the minimisation of dependencies.) It’s been a little while since my last blog, I’ve been pretty bogged down in a world of packages, .NET frameworks and testing. And it all started with what I thought would be a simple update […]