Azure Advocate Weekly Round Up with #PowerfulDevs!

by Scott Muniz | Jul 17, 2020 | Azure, Microsoft, Technology, Uncategorized

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

This week we held POWERful DEVs Conference, the first virtual conference of its kind. There was a  showcase of how developers can leverage the Power Platform to build applications faster and with far less effort.  Checkout the link above to the conference agenda and head over to the Microsoft Channel 9/Microsoft Developer You Tube channel to see all of the content on demand. 

Content Round Up

How to Run Custom Scripts on Azure Arc Enabled Servers

Thomas Maurer

With the latest update for Azure Arc for Servers, you are now able to deploy and use extensions with your Azure Arc enabled servers. With the Custom Script extension, you can run scripts on Azure Arc enabled servers and works similar to the custom script extension for Azure virtual machines (VMs). There is an extension for Windows and Linux servers, which is a tool that can be used to launch and execute machine customization tasks post configuration automatically.

Creating Custom Connector from Azure Functions with Swagger

Justin Yoo

This post shows how to create a custom connector from Swagger document, automatically generated from Azure Functions instance on-the-fly, and how to apply the custom connector to Power Automate and Power Apps.

Manage Hyper-V VMs using PowerShell Direct

Thomas Maurer

PowerShell Direct lets you remotely connect to a Virtual Machine running on a Hyper-V host, without any network connection inside the Virtual Machine. PowerShell Direct uses the Hyper-V VMBus to connect inside the Virtual Machine. This feature is convenient if you need it for automation and configuration for Virtual Machines or if you, for example, messed up network configuration inside the virtual machine, and you don’t have console access.

Instagram Content Analysis Code Sample using Cognitive Services

Dmitry Soshnikov

In this example, we try to figure out what makes people like pictures on Instagram more. To do so, we use Cognitive Services Vision API, and some Python and Machine Learning Magic. You can easily run this sample for yourself by opening code in Visual Studio Codespaces.

Studying for AI-900

Sarah Lean

Now Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, is absolutely not my area of expertise, I am very much a infrastructure gal. However, I love to learn new things and stretch myself every now and again, and sitting the AI-900 exam and passing it is firmly in my sights, and I thought I’d share some of the resources I have bookmarked and am using for my study.

PowerShell Basics: How to Delete Microsoft Teams Cache for All Users

Anthony Bartolo

Sometimes there is a need to delete Microsoft Teams cache to quicken the adoption of an in-band policy change or simply troubleshoot an issue. The challenge here is that the cache for Microsoft Teams is in multiple directories. This can be done manually but would result in a slow and tedious process. Again, we turn to PowerShell to automate this process and this time it’s a one-liner that addresses this opportunity. 

Azure Log Analytics for Azure Arc Enabled Servers

Thomas Maurer

In this blog post, we are going to have a quick look at how you can access Azure Log Analytics data using Azure Arc for Servers. The Azure Log Analytics agent was developed for management across virtual machines in any cloud, on-premises machines, and those monitored by System Center Operations Manager. The Windows and Linux agents send collected data from different sources to your Log Analytics workspace in Azure Monitor, as well as any unique logs or metrics as defined in a monitoring solution. When you want to access these logs and run queries against these logs, you will need to have access to the Azure Log Analytics workspace. However, in many cases, you don’t want everyone having access to the full workspace. Azure Arc for Servers provides RBAC access to log data collected by the Log Analytics agent, stored in the Log Analytics workspace the machine is registered.

Let people try your query in Microsoft Graph Explorer

Ayca Bas

Microsoft Graph Explorer is a wonderful learning space for the ones who are looking for testing Microsoft Graph APIs and reviewing the responses quickly. It provides the simple authentication where you can login, then see the response preview with your own tenant data. 

Today, we will explore one of the most practical features of Graph Explorer: “Share Query“.

Manage Azure Event Hubs with Azure Service Operator on Kubernetes

Abhishek Gupta

Azure Service Operator is an open source project to help you provision and manage Azure services using Kubernetes. In this blog post, you will get a high level overview of Azure Service Operator, how to set it up, use it to provision Azure Event Hubs and deploy apps to Kubernetes which use the Azure Event Hubs cluster

Getting Started with GraphQL on Azure – Part 1

Aaron Powell

This is the first part of my GraphQL on Azure series and we look at the different ways to host a GraphQL server on Azure, and some recommendations on why different options work for different reasons.

Improving CollectionView Scrolling

Brandon Minnick

Xamarin Podcast – July Edition

Matt Soucoup

Xamarin.Forms 4.7 is out and the Inverter Converter is all the rage!! … well … multi-value bindings are all the rage – but that doesn’t have quite the ring of Inverter Converter. This month James and Matt run down the rest of the great features in Xamarin.Forms 4.7 including how it helps you manage light and dark themes, eliminates the need for James’ image circle plug-in, and makes writing Grid row and column definitions so, so, so much easier.

Azure Data Factory adds support for XML format

by Scott Muniz | Jul 17, 2020 | Azure, Microsoft, Technology, Uncategorized

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

We are glad to announce that now in Azure Data Factory, you can extract data from XML files by using copy activity and mapping data flow. With such capability, you can either directly load XML data to another data store/file format, or transform your XML data and then store the results in the lake or database.

XML format is supported on all the file-based connectors as source. You can find the new “XML” option in the available format list:

When reading data from XML files, you have the flexibility to define whether to apply schema validation, to specify how to handle namespaces, and to map selective fields or reshape the hierarchy to match downstream data need.

Copy activity source example:

In mapping data flow, you can use XML as source either via an XML dataset or via inline dataset.

Data flow source example with XML dataset:

To learn more about XML support in Azure Data Factory, visit XML format in the documentation site.