31 December 2011

Important security update for ASP.NET (MS11-100)

Microsoft published an important security update to improve protection on vulnerability in ASP.NET Could Allow Denial of Service.
Detail of the information about the update is Here
For Window Azure cloud platform and CRM online, Microsoft already patched the system for you.
Take note for the update action if you are using on premises system.

28 December 2011

Working with ServiceConfiguration file in Azure Cloud

Recently I have been working heavily on CRM2011 + Azure platform, just want to share some of the quick tips for those plan to move their application into Cloud!
You will notice some extra file in your VS2010 solution when you added the Azure web role project, 2 configuration files included which differentiate by the "Cloud" & "Local". It give us the flexibility to deploy our solution base on different environment. For example my case I'm using different DB.


In order to configure the values, right click properties brings us into the setting page that allows developer to add the key into different configuration files.

Always remember to select the service configuration that you want to use base on your deployment. To retrieve the value dynamically on run time after deployment, refer below:
Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime.RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue("SQLConnection")

27 December 2011

Interesting Tips: Guid without dash

Easy way to return a GUID without dash:-
Guid.ToString("N")
Guid id = new Guid(string here); //back to guid

Guid test=Guid.NewGuid();
Console.WriteLine(test.ToString("N"));

Console.WriteLine(test.ToString()); 

12 December 2011

3 months free trial for Azure platform

You can now sign up for the free trial Windows Azure, 750 small compute hours/month is more than enough for developer to run "Hello world" service 24*7 for 3 months :)

Of course, there is no obligation to purchase at the end of the free trial, but you need to provide your Live Id and credit card for verification purpose. According to Microsoft, spending limit will applied on trial account for your peace of mind.

Azure free trial
  • Compute: 750 hours of a Small Compute Instance* (can run one small instance full-time or other sizes at their equivalent ratios)
  • Storage: 20GB with 50k Storage transactions
  • Data Transfers: 20GB outbound / Unlimited inbound data transfer
  • Relational Database: 1GB Web Edition SQL Azure database
  • Access Control: 100k transactions
  • Service Bus: Free through March 31, 2012
  • Caching: 128MB cache

09 December 2011

CRM2011 SDK5.0.8

New SDK for CRM 2011 published on Microsoft site. It was updated to include client and portal assemblies with matching version numbers. 

Download the SDK 5.0.8