First published on MSDN on Mar 12, 2016
Authored by Peter Laker
A quick summary of recent news you may not have heard, or may have just missed.
AZURE DATA FACTORY
There are only a few days left to register for a public webinar on "How to monitor & manage big data pipelines with Azure Data Factory".
You can register at https://info.microsoft.com/CO-Azure-WBNR-FY16-03Mar-15-Azure-Data-Factory-Registration.html
Tuesday, March 15th, 2016
10:00 A.M. – 11:00 A.M. PST
Speaker for this session is Gaurav Malhotra, Program Manager at Microsoft.
Also this week, we had a Data Factory tip-off from Sonia Carlson
" We have now published new sample code in our GitHub repo https://github.com/Azure/Azure-DataFactory/tree/master/Samples/CrossAppDomainDotNetActivitySample . This sample illustrates how to write a custom .NET activity that is not constrained to assembly versions used by the ADF launcher (e.g., WindowsAzure.Storage v4.3.0, Newtonsoft.Json v6.0.x, etc.) "
MACHINE LEARNING
Howard van Rooijen recently reached out to highlight some great ML reads:
"Machine Learning – mad science or a pragmatic process?" https://blogs.endjin.com/2016/02/machine-learning-mad-science-or-a-pragmatic-process/
"Machine Learning – the process is the science" https://blogs.endjin.com/2016/03/machine-learning-the-process-is-the-science/
And a slightly older post by Alice Waddicor "Azure Machine Learning–experimenting with training data proportions using the SMOTE module" https://blogs.endjin.com/2015/09/azure-machine-learning-experimenting-with-training-data-proportion...
BIG COMPUTE
Azure Big Compute team has completed a scale run on 100,000 cores with Towers Watson. See how we do this with Batch service.
So, if you had 100,000 cores at your disposal (or, let’s say, 25,000 computers with four cores each), what would you do?
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-data-center-migration-just-got-easier/
DATA FACTORY
In the Data Factory groups, Harish Kumar Agarwal tipped us off about Joris:
"Joris, the OData connector has been released. Note it works with Basic and Anonymous authentications currently."
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/data-factory-odata-connector
Thanks also, to Tai Yee (Microsoft) for tipping us off about "The Power Of R In Power BI"
https://info.microsoft.com/CO-PowerBI-WBNR-FY16-04Apr-14-Power-of-R-in-PowerBI-Registration.html?ls...
"In this demo-rich session, you will learn how to leverage the power of R in Power BI.
1.Get and transform data using R with Power BI Desktop
2.Create an R Visual in Power BI Desktop
3.Share R Visuals with Power BI Dashboards and Reports
Moshe Golan, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft"
APPLICATION INSIGHTS
Here's some Application Insights "hot news" from Beckylin Orooji that fills in some vital gaps:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/wcf-monitoring-with-application-insights
"We released a new Application Insights Labs SDK specifically for monitoring WCF applications. Although Application Insights SDK for .NET Web Applications already supports HTTP-based WCF applications, it has never been optimized for WCF specifics."
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more Azure news updates!
Pete Laker