Video review for "Hands-on Application Development with ASP.NET Core and Angular"

This video from Packt explains step by step how to build a sample application in Angular and ASP.NET Core.  The video is targeted to developers who have some working knowledge of development in this workspace. 

The video is broken down into sections:

Section 1: Getting Started
Section 2: Preparing Data Models and Database
Section 3: Building the APIs
Section 4: Angular Components Setup
Section 5: Angular Services
Section 6: Order Service Setup
Section 7: Finalizing the App

As the titles hint, the sample application is an 'orders' app.  The user is guided through the construction from tools setup to testing.

Each section is further divided into segments (usually 3 of them), each about 5 minutes long.  I found this an excellent setup, as each video is long enough to provide the necessary content but not so long that my attention started to wander. 

Raihan Taher (the instructor) spoke clearly and at a reasonable pace.  One small complaint:  viewing the series in a browser, I didn't find any speed controls to speed up or slow down the presentation.  I really like learning by video, but I like it best when I can control the pace.

The entire video shows the instructor's desktop, with accompanying instructions "now we do this, then this, then this..." so the user gets to see every step along the way as the sample application is built.  There is little in the way of 'overview' material, so the viewer is given practically no high-level information about Angular or ASP.NET.  The result: You may not understand why you are doing something, but you are given instructions on how to do it successfully, at least in one situation.

Watching this video is a lot like getting on-the-job training from a competent co-worker.  You are given everything you need to build a simple application.  (If you want to understand how you built it, or how to build something a little different, you will have to do some further study.)  This seems fine to me, this is an excellent springboard to Angular/ASP.NET development.  Once the user has followed this course, they are adequately prepared to begin the learning journey.

As a further benefit, this video makes use of Visual Studio Code, an excellent free IDE.  The instructor provides plenty of nice usage tips, these are valuable on their own.

If you're looking to get started with Angular on ASP.NET, I would recommend this video.

Happy viewing!



The video can be found here

Video review: "Software Architecture Fundamentals Part 1 Understanding the Basics"

Review for "Software Architecture Fundamentals, part 1  Understanding the Basics"
By Neal Ford, Mark Richards
Published by O'Reilly




This video series covers architectural issues.  The videos are presented as a small room lecture, headed by Neal Ford and Mark Richards.  (I hadn't heard of Richards before, Ford I knew from the software conference speaking circuit.)  The subjects covered are listed below.

Introduction
Architecture Soft Skills Part 1 
Continuous Delivery
Architecture Soft Skills Part 2
Understanding Large Codebases  
Architecting for Change  
Architecture Patterns Part 1  
Architecture Patterns Part 2  
Design Patterns
Architecture Anti-Patterns Part 1  
Architecture Anti-Patterns Part 2  
Tooling and Documentation 
Integration Architecture Fundamentals 
Enterprise Architecture Concepts and Fundamentals

Some of these are short (20 minutes or so), others can go over 40 minutes.  I used a video player that allowed me to control the speed of playback so I could go faster or slower depending on my perceived mastery of the topic.  I liked this.

Ford and Richards both spoke in a clear and straightforward manner.  It's obvious that both are experienced in the topic of software architecture, and they had plenty of valuable tips and insights.  For the most part, the conversations were interesting.  Each talk was accompanied by slideshow bullet points, these were always legible and well put together.  There was a live audience of a few people present at the taping, these people would occasionally ask a question of the speakers.  All things considered, the presentation is excellent.

The knowledge provided is mostly useful information.  A few times the speakers went into territory I consider a little unrealistic, but perhaps this is just my bias formed from years of working in fairly sedentary environments.  (Ford is well-known for lectures about polyglot programming, which I've always considered an immature move towards 'playing with new toys', but your mileage may vary.)   The parts of the lecture I discounted were few, so this should not be considered a harsh criticism.

The parts of the lecture I found most interesting were those that dealt with version control schemes, build techniques, and documentation.  I haven't seen a lot of other material about these topics, so I found the ideas presented of interest.  These parts weren't necessarily better than the others, just topics I found of interest.  I've been a certified architect for over a decade (and a practicing one before that), so I wasn't surprised by some of the other material.  That's not to say there was nothing to learn, just that not all of it was new to me.  What is new might differ for you, based on the career you've had.

At one point Richards claims there are 52 states in the USA, 2 more than proper but 6 less than counted by some politicians.  That's about the only egregeous error I've found in the series.

So, what's the verdict?  I consider these videos well worth the time spent watching.  I took notes on each chapter so I could improve my personal 'bag of tricks', leveraging the experience of these accomplished architects.  Given the high cost of experience, the price of this video series is a bargain.

 Happy Viewing!

Video Series Review: "Pentaho Reporting"

Do you sometimes have a need to produce reports?  I surely have!  No matter how technical my job, it seems I've always had a need to demonstrate trends, provide information, help sell some idea.  For all of these, reports are called for.  This review is about a tool that can help you when you need to write slick, professional reports.  That tool is Pentaho Reporting.

If you're like me, you may know Pentaho as the "Kettle company".  Kettle is an open source ETL engine, and it is very useful.  If you work with batch data, you probably ought to have a look at Kettle soon if you haven't done so already.  It really is slick.

This video series mostly involves the "Pentaho Reporting" tool, though.  The video series is broken up into 8 chapters, each composed of some number of sub-units (3 or 4 seems about average).  The runtime for each video is very reasonable, usually 5 minutes or a little longer.  The moderator's voice is pleasant and proper.  The pace of presentation seems about right.

The contents of each section are presented logically.  The highlights:

Lesson 1
Installation.  Opening, saving reports.  Making PDF, etc.
Making a report using a Wizard
Adding database drivers, defining a report from scratch (no wizard)
Customizing a report (headers, grouping, adding graphics, etc.)

Lesson 2
Setting up Eclipse/Tomcat.  Embedding a report in a servlet.  Embedding in a Swing app.  Compressed reports, writing reports through a Java API.


Lesson 3
Configuring the JDBC data sources
Configuring data sources for OLAP engines, XML, Pentaho Kettle, etc.

Lesson 4
Charts and illustrations

Lesson 5
Parameters in reports.  Limiting query results by parameter, specifying this parameter from the Java API. 
Functions and expressions.  Summarizing groups and making totals.  Showing page numbers in footers.

Lesson 6
Subreports and Cross-tab reports (i.e. a report that shows totals by month). 
How to enable this experimental feature.
 
Lesson 7
Java API to capture events (with a listener), links and mouse events.
HTML reports with interactive links, firing interactive javascript, tying formulas to a button, manipulating the HTML DOM.

Lesson 8
Using Pentaho Reporting with Pentaho Business Itelligence Server.
Setting up the server.  Managing users, roles, scheduling reports.  Setting up automatic emailing of scheduled rpts.
Pentaho Data Integration ('Kettle').  Setting up a small Transformation that kicks off a Reporting job.  Including the Transformation in a Job.  Running the Job both from the IDE and command line.

Does that sound like a lot?  It is a lot to learn!  But fortunately, much of it is intuitive once you see the general way of doing things.  I built some reports along the way, to validate my understanding of what I was seeing.  It's easy once you get going!  Pentaho Reporting also seems like a very capable tool.

So, what's the end verdict?  I highly recommend this video series to anyone tasked with writing reports.  It really does make learning the tool easy, and the video series can be used as a reference if you're already going with Pentaho Reporting.  Watching the videos is painless and relatively quick.  It's hard to think of a downside for this series.

The videos can be found here.

Happy Reporting!

Video course review: "JBoss EAP Configuration, Deployment, and Administration"

I've just completed my first ever 'Video Course' from Packt Publishing, "JBoss EAP Configuration, Deployment, and Administration".  This post is my review of that course.





What's the format/What should you expect?
If you're like me, you've never tried one of these before and might be wondering what to expect.  You can opt to receive the content streamed straight to your browser or through a downloadable zip file.  I tried a sample via streaming, but decided to go with the zip download for best pause/rewind control. 

You unpack the .zip file in a local directory, then open an 'index.html' file in your browser.  You are presented with a navigable carousel that lets you choose which 'chapter' you want to view.  (Full list below, with my notes.)   Each 'chapter' is composed of several topic videos, usually 5 minutes or less in duration.

The narrator is Jason Shepherd, an experienced JBoss Support Engineer.  (Disclosure:  I work with Jason, albeit in a different time zone.  He lives in Australia, and as such sometimes receives support cases my team is working on at the end of the day in North America.  Red Hat does a great job of handling cases 24x7 this way.  I pledge not to let this affect my review.)  As far as narration goes, Jason has a pleasant, even-toned Australian voice.  The narrative is properly paced and everything is easy to understand.

Within each chapter are several topics.  The video for each topic contains a briskly paced narrative and matching visuals.  There are screen views, pointers to documentation, and the occasional diagram.  I found them to be paced about right and illustrated adequately.

So, what about the content?  Below are the 'Chapters', with a few notes above them:

    * * This chapter covers basics of JBoss since EAP 6 / JBoss AS 7.  If you are new to 'domain mode', this will be valuable. * *
    Standalone versus Domain Mode [16:10 minutes]
        Running in Standalone Mode
        Running in Domain Mode
        Deploying an Application in Standalone Mode
        Deploying an Application in Domain Mode
        Sharing a Configuration in Domain Mode

    * * Fundamental tasks for JBoss users. * *
    Adding and Configuring Databases and Message Queues and Using Them from Your Application [21:04 minutes]
        Setting up a Database in JBoss Using the Console
        Adding a Datasource Using the Command Line Interface (CLI)
        Adding an XADatasource Using the Configuration File
        Connecting to a Database
        Configuring Database Pooling
        Adding a Messaging Queue Using the Management Console
        Connecting to Messaging Queues


    * * JVM tips are very good for any user.  Non-JBoss users will find value here, too.  Knowledge of this type is what moves a user from intermediate to advanced.  It will be of long-term value. You are also shown how to use some very useful 3rd-party open source tools. * *
    Configuring the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) for Troubleshooting and Diagnostics [23:19 minutes]
        Selecting a Garbage Collection Strategy
        Gathering Java Virtual Machine Diagnostics
        How and When to Capture a Java Thread Dump
        How to Analyze Garbage Collection Logging
        Analyzing Java Thread Dumps
        Analyzing a Java Heap Dump

    * * Good for enterprise users. * *
    Clustering and Load Balancing for Web Applications [16:11 minutes]
        Clustering in Standalone Mode
        Cluster in Domain Mode
        Set Up mod_cluster on JBoss to Connect to the Load Balancer
        JBoss Messaging in a Cluster

    * * Very useful information.  Class loading problems can be baffling for the unitiated, this chapter gives many good tips and clear explanations of how to control things. * *
    Classloading with JBoss Modules [13:27 minutes]
        Introduction to JBoss Modules for Classloading
        Implicit Module Dependencies
        Including and Excluding Dependencies Using Metadata
        Classloading in an EAR File

    * * Useful for Enterprise JBoss users. * *
    Deploying Applications [15:35 minutes]
        Improve Performance with Asynchronous Servlets
        Encrypt Client-to-Server communication with Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
        Use the Java Authentication and Authorization Service in JBoss (JAAS)
        Securing Passwords in JBoss

    * * Great productivity tips.  If you use JBoss, you'll want to understand these topics. * *
    Building and Testing Application with Maven and JBoss Tools [8:51 minutes]
        Installing the JBoss Tools plugin for Eclipse
        Build and Deploy an Application to JBoss Using Maven
        Deploying Using JBoss Tools
        Running a Test suite in Arquillian
        Anatomy of an Arquillian Test Case

    * * Great for developers, operations, etc.  Understanding logging options can be very helpful. * *
    Configuring the Application Server Logging [13:50 minutes]
        Setting the Logging Verbosity for the Entire Server
        Setting the Logging Verbosity for Parts of the Server or Application
        Improving the Logging Performance using the Async Handler
        Rolling the Server.log File by Size
        Use Logging Configuration in Your application


So there we have it.  The price is reasonable, the content valuable.  If you are a JBoss user (especially if your shop is using it in production), you will want to see these videos.

The video can be found here.

Happy viewing!

Now Under Review: Video Series on JBoss EAP

Readers of this blog are used to finding book reviews for programming materials here.  Today I am trying something new-- a technical video review.




The video series is over some familiar territory-- JBoss EAP Configuration, Administration and Deployment.  I've started watching today and should have a review out in the near future.

Watch this space for my impression of this medium soon.

The Video can be found here.