SQL Server database backup to Azure Blob Storage

SQL Server supports exporting data-tier applications (BACPAC). It means that database is packaged to one file with schema and data. It’s not same as SQL Server backups but to backup smaller databases it works pretty well. Those who don’t want to mess with local backup storage can use cloud services like Azure Blob Storage to keep database backups. Here’s the example how I automated backup of one not so big database using free tools SqlPackage and AzCopy.

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Using Dapper in ASP.NET Core applications

Times ago I blogged about micro ORM-s. I have been busy through all Covid-19 times learning technical side of DDD and during that I met again my old friend Dapper. There are applications where Dapper is used to query read-only data without overhead coming with ORM-s. Also there are simple applications where for one or another reason developers decided to keep as close to raw SQL as possible. This blog post is brief introduction to Dapper anbd how to use it in ASP.NET Core applications.

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Updating SQL Azure database using Visual Studio database project and Azure DevOps

Visual Studio database projects have been one of my important tools since Visual Studio 2010. Database projects were not easy to use with build servers ten years ago. Today things are different. It’s super easy to use database projects to update staging and live databases from Azure build and release pipelines. This blog post shows how to do it.

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Implementing repository querying interface in EF Core DbContext

My last bold statement was that we don’t need custom unit of work and repository classes with Entity Framework Core. One issue remained unsolved and it was querying part of repositories (yeah, those custom querying methods). After some experiments to get querying interface of repositories to DbContext I worked out something that I kind of like. I managed to make DbContext to work like classic unit of work that hosts repository instances. Here’s my experiment and the solution I worked out.

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Embedded Power BI reports with ASP.NET Core

Last year I had some projects where I had to embed Power BI reports to ASP.NET Core applications. There were easy cases that solved practically with copy-paste but I also had more complex situation where server-side code was needed because application uses custom authentication instead of Azure AD. This blog post covers both scenarios for embedding Power BI reportis to ASP.NET Core applications.

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Logging NHibernate SQL commands to debug window

I know there are advanced tools like SQL Server Profiler and NHibernate Profiler but often I want to see NHibernate queries just in debug window to have overview of what’s going on. It’s specially important when improving some legacy application where previous developers had not much idea how NHibernate works. Here’s the simple solution I’m using to get SQL generated by NHibernate to Visual Studio debug window.

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Readable fluent queries with Entity Framework Core

After my first experiments with Query Specification pattern on Entity Framework Core I came to interesting idea – why not using extension methods that wrap query specifications or add directly some more conditions to IQueryable the way that queries are easy to read. Here’s my experiment and thoughts of fluent readable queries.

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Implementing Query Specification pattern in Entity Framework Core

My previous blog post No need for repositories and unit of work with Entity Framework Core showed how Repository and Unit of Work patterns are already implemented in Entity Framework Code (and NHibernate) and how we can use IDataContext generalization to get ORM-s behind same interface. As I’m still trying to find out what’s the best place where to isolate queries without exposing IQueryable I started playing with Query Specification pattern.

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No need for repositories and unit of work with Entity Framework Core

After working again on codebase where Entity Framework Core was used through repository and unit of work patterns I decided to write eye-opener post for next (and maybe even current and previous) generations about what Entity Framework has to offer in the light of these to patterns. In many cases we don’t have to move away from database context approach but stick with it even more than we first planned. Here’s how many useless repositories and units of work born and here’s also how to avoid these and go with implementations offered by Entity Framework Core.

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Using query tags with Entity Framework Core 2.2

Entity Framework 2.2 introduces query tags that make it easier to find specific queries from logs and output windows of Visual Studio. When running application on development box it’s possible to live without query tags. We can set breakpoints to see SQL generated from LINQ queries. But how to find queries from log files in multi-threaded or multi-user scenarios?

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