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We're a little aghast at how time consuming it is to develop syntactically correct ARM templates from scratch.
The Portal helps, but pushes out non-development ready templates (pretty hard to find what the bug is when all the templates use 'name' for the resource name, versus maybe something more verbose like ('microsoftStorageAccountResourceName', microsoftStorageAccountResourceLocation, microsoftStorageAccountResourceTags, etc.).
We understand that there are many ways to deploy -- but if at all possible, we'd like some assurances that ARM is the current preferred way and will continue to be the preferred primary means of scripting deployments via VSTS -- or is it sliding towards a different -- maybe more programmatic -- approach (eg: Powershell, CLI, other).
We're asking this because it looks like we will have to invest significant effort to create a resource library for this organisation (to decrease the need for all projects to become proficient at ARM deployment) -- and would prefer to do it using an approach that will be preferred by developers over the coming years, for maintainability objectives.
Thanks for any insight on which approach to recommend as the best investment.
Templates are going to be around for the foreseeable future... it really depends on whether you want to orchestrate the deployment yourself (imperative deployments using CLI, PS, SDK) or you want ARM to orchestrate the deployment (via templates). Happy to chat in offline if you want to discuss more - email bmoore at microsoft.
Writing this now one year after the original post: The answer to 'ARM Templates are still the preferred deployment mechanism?' probably depends on who you ask. "Preferred" by Microsoft according to their product strategy may be meant differently than preferred by actual users that, well, feel the pain of vendor strategy decisions. I had started with an Azure automation book that used PS scripting only; I was lead (maybe mis-lead?) then to the ARM Template deployment model, mainly by the Microsoft web documentations, but found out that those templates need so much rework that writing a PS script, or even writing an ARM Template from scratch, seems to be a more efficient way to go. In fact, I am confused at the moment about what the 'Best Practice' is, i.e. what method other developers actually use. Is there a community-established opinion on this matter, now in August 2019? Or is it all VSTS / 3rd-party IDEs nowadays?
I'm about to build my first serious Lisp-based project: a web application that will need to scale to tens of thousands of users (not concurrently - probably hundreds, at most, concurrently).
The stack I'm intending to use looks like:
Weblocks web framework with a BerkeleyDB back-end
Elephant object database
Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL)
Ubuntu Server (10.04 LTS)
I have two areas of concern re. this stack:
Is Elephant dead? The latest release is getting on for three years old ... which could just mean that it's stable I guess :-)
As a relative newcomer to Lisp (but with significant RoR & ASP.NET experience) are any of those technologies likely to melt my head?
Feedback on my choices, & suggestions of alternatives, would be appreciated.
Elephant is effectively unmaintained. It does not work on current SBCL and the patch to fix the issue has not been applied. It's possible that someone else might pick up the development but it's not clear in the short term if that will happen. Some people use Rucksack as an object store, and bknr-datastore is also interesting.
Ubuntu is fine, but don't use Ubuntu Lisp packages; it's better to get SBCL from www.sbcl.org and libraries via Quicklisp. Because of that, almost any Linux will work equally well. I use Debian for my Lisp-powered website.
Weblocks is a continuations-based web framework - it is a very old approach, it should not be used for developing modern web-applications.
If you don't mind using PostgreSQL for persistence, you should check out Postmodern.
I have tried Weblocks, and i have made a simple web app also. But when i want to write a more complicated app, i found Weblocks is too limited. It lead user to write more widgets, but i suppose widgets cannot solve all web UI problem. I even read 80% source codes of Weblocks. But .... finally i decided to change another Web framework. What i really need, i suppose, is a url routing library like Ruby on Rails, Restas is fine. I tried it, and i wrote a blog library which support themes like WordPress using Restas. Restas is easier than Weblocks, but more powerful in my opinion.
Until recently I'd considered myself to be a pretty good web programmer (coming up for 10yrs commercial experience on a variety of e-commerce, static and enterprise applications). I'm self taught and have always used the Microsoft product stack (ASP, ASP.NET)...
My applications are always functional, relatively bug free, but have never been lightening quick. As a frequent web user I always found this to be the norm... how fast are the websites from the big tech players (eBay, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, Dell, Telerik etc etc) - in truth none are particularly fast. I always attributed this to "the way things are with web apps"...
...then I cam across a product called Jira from atlasian and this has stopped me in my tracks...
This application is fast, and I mean blindingly fast.. too fast to time the switches between pages, fully live content, lots of images and data and cross references etc etc...
I run this on an intranet, with a large application DB, and this is running on a very normal server (single processor, SATA HDD, 8GB RAM).
Am I missing something?? Are my programming techniques that bad?? I am wondering if this speed gain is down to it being written in Java and running on Tomcat.
Does anyone have any benchmarks to compare JSP / ASP or Tomcat / IIS???
Thanks,
Mark
NOTE: this isn't a blatant plug for Jira. I don't work for them or have any affiliation to them... but I would like to be able to write applications like them :)
YMMV. But one of the longest-lived Things That Aren't True Anymore is the assertion that "Java Is Slow". Excepting floating-point (where most Java implementations aren't at liberty to use the floating-point hardware), Java is generally as fast or faster than compiled code. Some of the best and brightest have spent years of effort ensuring this, including such things as dynamic recompilation/re-optimization of code based on run-time metrics - something that statically-compiled languages like C or assembler cannot boast.
ASP is sort of the opposite extreme, since the original ASP had to recompile each page request each and every time it was made. ASPX addressed this by allowing retention of the compiled page code. That got rid of a lot of useless overhead.
A more compelling reason to prefer Java over ASPanything/IIS is freedom. A Java/Tomcat webapp will run under almost any OS on almost any hardware. IIS runs on Windows. Period. And for the most part, that also means Intel. Not Sparc, Not zSeries. Maybe you don't care. But then again, maybe next week IBM will offer your employer a can't-refuse deal on a mainframe.
I don't have benchmarks, and there are a lot of things that can make one platform preferable. But I permanently gave up on the "Java is slow" idea when I encountered the Poseidon UML tool with its cool real-time graphics UI and the FreeMind mindmapper tool. A small hit to startup the JVM, but after that, you'd never know what language you were working under.
The great debate. Java vs. .Net.
When .Net first came out there was an application written called "The Pet Shop." Which was a .Net port of Sun's J2EE reference application, "The Pet Store". It was announced that Microsoft's implementation was "faster."
As with anything, especially anything to do with marketing, you have to dig deeper to find the truth.
Any technology can be fast with enough hardware and the correct design.
In my experience there are two factors to speed: What type of hardware is used and how you architect your application (this includes database tuning).
Caching at various levels (response, db, etc.) makes a huge different in responsiveness of a web application. There is also a lot of things that are done to reduce time consuming operations like db connection pooling, sql statement caching, etc. As much as I'd like to say Java is better :-), I think in this case the performance is due to the way Jira was written and the fact that it's being run internally (probably with few users as compared to eBay, Facebook, Microsoft). This site, Stackoverflow, uses ASP.NET MVC and IIS and is very responsive and my guess (since code is not open sourced, yet) is that they use many of the same techniques you would find in Jira or any other web application built to scale.
I think that it is not typically the frameworks and languages used that make an application slow. In my experience, some frameworks like JSF or .NET server side controls give developers alot of freedom to make too many database calls and look things up too often, but that's definitely not the fault of the framework used.
Keep your application as light as possible and focus on keeping the data sent to the client as small as possible, and you will have a fast application. It's usually faster to develop fast applications too.
The Jira folks have written a best in class application (and charge for it) - nice work crocodile dundees.
I also suggest to consider also two aspects:
the maintenance activities: logging and deployment. In my opinion under a unix like server is more easier to log, deploy, and maintain new release than doing the same on a Windows server.
if the project require to use some open source application (i.e. Alfresco repository) Java is better solutions
People's opinion is mostly biased. Most people have never really tried the other while claiming the other is slower. I wouldn't trust any answer: it's mere opinion. It's boring to always read the same 4 cents again and again.
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I have been developing in asp.net since its existence (also classic asp before that) and also I have been using SQL server as my back-end database.
After serious consideration, I now want to change the language I use. Considering the OOP capabilities of the .NET platform, what other languages do you suggest that I start learning instead of ASP.NET and why?
Also what should I use as a database? I have no experience in databases other than the SQL Server.
Django would get my vote.
Like you, I'd been using ASPNET since its creation and then a job forced me to use PHP. Then another. And another. I got to the point where 90% of my time was spent doing PHP and I didn't want to split my time between two completely different work-flows so I just went with it.
PHP, as you may or may not be aware, is a complete scrotum of a language when compared against the relative beauty of languages like C# or even VB.NET. And it's not getting better any way soon. Development frameworks mean you have to upload half-a-million files for each project and it all just feels unneccessary.
So about two months ago I started to look into alternatives. I use Linux now so I bump into Python quite a lot of the time. It looks pretty enough. It's always pretty well formatted (by design) and it has fairly excellent OOP techniques and opportunities.
Then I learnt about the Django ORM so I thought I'd make a quick site with some basic interactive features. I made a secret santa website for my girlfriend's family. Multiple forms, authentication, listing and detail pages and a splash of AJAX. Took me (a complete uber-novice) two days to get functional and the rest of the week to beautify (I'm a slow designer).
Other benefits include its superb built-in caching, a community that really knows how to program stuff, pre-made, reusable apps that you can just plug into your site and go, and python's easy_install and pip that make getting modules so simple. Oh and unlike ASPNET, it'll run on any OS which can make for considerable savings for personal projects.
I've since ported the rest of my PHP sites (and those that I have to maintain) to it and I'm about to start porting over my ASPNET projects. I'm happy.
Databases are pretty much a non-issue in Django. You pick one that's right for the size of your project, plug it in and the ORM handles all the DBIO.
I use SQLite for small-to-medium projects and a MySQL cluster for large projects.
I would use PostgresSQL for your database. It is by far the most feature complete of the open source databases. Though MySQL seems to be regarded as the best for speed. If cost is no object then oracle is obviously a big player.
In terms of language Java is going to be your best bet for similarity to the .Net languages. It is strictly typed and OO like C#. And is widely used in large enterprises, much like .NET.
Of course if you are changing just for the sake of change then maybe its better to switch to something more different. Ruby and Python are the big dynamic languages these days and will offer a different perspective.
Ruby on Rails seems to be very nice choice. Only it is a bit too different and bit too weird. But seems to be most effective, too. RoR is database agnostic, so the choice of database is not about syntax. You don't need to think about which database you use when writing application. You just use RoRs methods to access database and it will automatically wire it to the DB engine.
Or go with PHP and MySQL, it is proven and widely spread. I myself was using MS SQL Server first and switched to MySQL without problems. PHP is a bit dirty language, but it is comfortable to use and well supported and documented, too. If you decide to go this way, try ZEND framework, it solves lots of things and makes writing web applications much easier.
Use Mono, it runs on Linux, Mac and Windows. It runs my ASP.NET program faster in Ubuntu than when it is running on my development machine(Windows XP's IIS, though I haven't yet compared the speed when running on Windows server)
Languages supported on Mono: C#, Java, Boo, Nemerle, VB.NET, PythonNet, IronPython, Oberon, PHP, Object Pascal, Cobra, Component Pascal, Delta Forth, DotLisp, #Smalltalk
For database, use PostgreSQL, it is dubbed as the Oracle of the opensource database. It has many features suitable for enterprise-type system.
http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page
Why not take a look at ASP.Net MVC, you will capitalize on much of what you already know and is quite a bit different in its approach to websites. Just switching without a compelling reason or target in mind is probably not that useful, however it doesn't hurt to learn another language.
This site is built on ASP.Net MVC and Linq to SQL.
What is the reason for you leaving the .net scene?
A change of language may not fix the root cause.
I switched from LAMP to .net myself due to my job and then gradually in my hobby time to allow me to focus 100% on 1 language.
I switched from LAMP to .net myself due to my job and then gradually in my hobby time to allow me to focus 100% on 1 language.
You probably learned a few things from LAMP that you could apply to .NET. That's the best reason to explore other languages and frameworks.
Dynamic scripting languages can save considerable development time: no compilation, weak typing, and flexibility.
Personally, I love the flexibility of php. There are no abstract, inflexible, complex web controls to learn. I have complete control of my widgets because I can change the underlying code.
I didn't know php is still like a scrabbled scripting language... I don't want to go back to the old times...
No I need the shift to be as smooth as possible. From what I read, it seems ruby is going to be the choise... although Django seems interesting.
To be perfectly honest, the more I discover and experience in JavaScript / jQuery and DOM the less I use asp.net controls and related garbage on my pages. I have reached to a point where I know use ASP.NET for my project's back-end (objects and data classes to send and retrieve data) and standard HTML forms and controls on the front side, using jQuery for DOM manipulation and communication (thorugh ajax) with the server.
Having come to this point in my development career, I thought it would be a good idea to learn a new language that is faster than asp.net, that is not dependent on windows, and that is easier to learn.
I can then buy a macbook and relax :)
SQL Server Express has worked fine for me. I've used a lot of different databases with c#, but only mysql and binary files in production.
ASP.NET isn't a language. It's a framework upon which you can build web sites and web applications.
the reason is not job-centric.
Recently I realised I had enough of
bits-of-pieces that keeps me stuck
with microsoft. e.g. I want to buy a
MacBook but I can't since I need IIS
and VS etc.. (I know I can use windows
on a mac but what's the point)
Are you tired of Microsoft in general or ASP.NET specifically? Or is there a Cult you want to join that requires MacBook ownership? Or are you interested in LAMP or Java development? Do you still want to do web applications or are you more interested in desktop or mobile applications?
As far as databases are concerned, the most obvious alternative would be MySQL. Other options would be PostgreSQL or SQL Lite
I am creating a project called MPDA. It is a simple Dll and application that creates files that act as databases. It is aimed at .NET developers that want to use a database that does NOT impact on system performance on the system it is hosted on. Has no webside dependencies. If you have FTP access you can host it. No install required client or webside. Works on ANY platform with a file hosting ability. On drawback is it is accessible from .NET only.
I am the .Net specialist in a consultancy with many difference flavors of developers using many different languages and frameworks. Because everyone is pretty much trying to push their own agendas with our different clients in terms of what technology to propose, I'm constantly finding myself in the classic arguments with them all about "why" .Net may be a better technology solution for a given clients requirements.
Often time here, the debate comes down to the issue of performance. Usually the areas that are argued about here consist of costs, maintainability, and performance. I have a hard time arguing about cost because in general open-source technologies are usually cheaper, and although and can usual put a good word in for .Net in terms of total cost of ownership (It seems to be pretty easy to convince people that .Net applications have relative low costs for maintainability if the application architecture has been thoughtfully designed), we will really only push .Net here if the client understands and is indifferent about the costs associated with Microsoft licensing. In terms of maintainability, like I mentioned before, the other developers here realize how much a difference it can make when an application is thoughtfully designed. I have had around 8 years of experience programming .Net solutions and I'm pretty confident in my ability to present to a client all the features and tool sets that .Net provides to give an application a long, and easy to maintain life span.
So again, what it usually boils down to is an argument over performance. Up until now, I have worked for companies that already used Microsoft development technologies to developer their applications so while I have discussed performance with others in the past I have never been a position where I have had to convince performance. My other co-workers are always boasting about these different website that they go to that show improved performance for open-source web applications. This all being said, what I would like to know from everybody here is where do you usually go to get your information about how may some .Net web applications have out performed other technologies?
Thanks in advance for the advice,
-Matt
I appreciate the detail, though I must say I forgot your question at the end. =)
Anyhow, this is something that has certainly been on my mind in the past. There is always a conflict on what technology is the best. We all know on each side you will find zealots, so it's quite difficult weeding out the facts. Professionally, I've seen successes/disasters on both sides of the fence.
For you, since you have a vested interest in .NET. I would showcase success stories, such as ... (insert whatever big name site you want) Facebook, SO, etc. I'd also find stories where things went wrong on the .NET side and pinpoint the reason. Like you said, it is often poor implementation. I don't know how many DailyWTF stories I've seen with ASP.NET sites behaving poorly but it gets traced back to 1) Poor design 2) Implementation 3) Coding.
Once you have a solid show case to justify the technology you can then of course talk about your own past experiences. You need to qualify yourself as being able to avoid the same pitfalls that your stories exposed.
.NET loses in performance against C/C++. In general, it will win over Python, Ruby, and PHP in baseline performance. The static typing tends translates into faster native code. (There are exceptions, such as Python's hand-tweaked set() performance being faster than HashSets in .NET)
The difference might come down to things like apache vs IIS (and their respective caching configurations), database architecture, etc. Features than can be misused or misunderstood (ViewStates and large GridViews, or using large numbers of hidden WebControls, for example)
Depending on what type of application you are building I've found that performance is rarely an issue. All the technologies out there can perform well enough.
When debating .net versus java/ruby/python etc I usually try to point out other benefits of .net.
There was this one time my boss asked me why .net instead of others? He wanted to know because he could get a PHP programmer for cheap. As part of the report we wrote a simple web application in 4 different languages and the .net app ran the fastest by far. After that we solidified behind .net. This was when .net was new so none of us really knew it well. We came from ASP, PHP, Coldfusion and Java backgrounds.
If you are looking for .Net performance stories you can listen to this dot net rocks show