Azure DocumentDB is a NoSQL document database-as-a-Service from Microsoft Azure is designed for saving, retrieving and managing each record in an internal structure of fields (semi-structured data, documents or keys). DocumentDB is a schema free JSON document database and also support JavaScript. DocumentDB includes built-in high availability, offers predictable performance and supports elastic scale-out. DocumentDB has some exciting features.

• Tunable, high performance.
• Multi document transactions.
• Query over schema free JSON.
• Automatic Indexing.
• Easy to learn query grammar.
• Low-latency access around the globe.
• Rich SQL queries over schema-free JSON storage.
• Server side execution of the Application defined JavaScript as stored procedures and triggers.
• JavaScript language integration for multi-document transactions.
• Tunable consistency levels for optimal Application performance.
• Standard JSON storage with RESTful HTTP interfaces.

  

Let’s understand it by performing something practical on the portal. Enter your credentials and login to Azure portal. Go to New, select Storage and click See All because it seems there is no DocumentDB in Featured Apps.

Select NoSQL and click it. Here, I need to create Document Account.

Give a name to your account and select API for it. There are two options for selecting API DocumentDB and MongoDB. I’ll discuss MongoDB in my further articles. All steps are same and are related to the previous articles. Click to create DocumentDB Account.

Under DocumentDB account, I have to create a Collection. It is a logical container for the physical partitions. A collection is like a container for JSON documents and JavaScript Application logic. Click Add Collection to add a new one.

For a collection, give a name to your collection and its storage capacity to handle collection is up to 10 TB and set a storage capacity for it. Now, there is a Partition key, which is a JSON property within your documents. Partition key is an element within your document. Give a database name to it and click OK button to create a Collection.

Thus, my collection is ready now.

Go to Document Explorer, where we can create and upload our documents under our Collection.

Click Create and you will see a JSON format script with ID and People (partion). You can upload JSON script as well. I’ve given an Id and some data in People Partition. Click Save to save this script.

Now, go to Query Explorer and run a query.

The query will be executed successfully and produces the expected result.

I am going to explain SQL Server and SQL database in Microsoft Azure portal. You can create a database and Server from Azure portal and access it in Visual Studio. Afterwards, you can use it as Entity Framework Designer from the database in any Application.

Let’s login to Azure new portal and create a SQL database.

For creating a database on Azure portal, you have to fill in some details of it. Give a name to your database, subscription name, resource group whatever you want to use, blank database and a Server.

Click Servers, if you want to use an existing SQL Server from the list of the available Servers into your Azure, then you can select it (you must know name and password of the Server). Here, I am going to create a new one.

To create a new Server, follow the steps given below.

Click to select button to create a new Server.

Just click to create button to create a Server and database.

I want to add it with Microsoft SQL Server. To generate a client IP, click Add Client IP in Firewall Setting.

Here, I am using Visual Studio 2015. My Azure subscription is already connected with Visual Studio Server Explorer. Open SQL Databases under your Azure subscription. You’ll get your database, which you created on Azure portal. I want to open it in Microsoft SQL Server Explorer where we can create the scripts.

In next popup, give a Server name into Server name section, which you created in Azure portal along with the user name and password.

After clicking Connect button, you connect with Explorer. Now, you can create tables.

Add a new table.

After writing table script in to design section, click Update button.

Click Update database to update whole database.

Refresh the table and you will get the expected result.

If you want to connect with it again, then you have to enter only Server password.

Now, you can connect with ADO.NET Entity Data model. Also, you can use an Entity Framework approach.

Microsoft Azure app Service API apps offers secure and flexible development, easy deployment including continous delivery, accessing On-Permises data, Web jobs for background processing, high availability and scaling options for any sized RESTful API Applications. Use frameworks and templates to create RESTful APIs in seconds. Azure API apps are well known for automatic OS patching. You can use any tool or an opearting system to develop your RESTful API with .NET, Java, Node.js, PHP or Python.

• Fastest and easy way to build productivity developement.
• Provision and deploy fast and consume API.
• Simple develop, host access control and authentication.
• Secure platform, which scales automatically with hybrid connectivity.
• New Developement experience with API features.
• API definition for the Website host.
• Swagger metadata, which is integrated with API app.
• Easy connectivity with all apps.

  

Source – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-api/app-service-api-apps-why-best-platform

Create a Azure API app Service from Azure portal,;login to your credentials and go to New and select Web+Mobile. In featured apps , you may get API app. If it is not there, then click See all options.

Type API app and select it from the given list.

Click Create button to create a new API app.

Give a name to your API app, your default subscription will be selected by default and I have selected an existing resource group for my app.

App Service Plan/Location is your physical resource, where you host your apps. API app associates with one app Service Plan/Location. You can create a new plan for your app by clicking it.

You have to choose one pricing tier P1 Premium or S1 Standard or B1 basic for your app.

Application insights contain tools, which can be used to manage your app behavior. After filling all the necessary details, click Create button to create an API app.

When your app will create under your selected resource group, a notification appears.

Whenever your app is created, then you can manage your app such as Deployment settings, Settings, app Service plan, deployment tools, API, Monitoring and some common setting related to the app.

You can manage and see your app by clicking Overview, where would all the details be, which are available for your app.

Host your app Service to the existing app on Azure

I’m going to create an Azure API app from Visual Studio 2015 and I will publish it to our existing API app. Thus, let’s create a new solution and give it a name.

Select Azure API app template from the templates.

Create a model class by right clicking on Models folder in the solution.

In the class, I have created three properties.

Let’s add a Web API2 Controller class by right clicking on Controllers folder.

Give a name to your Controller class.

Write the code given below into your Controller class, where I’ve returned a list of cricketers.

Now, it’s time to publish our app to Azure. Right click on the solution and select Publish option.

Select a target to publish your app and click ext.

Enter your credentials and you’ll get your Azure Subscription along with the list of Resource Group. If you remember, where I have created an API app in the Default-Web-EastAsia. Expand and select app.

After clicking OK button, a connection will be created. Click Next button.

I don’t have any database for this app. Continue clicking on to next.

Finally, click Publish to publish your app on Azure.

It can take some time to publish it.

After a successful attempt, your app Service will be created.

Your app has been published now you can check your Service data by calling your controller in the Browser.

In this article, we learned about how can we create an Azure API app and publish it on Azure.

Nowadays, we are moving more and more towards digital transformation, like banking, automobiles, and  other sensitive information. Digital transformation has changed the business world totally and digital transformation is not just about end users in a particular organization or region. The technologies and processes driving digital transformation can help transform IT and also drive business rapidly.

Why security is important?

For most of us, the recent Zero Day vulnerabilities in iOS are probably still fresh.

Let’s think about what could happen. By clicking a link, we would get a text/message, our device could be jailbroken, and then it would ne completely owned by an attacker with access to literally everything stored and accessed with that device.

This is an incredible reminder of the importance of securing and protecting our people and data.

Given are the examples of most recent security breaches.

So, we could say that Cyber Security is the number one priority.

So, not coincidentally, this escalating threat comes at the same time when the surface area you have to protect is also rapidly expanding. This expansion is driven by the always growing number of mobile devices in your network, and these devices are constantly taking your data well beyond the confines of your data center. There is also the growing number of SaaS applications your organization needs or that your employees are already using.

Your operations are most likely run from a different set of datacenters, public and private. For decades, we all have relied on the perimeters of our organizations to act as one of the primary lines of defense from attacks but as our data regularly moves outside of these perimeters to the cloud and cloud-based apps, these boundaries are no longer effective deterrents.

• Do you know which user accounts have been compromised and are being used to access your company or customer information?
• Can you guarantee that only your employees are accessing corporate resources?
• Do you know what SaaS apps your employees are using and protect the company data in those apps?
• Are you confident that corporate data being accessed and stored on mobile devices is secure?
• Do you know what sensitive/confidential data is being shared with partners?
• Do you want to know if sensitive/confidential data is assessable without requiring authentication and validation?

So, we could say that after any security threat, these are action items needed to be performed.

1. Protect
2. Detect
3. Respond

   

Azure Active Directory is a comprehensive identity and Access Management cloud solution that provides a robust set of capabilities to manage users and groups. It helps secure access to on-premises and cloud applications, including Microsoft Online services like Office 365 and many non-Microsoft SaaS applications.

How reliable is Azure AD?

The multi-tenant, geo-distributed, high availability design of Azure AD means that you can rely on it for your most critical business needs. Running out of 28 data centers around the world with automated failover, you’ll have the comfort of knowing that Azure AD is highly reliable and that even if a data center goes down, copies of your directory data are live in at least two more regionally dispersed data centers and available for instant access.

Control and help secure email, documents, and sensitive data that you share outside your company walls. From easy classification to embedded labels and permissions, enhance data protection at all times with Azure Information Protection—no matter where it’s stored or who it’s shared with.

What is Azure Security Center?

Security Center helps you prevent, detect, and respond to threats with increased visibility into and control over the security of your Azure resources. It provides integrated security monitoring and policy management across your Azure subscriptions, helps detect threats that might otherwise go unnoticed, and works with a broad ecosystem of security solutions.

Key capabilities

Security Center delivers easy-to-use and effective threat prevention, detection, and response capabilities that are built in to Azure. Key capabilities are:

I hope this article has increased your understanding about digital transformation. Until next time, keep learning!!

This article is based on the Storage tool of Microsoft Azure. In previous articles of the series, we learned all about storage in Microsoft Azure. The Azure Storage tool is one kind of place where you can manage all your Microsoft Azure Storage in a new fashion. You can manage all your storage, even blobs, or files, or tables, or queues in a very fast and easily manner as such as your files. You can directly copy, paste and delete files within the Azure Storage Explorer.

You can download Azure Explorer from this Link or this Link.

Open the setup of Azure Explorer, and accept the agreement before installation of it.

The setup will take a default folder in to your system.

Click on to Next to finish the setup.

The Azure Storage Explorer has successfully installed, open it and you’ll find that you are connected with your default subscription. You need one storage account on Azure Portal to connect with it. So just go to Azure Portal and create a storage account.

Now right click on to storage account to add an account from portal.

A Storage Account has its name and primary and secondary key which is used for accessing a storage account from outside the portal. I’m going to use a storage account name and key to connect with Storage account.

Here you need to copy your Storage Account name and Account Key from the Azure portal.

You can get your name and key from the Azure Portal by clicking on to Access keys.

The keys really help in to connect with outside of the portal where you want to access storage account.

Copy your Storage Account name and Keys from here and paste it on Azure Storage Explorer.

After clicking on the next button, you’ll be connected with your Storage Account, now you can perform all operations in one place.

In fthe ollowing screenshot you can see your storage account is connected with Azure Explorer.

Under Blob Container, I have a Container which is a set of blobs. Under Container I have three files. Right click on to any file where you can see the properties of any file.

Notice

If you want to access blobs to the browser or you want to download, you have to change permission of the container  make either the blob or container not private.

If you’re going to download any file then the file will be saved in Temp folder.

Copy the path of any file and paste it on directly browser’s url. You will get your expected result on the browser.

You can access other storages by the Azure Storage Explorer as well.

I hope you enjoyed this series. Thank you