Development

Function Friday: Binary, DataUri, UriComponent, and Base64 Conversion Functions

This time I’m going to delve into conversion functions for base64 and binary. Both are typically used to convert binary files such as images and zip files back and forth between formats that various connectors need in order to process them. It’s also sometimes used to generate hashes used for checksums, certificates, and encryption. base64 The base64 function is used to convert a string into a base64 encoded version of a string. The pattern is:

Friday, July 29, 2022 | 3 minutes Read

Power Automate: Connectors from Independent Publishers

One of the most fantastic parts of Microsoft Power Automate is its ability to connect to a massive array of other systems to push and pull data. Early on this was restricted to those systems that Microsoft had created connections to or had worked with external vendors to develop connections to their systems. In recent years, however, they added the ability for people to create their own connectors to external systems and to share those connectors with the community at large. There are now a huge number of Microsoft-approved community-created connectors available for Power Automate. In this post, I want to highlight a few of my favorites.

Tuesday, July 26, 2022 | 5 minutes Read

Guest Post: What are the different types of interviews?

I’ve got a guest post this week provided by the Codementor team. Thanks to them for providing this, and I encourage you to take a look at what they have to offer. Your resume got you in the door. What awaits you is a big hurdle: the interview process. Whether it’s a one-on-one interview with the manager, a group interview with the entire team, or multiple interviews of all types, you’ll have to pass them to land the job.

Tuesday, July 19, 2022 | 9 minutes Read

A Brief Introduction to Azure Data Factory

Over the last year or so I’ve had a chance to delve deeply into one of Microsoft’s newer Azure offerings: Azure Data Factory (ADF). This post is a summarized version of a talk I’ve given at a few conferences and meetups in recent months. A huge part of what we deal with in tech is data. It’s everywhere, and it’s only getting bigger. It used to be that if we needed to move data between different systems or data sources, we would have to spend hours, days, or even weeks writing some custom integration that would take the data from one system and convert it to be imported into a different system.

Wednesday, July 13, 2022 | 8 minutes Read

Function Friday - Data Type Conversion Functions - Bool, Decimal, Float, Int, String

For this batch of functions, we’ll start delving into the data type conversion functions. For the first group let’s look at the base type conversions. They all work pretty much the same way. Bool The bool function is used to convert input data into boolean form (i.e. true or false). The format is pretty straightforward: bool(<value>) The value can be of number or string data types. The output depends on the data type of the input. Numbers all work the same way, whether it’s an int, float, or decimal. If the input number is 0, bool returns false. If the input number is any other value, positive or negative, and the result is true.

Friday, July 8, 2022 | 3 minutes Read

The Ethics of Being a Software Developer

There’s a lot of pain in the world right now. In nations where freedom exists, the rights and privileges of their citizens are eroding away. The world is changing. Freedom is under attack from every corner and by every means possible, be it war, oppression, apathy, or the destruction of rights by those who have been entrusted to uphold and sustain those rights. As technologists, we have a duty and responsibility to evaluate our roles in those changes.

Wednesday, July 6, 2022 | 11 minutes Read

Function Friday - Collection Functions: Contains, Item, Join

For the last group of collection functions, we’re taking a look at the functions that focus on the items in the collection itself. Contains The contains function details whether or not a collection contains a specific element. The result is a boolean value (true/false). The pattern is as follows: contains('collection', 'value') contains([collection], 'value') The exact way it works depends on what the collection is. If the collection is a string, the contains function works to find a substring of characters.

Friday, June 17, 2022 | 2 minutes Read

Function Friday - Collection Functions: Intersection, Union, Skip, Take

For the second batch of collection functions we’re taking a look at the functions that let you work with the collections themselves. These functions let you slice, dice, and merge one or more collections together. Intersection The intersection function compares two or more collections and returns a new array that contains only the elements that exist in all the passed in collections. The format is as follows: intersection(collection1, collection2, ...) As with all the functions, you can pass in collection variables or literals, and strings are treated as character arrays.

Friday, June 10, 2022 | 3 minutes Read

Function Friday - Collection Functions - First, Last, Empty, Length

Power Automate contains excellent support for working with collections of objects. Generally, these will be treated as arrays of objects. However, these functions will also work with strings as, in Power Automate, strings are also considered a collection, as they are essentially an array of characters. As such, Power Automate contains a good selection of functions for working with these collections. For my return to functions in Power Automate, we’ll take a look at the first group of collection functions: First, last, empty, and length.

Friday, June 3, 2022 | 3 minutes Read

My Favorite Podcasts and Video Channels for 2022

I’ve posted a couple of times (here and here) in the past about my favorite podcasts and I figured it’s past time for an updated list. So here’s my current list of favorite podcasts. And this time I thought I’d add my favorite YouTube video channels. Some are developer-related, and some are not. DotNetRocks This one continues to be one of my all-time favorites. Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell are two of the superstars of the .NET world and continuously provide a steady stream of the greatest minds in the industry as their guests.

Wednesday, June 1, 2022 | 3 minutes Read

Communication: The Missing Skill

Please note for the record that I am not a communications expert. Everything I say here is based on 30 years (20 in tech) of professional experience, nearly half of that in various leadership positions. There’s a giant elephant in the room. It’s huge, enormous even. It’s quite possibly the biggest flaw in the development community. And it really doesn’t get enough attention. Take the following real exchange taken from an email chain:

Wednesday, April 27, 2022 | 9 minutes Read

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Function Friday - More Math

I previously covered some of the base math functions available. This time I’ll cover the math functions that are related to working with arrays of numbers. This includes the max, min, rand, and range functions. max & min These two functions work the exact same way. The max function returns the largest number in an array of numbers, and the min function returns the smallest number in an array of numbers. The format is as follows:

Friday, April 8, 2022 | 2 minutes Read