Click here to Skip to main content
15,878,945 members

Dominic Burford - Professional Profile



Summary

Follow on Twitter LinkedIn      Blog RSS
6,554
Author
2,053
Authority
9,852
Debator
8
Editor
100
Enquirer
212
Organiser
2,954
Participant
I am a professional software engineer and technical architect with over twenty years commercial development experience with a strong focus on the design and development of web and mobile applications.

I have experience of architecting scalable, distributed, high volume web applications that are accessible from multiple devices due to their responsive web design, including architecting enterprise service-oriented solutions. I have also developed enterprise mobile applications using Xamarin and Telerik Platform.

I have extensive experience using .NET, ASP.NET, Windows and Web Services, WCF, SQL Server, LINQ and other Microsoft technologies. I am also familiar with HTML, Bootstrap, Javascript (inc. JQuery and Node.js), CSS, XML, JSON, Apache Cordova, KendoUI and many other web and mobile related technologies.

I am enthusiastic about Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery and Application Life-cycle Management having configured such environments using CruiseControl.NET, TeamCity and Team Foundation Services. I enjoy working in Agile and Test Driven Development (TDD) environments.

Outside of work I have two beautiful daughters. I am also an avid cyclist who enjoys reading, listening to music and travelling.

 

Reputation

Weekly Data. Recent events may not appear immediately. For information on Reputation please see the FAQ.

Privileges

Members need to achieve at least one of the given member levels in the given reputation categories in order to perform a given action. For example, to store personal files in your account area you will need to achieve Platinum level in either the Author or Authority category. The "If Owner" column means that owners of an item automatically have the privilege. The member types column lists member types who gain the privilege regardless of their reputation level.

ActionAuthorAuthorityDebatorEditorEnquirerOrganiserParticipantIf OwnerMember Types
Have no restrictions on voting frequencysilversilversilversilver
Bypass spam checks when posting contentsilversilversilversilversilversilvergoldSubEditor, Mentor, Protector, Editor
Store personal files in your account areaplatinumplatinumSubEditor, Editor
Have live hyperlinks in your profilebronzebronzebronzebronzebronzebronzesilverSubEditor, Protector, Editor
Have the ability to include a biography in your profilebronzebronzebronzebronzebronzebronzesilverSubEditor, Protector, Editor
Edit a Question in Q&AsilversilversilversilverYesSubEditor, Protector, Editor
Edit an Answer in Q&AsilversilversilversilverYesSubEditor, Protector, Editor
Delete a Question in Q&AYesSubEditor, Protector, Editor
Delete an Answer in Q&AYesSubEditor, Protector, Editor
Report an ArticlesilversilversilversilverSubEditor, Mentor, Protector, Editor
Approve/Disapprove a pending ArticlegoldgoldgoldgoldSubEditor, Mentor, Protector, Editor
Edit other members' articlesSubEditor, Protector, Editor
Create an article without requiring moderationplatinumSubEditor, Mentor, Protector, Editor
Approve/Disapprove a pending QuestionProtector
Approve/Disapprove a pending AnswerProtector
Report a forum messagesilversilverbronzeProtector, Editor
Approve/Disapprove a pending Forum MessageProtector
Have the ability to send direct emails to members in the forumsProtector
Create a new tagsilversilversilversilver
Modify a tagsilversilversilversilver

Actions with a green tick can be performed by this member.


 
GeneralBlog updates Pin
Dominic Burford13-May-21 1:37
professionalDominic Burford13-May-21 1:37 
GeneralPublishing events into an ASP.NET Core webhook with Octopus Pin
Dominic Burford13-May-21 1:33
professionalDominic Burford13-May-21 1:33 
GeneralA quick update Pin
Dominic Burford2-Nov-20 8:33
professionalDominic Burford2-Nov-20 8:33 
GeneralHow do you know when it's time to move on? Pin
Dominic Burford19-Aug-20 0:19
professionalDominic Burford19-Aug-20 0:19 
GeneralInitial thoughts on deploying with Octopus Pin
Dominic Burford17-Aug-20 4:25
professionalDominic Burford17-Aug-20 4:25 
GeneralWhat makes for a good DevOps process? Pin
Dominic Burford5-Aug-20 23:00
professionalDominic Burford5-Aug-20 23:00 
GeneralExecuting async code from non async code Pin
Dominic Burford19-Jul-20 23:21
professionalDominic Burford19-Jul-20 23:21 
GeneralPassing dynamic queries between client and backend server Pin
Dominic Burford29-Jun-20 4:55
professionalDominic Burford29-Jun-20 4:55 
GeneralManaging your Azure resources using Powershell scripting Pin
Dominic Burford13-Mar-20 6:42
professionalDominic Burford13-Mar-20 6:42 
GeneralIntroduction to Azure Cognitive Search Pin
Dominic Burford28-Feb-20 5:39
professionalDominic Burford28-Feb-20 5:39 
As part of my research into technologies to support the new web application that I am helping to build, I have been looking into Azure Cognitive Search (ACS). I came across this technology by accident while reading through an issue of Code magazine[^]. In that article, the author explains how the technology can be used to perform powerful queries across your data, even leveraging fuzzy logic and AI capabilities.

Quote:
Azure Cognitive Search is the only cloud search service with built-in AI capabilities that enrich all types of information to easily identify and explore relevant content at scale.
The article then goes on to give a step-by-step guide as to how to setup and configure a simple instance of ACS. This got me thinking how I could implement this in our own applications where we regularly mine large data sets using disparate ad hoc queries. I won't go into a detailed description of setting up or configuring ACS as there are already plenty of articles online that do this including this one[^]. In particular look at the 10-minute quickstart articles on that page.

The basic premise is to create a new instance of ACS, and as part of the configuration you connect to your data. Once you have connected to your data, you can then create Indexes. These are where the magic happens. By creating an Index onto your data, this allows you to query your data using the powerful capabilities of ACS. You can add AI capabilities if you so wish by enriching your data as part of the configuration.

For example, if your data includes images of vehicles, you can enrich your data to be able to search on the vehicle's registration number. ACS will use its pattern recognition to locate the vehicle registrations from within the images. You can then search through the image data for vehicles that match specified vehicle registrations. This is just one simple example of how you can enrich your data and leverage the powerful AI capabilities of ACS.

You are able to write simple queries using SQL-like syntax including the following commands[^]
search=
searchMode=
searchFields=
queryType=
$skip=
$top=
Using the power of OData expression syntax, you can then filter and order the results of your data using the following commands[^]
$filter=
$orderby=
$select=
If you need fuzzy logic search, you can implement Lucene query syntax very easily. This gives you the ability to search for data where the user may have mis-typed a name or email address for example. If the user meant to type "Fred" as the search term, but accidentally typed "Frod" then using Lucene fuzzy logic you are able to return all such close matches (and you can also define how close a close match is too). See this article[^] for more details.

You can implement your queries using the REST API[^] or the Azure Cognitive Search .NET library[^]

However you decide to implement ACS in your application, it gives you a powerful, yet simple view onto your data allowing you to return everything from a simple SQL-like query to full blown fuzzy logic / pattern matching / AI capabilities. All from the same, consistent APIs.

I haven't even scratched the surface of this technogy. My intention was merely to pique your interest and hopefully get other developers to explore ACS for their own applications. I'll keep exploring this fantastic technology and hopefully write future articles on how I have used it within the applications I am developing. In the meantime, if you haven't already done so, I can't recommend this technology highly enough.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare

Home | LinkedIn | Google+ | Twitter

GeneralUpdating the version number in your .NET build pipeline Pin
Dominic Burford24-Feb-20 5:33
professionalDominic Burford24-Feb-20 5:33 
GeneralFinding a solution to an Azure web app deployment problem Pin
Dominic Burford23-Jan-20 23:51
professionalDominic Burford23-Jan-20 23:51 
GeneralStructured Logging Pin
Dominic Burford24-Dec-19 1:28
professionalDominic Burford24-Dec-19 1:28 
GeneralEnabling TLS 1.2 on your .NET application Pin
Dominic Burford11-Dec-19 23:11
professionalDominic Burford11-Dec-19 23:11 
GeneralThe new version of the app is (almost) ready for release Pin
Dominic Burford7-Nov-19 23:28
professionalDominic Burford7-Nov-19 23:28 
GeneralChunking your lists into multiple smaller lists Pin
Dominic Burford11-Sep-19 3:40
professionalDominic Burford11-Sep-19 3:40 
GeneralWriting flexible filters for your data using Predicates Pin
Dominic Burford16-Jul-19 6:11
professionalDominic Burford16-Jul-19 6:11 
GeneralRe: Writing flexible filters for your data using Predicates Pin
Slacker00716-Jul-19 22:09
professionalSlacker00716-Jul-19 22:09 
GeneralRe: Writing flexible filters for your data using Predicates Pin
Dominic Burford17-Jul-19 1:17
professionalDominic Burford17-Jul-19 1:17 
GeneralBlocking Asynchronous Code Pin
Dominic Burford4-Jul-19 22:11
professionalDominic Burford4-Jul-19 22:11 
GeneralDesigning and implementing flexible RESTful services Pin
Dominic Burford14-Jun-19 0:50
professionalDominic Burford14-Jun-19 0:50 
GeneralWriting asynchronous code with .NET Pin
Dominic Burford10-Jun-19 3:34
professionalDominic Burford10-Jun-19 3:34 
GeneralWeird Minification Behaviour in ASP.NET Core Pin
Dominic Burford28-May-19 3:54
professionalDominic Burford28-May-19 3:54 
GeneralThe Importance of Structure and Dilligence Pin
Dominic Burford24-May-19 6:14
professionalDominic Burford24-May-19 6:14 
GeneralWhen should you rewrite that legacy application? Pin
Dominic Burford22-May-19 0:03
professionalDominic Burford22-May-19 0:03 

General General    News News    Suggestion Suggestion    Question Question    Bug Bug    Answer Answer    Joke Joke    Praise Praise    Rant Rant    Admin Admin   

Use Ctrl+Left/Right to switch messages, Ctrl+Up/Down to switch threads, Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right to switch pages.