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Dominic Burford - Professional Profile



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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.

 

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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 
Whilst developing the journey logging functionality for our Xamarin mobile app, we needed to give the user the ability to start and stop the app from recording their journey. The functionality was designed to give drivers the ability to record their business journeys so that they could reclaim business mileage expenses. So when they set off on their business journey, they would open the app and set it to begin recording their journey. When they arrived at their destination they would stop the app from recording their journey. For anyone who's ever used a running / cycling app such as Garmin or Strava, the concept is identical.

We already had the functionality for initialising and recording the driver's journey. These were RESTful services that send the data to our backend for storage and processing. The problem came when we tried to plug these RESTful services into the Xamarin app. The Xamarin service methods we wanted to plug into were not async. They were overridden service methods, and we had no control over these whatsoever. Our RESTful services for initialising and recording the journey were both async.

So the question was how to execute async code from inside non async code. Turns out the solution is pretty straight forward. The .NET Framework has already solved this problem, as there are many use cases where async code will need to be run from inside non async code. As developers we won't always have full control over the entire pipeline of a process. Sometimes we will be constrained by the underlying environment (in our case Xamarin service methods), or we may be updating existing non async code with new async functionality. Either way, there will be times when we need to run async code from non async code.

Below is the OnStartCommand from the Xamarin service. We have no control over this method and cannot therefore make it async.
C#
public override StartCommandResult OnStartCommand(Intent intent, StartCommandFlags flags, int startId)
{
  //how do we execute async code from inside this method?
}
The Task object contains a method for doing exactly this. The Run() method contains several overloads to allow for the execution of tasks, including async tasks. The Task.Run() method queues a task to run on the threadpool and returns a handle to the task.

Here's the Xamarin OnStartCommand method updated to execute our RESTful services for initialising and recording a journey.
C#
public override StartCommandResult OnStartCommand(Intent intent, StartCommandFlags flags, int startId)
{
    base.OnStartCommand(intent, flags, startId);
    Task.Run(async () => { await this.InitialiseJourney(); });
            
    Task.Run(async () => { await this.StartJourneyTracking(); });
    return StartCommandResult.NotSticky;
}
This is just one simple example of using the Task.Run() method. It can be used in many different ways to solve many similar problems. By giving the developer the ability to queue and execute tasks, this is a very powerful method that is worth understanding. If you're writing async code you should definitely check out this method.
"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

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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 
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 

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