by Derek Du

Recently, we were asked to improve the performance of some SQL queries that run for 15 seconds and 30 seconds. At first, we were not sure whether the performance could be improved, given that there were about 80 million data pieces in the database. I have to admit that SQL Server is really powerful as eventually we reduced the time to 2 seconds and 6 seconds!

During the proces...

by Derek Du

Windows Azure websites allow quick deployment of web applications, but troubleshooting it is quite limited. So, here is a quick reference for remote debugging Windows Azure applications.

1. First enable remote debugging on the Windows Azure website in Configure -> Site Diagnostics -> Remote Debugging. Set it to ON. Also, make sure you select the correct version of Visual Stu...

by Derek Du

After my last blog post about using Cert-based Message security for WCF web service, we started to look into using Windows Authentication for a different system that also sits behind a load balancer/SSL handler. Windows Authentication provides a much easier integration option – the client side can simply provide a domain user account to be authenticated, whereas in Cert-ba...

by Derek Du

Configuring WCF web service’s security is just tedious. Microsoft has been trying to make it simple by removing many configuration settings in .NET 4.5, but it can still get messy if you need to touch the security part. There are many bindings and there are Message, Transport, and TransportWithMessageCredentials security modes, each with their own client credential types, ...