Deleting and updating a smart contract - azure-blockchain-workbench

In practice how should you go about updating your smart contract logic. Smart contracts are immutable by design. You can't delete it since Azure Blockchain Workbench API doesn't support deleting a contract at this moment (from the API documentation: Applications - Application Delete, Currently not implemented.) And if you try to deploy an updated version of the .sol and .json file through the Azure Blockchain Workbench web app the changes are ignored when creating a new instance of the contract. This leads you ho have versioned contracts over time: Contract1, Contract2, ..., ContractN. So how should you deal with this correctly?

Related

Can I get the Swagger interface to appear on a deployed Azure web API?

When one creates an ASP.NET Core Web API in Visual Studio 2022, and tests it locally, one gets a convenient Swagger page built upon an OpenAPI definition, to test all HTTP endpoints.
However, when deployed and trying to access {path-to-api}/swagger, it returns a 404 Not Found error, even while on localhost, when both the API and the database is sitting on my own machine. Even if the database is in the Azure cloud, for that matter, it also works, if I put the Azure SQL Database connection string into appsettings.json.
So is there a way to achieve this, preferably without too much hassle? Or am I wrong in wanting this, do developers mostly test their APIs locally? Because I want the Swagger API online only for testing.
The problem is getting and using the swagger functionality into the cloud. Is it possible and good practice?
If you look at the startup, you will notice that the swagger is only loaded during a development session via an if check. Commenting that out, or expanding it based on evironment, will allow a published version to generate the page on the target host.
if (app.Environment.IsDevelopment())
{
app.UseSwagger();
app.UseSwaggerUI();
}
I generally do that for first publishes or to Dev/Test environments to see it running. Once it is not needed, I un-comment it back in.
Also it may be actually viable (turned on) in Dev or UAT server because one is also publishing the open api it to APIM (Azure api manager), which takes the api and generates its own development environment; away from an initial publish.
Also once published, it is not the default page, one still has to path to it such as .../swagger/index.html.
I'm aborting this mission to deploy the Swagger interface to Azure along with my API. It's bad security practice to make the HTTP request methods so visually available to all. So the answer to my question do developers mostly test their APIs locally, is apparently yes.
I wondered if I should remove the question, but I would like to make it still stand, in case anyone else is contemplating about doing the same thing - exposing an API online with the Swagger UI.

Confluence migration from cloud to server

We have migrated a space from cloud instance to server instance,in cloud instance we were using "Plantuml diagrams for confluence" but in server we are using "Confluence PlantUML Plugin" .so macro name are different in both cloud and server ,so macro name for cloud is "plantumlcloud" but for server it is "plantuml".so ,in pages after migration it is showing "plantumlcloud" not a valid macro ,kindly help to resolve.
In general, migration of confluence spaces to another application which is not running the same plugins will cause any functionality of that plugin to break.
If you migrate hosting platforms, and have the equivalent version of the plugin for your new platform, created by the same developer, in most cases you will retain functionality, however there will often be differences between versions.
These differences are found especially when downgrading, and moving from cloud to server is a very definite example of a downgrade, as cloud will always run the latest version.
In general I would reccomend against a migration from cloud to server, and when it must be done, time should be spent to ensure compatability with all plugins, and migration guides and plans should be made and followed.
As commented by #tgdavies, there seems to be an equivelent version of the plugin you were using on cloud, so hopefully that can resolve your issue.

DevOps with XPages on Premesis or PaaS like Bluemix

What is the best way to achieve DevOps with XPages.
Multiple Developers working as a team, On Premises Servers [Dev, QA,
Prod] can we replicate to Bluemix? Source Control Automated Testing UI
/ Application, Unit testing business logic with testing framework, Automated Deployment
IDE/Tools
Domino Designer; are there other ways?
Note: Use of Views when the data is in a NSF, otherwise data is in the cloud, or SQL. No Forms or other classic Notes design elements.
What are your approaches to this?
This is a high level overview of the topics required to attempt what you're describing. I'm breezing past lots of details, so please search them out; I've tried to reference what I'm currently aware of as far as supporting documentation and blog posts, etc. of others. If anyone has anything good to add, I'm happy to add it in.
There are several components involved with what you're describing, generally amounting to:
scm workflow
building the app (NSF)
deploying the built app to a Domino server
Everything else, such as release workflow through a QA/QC environment, is secondary to the primary steps above. I'll outline what I'm currently doing with, attempting to highlight where I'm working on improving the process.
1. SCM Workflow
This can be incredibly opinionated and will depend a lot on how your team does/wants to use source control with your deployment / release process. Below I'll touch on performing tests, conceptually, during/around the build step.
I've switched from a fairly generic scm server implementation to a GitLab instance. Even running a CE instance is pretty fantastic with their CI runner capabilities. Previously, I had a Jenkins CI instance performing about the same tasks, but had to bake more "workflow" into the Jenkins task, whereas now most of that logic is in a unified script, referenced from a config file (.gitlab-ci.yml). This is similar to how a Travis CI or other similar CI config file works.
This config calls some additional helper work, but ultimately revolves around an adapted version of Egor Margineanu's PowerShell script which invokes the headless DDE build task.
2. Building an NSF from Source
I've blogged about my general build process, with my previous Jenkins CI implementation. I followed the blogging of Cameron Gregor and Martin Pradny for this. Ultimately, you need to:
configure a Windows environment with Domino Designer
set up Domino Designer to import from ODP (disable export), ensuring Build Automatically is enabled
the notes.ini will need a flag of DESIGNER_AUTO_ENABLED=true
the Jenkins CI or GitLab CI runner (or other) will need to run as the logged in user, not a Windows service; this allows it to invoke the "headless dde" command correctly, since it runs in the background as opposed to a true headless invocation
ensure that Domino Designer can start without prompting for a user's password
My blog post covers additional topics such as flagging the build as success or failure, by scanning the output logs for being marked as a failed build. It also touches on how to submit the code to a SonarQube instance.
Ref: IBM Notes/Domino App Dev Wiki page on headless designer
Testing
Any additional testing or other workflow considerations (e.g.- QA/QC approval) should go around the build phase, depending on how you set up your SCM workflow. A lot of the implementation will revolve around the specifics of your setup. A general idea is to allow/prevent deployment based on the outcome of the build + test phase.
Bluemix Concerns
IBM Bluemix, the only PaaS that runs IBM XPages applications, will require some additional consideration, such as:
their Git deploy process will only accept a pre-built NSF
the NSF must be signed by the account owner's Bluemix ID
Ref:
- IBM XPages on Bluemix
- Bluemix Docs: Building XPages apps for the Bluemix Runtime
3. Deploy
To Bluemix
If you're looking to deploy an XPages app to run on Bluemix, you would want to either ensure your headless build runs with the Bluemix ID, or is at least signed with it, and then deploy it for a production push either via a git connection or the cf/bluemix command line utility. Bluemix's receive hooks handle all the rest of the deployment concerns, such as starting/stopping the server instance, etc.
To On-Premise Server
A user ID with appropriate level credentials needs to perform the work of either performing a design replace/refresh or stopping a dev/test/staging server, performing the file copy of the .nsf, then starting it back up. I've heard rumors of Cameron Gregor making use of a plugin to Domino Designer to perform the operations needed for OSGi plugin development, which sounds pretty useful. As most of my Domino application development is almost purely NSF based, I'm focusing more on an approach of deploying to a staging/dev/test server, which I can then perform a design task on to do the needed refresh/replace; closer to the "normal" Domino way of doing things.
Summary
Again, there are a lot of moving pieces involved here, some of which gets rather opinionated rather quickly. For example, I'm currently virtualizing my build machine, so I can spool up a couple virtual machines of it, allowing for more than one build at a time. If there are major gaps in the process, let me know and I'll fill it what I can.

Behavior difference between Actor and Service projects in Azure Service Fabric

In an Actor project, the AssemblyVersionAttribute value is used to update the ServiceManifest version, along with the code and config version. There is no such behavior for Service projects.
This updated version is also used to update the ServiceManifestRef 's ServiceManifestVersion reference in the ApplicationManifest. While the ApplicationManifest is modified on every build, it doesn't appear a manually set version within the Service project's ServiceManifest is updated in the ApplicationManifest either.
Is this planned or intended behavior for Service projects?
I'm running Visual Studio 2015 RC, the first preview of the Service Fabric SDK, and 4.0.95-preview1 of the NuGet packages.
Short answer: This behavior difference is temporary as we improve our tooling support for versioning and upgrade.
Slightly longer answer: Part of the original goal of the Service Fabric actor framework was to abstract away the details of manipulating the application and service manifests so that you can truly focus on your business logic. Hence, the SDK includes a tool (called FabActUtil) which is responsible for doing some of that manipulation on your behalf as a post-build step. There is currently no such tool for reliable services projects. We are considering options for reconciling this difference as part of adding upgrade support to Visual Studio. We need to strike a balance between keeping you in control of your versioning scheme and taking care of the chore of cascading your version changes throughout the application as required.

How does a production deployment for a cloud based software happen?

Lets take the example of a heavily used cloud based software.
When a deployment happens, let's say users are online.
Won't the server require stop & start after deploy? How is the service continuity maintained?
How will the ongoing user sessions / unsaved data be continued post deploy?
How is the risk managed? (Lets say an issue comes up after deploy and you need to revert to the older version, now imagine a user has already worked on the new version and saved some data with it, which is not compatible with previous versions)
Whether the server require stop & start after deploy depends on the technology being used. Any state information that is kept within the server can be externalized (i.e. written to disk) for the purpose of updating the application. Whether this is neccessary and whether this is done depends on the technology being used.