In general, any certification offers practical experience to individuals from all the aspects to be a proficient worker.Certified professionals have more beneficial and relevant networks that help them in setting career goals for themselves.Since last year I concentrated on the different Azure certifications. This year I have have a target to complete certifications on different areas too. As a start for this year, i did the certification PL-900 today and i would say it is one of the easiest exam if you have prior experience in building Mobile applications and have a general idea on how to solve business problems.

Microsoft's Power Platform​

Microsoft's Power Platform is a low code platform (an environment with graphical user interfaces rather than traditional scripts and programming languages) powered by Microsoft Azure (the cloud computing platform) enabling organisations to analyse data from multiple sources, act on it through created applications and automate business processes.he Power Platform contains 3 key aspects (Power Apps, Power BI,Power Virtual Agents, and Power Automate) and integrates with 2 main ecosystems (Office 365 and Dynamics 365).

PL-900: Microsoft Power Platform Fundamentals​

Last year November the new PL-900: Microsoft Power Platform Fundamentals was released in Beta mode and it's recently went into generally available.

After reading the "Skills Measured" section, I realized that a lot of what I have implemented in the past as a developer and i had some experience with PowerBI as well.

Based on the content , i was confident enough to take the exam but I wanted to make sure I was completely prepared for the exam on the topics which i am not familiar with, so did some learning on Dynamics 365 on Microsoft Learn and the Common Data Service (CDS) on Microsoft Learn as well.

Exam Materials and Tips:​

You need to only spent 3-4 hours reviewing the Learning Path of Power Platform Fundamentals if you are already familiar with the topics. It's a pretty straight forward exam for which if you read the course on Microsoft Learn, you should be good to go. If you are aware of all the components of the Power Platform, you probably can give the exam as is.

Link to Exam: Here
Released: 4th November 2019 (GA 18/02/2020)
MS Learn: Modules available

I would request anyone preparing for PL-900 to have a good grasp of the following subjects:

• Common Data Service
• Difference between Power BI Desktop and Power BI Service
• Power Apps Portals
• AI Builder Models
• Difference between Business Rules and Business Process Flows
• How Power Platform works with Dynamics 365

It is not a hard exam if you are from the developer background, however get well prepared for this one! As always get hands on. Let’s be citizen developers together. Cheers!

I've been gaming since 2003 till now.I remember those sleepless nights and how much fun i had playing PC games. I always wanted to be a game designer since my childhood days and have built lot of small games during my university days. After a very long time i invested some time and built a simple game using Python and Azure cosmosdb. I wanted to write how to build the game "Corona escape" with others in this blog post.

PreRequisities:​

• Python 3 Installed
• VScode or Pycharm
• Azure Subscription

Game Structure :

The coronavirus is fairly new that has taken the world by shock. It’s been two months since the outbreak started and it has shown that it isn’t as deadly as the SARS virus. This game "Corona Escape" is built using Pygame which is a library for beginners to cut their teeth on to get comfortable with learning programming and the process of game development and feel successful in making games. It's also a great rapid prototyping tool. This game is very similar to any jump game. The idea is that to escape from the virus as much as you can, user will be provided with a capsule to make the move fast and a mask to escape from the virus. I will not go in detail on the logic side of it as the source code is published here.

Architecture below is fairly easy, its just a diagram with Cosmosdb to store the data and application insights to gather the user details (type of device,location etc). If you have plan to expand the game, you could add other components in the architecture such as azure functions etc.

Highest score is pushed to a text file and Azure cosmosdb for sharing the score across the users in the world. The related code resides in the cosmos.py which as follows,

def getLeaderBoard(self):
        options = {}
        options['enableCrossPartitionQuery'] = False
        options['maxItemCount'] = 100
        query = {'query': 'SELECT * FROM server s'}

        results = self.client.QueryItems(self.container['_self'], query, options)

        for result in results:
            print(result['message'])


def pushData(self,username,highscore):
        data = self.client.CreateItem(self.container['_self'], {
            "username": str(username),
            "highscore": str(highscore),
            "message" : str(username) + " got " + str(highscore)
        })

 

Make sure to create a cosmosdb account with the SQL API and pass those credentials under config.

self.config = {
            'ENDPOINT': 'your endpoint',
            'PRIMARYKEY': 'your cosmosdb primary key',
            'DATABASE': 'your db',
            'CONTAINER': 'your container'
        }

How to run the Game:​

• Clone the repository from here
• Make sure to install the dependencies using pip such as pygame
• Run the game with the command python main.py

Hope this helps someone who want to build games using python and cosmosdb. Play the game and add your comments below. cheers!

I've been gaming since 2003 till now.I remember those sleepless nights and how much fun i had playing PC games. I always wanted to be a game designer since my childhood days and have built lot of small games during my university days. After a very long time i invested some time and built a simple game using Python and Azure cosmosdb. I wanted to write how to build the game "Corona escape" with others in this blog post.

PreRequisities:​

• Python 3 Installed
• VScode or Pycharm
• Azure Subscription

Game Structure :

The coronavirus is fairly new that has taken the world by shock. It’s been two months since the outbreak started and it has shown that it isn’t as deadly as the SARS virus. This game "Corona Escape" is built using Pygame which is a library for beginners to cut their teeth on to get comfortable with learning programming and the process of game development and feel successful in making games. It's also a great rapid prototyping tool. This game is very similar to any jump game. The idea is that to escape from the virus as much as you can, user will be provided with a capsule to make the move fast and a mask to escape from the virus. I will not go in detail on the logic side of it as the source code is published here.

Architecture below is fairly easy, its just a diagram with Cosmosdb to store the data and application insights to gather the user details (type of device,location etc). If you have plan to expand the game, you could add other components in the architecture such as azure functions etc.

Highest score is pushed to a text file and Azure cosmosdb for sharing the score across the users in the world. The related code resides in the cosmos.py which as follows,

def getLeaderBoard(self):
        options = {}
        options['enableCrossPartitionQuery'] = False
        options['maxItemCount'] = 100
        query = {'query': 'SELECT * FROM server s'}

        results = self.client.QueryItems(self.container['_self'], query, options)

        for result in results:
            print(result['message'])


def pushData(self,username,highscore):
        data = self.client.CreateItem(self.container['_self'], {
            "username": str(username),
            "highscore": str(highscore),
            "message" : str(username) + " got " + str(highscore)
        })

 

Make sure to create a cosmosdb account with the SQL API and pass those credentials under config.

self.config = {
            'ENDPOINT': 'your endpoint',
            'PRIMARYKEY': 'your cosmosdb primary key',
            'DATABASE': 'your db',
            'CONTAINER': 'your container'
        }

How to run the Game:​

• Clone the repository from here
• Make sure to install the dependencies using pip such as pygame
• Run the game with the command python main.py

Hope this helps someone who want to build games using python and cosmosdb. Play the game and add your comments below. cheers!

Biometric Face Recognition is the process and ability of a bio metric machine to identify and recognize the face of an individual. It deals with either to grant access to a secured system or to find out the details of a person by matching the face with existing data in the machine’s system.

Facial recognition is full of potential and can be easily incorporated to increase the security measures of any device/object. Apart from all the excitement, this technology is still developing, the more faces are fed in the algorithm, the more accurate it becomes. Therefore, there’s no need to be afraid of facial technology as it is being used for good ethical uses and safe practices.

Industries around the globe have already started to use face detection for several purposes. As a series of my ideas, continuation with Architecture for traffic problem.

This post focuses on one of the solution with Azure by using various services such as Cognitive Service, Blob Storage, Event Grid, Azure Functions and Cosmosdb to build the right architecture that would solve the above mentioned use case.

Overall Architecture:​

Components used:​

• Azure CosmosDB
• Azure Functions
• EventGrid
• Cognitive Face API
• Storage (Queue,Blob)

Architecture:​

The above architecture is very self explanatory, it comprises of two main components/flow.

• Training Faces of Individuals
• Identifying faces of Individuals

Every process is achieved in the above case using Azure function. Each operation will have separate function to achieve result. Main operations such as RegisterUser,TrainFace,TriggerTrain are simple Azure functions in the above diagram. Images are uploaded to Blob Storage using SAS token and face detection is done using cognitive service and references are stored in CosmosDB. EventGrid is used to route the events according to the invokes, for ex, to train image whenever a user uploads while registration and tag the face of the individual in the database.

I have used the above architecture with one case study and hope it will help someone out there who wants to build similar solution. Cheers!

Biometric Face Recognition is the process and ability of a bio metric machine to identify and recognize the face of an individual either to grant access to a secured system or to find out the details of a person by matching the face with existing data in the machine’s system.

Facial recognition is full of potential and can be easily incorporated to increase the security measures of any device/object. Apart from all the excitement, this technology is still developing, the more faces are fed in the algorithm, the more accurate it becomes. Therefore, there’s no need to be afraid of facial technology as it is being used for good ethical uses and safe practices.

Industries around the globe have already started to use face detection for several purposes. As a series of my ideas, continuation with Architecture for traffic problem, This post focus on one of the solution with Azure by using various services such as Cognitive Service, Blob Storage, Event Grid, Azure Functions and Cosmosdb to build the right architecture that would solve the above mentioned use case.

Overall Architecture:​

Components used:​

• Azure CosmosDB
• Azure Functions
• EventGrid
• Cognitive Face API
• Storage (Queue,Blob)

Architecture:​

The above architecture is very self explanatory, it comprises of two main components/flow.

• Training Faces of Individuals
• Identifying faces of Individuals

Every process is achieved in the above case using Azure function. Each operation will have separate function to achieve result. Main operations such as RegisterUser,TrainFace,TriggerTrain are simple Azure functions in the above diagram. Images are uploaded to Blob Storage using SAS token and face detection is done using cognitive service and references are stored in CosmosDB. EventGrid is used to route the events according to the invokes, for ex, to train image whenever a user uploads while registration and tag the face of the individual in the database.

I have used the above architecture with one case study and hope it will help someone out there who wants to build similar solution. Cheers!