Azure Weekly

Issue #537 - 26th October 2025

First up, OneLake APIs: Bring your apps and build new ones with familiar Blob and ADLS APIs Microsoft Fabric's OneLake now supports Azure Blob Storage and ADLS APIs, allowing developers to connect existing applications and tools to the Fabric ecosystem without code changes. A post very much worth reading highlighting Threat activity targeting Azure Blob Storage - Microsoft details the complete attack chain targeting Azure Blob Storage, from reconnaissance to impact, providing security recommendations and detection strategies using Defender for Storage. There's also an update to Sovereignty and Geography Groups - Azure's Locations API updates UK region metadata, changing the geography group from "Europe" to "UK" to align with compliance and data sovereignty requirements.

Other articles of interest include: Context-Aware RAG System with Azure AI Search to Cut Token Costs and Boost Accuracy - an intelligent RAG pipeline using Azure AI Search and semantic chunking reduces token consumption by up to 85% while improving accuracy through context-aware document segmentation. What's new in Microsoft Entra – September 2025 - Microsoft Entra introduces AI-driven security features including Security Copilot and Conditional Access Optimization Agent, along with updates to authentication methods and identity governance capabilities.

In development-focused posts: Planning in Visual Studio (Public Preview) Visual Studio's new planning feature in Agent Mode enables Copilot to create structured, multi-step plans for complex coding tasks, improving success rates by 15% in testing. If anyone has been using Claude Code, they know this feature adds so much value. A really interesting post, that caught my attention was Create your own custom extension for Azure Bicep The experimental Bicep local-deploy feature allows developers to create custom extensions that deploy outside Azure using familiar Bicep syntax, connecting to any REST API-enabled service. I've been using PostgreSQL for the last few months and found this an interesting read: Postgres as a Distributed Cache Unlocks Speed and Simplicity for Modern .NET Workloads A new NuGet package enables PostgreSQL to function as a high-performance distributed cache for .NET applications using UNLOGGED tables to achieve near-millisecond response times comparable to Redis. We've also been using AZD to deploy a .NET Aspire app, so this also caught my eye: .NET Aspire 6: Deployment Using Azure Container Apps A comprehensive guide to deploying .NET Aspire applications to Azure Container Apps using the Azure Developer CLI, covering infrastructure provisioning, Bicep templates, and production considerations.

Finally, Barry Smart published a 4-part series on The Data Product Canvas: Stop Building Data Products That Fail, Part 2: Deep Dive into the Building Blocks, Part 3: The Data Product Canvas in Action, and Part 4: The Theory Behind The Canvas.