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Sep 01, 2025

Arbitrary SQL, Migrations & Idempotent Scripting

I'm a huge fan of Entity Framework Migrations, using them for almost all client projects. In a given week, I will see dozens of changes deploy to production successfully across our portfolio of projects. However, there is always that "one task" that results in a failure and each time it happens it triggers an update to our internal training and review processes, and it has to do with repeatable scripting and the use of the "idempotent" flag. I thought I'd share our experiences with everyone, to help prevent issues for others.

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Jan 17, 2025

Limiting Risk With Open Source Consumption

I'm an avid supporter of Open Source software; I maintain multiple projects, contribute to others, and sponsor developers across numerous projects I use or care about. However, there has been a recent trend in license changes with open source software that create a unique and real risk to companies and development teams that could go unnoticed and result in a catastrophic impact on organizations. Let's explore how we select, integrate, and manage the usage of third-party solutions.

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Dec 10, 2024

Updating to .NET 9 Has Benefits! Performance!

There are many discussions regarding the cadence of upgrades and the burden of keeping up to date with the .NET releases, but that is all a topic for another day. Today, I want to take a moment and talk about the unsung heroes of constant updates: improved performance!

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Sep 06, 2024

Seeding Identity Users with ASP.NET Core

ASP.NET Identity is fantastic and provides a quick method for implementing user security in your applications, however, the process of inserting system defaults is not exactly the most straight forward and there are many ways to look at it, so lets explore some options.

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Mar 21, 2024

Deploying .NET MAUI Blazor App to ProgramFiles'

The most common deployment process for Windows implementations of .NET MAUI Blazor applications is to utilize the automatic MSIX package creation. However, there are situations where you may need to deploy your application as a simple exe so you can deploy it to the location of your choice or as in my case so that I could pass parameters at launch to the application.

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Feb 13, 2024

Improving .NET Development Experience with DevDrive

Windows 11 added the ability to set up a Dev Drive that is targeted for key developer workloads, and after soliciting some experience from others, I thought I would try it out myself. The results were impressive and immediate, and something I'm rolling out to our entire team.

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Jan 09, 2024

Leveraging Chat GPT for Development: Balancing Privacy, Security, and Integrity

Over the past few years, AI model growth has been exponential, providing a robust collection of tools that can be utilized to streamline many operations that can benefit from machine learning operations. Although some may see AI models as simply "better search engines," there is a lot more that you can utilize ChatGPT or otherwise for; however, it requires careful consideration & planning. Let's explore how ChatGPT can help developers and how we can balance the privacy, security, and other aspects of day-to-day interactions.

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Jun 21, 2023

.NET MAUI + GitHub Actions + Commas in Certificate Names

I recently wasted more time than I care to admit working through an issue where I was getting build errors that did not make sense. I was trying to set up the build/publish of a .NET MAUI application, and I wanted to inject my certificate using a GitHub Actions Secret, and it failed miserably; this post explores the issue and resolution.

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Jun 19, 2023

Upgrading Xamarin Forms to .NET MAUI

So much has changed in the .NET Mobile Development world in the past few years. This blog post investigates the current process to migrate from Xamarin Forms to .NET MAUI. Including some helpful tips, links to documentation, and real-world feedback after completion of numerous transitions.

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Notice

Content provided in this blog is provided "AS-IS" and the information should be used at your own discretion. The thoughts and opinions expressed are the personal thoughts of Mitchel Sellers and do not reflect the opinions of his employer or any other affiliated company.

This blog’s content is copyright protected. Re-publishing on other websites is allowed as long as proper credit and backlink to the article is provided. Any other re-publishing or distribution of this content is prohibited without written permission from Mitchel Sellers.