A Developer's Life

Microsoft Thrive

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 03:19:00 +0000

I recently heard about a new site from Microsoft called “Thrive” and finally checked it out. Here’s a quick blurb from the site:

We’ve heard from lots of developers that times are tough. You’re doing more with less, applying your skills more broadly, and maybe even learning new tools. That’s why we created Thrive – a one-stop community hub that offers job postings, technical content, and community resources. So whether you’re seeking new ways to differentiate yourself on the job, or you need to re-tool your skills for that next big role, Thrive has the resources to help you get there faster.

There is quite a bit of information available on this site and the jobs listing seems to have quite a few available positions listed. If you’re looking for a job or simply looking for developer-related information to help you maintain your edge, this site is worth a look.

At first glance, this seems like a nice attempt to provide developers (who make use of Microsoft-based development technologies) with a single site for information. If I were to have any criticism, it would be that the “Community” section of the site doesn’t seem to provide any (obvious) way to actually communicate/collaborate with other developers. Maybe this is coming down the road or maybe that’s not the intent.

Not that I’m complaining because any source of reliable, useful information is a good thing :-)

Silverlight 3 Ships

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:11:00 +0000

I don’t normally post about Silverlight since I tend to focus on Team System so much. However, lately I have been spending a lot of time with Silverlight since I will be doing a presentation on it at our internal user group later this fall. As such, I noticed that Silverlight 3 has officially shipped.

Here’s a short list of new features available in v3.0:

Ability to run Silverlight applications “out of browser”
H.264
Navigation Framework
DeepZoom
SaveFileDialog (yeah!)
WriteableBitmap
Pixel Shaders
ClearType (again, yeah!)
Hardware Acceleration
New Controls
UI to UI Binding (third yeah!)
New REST Networking Stack
Mouse Wheel Support
And much more…

You can read more about the details here.

Quick Links:

Developer Runtime (pc, mac)
SDK (link)
Visual Studio Tools (link)
Expression Blend RC (link)
July Toolkit (link)
What’s New In Silverlight 3 Wiki [update]

Omaha Team System User Group

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Wed, 27 May 2009 12:58:00 +0000

Yesterday was a long day that ended on a great note – the Omaha Team System User Group meeting. Mike Douglas, from Deliveron Consulting Services, presented on Installing and Configuring Team Foundation Server 2008. Here is the synopsis:

This presentation provides an overview of TFS 2008 and demonstrates best practices, lessons learned, and “gotchas” installing and configuring TFS 2008. The overview explains the architecture and components of Team Foundation Server 2008 and recommended server configurations. The demonstrations will include using the Best Practice Analyzer, setting user permissions and using the TFS Admin Tool, and creating and configuring a team project from start to finish. The configuration process will include recommended settings, source control folder structure, and creating appropriate notification. The presentation will conclude with techniques and lessons learned for troubleshooting problems with installations.

Mike covered a lot of information in an hour and 45 minutes answering lots of questions along the way.

The meeting was co-sponsored between Farm Credit Services of America and Deliveron Consulting Services. Deliveron provided the food and some great giveaways (including an Xbox 360, TFS books, and some gift certificates).

The slide deck from last night’s presentation is available here.

Visit the Omaha Team System User Group web site for more information or contact me if you have any questions. We hope to see you at the next meeting!

Visual Studio 2010 - Beta 1 Available

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Mon, 18 May 2009 20:27:00 +0000

As of today (May 18th, 2009) Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 (various SKUs) and .NET Framework 4 Beta 1 have shown up on the MSDN subscriber site. Here is a quick list of what shows up for the Enlish language (I'm not sure what other languages, if any, are yet available):

.NET Framework 4 Beta 1 (ia64)
.NET Framework 4 Beta 1 (x86 and x64)
.NET Framework 4 Beta 1 (x86)
.NET Framework 4 Client Profile Beta 1 (x86 and x64)
.NET Framework 4 Client Profile Beta 1 (x86)
Visual Studio 2010 Professional Beta 1 (x86) - DVD
Visual Studio 2010 Remote Debugger Beta 1 (x64)
Visual Studio 2010 Remote Debugger Beta 1 (x86)
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 1 (x86 and x64) - DVD
Visual Studio Team System 2010 Team Suite Beta 1 (x86) - DVD
Visual Studio Team System 2010 Test Load Agent Beta 1 (x86)
Visual Studio Team System 2010 Test Load Controller Beta 1 (x86)

I do not know when the beta will show up on the public download site but I wouldn't think it would be too far behind. I am looking forward to seeing what changes/features have made their way into the beta (and what features were left out/removed).

Now, off to download...

Deleting Work Items in TFS – a UI

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:33:00 +0000

If you work with Work Items in VSTS/Team Foundation Server then you’ve probably had the desire to delete a work item at some point. Sounds easy enough, right? Just right-click a work item and select… wait, there’s no Delete option? That’s right – the Team Foundation Client does not include any functionality for deleting work items from TFS.

Although it’s a tad inconvenient, you can delete work items from TFS by installing the Team Foundation Server Power Tools (October 2008 release or greater). Of the many features available as part of the power tools, there is a command called destroywi that can be used to delete work items. For example, to delete the work item ID 1234, use the command:

tfpt destroywi /server:tfs-dev /workitemid:1234

Although this is a relatively straightforward task to perform, not everyone is comfortable with the command line interface not to mention you have to look up the work item ID(s) ahead of time. To ease the process a little bit, I created a simple UI that sits on top of the Team Foundation Server Power Tools that allows you to easily select a Team Foundation Server and Project to query from. You can run an existing query to display a list of work items from which you can select one or more work items to be deleted. You can also enter the work item IDs directly (as a comma-separated list) if you prefer.

Here is a screen shot of the utility after running the All Work Items query for a Demo project:

When you select one or more work items to be deleted, click the Delete button. You will be prompted to be sure you want to delete since the action cannot be undone (i.e. it’s permanent).

DISCLAIMER: We have been using this utility in multiple production environments for several weeks now and have not experienced any issues. However, since this utility physically deletes work items from a Team Foundation Server (via the Team Foundation Server Power Tools), use at your own risk :-)

Download the Delete Work Item utility here.

VSTS 2010 Feature List

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:14:00 +0000

Brian Harry has started a series of posts detailing the new features in Visual Studio Team System 2010. In his first post, he lists the high-level features along with associated blogs that provide further details. He will be drilling into more detail with future posts but this is a great list if you’re just wanting an idea of what’s new in VSTS 2010.

Omaha Team System User Group

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:09:00 +0000

Due to the recent birth of our new son, Zachary, I am somewhat late in getting this post on-line. Although I am a little behind in getting this posted, I still want to get the word out about our last presentation at the Omaha Team System User Group.

On March 24th, Farm Credit Services of America (FCSA) once again hosted the user group meeting. Many thanks go out to Russ Wagner for his continued help and for accepting the position as co-leader of the Omaha Team System User Group!

This meeting’s topic was presented by Jeremy Novak, a developer at Farm Credit Services of America. Jeremy presented on a new open source product called Remote Test Runner – or, RTR. RTR was originally developed at FCSA for internal use to aid in the automation of customer acceptance testing (sometimes referred to as service-level testing). RTR was published to Microsoft’s CodePlex site following the presentation.

Remote Test Runner is a unit test assistance tool that allows the user to exercise Visual Studio-based test classes outside of Visual Studio. RTR reports on Data-Driven tests at the data field level as opposed to the unit test method level. Failed asserts no longer abort a test.

For more details about RTR, check out this previous post or the RTR project site on CodePlex (link below).

References:

IE 8, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight 3 Beta and More

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:50:00 +0000

For those of you who have been following the MIX conference this week, there have been several new (final and beta) releases. So far, the ones most interesting to me personally include:

Internet Explorer 8 (final) – there are some great improvements in this version of IE that you can read more about here.
ASP.NET MVC 1.0 (final) - ASP.NET MVC enables you to build Model View Controller (MVC) applications by using the ASP.NET framework. ASP.NET MVC is an alternative, not a replacement, for ASP.NET Web Forms that offers the following benefits:
- Clear separation of concerns
- Testability - support for Test-Driven Development
- Fine-grained control over HTML and JavaScript
- Intuitive URLs
Silverlight 3 Beta - this is a preview release which continues Silverlight’s track record of rapid innovation - introducing more than 50 new features, including support for running Silverlight applications out of the browser, dramatic video performance and quality improvements, and features that radically improve developer productivity.

There are also several related tools/frameworks that can be utilized along with Silverlight 3 (Beta) to improve the overall experience. Some of these include:

Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta - the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 (Web PI) is a free tool that makes it simple to download, install and keep up-to-date with the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer. In addition, install popular open source ASP.NET and PHP web apps with the Web PI.

Omaha Team System User Group

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:49:00 +0000

The next Omaha Team System User Group meeting is going to be held Tuesday, March 24th at Farm Credit Services of America. Jeremy Novak will be presenting on Acceptance/Service Level Testing using Remote Test Runner.

Here are the details:

Presentation: Acceptance/Service Level Testing with Remote Test Runner – Using an automated acceptance testing framework allows you to separate the task of creating test data from the test framework. Your business owners can concentrate on creating the test data that gives them the assurance the product being tested meets their needs leaving developers to create the associated unit tests.

This presentation will be covering a new automated testing tool for use with Visual Studio – Remote Test Runner (RTR). RTR builds upon the data-driven testing features currently built into Visual Studio Professional and higher. RTR provides a nice, intuitive interface for running data-driven tests, even if you don’t have Visual Studio installed. The test results can be reviewed in a summary or detailed view. The detailed view is similar to the output provided by FitNesse, if you’re familiar with that product. If you’re making use of continuous integration, you can integrate the acceptance tests into your automated builds ensuring all tests are executed with each build. If you have code coverage turned on, then coverage of your acceptance tests will be tracked as well.

Remote Test Runner will be released as an open source project on Microsoft’s CodePlex site the night of the presentation.

Speaker: Jeremy Novak, FCSA
Jeremy Novak has over 15 years of software development experience and is current employed as a Developer/Web Programmer by Farm Credit Services of America. He is interested in learning about all things.

I hope to see everyone there!

Free ASP.NET MVC Tutorial

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:00:00 +0000

Scott Guthrie recently announced a new ASP.NET MVC book that he co-authored with Scott Hanselman, Rob Conery, and Phil Haack. Scott wrote the first chapter, a 185 page end-to-end tutorial that walks through the creation of a complete ASP.NET MVC application. As part of his agreement with Wrox to write this chapter for free, he asked that they make the tutorial available as a free download. Nice!

You can read the details in Scott’s post here. You can download the free PDF tutorial here.

TFS Admin Tool v.Next

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 02:38:00 +0000

For those of us who use the Team Foundation Server Administration Tool, we know how much of a time saver it can be. If you have not used the TFS Admin Tool, hosted on CodePlex, here’s a quick description:

The TFS Admin Tool allows a TFS administrator to quickly add users to all three platforms utilized by Team Foundation Server: Team Foundation Server, SharePoint, and SQL Reporting Services, all through one common interface. The tool also allows administrators to change the current permissions on any of the three tiers, identify any errors, and view all of the users and their permission sets across Team Foundation Server, SharePoint, and SQL Reporting Services.

The TFS Admin Tool is getting a boost. Specifically, there are several people, myself included, gearing up to work on a defect regarding SQL 2008 support (click here for details). The next release will include the fix for this defect along with fixes for a few other defects currently in progress.

What we would like to see is more community involvement around this product. We want to hear your ideas and suggestions. If you’ve made any source code updates to help improve the product, we’d like for you to upload those as well. If you maintain a blog or Facebook page, tweet on twitter, etc. then help us get the word out that we’re looking for everyone’s ideas and support. The project coordinate, Michael Ruminer, has posted more details here.

Microsoft MVP Global Summit

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 06:04:00 +0000

Microsoft MVPs from all around the world have began their descent on Seattle. Tomorrow starts the 2009 Microsoft MVP Global Summit which will run from March 1st thru March 4th.

Having been a Microsoft MVP (for Team System) for only a few months, this is my first Summit and I am happy that I am able to attend. I am not completely sure what to expect but what I hope to get out of it is the opportunity to meet a lot of other software professionals with a passion for technology and learning. Based on my conversation with the first MVP I’ve met so far on this trip, Jay Smith, it doesn’t appear that it is going to be a problem :-)

I also look forward to meeting some of the people that helped develop the technologies that I make use of on a daily basis – e.g. Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server. I have no doubt that I, along with the other attendees, will have plenty of questions to ask. This is a great opportunity to gain knowledge of what’s currently being used today as well as what’s coming down the road. As always, I look forward to sharing this information (barring any NDA’s, of course :-) with fellow co-workers and acquaintances.

Install Partner

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:39:00 +0000

If your development shop is anything like ours, then you probably have dozens of various development tools, utilities, etc. In our case, we have multiple development teams which utilize a common set of tools but also make use of specific tools that apply to the types of projects each team supports. There are two common issues that arise because of this configuration:

When we re-image our development machines we still need to install most of the developer tools that we make use of. Again, some of this is common across teams but most of it varies by team and developer.
There are dozens of applications that we pick and choose from when we install. Most of the installations for these applications are available on a common network share but we still have to navigate our way through a folder maze in order to find them.

Install Partner alleviates both of these issues. In the first case, Install Partner allows you to create one or more profiles that group a set of applications. This set of applications, which can be ordered in any manner you wish, can then be installed simply by selecting the desired profile and clicking on the “Install” button. This makes it relatively painless when re-imaging new machines. For example, once the re-imaging process has completed, I can simply run Install Partner, select the desired profile, and install. This step can be automated as well via the command line if desired.

For those “one-off” situations where you just want to install a single application, you can also do this quickly by right-clicking an application from the list and selecting “Install”. Since all the applications we make use of are categorized and neatly presented within the Install Partner UI, we don’t have to spend the extra time looking for the installation files.

If this sounds like something that may be useful for you and/or your team, feel free to check it out on the CodePlex site here.

Here is a screen shot of Install Partner with a configuration file opened:

Team System Live

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:29:00 +0000

I came across a (relatively) new site yesterday called Team System Live. This site is built on the Ning platform and was put together by Chris Tullier. It provides a great view into various live events related to Visual Studio Team System. There are various event types, including:

In Person events such as workshops and user group meetings
On-line events hosted by Microsoft Office Live Meeting
On-line chats

You can add your own events or you can search for existing events by keyword or browse based on event type or date. Once you locate an event of interest, you can easily add it to Outlook or iCal. As of the time of this post there were 32 on-line events and 28 in person events listed on the site.

The site also hosts an on-line chat session every Wednesday from 12:00-1:00pm (CST/-6GMT) to discuss all things related to Team System. In fact, I just finished participating in today’s chat session a few minutes ago.

Along with the great information regarding events, there are links to other sites including Team System-related sites, bloggers that blog on Team System, user groups, etc.

So, if you’re looking for some great “live” events related to Team System want to chat with other Team System users, then I highly recommend checking out Team System Live.

VS 2008 Project Template for TFS Utilities

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:48:00 +0000

If you’re like me and create a lot of simple, “one-off” TFS utilities, you’ve probably followed steps similar to these multiple times:

Create a new “Windows Forms” (or “Console”) project in Visual Studio 2008.
Add various TFS assembly references which can range anywhere between one or a dozen references.
Add some “using” statements to your code.
Finally, start coding the utility.

Apparently, Neno Loje (a fellow Team System MVP) has done this a time or two as well and decided to create a Visual Studio 2008 Project Template to alleviate some of the repetitive tasks.

After installing the template, you will have a new project type called “TFS Utility”. When you choose the “TFS Utility” project type, a new project will be created with a dozen or so TFS assembly references automatically included. Some boiler-plate example code is also included in the default form class to get you started.

Needless to say, this will save on some of the monotony when creating new TFS utilities.

You can get the full details from his post here. The template can be downloaded directly from his blog site here (as per his instructions, just copy the ZIP file to this folder: {MyDocuments}\Visual Studio 2008\Templates\ProjectTemplates).

Get Files Associated with a Build

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 02:24:00 +0000

One of the greatest features of Team Foundation Server is it's extensibility via the TFS Object Model. A short while back I received a question asking how to retrieve a list of all files included in all the changesets associated with a build. The intent (of the person asking the question) was to deploy only those files that had been modified in one of the changesets.

The following code example is what I came up with. I can't say it's the only way, or even the most efficient way, to achieve the desired result, but it's at least one way :-) I've also posted this example on TFSExamples.com, here.

/// <summary>
/// Gets a list of files included in all changesets associated with the specified build URI.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="tfServerName">The name of the Team Foundation Server server.</param>
/// <param name="buildUri">The URI of the build to retrieve items for.</param>
/// <param name="workspaceName">The name of the workspace that's used to map server items
/// to local items (e.g. to a file on the client machine).</param>
/// <param name="workspaceOwner">The workspace owner.</param>
/// <returns>A list of files included in all changesets associated with the specified
/// build URI.</returns>
/// <remarks>You can specifiy an empty/null <paramref name="workspaceName"/> and/or
/// <paramref name="workspaceOwner"/> if you want a list of server items returned.</remarks>
private List<string> GetFilesAssociatedWithBuild(string tfServerName, Uri buildUri, string workspaceName, string workspaceOwner)
{
    var buildFiles = new List<string>();
    Workspace workspace = null;

    // Obtain cached instance of TeamFoundationServer (if a match is found).  If the current credentials are not
    // valid, then a connection dialog will be displayed when EnsureAuthenticated is called below
    var tfServer = TeamFoundationServerFactory.GetServer(tfServerName, new UICredentialsProvider());

    // Ensure the current user can authenticate with TFS
    _teamFoundationServer.EnsureAuthenticated();

    // Get a reference to the build service
    var buildServer = (IBuildServer)tfServer.GetService(typeof(IBuildServer));

    // Get a reference to the version control service
    var versionControl = (VersionControlServer)tfServer.GetService(typeof(VersionControlServer));

    // Get the workspace used to map server items to local items
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(workspaceName) && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(workspaceOwner))
    {
        workspace = versionControl.GetWorkspace(workspaceName, workspaceOwner);
    }

    // Get the build specified by the selected build URI
    var build = buildServer.GetBuild(buildUri);
    if (build != null)
    {
        // Get a list of all changesets associated with the selected build
        var changesets = InformationNodeConverters.GetAssociatedChangesets(build);
        if (changesets != null)
        {
            // Iterate through all changesets associated with the selected build
            foreach (var changesetSummary in changesets)
            {
                // Get the changeset for the specified ID
                var changeset = versionControl.GetChangeset(changesetSummary.ChangesetId);

                if (changeset.Changes != null)
                {
                    // Add each file associated with the current changeset
                    foreach (var changesetItem in changeset.Changes)
                    {
                        if (workspace != null)
                        {
                            // Since a workspace is available, map the server item to a local item
                            item = workspace.GetLocalItemForServerItem(changesetItem.Item.ServerItem);
                        }
                        else
                        {
                            // A workspace was not provided, so return the server item
                            item = changesetItem.Item.ServerItem;
                        }

                        // Do not add duplicate filenames
                        if (!buildFiles.Contains(item))
                        {
                            buildFiles.Add(item);
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
    return buildFiles;
}

Microsoft Learning & Hands-On Labs

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:35:00 +0000

If you've never checked out the Microsoft Learning site I would recommend giving it a look. This site provides a great deal of training-related information for various Microsoft products. You can easily find training for a variety of products based on the learning resource types, technologies, or subjects.

You can also search for a specific exam and get detailed information on what materials are available for use in preparing for the exam. It will also give you other useful information such as what certifications does the exam apply to.

Another cool feature of the site are the Learning Plans. There are several pre-defined learning plans that allow you to easily add a group of learning resources to your "My Learning" page. For example, you can select the Learning Plan for MCPD Certification as a Web Developer and get a list of steps that you can follow to achieve the MCPD Certification as a Web Developer.

The best part of this site is that a lot of the content is offered for free (who can resist free on-line training? :-). As of this post, here is a list of the developer-related e-learning modules available for free (or you can view all current free items on-line by clicking here):

Distributed Applications

Windows and Smart Client

.NET 3.0

ASP.NET

SharePoint Technologies

Security

Microsoft BizTalk

Clinic 2954: First Look: Microsoft® BizTalk® Server 2006 for Developers

Microsoft SQL Server

Hands-On Labs

There are also several hands-on labs available for free. Here is a short list of a few of them - I have no doubt there are others available as well:

Happy learning!

How To: Skip Actions When Queuing a Build

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 04:13:00 +0000

One of the tasks we commonly build into our Team Build scripts is the ability to run FitNesse tests along with other tests (such as unit tests). If any of the tests fail, we do not deploy the product for user acceptance testing.

The advantage to this approach is that we find out relatively quickly if we have "broke" the build if we have failing tests. The down side to this is two-fold: 1) the build takes longer to run (not that big of an issue in our case) and 2) Sometimes we refactor code that should break the FitNesse tests.

In the latter case, it may take somebody several hours (or even sometimes, days) to review the failing tests and get them corrected. In the meantime, none of our updates get deployed for further testing.

Properties to the Rescue

Some time ago, I wrote a short post explaining how to access the various properties, items, and meta data that you can define and/or make use of in your Team Build scripts. By making use of a simple property declared within the build script we can allow the developers to queue a new build and override the execution of the FitNesse tests so the build can proceed. Configuring the build script to achieve this requires three steps:

1. Create a custom property that will be used as a flag to determine whether the desired functionality should be executed or overridden (i.e. skipped). In my example below, I named the property SkipFitNesse.

<PropertyGroup>
<SkipFitNesse>false</SkipFitNesse>
</PropertyGroup>

2. Place the task(s) to be executed into a custom target specifying a condition. For example:

Notice that the property name, SkipFitNesse, is used in the condition. As long as it remains set to its default value (in this case, false) the target will execute.

3. Call the target at the desired point from within the build script. In the example below, I am calling the target to run the FitNesse tests in the <AfterCompile> target.

Now that the build script is setup, you can manually override the execution of the FitNesse tests when you queue a new build by entering the following text into the command-line arguments field:

/p:SkipFitNesse=true

For example:

With this approach, the developers on our team now have a quick and simple method for skipping the execution of FitNesse tests if they are known to be in a "non-passing" condition and we want the build to continue. This is only one example of how you might override the value of a property on the queue build dialog. There are undoubtedly countless uses for this technique.

Also, if you're interested in seeing how we execute FitNesse tests as part of our builds, check out this post.

Omaha Team System User Group

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 03:34:00 +0000

After having to postpone the session from September due to scheduling conflicts we had a great turnout for the Omaha Team System User Group meeting last week. The speaker for our November meeting was Russ Wagner, an Enterprise Applications Architect at Farm Credit Services of America.

After having some tasty pizza and enjoying a little socializing, Russ presented on the TFS command line utilities and TFS Power Tools related to Team Foundation Server. The presentation went very well (despite some pre-demonstration glitches) and proved to be very informative. Although I've had the opportunity to use the majority of the command line tools and TFS Power Tools, it was nice to see them all covered in a single presentation.

Once the presentation was over, we raffled off some books and had some great Q & A with a few of the attendees. As always, I'm looking forward to our next meeting after the start of the new year.

Click here to download the presentation in PowerPoint 2007 format.

VSTS 2010 + .NET Framework 4.0 CTP

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:04:00 +0000

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Community Technology Preview (CTP) has been made available for download (as of 26 Oct 2008). You can get the latest bits here.

It is about a 7.5 GB download so be prepared for it to take a little while, especially since it was just released.

There is a ton of new functionality in VSTS 2010, far too much to enumerate in this post. However, you can check this previous post of mine as a starting point for getting more details.

Download VSTS 2010 .NET 4.0 CTP

VSLive! Las Vegas - Day 3

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:59:00 +0000

Well, the "regular" conference sessions are now over. All that is left is the post-conference session which includes an all-day hands on lab for LINQ. I will spend part of the day in this session until it's time to head to the airport.

Once again, I spent the last session day in ALM sessions related to Team Foundation Server.

The first session of the day was mine, "Using Team Foundation Build in the "Real" World". I thought the session went very well (I suppose the feedback will tell the real story :-). There was great attendance and a lot of great questions being asked. I really enjoyed presenting at VSLive! and hope to do it again in the future.

The remaining sessions covered implementing cross platform/language builds using TFS, migration vs. integration of TFS, and programming the TFS object model.

Although the sessions were great, I enjoyed talking to the other attendees and speakers the most. It's always nice to meet other people facing the same issues as you and that have the same interests. Because of the sessions I attend and the people I talked to, I have a lot of new information, techniques, and practices that I can take back with me and apply to my daily work.

All in all, it's been a great week at VSLive! Las Vegas. I may have even set some kind of world record while being here - I'm not much of a gambler and, in fact, I may be the first person ever to stay in Las Vegas for five days without gambling a single cent :-) I did enjoy a lot of other attractions while here in Las Vegas, however. I attended a show (the Phantom of the Opera), spent time swimming (don't get a chance to do that much at home), walked the "strip" countless times, watched a battle between two pirate ships, and spent an average of $20-$25 on just about every meal I ate :-) Speaking of food, the lunch meals provided during the conference were second to none.

If you're interested in the slides from my presentation, you can get them here.

TFSInfo Updated for TFS 2008 SP1

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 05:14:00 +0000

The TFSInfo utility has been updated for TFS 2008 Service Pack 1. This update includes the following changes:

UPDATE: TFSInfo will correctly report TFS 2008 SP1 when it is installed.
UPDATE: TFSInfo now displays the TFS installation folder.
FIX: TFSInfo now finds the TFS installation folder when it has been installed in a non-default location.

You can see from the screen shot which information is displayed. In case you can't see the image, the following information is displayed by TFSInfo:

AT Server Name
AT Version
AT Edition (e.g. Standard, Workgroup, or Trial)
TFS Installation Folder
DT Server Name
DT Server Version (not available for TFS 2008)
SQL Server Version
Reporting Server URL
TFS Installation Date
TFS Product ID

You'll notice in the list above that the Data Tier schema version is not available for TFS 2008. This is because the column that's used to determine the schema version in TFS 2005 does not exist in TFS 2008. I haven't had any luck locating the schema version in any other table in the set of TFS 2008 databases. If I am able to determine how that information is stored (assuming it is) I will release an update. Another update will be released shortly following the next Visual Studio 2010 CTP (due out in the next couple of weeks during the PDC).

The new version can be downloaded here.

NOTE: The Team Explorer Client 2005 or 2008 needs to be installed for TFSInfo to work.

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VSLive! Las Vegas - Day 2

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:50:00 +0000

Day 2 is now a wrap and the conference continues to go strong. As you may have suspected, I spent my time in the ALM sessions around the subjects of TFS Work Item Tracking, Team System Add-Ons, and Branching Strategies. All the sessions I attended were very good although I didn't attend every session because I spent a little time polishing up my slides and demos for my talk on Thursday morning (Using Team Build in the "Real" World).

I would have to say my favorite talk of the day was the one on Branching Strategies by Jeff Levinson. There was definitely some good information coming out of this presentation that can be applied today on our projects. I'll be picking Jeff's brain over the next few months attempting to learn everything he knows about branching (if that's possible :-)

VSLive! Las Vegas - Day 1

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:47:00 +0000

The first day of VSLive! Las Vegas is now in the books. This is my first time attending a VSLive! conference so I wasn't sure what to expect.

The keynote was given by Stephanie Saad, the Group Program Manager for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. She discussed the use of Team Foundation Server throughout Microsoft and some of the challenges they ran into while using the product. The scale at which they make use of Team Foundation Server is somewhat staggering in comparison to the seven developer teams at the company I work for. Along with one of her co-workers, I don't recall the name (sorry), they also presented some of the new features that will be available in VSTS 2010 - mostly around the tracking and reporting of project-related data in Microsoft Excel.

I spent most of the rest of my time in TFS-related sessions with speakers such as Benjamin Day and Brian Randell. All in all, it was a great start to the conference. So far, based on the size of the conference rooms, the number of attendees, and the speakers, I would have to say it's relatively comparable to the Heartland Developers Conference.

Being in Las Vegas for the first time, I decided I had to check out at least one show. So, I decided to go to the Phantom of the Opera at The Venetian. I've seen Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera in Des Moines and Omaha and thought I could use those shows as a basis for comparison. I must admit, the show at The Venetian pretty much blew the others away! In all fairness, the show at The Venetian has a dedicated stage and auditorium built solely for the purpose of The Phantom of the Opera. This allows the effect to be top notch. Although I'm not sure who was playing the parts of the Phantom, Christine, etc. the singing was phenomenal. If the other shows in Las Vegas are of this caliber of quality, then there are indeed a lot of great shows in this town :-)

Visual Studio 2010 Links

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff B.) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:05:00 +0000

There has been a lot of information coming out over the past couple of weeks regarding Visual Studio 2010 so I thought I'd consolidate a list of links that provide some information about what may be included in the next release:

Informational Posts

Visual Studio Team System 2010 Overview - a quick overview of what's being accomplished in VSTS 2010.

PodCasts and Videos

RadioTFS Interview with Habib Heydarian on VS 2010 Developer Features.
Historical Debugger (10:47) - demonstrates the use of the Historical Debugger in VSTS 2010. This promises to be a great feature for developers everywhere!
An early look at Team Foundation Build 2010 with Jim Lamb (34:46) - a great video with with Jim Lamb demonstrating some of the new features in Team Build 2010. I've also written a summary of the features covered by Jim here if you're interested in the abridged version :-).
Channel 9 Videos - Channel 9 has quite a collection of videos now showcasing some of the new features of VS 2010. There's enough video here to keep you busy for a while.

BLOGs

There are a lot more blogs related to Team System than these listed below. However, these are some of the blogs I read more often:

There is no doubt a lot of other information out there but this should help you get started if you're just now starting to take a look at what's coming down the road with Visual Studio 2010.