Nicolas Müggler

Erfahren Sie das Neueste zu Team System 2010 an der TeamConf 08 in Zürich

Nicolas is blogging » Work — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 07:39:43 GMT

An der Microsoft PDC (Professional Developer Conference) von letzter Woche in Los Angeles wurden viele neue Produkte und Technologien angekündigt, darunter sind Windows Azure, Windows 7, .NET Framework 4.0, Oslo und Visual Studio Team System 2010! Wer...(read more)

TFS SP1 installation retrospect

Nicolas is blogging » Work — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:41:09 GMT

After helping a few customers to install TFS SP1, I’d like to note some problems often occurring. The SP installation package has some problems in dual server configurations and throws an error while installing. To avoid this problems, I always...(read more)

Migration complete

Nicolas is blogging » Work — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 09:45:52 GMT

After migrating my Trivadis posts to here, I will start writing new posts....(read more)

Share ConnectionStrings between projects for each developer differently

Nicolas Mueggler — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:13:00 GMT

Share ConnectionStrings

A customer of mine have a Visual Studio C# solution with more than one project which uses the same ConnectionString. So how can you define your ConnectionString(s) once and share them between projects?
This is how my sample solution looks like. The "Console" and "ServerConsole" projects should use the same ConnectionStrings.

I created a XML file called "connections.config" in the solution root folder and added it to the solution via the "Add Existing Item" dialog. This file contains all my ConnectionStrings I need.

Content of connections.config:

   1:  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

   2:  <connectionStrings>

   3:    <add name="DefaultDatabase"

   4:     providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"

   5:     connectionString="Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;
             Initial Catalog=ShareConnection;
             Integrated Security=True" />

   6:  </connectionStrings>

After that, I add the file to all projects, which are needing the same connections. You need to add the file as "Add As Link" to ensure using the file in the shared location.

Now you see the file in your project with a little arrow on the left bottom (linked file).

To ensure the file is copied to the build output directory, you need to modify the "Copy to Output Directory" setting of the linked file to "Copy Always".

Now write the following "connectionStrings" section in the "App.config" of your projects:

   1:  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

   2:  <configuration>

   3:    <appSettings>

   4:      <add key="SpecificProjSetting" value="SomeValue" />

   5:    </appSettings>

   6:    <connectionStrings configSource="connections.config" />

   7:  </configuration>

And that's all. If you now write your code, you always get the shared ConnectionString e.g.:

   1:  public string GetDbConnection()

   2:  {

   3:      return ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["DefaultDatabase"].ConnectionString;

   4:  }

Individual ConnectionStrings for each developer

My second requirements, enabling each developer to have his own ConnectionStrings (they have different Instance-Names), needs only a small addition.

In addition to the "connections.config" file which is under Source Control, each developer can create his own file at the same place with the convention "connections.config.{COMPUTERNAME}" which will not be checked in. In my example my computer's name is "NIM-50", so the file is named as "connections.config.NIM-50".

Edit now each project's (Pre-Build/Post/Build) property in the "Build Events" tab with the following command lines.

Pre-build event command line:
if exist $(TargetDir)connections.config del $(TargetDir)connections.config

Post-build event command line:
if exist $(SolutionDir)connections.config.$(COMPUTERNAME) copy $(SolutionDir)connections.config.$(COMPUTERNAME) $(TargetDir)connections.config

The "Pre-Build" checks if a "connections.config" allready exists in the drop location and deletes it. If the "Pre-Build" wouldn't be run, then the old (existing) file will not be overwritten!
The "Post-Build" checks if a specific developer configuration is found and copy/rename it to the drop location. If no one exists, the standard shared config will be used as defined in the project's include.

eScrum for TFS 2008 released

Nicolas Mueggler — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:27:36 GMT

eScrum is a Scrum process template with a strong web management interface. It is developed by Microsoft and was released some times after Team Foundation Server 2005 as a separate download on their website.

It took some time, but now they released version 1.1 which supports TFS 2008 without doing the known work-around.

Go and download the new version 1.1 .

Help on installing Team System SP1

Nicolas Mueggler — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:42:07 GMT

Being the first is not always the best, especially if you want to be the first on a new software release ;-). So if you already want to install the Service Pack 1 for your Team System environment, I want to give you some hints to not getting troubles.

Before installing SP1 make sure you run the Hotfix Cleanup Utility for Visual Studio to cleanup your current installation
If you have Express Edition and normal Visual Studio installed, you can't update Express before upgrading normal Visual Studio
When upgrading your TFS with an installation of Visual Studio make sure that you first install SP for Visual Studio and then the one for TFS. If you first install TFS SP1, then you can't update Visual Studio anymore...
Update all your tiers with SP1 (this includes Build Server, Load Controller, TFS and Client) to avoid unpredictable errors
If you working with ASP.NET Ajax you should wait to upgrade, because there could be a bug in the SP. This was reported by Thomas Schissler in his blog post (German).
If you make a new installation of TFS and want to include installing SP1, then look for the updated TFS Installation Guide to integrate SP1 in the installation (there is currently no TFS2008 ISO incl. SP1).
Look for the Readme listing the known issues

As good practice I advice my customers (Production environments) to wait for the next 2 weeks to make sure no big problems will be found.

Service Pack Day (Visual Studio, TFS, .NET Framework)

Nicolas Mueggler — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:57:57 GMT

Hi, if you don't know it already, Microsoft has released Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2008 and also the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (Just a week after the release of SQL Server 2008).

To get more info and links to the download page go to Brian Harry's blog post.

Rosario's tiny enhancements (Work Item Queries)

Nicolas Mueggler — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:05:47 GMT

Currently I'm looking at the Rosario CTP's, what's new and hot. So this post will hopefully be the first of a series about small enhancements which helps you in the daily work.

Work Item Queries

It's now possible to group your queries in folders.

In VSTS 2008, I created/changed the queries with a prefix for example the "RE - User Stories" or "DEV - My Tasks". Because if you have many queries, it's nice to have some sorting. In Rosario you could make folders by process role. Nice!

Hint: Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 available

Nicolas Mueggler — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:11:38 GMT

As I normally blog about Team System and especially Team Foundation Server, maybe the question comes up, why am I posting about Sharepoint updates? The answer is quite easy. Because with each TFS installation, you also need at least a WSS installation. I'd like to inform the TFS admins out there, to also look for maintaining the rest of the system or inform their system admins to look for it.

This updates corrects some problems with workflows and improvements to scalability and performance, for details look at Knowledge Base article KB951695.

Download: Infrastructure Update for Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 (KB951695)
Deploy software updates for Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0

As I'm posting information about updates, I always tested them on my TFS test machine. But for sure, I do not guaranty that the updates works on all environment configurations.

TFS Power Tools Juli 08 Release is out now

Nicolas Mueggler — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:20:08 GMT

The new release (Juli) of the Team Foundation Server Power Tools has been released this night.

The new features are:

UI for subscribing to TFS alerts!
TFS Best Practices Analyzer support for SQL-Server 2008
Support for changing user's names
Some improvements of the tfpt.exe

You can download it here.
For more details see the post from Brian Harry and his preview post. He does an outstanding job to deliver us with all this great feature extensions!

Unfortunately the TFS Web Access Update and SCOM management pack is still in work, but will be released soon.
And what's hot: Brian said, there will be an eScrum 2008 release soon! How long do we waited for that?

Visit us at the ALM Day

Nicolas Mueggler — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:56:00 GMT

Are you interested in the Application Lifecyle Management topic combined with the Microsoft development products?

Software development has changed over the past years. Many companies tried to implement their development processes with more or less success. The biggest problem is not the definition, but the control of the work produced each day according to that process. Only with the integration of the complete product lifecycle and the ability to adopt the process, will help us, to make the quality of the software and organization better.

Microsoft has announced the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Day with 7 speeches about how ALM can be implemented with the Team System product suite.
We from Trivadis will be there with a speech about the theory and practice of agile development with VSTS and SCRUM. So come and join us!

Monday, August 25th at Microsoft Switzerland, Wallisellen
for more details, check out the offical event infos on MSDN Switzerland: Application Lifecycle Management Day

New version of Visual Studio 2008 PowerCommands released

Nicolas Mueggler — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:09:24 GMT

I already posted about the PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2008 here.
Last Saturday, they released a new version which includes some good additions:

Enable / disable PowerCommands in options dialog
Format document & Remove and Sort Usings on save
Clear all panes
Copy path
Email CodeSnippet
Insert Guid attribute
Show all files
Undo close

Have a look on the MSDN code gallery.

Deleting branches don't removes them from source control folder properties

Nicolas Mueggler — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:43:36 GMT

Have you ever created a branch in the wrong directory and noticed it too late (after check-in)?
For example, you create a branch under "$/Project/Main/" instead of "$/Project/Dev/". After you have realized your mistake, you go for a delete on the branch (checking in) and create a new one under "Dev".
Now go to the branches tab on the source control folder properties and look what you've got:

Your deleted branch will appear in the tree without any information that it was deleted. It's right that the branch wasn't removed because TFS handles deletes only with a status change. But I don't want to see the deleted files, right? Or at least they should be marked as deleted. Because I think this is really confusing, I posted a bug at connect:
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=336734

How can I really remove the branch?
To really remove your branch, go for a destroy with the tf command line util.

To remove an item out off source control (not only mark as deleted), run the destroy command:
>tf destroy {BRANCHNAME}

Because you already have deleted the branch, the command will throw an exception that the branch wasn't found. This is because deleted items will get renamed with a deletion-id suffix. To get the deletion-id, go and run the properties command:
>tf properties {BRANCH_NAME}

Now, after you have the deletion-id, go and run the destroy command again (don't forget the x!):
>tf destroy {BRANCHNAME};x{DELETION-ID}

The properties window of your source control folder will show only the existing branches :-).

TFS for Eclipse: Teamprise version 3.0 released

Nicolas Mueggler — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:16:43 GMT

The new version of the Teamprise add-in for Eclipse has released.
Teamprise Explorer enables you to connect to the Team Foundation Server from within the Eclipse IDE. You can use source control, work item tracking, project reports and Ant / CruiseControl integration.

Now in version 3.0 you can also use Team Build & Check-in policies. It's getting better and better!

PowerCommands & Power Toys for Visual Studio 2008 released

Nicolas Mueggler — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:52:40 GMT

Have you heard from the Visual Studio Extension "PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2008"?
Microsoft has released some really cool extensions to the solution explorer:

Collapse projects
Copy/Paste Class
Copy/Paste Reference
Open containing folder
Open command prompt
Unload/Reload projects
Remove and sort usings
Extract constant
Clear recent lists
and some more...

Download it from the Visual Studio Gallery here.

If you're already there, also watch out the "Source Code Outliner Power Toy". It's like a "Class View" only for the current file. Normally you need to work with the combo boxes at the top of your current opened source file to browse to methods. Not any more...
And if you have ever worked with the Eclipse IDE, then you won't work without it!