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My MVP Award is Renewed!

joycsharp — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:44:58 GMT

Yesterday I’ve been informed that I’ve gained the Most Valuable Professional award again for next year, in ASP.NET category. This is the third time I have received this award, which is pretty exciting.

Here is my MVP profile: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Ashraful

Special thanks to few Microsoft employees including Technical Fellow Brain Harry, Sr. Program Manager Joe Stagner, Lead Product Manager Dan Fernandez and South Asia MVP Lead Abhishek Kant who encouraged and supported me in several ways last year.

Thanks Microsoft for this recognition, which will encourage me to keep my passion on MS products continued with more optimization and greater efforts.

Technorati Tags: community,mvp,developer

Microsoft Day @ Dhaka: Community Feedback, Pictures and Resources

joycsharp — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:25:26 GMT

Thanks everybody who Participated in the event Microsoft Day @ Dhaka, held on 20 June 2009 at IDB Auditorium, Dhaka. It was an excellent gathering of 250+ professionals, specially developers in Bangladesh.

Besides the knowledge sharing stuffs, the event was very successful to create a social gathering of technical professionals. I was really found it pretty nice that, I have meet at least 20+ guys there, whom I knew and meet virtually before.

The good news for the community is, we will be organizing the similar events in futures and organize it in a better way based on community feedback we received.

Presentation Slides: Overview of Visual Studio Team System 2010

Here goes my presentation slides used in the event.

Overview of Visual Studio Team System 2010

View more OpenOffice presentations from joycsc.

Pictures:

Community Feedback and Resources:

Check the facebook user group for related resources, other images etc. You can put your suggestions and feedback here in the msdnbangladesh site to make the future events better.

Technorati Tags: community,microsoft,asp.net,vsts,team system,developer

See You on Microsoft Day @ Dhaka!

joycsharp — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:34:50 GMT

Microsoft Community in Bangladesh proudly presents Microsoft Day @ Dhaka. This is a special day dedicated to all Microsoft technology professionals and students in Bangladesh. We will be having the best Microsoft community technologists from Bangladesh - Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) delivering sessions at the event.

This technology marathon is a great opportunity to learn from the best and network with each other.
Both Microsoft developers and networking professionals would find the event worth attending.

I am really very excited to be a part of this event, both as an organizer as well as as a speaker. I’ll be delivering speech there on Visual Studio Team System 2010.

If you not already registered, but don’t want to miss this cool event, register now at the msdn bangladesh site.

See you there!

Check below the agenda of this event.

AUDITORIUM – Dev Track

9:00 - 9:30: Opening Speech - Feroz Mahmood

9:30 - 10:30: Development in ASP.NET [LINQ, Web Forms, Dynamic Data] - Tanzim Saqib

10:30 - 11:15: My First ASP.NET MVC App - Mehfuz Hossain

11:15 - 11:45 : Unit Testing in MVC and Demo of dotnetshoutouts.com - Kazi Manzur Rashid

11:45- 12:30: Developing in Silverlight - Faisal Hossain Khan

12:30 - 1:30: Lunch

1:30 - 2:00 : Introduction to Sharepoint/ MOSS - Jannatul Ferdous

2:00 - 2:45: Production Challenges of ASP.NET Websites - Omar Al Zabir

2:45 - 3:15: Windows Azure - Ashic

3:15 - 3:45: Tea Break

3:45 - 4:30: Overview of Visual Studio Team System 2010 - Mohammad Ashraful Alam

4:30 - 5:30: Features of Windows 7 - IE8 and Windows Live Features - Omi Azad

BREAK OUT – IT Pro Track

9:00 - 9:30: Opening Speech - Feroz Mahmood [IN AUDITORIUM]

9:30 – 10:30: Exchange Server 2010

10:30 - 11:30: Windows Server 2008 - Virtualisation & HyperV

11:30 - 12:30: Talking Windows Server 2008 and R2 [Windows Client & Windows Server 2008 NAP – Better Together] - Anwar Hossain (Technical Specialist, MS Bangladesh)

12:30 - 1:30: Lunch

1:30 - 2:15: Session on MS Project & EPM : M. Manzurur Rahman (CEO, ICT Alliance)

2:15 - 3:00: Office 2007

3:00 - 3:30: Tea Break

3:30 - 4:30: Introduction to SQL Server 2008

4:30 - 5:30: Features of Windows 7 - IE8 and Windows Live Features - Omi Azad [IN AUDITORIUM]

Technorati Tags: community,event,microsoft

5 Quick Steps to Get Introduced with Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server 2010 (Beta 1)

joycsharp — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:13:39 GMT

Last month (May 2009) Microsoft has released its first beta for Visual Studio Team System 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 release, two of the most waited and wanted tools in developer community. From my point of view these two releases are going to be one of the most historical releases, as lots of really cool stuffs has been added with respect to the last version.

However, as the Beta 1 releases are pretty infant, there are very limited resources available in the web and community, so I just wanted to gather all of the useful resources with respect to these two tools in one place, so that anyone can move forward from installation to first “Hello VSTS/TFS” excitement smoothly!

Step 1. What’s New on VSTS 2010 and TFS 2010

Well, you are really liking what the tools you are using, however you are pretty interested what are the cool stuffs that MS bring with VSTS 2010 and TFS 2010. Here we go:

Jason Zander, General Manager, Visual Studio, Developer Division provides lots of images in his Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 release announcement to have an overall idea about its core features.
MSDN provides an excellent, yet simple overview of VSTS 2010 with some brief intro of top features available in VSTS 2010.
Microsoft Fellow Biran Harry provides a quick overview of VSTS 2010 features and TFS 2010 key concepts.
Biran Harry also explaining cool new features of TFS 2010 in this Channel 9 video.

Step 2: Installation Planning

Well, you are convinced VSTS 2010 and TFS 2010 new features are really cool. Now you need to plan, if your existing infrastructure is supported.

While VSTS 2010 installation is pretty simple, TFS 2010 installation stuffs are pretty large deal. Team System MVP Mike has provided an excellent diagram with respect to Microsoft Fellow Brian Harry’s post, which really shows on the fly which software installation are required/recommended/not supported while installing TFS 2010.

Step 3: Installer Download

Visual Studio Team System 2010 (Beta 1) download link.
Team Foundation Server 2010 (Beta 1) download link.

Step 4: Installation Walkthrough

As soon as the required files are downloaded, you are ready to go start the installation.

Brian Keller provides an excellent walkthrough explaining the installation process of TFS 2010 Beta 1 in this Channel 9 video. It also includes installation process (along with all relevant download links/instruction) of other pre-requisites of TFS 2010, including Sql Server 2008 Beta 1 and supporting software as VSTS 2010.

Step 5: First Walkthrough with VSTS 2010 and TFS 2010

And finally you are done with the installation! Great and congratulations! What what to do? Take some breath and move forward to the exciting world of VSTS 2010 and TFS stuffs, to see on hand and own eye, what really been implemented by MS guys.

Jason Zander, General Manager, Visual Studio, Developer Division provides a quick walkthrough from creating a simple WPF application to testing it using the latest cool features available in Visual Studio 2010 in this two part (part 1 and part 2) blog post.
Brian Keller’s video, as mentioned in the earlier section also have a quick walkthrough with TFS 2010 Beta 1. Really cool for beginners.
Although the earlier version of TFS (2008) is considered, but I really liked this walkthrough written by Mitch Denny, in this two part (part 1 and part 2) article. Extremely helpful and quick resource to begin working with such a big developer platform like Team Foundation Server.
If you wish to know more about TFS but need a single resource to explore most of the powerful features, you can have a look on this book, hosted at CodePlex and published by the team. The TFS version is 2008, however hopefully they will publish the updated version of this book with respect to the latest version of TFS.

Technorati Tags: visual studio,2010,tfs,team system,team foundation server

Aggregator Provider Pattern: An Extension of Provider Pattern

joycsharp — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:29:51 GMT

Definition

Aggregator Provider Pattern is an extension of Provider Pattern, which enables us to create and utilize multiple instance of the class having the same provider interface. In this pattern, there is an Aggregator class which implements the provider interface and contains a collection of instances of classes having the same provider interface.

The underlying caller class of this aggregator is simply unaware of how many provider instances do the caller Provider Aggregator contains, but all of the provider instances will be utilized with a single invocation from the caller class.

Comparison with Provider Pattern

Provider Aggregator Pattern is fully compatible with the existing Provider Pattern and the power of provider pattern can be easily extended to use multiple providers concurrently without any modification on the caller classes that were using a provider.

In short Provider Pattern is concerned with the utilization of one of the available providers; whereas Aggregator Provider Pattern is concerned with the utilization of all of the available providers at the same time.

Example Demonstration

Aggregator Provider Pattern is useful when we need a configurable framework to add/remove multiple services used by one caller/user. For instance we can have Logger Provider framework, where we need log info to be saved at text files, save to database and sent to email addresses and so on. Having an easy configurable framework along with Aggregator Provider Pattern will enable us to add or remove more services without requiring the code modification in the code that uses this provider.

Regarding the example case that just been described can utilize the Aggregator Provider Pattern, by creating the classes as illustrated above. The code snippet below shows a basic usage of this pattern, where the last line will perform the log operation based in list of log providers loaded in the aggregator class dynamically.

Download the latest white paper and samples from MSDN Code Gallery.

Technorati Tags: pattern,architecture,coding,best practices,development,engineering

Check This Out: KOBE – Web 2.0 Service Development Resource Kit

joycsharp — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 09:20:33 GMT

Kobe is a “getting started” resource kit on planning, architecting, and implementing Web 2.0 applications and services using the Microsoft Platform.

I am sure all of you who are interested in this area would be really benefitted with it.

Check this out: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb194897.aspx

Technorati Tags: architecture,starter kit,asp.net,visual studio

Email Reporter: VSTS 2008 Load Test Plug-in (V1.0) Released

joycsharp — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:00:07 GMT

Microsoft’s Visual Studio Team System Test Edition provides a powerful platform to perform high volume load testing. It also provides high end flexibilities to write and utilize external plug-in for extended functionalities.

Email Reporter: VSTS 2008 Load Test Plug-in enables users to send the load test reports to one or more pre-configured email addresses automatically, once a VSTS Load Test is completed. This open-source load test plug-in also provides supports for customization by which you can customize the reported performance data.

Download the latest version from: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/erep

Technorati Tags: visual studio,team system,tools,open source

Smoke, Sanity and Regression Testing: The River Analogy

joycsharp — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:21:10 GMT

Roy Osherove written an excellent ‘Restaurant’ analogy to explain the difference between unit tests and integration tests. This type of analogy really becomes lot helpful to understand the concepts that are similar to each other, but has significant difference as well as.

In the world of testing, Smoke Testing, Sanity Testing and Regression Testing are very similar to each other: to ensure the quality running the test cases of an existing application with respect to a new feature being added/dropped/modified. They are targeted to find out the bugs in both UI and code level.

We can consider a River Analogy to understand the difference between Smoke Testing, Sanity Testing and Regression Testing better. Before moving to the analogy, lets consider the very basic definition of three of these testing:

Smoke Testing: Testing all (wide) areas related to new feature, not deeply. Determines if we should go for further testing.
Sanity Testing: Testing narrow areas related to new feature, deeply.
Regression testing: Testing all areas related to new feature, deeply.

If we consider a river, for instance, which has, for instance 1000 feet width, and contains “dusts” in its water (which can be considered as “bugs” in software), the goal for the corresponding three types of tests should be as follows:

For Smoke Testing: to find out the dusts in all over the surface of the river, which not includes the dusts under water.

For Sanity Testing: to find out the dusts in a specific width (for instance left side 200 feet), which not only includes the dusts on surface, but also includes the dusts under water, till the last depth of the river.

For Regression Testing: to find out all the dusts that are available on surface and under the water in all over the river.

Technorati Tags: testing,vsts,unit testing,software development

Announcement: The Official Site of “ASP.NET Developers, Bangladesh” has Changed

joycsharp — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 13:37:29 GMT

ASP.NET Developers, Bangladesh is a group of professional developers, which focuses the latest development trends in ASP.NET and it’s related technologies. This professional group is member of INETA (International .NET Association) and Culminis.

The previous group site address has been changed, as it was hosted at MSN group, which was closed from March 2009. All of the previous group members and those who are not yet been member but interested to share and learn new cutting edge technologies are requested to join in the new site:

http://msdnbangladesh.net/groups/aspnet/default.aspx

The new site contains lots of resources including blogs, discussion forum, media gallery, code gallery etc.

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: community,group,software development

5 Reasons to Write Automated Tests for Generated Data Access Layer Code

joycsharp — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 08:33:36 GMT

Software Designers often have to face a common decision factor, that whether they need to design automated test (unit test, integration test etc) infrastructure for data access layer code, specially when the data access layer codes are written using code generator tool. Basically the straight forward answer as ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ in this regard depends of several situations/ factors such the size and budget of the project etc. Here are my 5 top reasons to write automated test (unit test, integration test etc) for generated data access layer code.

1. When the code generation template/logic itself contains bug

While using the code generators, it’s possible that the underlying code/logic of the code generators may contain bug! Having the automated test for the generated data access layer code greatly helps of indentify the ‘generated’ bugs!

2. When the code is not re-generated after to change of underlying database object

Well I swear my generated code engine is perfect (i.e. no bug on my generator engine/template logic)! Cool. I have generated the code perfectly. However I have changed the underlying database, but really forgot to re-generate the code using the code generator! Well that could be possible and can be detected if we have corresponding automated tests!

3. When the re-generated code is not perfect for the new changes of underlying database object

Well I swear my code has been re-generated after I have changed by database. Cool. But the initial version of generated code may work perfectly with the initial version of database objects. However, new bugs can be found/introduced in the generated code for the new changes of underlying database objects, which results updating the code generation logic. So, still you need automated tests for your data access layer code!

4. When custom code is added in the generated code

Sometimes custom code needs to be placed on the generated code. In those cases automated tests really helps a lot of indentify the bugs possibly placed in custom code in data access layer and/or in database stored procedure, function etc.

5. To check the perfect integration with database objects

Even the codes are generated/written for data access layer perfectly, but it’s still possible of failing the code running properly while the data access layer code and database objects are integrated. For instance using wrong connection string that points to wrong version of database etc. Having a well designed automated testing infrastructure really helps us in this regard!

Technorati Tags: database,visual studio team system,architecture

Top 10 Favorite Performance Counters in Web Site Load Testing Using VSTS 2008

joycsharp — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:12:11 GMT

Microsoft Visual Studio Team System/Test Edition provides an excellent tool to perform web site load testing. Using this load testing tool, you can monitor and measure the site performance along with system status with respect to a given load/stress.

The number of counter parameters to be considered by the load tester/designers is greatly varies based on the type and size of the web application to be tested. Here is my favorite top 10 performance counters that I use on my each load tests, regardless of project size. These counters are based two primary categories: Web Site end and Hardware end.

Web Site Related Performance Counters

Web site related performance counters are the counters that provide valuable information about the health of web site that is under test. These parameters are categorized as Requests, Pages, Tests and Errors.

1. Request - Avg Req/Sec

Desired value range: High

This is the average number of requests per second, which includes failed and passed requests, but not cached requests, because they are not issued on web server. Please note that, all http requests, such as image, java-script, aspx, html files generates separate/individual/single request .

2. Request - Avg Req Passed/Sec

Desired value range: High

While “Request - Avg Req/Sec” provides an average with respect to all passed and failed request, “Request - Avg Req Passed/Sec” provided the average of passed requests. This info also helps to determine the average number of failed requests/sec.

3. Page - Avg Page Time (Sec)

Desired value range: Low

While a single request refers to request to a single http elements (such as css, java-script files, images, aspx, html etc), a page is the container of all of the corresponding requests generated when a web page is requested (for instance via the browser address bar). “Page - Avg Page Time (Sec)” counter refers to the average of total time taken to load a page with all of its http elements.

4. Test - Total Test

Desired value range: High

For instance, we have created a web test, that contains two web pages, pushing on a button on the first page will re-direct the user to the second page, although there will be multiple entries will be involved for Requests and Pages counters, but the whole process will be considered as a single Test.

This counter considers the total number of tests (which includes passed and failed tests) during the test period.

5. Scenario - User Load

Desired value range: High

This counter considers the maximum user load that has been provided during the test run. Please note that, for Step Load pattern, where more user volume is added on step by step basis, the maximum user load will be counted through this counter parameter.

6. Errors - Errors/Sec

Desired value range: Low

Includes average number of errors occurred per second, which includes all types of errors.

Hardware Related Performance Counters

7. Processor - % Processor Time

Desired value range: Low

This is the number of processor time being utilized in percentage.

8. Memory - Available MBytes

Desired value range: High

This the amount of Memory available in Mega byte.

9. Physical Disk - Current Disk Queue Length

Desired value range: Low

It shows how many read or write requests are waiting to execute to the disk. For a single disk, it should idle at 2-3 or lower.

10. Network Interface - Output Queue Length

Desired value range: Low

This is the number of packets in queue waiting to be sent. A bottleneck needs to be resolved if there is a sustained average of more than two packets in a queue.

Download the SQL Script which selects all of the parameters as mentioned above with respect to the latest load test, from here:

Technorati Tags: performance,load testing,visual studio 2008,vsts,web site,testing

Understanding VSTS Load Test Counters: Requests, Pages and Tests

joycsharp — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:09:36 GMT

Fortunately VSTS provides a support for wide range of performance counters, from web page request per second to condition of physical disk, memories. Unfortunately, they are too huge that, initially testers/designers get overwhelmed with all of those, to find out a clear idea about the performance of the site they built. Today we’ll be discussing about three counter sets that are closely related to each other, but provides a meaningful information about the health of the target web site to be load tested.

Definitions

Requests: Requests are the smallest load testing parameter with respect to a web page.

It contains details for individual requests issued during a load test. This includes all HTTP requests, and dependent requests such as images, css and java-script files.

Meaning, each refereeing contents in a web page, such as images, css files, java-script files will generate separate request along with the request for the web page which includes the actual textual content (text, tags etc). It will include the same number of additional entries for a postback.

Pages: Right after “Requests” we can consider “Pages” as the next level of load testing counter set, which is defined in MSDN as “Displays a list of pages accessed during a load test run. Some data in this table is available only after a load test has completed.”

For instance, we have a web page, which has a button, clicking on which shows a message on that page, which generate two entries for Page counter.

One important note is, any redirection to a separate page will not be counted with additional value, however the corresponding Requests for the redirected page will be counted.

Tests: Contains the details for individual tests run during a load test.

Case Study

To have better idea, lets consider 4 different cases to see the corresponding entries with respect to the counters we are discussing.

Text only:

We have a web page, that contains only textual content, no external content such as image, css, java-script file referred there. However it may contain html controls, but no postback (button click etc) will be considered here.

Counter Status: number of request = number of pages = number of tests