Join us tomorrow (Tuesday, June 23rd) at 2pm MST for the following webcast:

First Look: Visual Studio Team System 2010

Microsoft has been working hard on their next generation of Visual Studio Team System. The 2010 version will deliver new capabilities for everyone on a project, including architects, developers, project managers and testers.

Since beta 1 released, the experts at Accentient have been hard at work, putting it to the test, and demonstrating it to our clients. We would like to share some of this insight with you.

Join us for a tour of the marquee features and improvements found in Visual Studio Team System 2010:

• Separate and improved install and configuration process
• Team project collections
• Architecture explorer
• UML support
• Hierarchical work items
• Improved test case management
• Source control branch visualization
• Workflow-based build
• Test and Lab Manager
• UI testing

Whether you’ve already adopted Team System, or have been waiting for the critical “third version” to be released before you commit to trying it, you should attend this webinar, see it firsthand, and get your questions answered.

 

There are a few seats left. Please be sure to register to attend.

Last week I gave a presentation on integration and migration options for IBM ClearCase and ClearQuest. Here are some bookmarks to some various tools and articles that came up:

• Blog post: Migrating ClearCase Branches to TFS
• ClearQuest Hooks and Scripts
• Forum post: ClearCase versions supported
• Forum post: How to manually sync TFS with CQ
• Forum post: Should CQ and TFS be integrated
• IBM Rational ClearCase and ClearQuest Sales Discussion Guide
• TFS 2005 vs. Clear Case
• Walkthrough: Migrating CQ Work Items to TFS

I hope this helps anyone who is looking into to this.

Finally, there’s something to do in Southern California besides surfing, celeb-watching, and working on your tan. Mike Vincent, a VSTS MVP, has taken the lead on setting up this new user group.

The kickoff meeting is this month, June 23rd and I’ll be presenting a grab-bag of topics on best practices. Time permitting, I’ll show a bit of VSTS 2010 beta 1.

So, if you are in the SoCal area, be sure to come to support this user group, and attend the first meeting.

http://www.socalteamsystem.org

I’ve been getting asked more and more about IBM’s CC and CQ products, and not just how to migrate away from them to TFS. Some clients are wanting to know why Team Foundation Server is better. I think it’s obvious, but sometimes have difficulty putting it into an executive summary with all of the details.

I happened upon this document today, which gives an overview of IBM Rational, ClearCase, ClearQuest, pricing, licensing, competitive messaging, and other resources.

Not quite as gritty as a true “Battle Card” used internally by Microsoft’s sales team, but this discussion guide does provide some good information.

I ran across this document today, which details out Microsoft’s virtualization strategy on implementing 64-bit (Hyper-V) virtualization in the classrooms. As virtual machines do more, and require more resources, so must the hardware/software requirements of the training centers be updated.

In a nutshell, here are the requirements for HL6:

Hardware

 

· 64-bit Intel Virtualization Technology or AMD Virtualization processor (2.8 GHz dual core or better recommended)

· Dual 120 GB hard disks 7200 RPM SATA or better (striped)

· 4 GB RAM expandable to 8 GB or higher

· DVD (dual layer recommended)

· Network adapter

· Sound card

· Video adapter aero-capable recommended

· Super VGA monitor (17 inch/ 43 cm)

 

Software

 

· 64-bit Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition

· Hyper-V role configured

· Microsoft Learning Lab Launcher – Hyper-V version

I was talking TDD with Doug Seven at Tech-Ed last week. He gave a great presentation on Agile Development with Team System 2010. Afterward we were brainstorming on ways to get people to write unit tests. We both agreed that it has to be understood and driven by management. While we may never get management to understand the intricacies of unit testing or the discipline of TDD, but we may be able to appeal to their desire for software quality. On that point, Doug guided me towards this document on Microsoft Research from January 2008.

The authors (Nachiappan Nagappan, E. Michael Maximilien, Thirumalesh Bhat, and Laurie Williams) conducted case studies with three development teams at Microsoft and one at IBM that have adopted TDD. The results of the case studies indicate that the pre-release defect density of the four products decreased between 40% and 90% relative to similar projects that did not use the TDD practice. Subjectively, the teams experienced a 15–35% increase in initial development time after adopting TDD.

Finally, some empirical evidence supporting the practice of TDD.

As I was explaining how the Build > Deploy process is radically different this week, a question came up about licensing restrictions around the vsdbcmd.exe command-line utility that ships with the GDR. Here’s a quick history lesson:

The Pre-GDR Way

The Build process analyzes the target connection and then assembles all of the various .sql scripts into one large .sql script. The resulting script would contain CREATE or ALTER statements depending on what it found when it studied the target connection. The script also contains other custom scripts and variables you want to define. The problem is that this Build process requires access to that target environment. This was not always a possibility – either the developers didn’t have permissions, or ISVs didn’t have physical access to their customer’s datacenters. Finally, the Deploy process would then just execute the big .sql script against the target connection, which could be done using VS, SSMS, SQLCMD, etc.

The GDR Way

The Build process generates a .dbschema file which represents the current schema definitions of the database project in a single, easy-to-handoff XML document. This document has accompanying scripts and manifest files as well. The Deploy process then creates the .sql script and (optionally) executes it. The Deploy is now the only connected operation and it can be performed from Visual Studio or by using the new vsdbcmd.exe command-line utility. The major difference is that Build doesn’t need access to the target database, only Deploy does. This rocks, because now you can just give the .dbschema file to that department’s DBA or that customer’s datacenter admin, etc. and only they need access to the target to generate the proper script and to execute it. Problem solved.

… but question raised: what about the licensing of the vsdbcmd.exe file? Can the developer or ISV just give it to their respective user to deploy the changes?

The answer (thanks to Ted Malone, SQL guru and VSTS MVP) is YES, as explained in this article by Gert Drapers.

BTW - GDR R2 is available so you should download it now!

I’ve really been enjoying my Samsung 128GB SATA 3.0Gb/s Flash-based Solid State Drive (NSSD). Per Doug Seven’s advice, I’ve been copying over my existing Virtual PC 2007 hard drive images to the SSDD, and booting them up with Hyper-V. For the most part, there hasn’t been a problem, except yesterday I started receiving “General Access Denied” error message, something like this:

VMMS Account does not have sufficient privilege to open attachment 'E:\Hyper-V\Windows Server 2008\Windows Server 2008.vhd'. Error: 'General access denied error' (0x80070005).

There’s a lot of chatter on the forums about this, but essentially it comes down to having to give the Network Service account (for the Hyper-V Image Management Service) adequate permission to the VHD file. There are several ways to do this, but I just gave the Everyone group (Users in Windows Server 2008) full control under the Hyper-V folder. Fixed!

As a follow-up, it turns out that this is a bug for systems running Intel motherboards and Intel released a fix back in November 2008.

I finally took the time to put together a chart showing which edition of Visual Studio needs to be installed on the Team Build server to achieve specific features. As you can see, Team Suite has you covered. As for the question of whether or not you need to purchase an additional copy of Visual Studio for this - that question has been answered on Jeff Beehler's blog as well as in the VSTS 2008 Licensing White Paper.

I might also add that Brian Randall mentioned that you can automate the validation of Architect Edition Deployment Diagrams on the Team Build server if you install that edition; but, being that he's the only guy on the planet to probably do that, I didn't think it was worth mentioning.

So I splurged recently and picked up one of the new Western Digital 300GB SATA VelociRaptor drives. I also happened to be in Las Vegas, and there was a Fry's nearby. I think that was the cause, and the effect was me ending up with the drive, but I digress. Every so often, I wonder how fast my various 5400, 7200, and 10000 RPM drives are, especially taking USB 2.0 and ESATA into account. I downloaded the latest version of HDTach and went to work with my not-very-scientific performance tests:

Hard Drive	Random Access	CPU Utilization	Average Read	Burst Speed
Internal Hitachi 100GB 7200RPM	16.8 ms	3 %	41.3 MB/s	114.6 MB/s
External 5400RPM (USB)	17.9 ms	13 %	32.8 MB/s	36.2 MB/s
External 750GB 7200RPM (USB)	13.9 ms	0 %	34.7 MB/s	35.1 MB/s
External 750GB 7200RPM (ESATA)	13.6 ms	4 %	66.9 MB/s	90.4 MB/s
External 300GB 10000RPM VelociRaptor (ESATA)	7.3 ms	4 %	80.0 MB/s	88.9 MB/s

  Hardware used: Dell D820 laptop, 4gb RAM, Windows XP/SP2

BTW - the numbers in bold make me happy, and here's the graphic that went along with the final test (the VelociRaptor drive):

At a client site this week, and having to generate the same initial folder structure for many team projects, so I thought I would create a script (.BAT file, no PowerShell sorry).

Below is the script, but here are a few details to point out:

• I assume that my workspace name and local folder name is the same as the team project
• I put my local workspace folders under a common D:\Workspaces folder
• You can set the team project name easily by tweaking the SET line below
• I could have, and should have parameterized the folder root, TFS, comments, etc.

Hope you can make use of it:

@ECHO OFF

SET TeamProject=Sample

ECHO Create folder Structure
ECHO.

D:
CD\
MD D:\Workspaces
MD "D:\Workspaces\%TeamProject%"
MD "D:\Workspaces\%TeamProject%\Code"
MD "D:\Workspaces\%TeamProject%\Code\DEV"
MD "D:\Workspaces\%TeamProject%\Code\QA"
MD "D:\Workspaces\%TeamProject%\Code\PROD"
MD "D:\Workspaces\%TeamProject%\Documents"
CD "\Workspaces\%TeamProject%"

ECHO.
ECHO Drop existing workspace
ECHO.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" workspace /delete /noprompt /server:TFSSRV1 "%TeamProject%"

ECHO.
ECHO Create workspace mapping
ECHO.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" workspace /new /noprompt /computer:TFSSRV1 /comment:"Created by Richard Hundhausen" /server:TFSSRV1 "%TeamProject%"
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" workfold /server:TFSSRV1 /workspace:"%TeamProject%" /unmap $/
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" workfold /server:TFSSRV1 /workspace:"%TeamProject%" /map $/"%TeamProject%" D:\Workspaces\"%TeamProject%"

ECHO.
ECHO Adding folders to version control
ECHO.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" add Code /recursive /noprompt
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" add Documents /recursive /noprompt

ECHO.
ECHO Check in
ECHO.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" checkin /comment:"Created by Richard Hundhausen" /noprompt /recursive "D:/Workspaces/%TeamProject%"

PAUSE

The Seattle developer community is holding Seattle Code Camp November 15-16, 2008 at the DigiPen campus in Redmond, Washington (close to Seattle). Please pass this notice on to folks you think are interested in either attending or speaking. Speaking of speaking, they are looking for speakers. If you hit the code camp site, you will see that they don't have sessions or tracks listed at this point. This 'camp is a blank page at this point that needs to be colored in - which is a great venue for presentations. If you have something you are passionate about but have never done any public speaking I encourage you to give it a try. If you are an experienced speaker, this is your time to get involved in your local community and share some of your experience.

What types of topics are they looking for?  Pretty much anything goes as long as (A) it involves code, and )B) It isn't a direct advertisement for a product or service. This means that this isn't limited to .NET or even Microsoft technologies. Past 'camps have included sessions on XBOX 360 development, Java, PHP, Delphi, and Rails. Submit your sessions here. Alternatively if you have no desire to get up in front of a bunch of developers and impart your wisdom, they could still use your help. Please promote this code camp at your user group meetings, post it on your blog (like I did), email it to interested locals and encourage your friends and coworkers to submit sessions.

Finally if you plan on attending please register so that we can get some idea of the required space and food needs.

Microsoft published more information today about Visual Studio 10 and .NET 4.0. Click here to read the Press Pass and here to read some additional information.

Oh, and for SA customers, some really interesting news has come out that will impact you in just a few days:

Microsoft also announced that VSTS 2010 will provide a unified VSTS Development and Database product. As a benefit to existing Software Assurance (SA) customers, those who currently own Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition or Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition will receive all the following products starting Oct. 1, 2008, for free:

 

• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition

• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition

• Visual Studio 2005 Team System for Software Developers

• Visual Studio 2005 Team System for Database Professionals

I was invited by INETA to speak at the Pacific Northwest Access Developer Group (a.ka. the Seattle Access Group). Now, Access developers are typically "teams of one", but I thought that any team developers or consultants attending the meeting would get the ALM story and features of TFS. They did.f

As it turns out, the steps to integrate Microsoft Access 2007 with TFS aren't all that difficult:

1. Install and configure TFS to allow the developers to connect
2. Install the MSSCCI provider on each developer's desktop
3. Install the Access Developer Extensions on each developer's desktop
4. Create and configure the Team Project, version control folders, and workspace(s)
5. Follow the guidance on using Access with Source Control (you can ignore the references to VSS).

Remember: you can't View, Compare, or Annotate any Access objects under source control, with the exception of code (modules, macros).

Thank you to those of you who attended my talk. You can download my presentation here.

Last week, Microsoft announced that they had joined the Object Management Group. OMG is the consortium responsible for many distributed, and object-oriented specifications. One of their sets of standards defines the Unified Modeling Language (UML), and I'm sure that's the reason Microsoft joined the ranks.

Knowing what's coming in the Rosario (and beyond) versions of Visual Studio Team System, I'm glad to see this happening, as it reinforces that Microsoft is taking their modeling strategy to the mainstream.

I'm sitting through the two-day Visual Studio Extensibility (VSX) Developers Conference this week and Rico Mariani gave his roadmap to Visual Studio extensibility. Here are some highlights of the coming, "decade worth of work" ...

VS10 (the version after 2008, a.k.a. "Dev10")

• New editor with fine-grained extensibility
• Build on Microsoft Extensibility Framework (MEF) which is "COM for the managed world"
• All new features that should support multiple languages do

VS11

• VSTA (DLR) used for macros and other end-user extensibility
• Critical mass for managed extensibility models enables several common classes of add-ins to be built purely in managed code
• Common project system
• Richer, common base types and protocols for discovery, activation, and manipulation
• Asynchronous extension and visualization model and showcase examples

VS12

• Stable VSIP API's enabling a high degree of compatibility
• Extensive use of asynchronous extension and visualization model

I've seen Test Driven Development work, so why not adjust it slightly and have the attendees (who own the requirements after all) drive the presentation? Today, at the in-between conference (a.k.a. Microsoft Community Summit 2008), I did just that. I had the attendees drive my four hour presentation. I did this in the Open Space room, and it not only fit with the theme of that room, but it worked great!

As the attendees arrived, I handed them 3-5 3x5 cards - the cool ones from 3M that you can sort, stack, and stick to surfaces.

Here are the topics (backlog items) that they came up with:

• How do you customize work item types?
• (What) team size to justify the usage of Team System?
• What's new and improved in VSTS 2008 vs. VSTS 2005?
• Continuous Integration (x 3)
• What performance degradation (can occur) from extensive branching?
• Integration with external tools (e.g. Mercury Quality Center, Doors)
• TDD
• Multiple builds running at the same time
• How to limit CI build to only trigger when for certain check-ins (by location)
• Best practices
• How to customize Code Analysis
• What makes VSTS more beneficial than VS Professional?
• What is Team Foundation Server?

And my personal favorite:

• I'm here to see if you're a good presenter because my company is thinking of bringing you in for a day to teach the team.

For those of you who attended my talk, here's a link to my notes and my worst practices presentation.

My final talk at VSLive! San Francisco this week was on one of my favorite topics - parallel development. In other words, dealing with the real-world situations where multiple developers are coding away on the same project, and even the same file.

The first order of business was to have a few of the ex-Visual SourceSafers lay down on my couch so we could discuss their phobias and irrational urge to run to their "safe place" - a.k.a. locking.

In all seriousness, we discussed the two locking models of TFS and then explored the many wonderful benefits of not using locks by default, known as shared check out. Most in the audience agreed that the benefits of not blocking each other with their routine development (for example, not locking .csproj files when somebody adds a new file) greatly outweighs the detriment of having to deal with a conflict that requires manual intervention. Of course, arguments can be made either way.

I pointed out that there are four situations where conflicts can occur that may require auto/manual merging:

• CHECK-IN - the most obvious; somebody else may have just checked in competing changes just before you
• GET - you may already have pending changes on one or more of the files you are trying to download
• MERGE - by definition; when you merge changes from one branch to another, the chances are good that you will have to resolve conflicts
• UNSHELVE - not so obvious, but this is basically like a GET, just coming from another location in TFS; unfortunately, Team Explorer doesn't know how to handle the detection/resolving of these types of conflicts, so look to the TFPT UNSHELVE power tool for help

Finally, we looked at setting up a source control folder structure that will support your teams promotion model (a.k.a. staging environment). I proposed a simple structure, that looks somewhat like this:

 

Some explanations

• Code holds code artifacts - C#, VB, SQL, WiX, etc.
• Documents holds snapshots of the SharePoint site archived at the end of each iteration, release/version, build, etc. (whatever your term is)
• Active development occurs in "Current", which you could name "Dev" or "Main" (although I prefer "Main" for integration)
• Under the "Current" folder you'll have folders for each high-level application/component in the system, including common, database scripts, build definitions, and even setup projects
• "Branches" are just that - QA, UA, RC, Release, and private branches (Bridges), etc.

If you'd like to have a look at my slide deck, you can find it here.

That was the topic of our discussion today at VSLive! San Francisco. Unfortunately, in the short amount of time (75 minutes) we didn't get too deep into all of the tools and techniques, but I did get my point across: I feel that Team Foundation Server (TFS) can do it all, and you should strive to migrate your source/revision control system, requirements and defect tracking system, document managing system, automated build and deployment system, and even your custom process workflow over to TFS.

That said, there are certainly situations where existing systems must be used. I identified two categories of such legacy software:

• Politicalware - somebody important in the organization bought or built the system and you there are strong feelings about migrating away from it
• Guiltware - the organization spends oodles (that's a lot) of cash on said software, maintenance/support, training, etc. and they haven't seen their ROI (and they may never see it)

I don't know what to tell you about the above situations, except that running in parallel (not good) or integration (better) would be an option. That lead us to the discussion of building custom software to do one-way and two-way synchronization with said systems. We briefly walked through the TFS Migration and Synchronization Toolkit (found on CodePlex) and I demonstrated the TFS to TFS Migration Tool (also found on CodePlex) which uses the toolkit.

I see Team Foundation Server as yet another great "grassroots" platform. Just like .NET was for the developers, TFS is for the team. So, I say get it installed no matter what, even if just for source control, which is the no-brainer. Once it's in-house, then work on migrating the work items, automated builds, and other systems over sooner, rather than later, so you can enjoy the end-to-end traceability, product quality reports, and process quality reports.

If you'd like to have a look at my slide deck, you can find it here and my demo files here (you'll need to download the SDK and CodePlex toolkit and tool separately).

For those of you who joined me at VSLive! this week in San Francisco, I had fun sharing many worst (or un-preferred) practices I've run into over the years. My talk broke them down into several areas: TFS installation, TFS configuration, team projects, work items, and version control. Hopefully I didn't make anyone feel tool uncomfortable when I highlighted your practice on the big screen!

Actually, it was all in good fun. By highlighting Team System worst practices, we were able to define Team System best practices and preferred practices.

If you'd like to have a look at my slide deck, you can find it here and my demo files here.

Feel free to let me know about any other worst or worster practices you may know of.

Last year I posted a note about how to integrate VSoft Technology FinalBuilder with Team Build. I really like FinalBuilder and think it's easy to use, compared with having to hand-jam the XML of MSBuild.

With the upcoming version 6.0 of FinalBuilder, this integration becomes a snap, even including a Visual Studio add-in for configuring Team Build.

Read this article for more information.

One of my students forwarded this to me this week. I thought it was hilarious.

Ah yes, late August, time to go back to school - even for us adult geeks.

Fortunately, David Starr has provided us an exhaustive list of must-read books, organized by developer, tester, project manager, and executives.

... nothing specifically on VSTS however. I'll have to bug him about that.

The great news just keeps on coming from Microsoft. After a flurry of Team System announcements and downloads recently, we have yet another set of Power Tools to play with.

These tools are designed specifically for the Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Architects and provide the following capabilities:

• View class library projects on the Application Diagram (AD)
• View references to class library projects as connections on the Application Diagram
• Create class library projects from the Application Diagram
• Create references to class library projects from the Application Diagram
• Synchronize properties between class library projects and their representative applications on the Application Diagram
• Create and use class library applications and references on the System Designer (SD)

Fantastic. We haven't seen much out of the Architect tools, except for the SDM SDK in quite some time. I'm looking forward to it.

Download the CTP here. Note: you will also need to download Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2.

If you have any feedback on these tools, please visit the Architecture & Design forum.

Not only did Microsoft just recently post Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas) a few days ago, but yesterday Microsoft made a CTP of the next generation of Visual Studio Team System (codename Rosario) available for download. Craziness ... which do I spend my time with? It's like having two mistresses to pick from.

Anyway, here are the details, if you want to start playing with Rosario: (keep in mind that it won't ship until some time [6,12,18?] months post Visual Studio 2008, so at least 2009):

• Read Jeff Beehler's blog posting
• Read the Rosario Overview whitepaper
• Download the VPC images (8+ files, 700mb each)
• Download the Rosario documentation
• Visit the MSDN newsgroups dedicated to Rosario
• Visit the MSDN homepage for Rosario

Finally, and most important, provide feedback to the team using http://connect.microsoft.com.

Over the past few years, a few of my clients have deployed Team Foundation Server Proxy to improve the performance of their remote/distributed teams. It boosts network performance by caching copies of source control files in a remote location, local to the developer needing the files but away from the main source control location. In short, the proxy helps each user avoid a costly download of the files to their workspace across the slower connection.

So why wouldn't this work for Team Build?

In today's VSTS chat, I asked if anyone had done this. I should have expected that Buck Hodges would have, and even blogged about it.

Still trying to decide if Team System is right for you and if you can afford it. I would say you can't afford *not* to have it. Check out this list of case studies from other companies and teams who agree with me.

Thanks to Rob Caron, for putting together this consolidated list of the "top" Visual Studio Team System case studies. They support a wide range of propositions by showcasing real customers who have gone through the adoption process and have great stories to tell.

Microsoft just released their Team System Web Access Power Tool (formerly known as TeamPlain). This is a Web interface to Team Foundation Server.

If you have team members that don't want Visual Studio/Team Explorer installed on their desktop, but they still want to participate with the project lifecycle, this is a great, web-based approach to getting everyone connected quickly/easily. Here are some of the features:

• Add new work items or edit existing ones
• Work with any type of work item, including custom ones
• Add new work item queries or edit existing ones
• View, download, upload, check-in and check-out documents on SharePoint team portal
• View reports, export as PDF or Excel
• Browse source control repositories, download files, view changesets, diffs, histories, and annotated views
• View build results, start or stop builds
• Search for keywords in work items
• Authentication Modes: Integrated Windows Authentication or Forms Based Authentication (Recommended to use with SSL)

Read more about it in Brian Harry's blog posting.

This week Microsoft released the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server – Project Server 2007 connector as a CodePlex project. The project has been up for a few weeks, but is now being broadly advertised.

The TFS-PS2007 connector is designed to integrate the project management capabilities of TFS with Project Server 2007. It's been developed by the Visual Studio Team System Rangers in response to significant customer demand for a connector solution. Future versions of Team System will have native integration with Project Server, in the meantime this Connector solution is the best way to integrate the two Microsoft products. This solution builds on the previous PS2003 VSTS Connector, published on GotDotNet.

I just learned about this neat editor for creating and editing Windows Installer packages (.msi files) and merge modules (.msm files). Orca is just one of many cool installer tools by Microsoft. It provides a graphical interface for validation, highlighting the particular entries where validation errors or warnings occur. This KB255905 article explains more.

Orca is part of the platform SDK and locating the correct download was difficult - a lot of redirected pages and dead ends, but I found it as part of the Vista SDK download as well as the Windows Server 2003 SDK download. Once you install the SDK, look for Orca.msi and install it separately.

Here is a screenshot of running Orca on the Orca.msi file ...

Microsoft (and others) had announed that its Fall Professional Developer's Conference (PDC) would be October 2-5, in Los Angeles. Yesterday, they canceled the event and are in the process of rescheduling it.

From their site:

We are currently in the process of rescheduling this fall’s Professional Developer Conference. As the PDC is the definitive developer event focused on the future of the Microsoft platform, we try to align it to be in front of major platform milestones. By this fall, however, upcoming platform technologies including Windows Server 2008, SQL Server codenamed “Katmai,” Visual Studio codenamed “Orcas” and Silverlight will already be in developers’ hands and approaching launch, which is where we’ll focus our developer engagement in the near term. We will update this site when we have a new date for the PDC that is better timed with the next wave of platform technologies.

Today's chats were well attended, with many experts and well over a hundred guests. The quests came fast and furious, with some great answers given by the experts. It seems people are really anticipating Orcas (and Rosario) for those features that didn't make it into v1.

I have captured the entire transcripts (both expert and guest chats) in this PDF document (for the 10am PST chat) and this PDF document (for the 4pm PST chat).

Note: this is the raw content, copied and pasted from each chat, so you are getting it "as is".

Pack up your compilers and IDES, because it's camping time in Portland!

Portland Code Camp 3.0 is back May 19th and 20th!

Location: Washington State University - Vancouver, 14204 NE Salmon Creek Ave, Vancouver, WA 98686

Visit the site for more information.

Join members of the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, Team Editions for Architects, Developers, Database Pros, and Testers. In addition, discuss what's new in the in the Visual Studio code name “Orcas” Beta 1 releases for Team Suite and Team Foundation Server.

Join the chat on Friday, April 27th, 2007 from 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time | Add to Calendar | Additional Time Zones

Yesterday, Microsoft's Developer Division (DevDiv) released beta 1 of Visual Studio "Orcas", which corresponds with the Connected Systems Division’s beta 1 release of the .NET Framework 3.5. Soma blogged this yesterday morning. Visual Studio "Orcas" enables developers and development teams to rapidly create Software + Services on the latest platforms, including the Web, Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and Windows Server "Longhorn".

As usualy, one of the most common questions about Orcas is, "When will it ship?". Well, here's Microsoft's official/public timeline:

Orcas Beta 1 will ship "Before TechEd Orlando in early June." - done! (see below)

Orcas Beta 2 will ship "In the North American summer."

Orcas RTM will ship "Before the end of the year."

BTW you can download the ready-to-go VPC images here (Team Suite) and here (TFS) of Orcas.

Just to catch you up, Microsoft's Team Foundation Server v1.0 (released March 2006) only works with WSS 2.0. WSS 2.0 is the old version. WSS 3.0 is the new version, and launched with Microsoft Office 2007. It's full of great new features, but alas TFS won't integrate with it naturally. Even installing TFS SP1 won't get you there.

Thanks to Brian Keller, a Technical Evangelist for Team System, who has published a document on how to integrate TFS with WSS 3.0. As Brian explains, keep in mind that this is a "release candidate" of guidance that will eventually be posted to MSDN.

Now I've heard of a lot of things, but an RC of a guidance document?

I'm a bit late to the party, but I wanted to recognize a couple of cool 2007 Jolt Award winners ...

• Microsoft and the VSTS/Database Professionals product group for "Database Engines and Data Tools" (read more here and here)
• Scott Ambler for his awesome book, Refactoring Databases.
• stpBA Storyboarding for VSTS 

In fact, here are all the winners.

Recently, Microsoft and IESC Geekcorps have teamed up to send Microsoft developer experts to participate as volunteers in the “Access to International Markets Through Information Technology” (AIM-IT) project in Lebanon. They are currently in search of volunteer experts with expertise in Visual Studio 2005 Team System & Team Foundation Server, as well as MS Solution Framework, and general software development project management.

Those that volunteer with Geekcorps on this project will receive airfare, accommodations, insurance and a living stipend – all paid for by Microsoft. Volunteers’ only out-of-pocket expenses come from any incidentals or personal purchases. Arrangements will be made for you to travel from home to Lebanon (a passport is required) and you will be met at the airport by a program representative. The project’s duration will be approximately 6 weeks.

If you are interested in learning more about this opportunity, visit this page.

If you are running Vista and VS 2005, you need to install this SP1 update.

It's referenced by KB929470, and you can download it here.

Thank you to my friends at Basta! for recommending me as an alternate speaker for the Frankfurt .NET User Group meeting last week. Thomas "Teddy" Sohnrey was the coordinator (and my interpreter at times).

The topic was Effective SCM using Visual Studio Team System, and I enjoyed sharing my approaches and best practices to the many software developers in the room.

Of course, what I will remember most about the evening is the venue: Microsoft's office in Bad Homburg, and the free beer in the break room!

As you know, Visual Studio Team System tracks many different work item types, such as requirements, tasks, and bugs. Many agile teams like to use "sticky notes" to post on the wall to organize their backlog of requirements and tasks and plan their iterations. Even Joel on Software's company is doing this.

Since I have no life when I travel, I wrote 3M yesterday to see if they manufacture Post-It note sheets that can be fed through a laser/inkjet printer ... and they do!

They come in 25, 100, 300 or 500 sheet quantities and I checked a couple of sites, such as CDW, #1 Online Catalog, and Computers Unlimited. The prices range from $0.40 to $0.85/sheet, which might be cost prohibitive. Another cool option might be to use the stackable/sortable cards from 3m, although they are not sheet-fed, some printers might be able to "grab them". They come in a few different sizes.

Occasionally I'm asked about the business value of VSTS and TFS. I think it's pretty obvious, but I guess others need more convincing than just my word.

I've pulled together some links below that will help with this.

• Case studies - contains many ROI as well as technical case studies
• Customer evidence - contains some more case studies and testimonials
• Business value whitepaper - SDLC pain points and VSTS benefits
• Software lifecycles - a collection of scenarios providing evidence of VSTS benefits
• TFS Evidence Booklet - a PDF that was handed out at some of the roadshows

I was honored to learn that I had achieved the Bronze, Silver, and Gold awards for 2006.

Thanks to all of you who read my blog, attend my classes, and generally listen to me ramble on about Microsoft's tools and technology. Without you I wouldn't have these giant coins to carry around!

Join members of the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, Team Editions for Architects, Developers, Database Pros, and Testers. In addition, discuss what's new in the latest Community Technology Preview (CTP).

Join the chat on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 from 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time.

Over the years, we've had a few clients automate their build process by using Final Builder by VSoft Technologies. Much like Team (Foundation) Build, Final Builder is a powerful build & release management tool. Unlike Team Build, Final Builder has a slick UI allowing a build master to quickly design the builds.

Last summer, a new Final Builder version (4.2) was release which included more support for MSBuild and Team Build tasks. With that version, and following the guidance in this article, you can get the two products working together!

I just noticed that the new TFS Installation Guide (date: 4 Jan, 2007) is available for download from Microsoft. It contains updated help relating to SP1.

The TFS Administrator's Guide is still the Nov 2006 version however.

It looks like I'll be speaking at BASTA! in a few weeks.

I'll be delivering two regular sessions:

• Team System Best Practices (Mar 1, 8:30AM - 9:30AM)

• Customizing and Extending Team Edition for Database Professionals (Mar 1, 3:15PM - 4:15PM)

And one full-day workshop:

• From Zero to Team System (In 5 Days) (Mar 2, all day)

I just ran across my Visual Studio 2005 Team System book in Hungarian. Very cool!

Check out the Interbook.hu site for more information. I'll see if I can't get a copy.

I just received my letter from Microsoft welcoming me back to the Microsoft Regional Director program for the 2006-2007 period. Thought I'd share.

I'm proud to be one of the folks acknowledged for making Visual Studio 2005 the thing of beauty that it is.

Congratulations to all recipients!

This has happened to us a few times, so I'm sure we're not alone ...

You go to configure your Unit Test project for Code Coverage, but your test run configuration is missing. In other words, you click Test - Edit Test Run Configurations - and see "No Test Run Configurations Available".

Solution: Add a new item at the solution level (not to the test project!) and select a Test Run Configuration as the template

 

And a few more bugs and annoyances.

1)  When you implement an application (i.e. Web Service) from the Application Diagram, you are not prompted to check the resulting project to source control.  Workaround:  Add it yourself manually from solution explorer.  Nothing too difficult to do, just would be a bit more consistent with the rest of the 'new project' functionality in VS2005.

2) When you implement a Web service from an Application Diagram, the resulting code doesn't contain a reference to System.Xml.  I know that this isn't a bug...  But it seems wierd, since you so often use Xmk in XML Web services.

3) When you implement a unit test, using the right-click method from the code, there can be problems if you're dealing with XML.  If you are passing a System.Xml.XmlDocument as a parameter, the unit test converts it to an XmlNode.  These are much harder to deal with, since in a unit test, you may want to just load the XML from a file.  But the problem goes very deep into Visual Studio, since the return type of a Web service is converted from XmlDocument to XmlNode.  Yet they are NOT interchangable.

4) Team Foundation Server seems to sometimes slow to an absolute crawl, with processor utilization hitting 100% for 10 - 15 minutes at a time.  Generally, this is when you attempt to check in a solution to TFS from a client.  We have our TFS on a standalone box, set up according the setup guide.  We must be missing some optimizations somewhere.  The web server and SQL Server processes compete for processor time, pushing it up to 100%.  Something's wrong.

5) When adding Unit Tests to a class, you can simply right-click a method and choose "Create Tests". It prompts you for the language, file names, etc. - but not the path. The new project is tucked away under My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\ ... which is an annoyance, if you like to tuck all your related projects in sub-folders under a common solution folder -- or if you just plain hate My Documents.  Fix: First create a Test Project, by right-clicking your solution.  Then when you

 

Here's the latest round of bugs and annoyances on our weekend of discovery:

• When you copy/paste an application prototype, or drag and drop a saved to toolbox prototype, it overwrites your Class Namespace with the name of the new application
• Speaking of copy/paste in the application designers, you can't use the keyboard - Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, you have to use the mouse.
• Can we hide the labels of our Web app and Web service endpoints by default?
• When you rename the DefaultSystem1.dd (deployment diagram) to a better name, such as MyDeployment.dd, it doesn't seem to take right away. It seems like you have to save/reopen the document.
• Semi-related to the above, the deployment report always seems to read “Default“, no matter what I name the AD, LDD, or DD.
• When the validation of a deployment diagram finds “warnings“, these then become “errors“ in the deployment report.
• It seems that Visual Studio is applying my "Clean Build" source control policy when checking in Distributed System Designer solutions, which don't have any code to "build". You can always override the policy constraint; but, this is a pain.