Ponder .NET

VSTS Big Event - “It works on my machine”

dmckinstry — Mon, 11 May 2009 14:12:39 GMT

If you attended the “VSTS Big Event” in Phoenix last week, I promised anyone interested a copy of the slides. So, here they are! If you’d like the complete day’s contents, check out Steve Lange’s blog.

Brian Harry speaks…

dmckinstry — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 13:47:00 GMT

The Team System User Group (TSUG) is proud to welcome the TFS Product Unit Manager, Brian Harry. You may have read Brian’s popular blog or seen him present on the big stage. This is the opportunity to hear him speak and ask him questions in a more intimate user group setting.

Brian will be presenting on Visual Studio Team System Internal Adoption at Microsoft during the online EMEA TSUG-VE meeting. Come hear how one of the largest software companies in the world is using VSTS from one of the biggest names!

TSUG-VE is a free online user group catering to Visual Studio Team System. Participation is through Second Life and/or Live Meeting, so you can attend from your desk, your house, or even your local coffee shop. All that is required is a compatible computer, a decent Internet connection, and membership at TSUG-VE.com. You may have noticed that this specific meeting is in our EMEA (Europe/Middle East/Africa) time zone. That doesn’t limit attendance to that geography… it just means that the meeting is held after work for EMEA participants, during the work day for the Americas and in the middle of the night for Asia/Pacific.

Feel free to email info@tsug-ve.com if you would like more information.

Team System Users Group “EMEA” meeting moved to weeknights

dmckinstry — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 03:38:00 GMT

Effective this month, the TSUG-VE monthly meetings targeted at Europe / Middle East / Africa (EMEA) participants is being moved from Saturday to Thursday. This should make it easier for Team System enthusiasts across Europe and through related time zones to more easily attend and participate. Even if you aren’t able to participate, sign up to gain access to the recorded Live Meeting presentations portion of the meetings.

The meetings for this month include:

Joel Semeniuk presenting on Estimation Madness

Thursday, March 19
5:00 PM PDT (UTC-0700)
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Joel is a founder of Imaginet Resources Corp; a Canadian based Microsoft Gold Partner. He is also a Microsoft Regional Director and an MVP in Visual Studio Team System.

Thomas Schlisser presenting on Requirements Management

Thursday, March 26
1800 UTC
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Thomas is a Project Lead and Software Architect for Artiso Corp. in Germany. He is the leader of the Ulm .NET Developer group and a Microsoft MVP in Visual Studio Team System.

For both meetings, the pre- and post-meeting participation will be available in Second Life. Meeting presentations will be simulcast on both Second Life and Live Meeting. Demonstrations will be provided solely in Live Meeting. The Live Meeting content will be recorded for future review by TSUG members.

Install Live Meeting from: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90703

Install Second Life from: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Microsoft%20Island/190/73/22

“See you there!”

VSTS “Big Event” for the Western US

dmckinstry — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 18:44:14 GMT

If you’re interested in Visual Studio Team System and you live in the western United States, you should consider attending the Team System Big Event! Steve Lange and other Microsoft Tech Specialists, Microsoft Evangelists and community specialists are coming together to bring a great full-day event at several locations, including: Denver CO, Mountain View CA, Irvine CA, Portland OR and Phoenix AZ. I’m planning on attending and speaking in one or more of the different events. It should be a great time to learn more about Team System and ALM. Registration is being handled through Microsoft events. See Steve’s blog for more information, to download the related PDF and for the registration links.

Tech Trifecta presentation

dmckinstry — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:09:00 GMT

Last Saturday, members of the developer community in Colorado put on a fantastic event. It appears that over 400 people convened in downtown Denver to participate in the Rocky Mountain TechTrifecta. The event featured great speakers such as Scott Hanselman, Kathleen Dollard, Tim Huckaby, Joe Mayo, ... over 30 in all. Congratulations to Julie Yack and all the organizers for a great day.

If you attended my Unit Testing in Visual Studio 2008 presentation, I promised the slide deck for anyone interested. So, here it is... UnitTestingWithVS2008.zip

February is “Build Month” at the online Team System User Group

dmckinstry — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 04:50:50 GMT

This week, the online Team System Users Group (TSUG-VE) is hosting two great events focused on MSBuild and Team Build. If you’re interested in how automated builds can help your team, plan to attend both! Don’t forget… TSUG is an ONLINE user community focused on Team System and development practices. You can attend regardless of where you are in the world!

The first meeting features Canadian Team System MVP Wes MacDonald focusing on Deployment Strategies with Team Build. The second meeting features Team System consultant and trainer Steve St. Jean who will focus on the foundation of .NET builds with his Introduction to MSBuild. Both sessions will include a quick introduction to custom work item controls with Israeli Team System consultant, Shai Raiten.

February Evening Meeting

Meeting Date: Thursday, February 19, 2009
Time: 5:00PM PST/SLT (UTC-08:00)
Location: Microsoft Island in Second Life
Intro Session: Introducing Work Item Custom Controls with Shai Raiten
Keynote: Deployment strategies with Team Build with Wes MacDonald
Second Life URL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Microsoft%20Island/190/73/22
LiveMeeting URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/join?id=RFR4H7&role=attend&pw=g6%22q%29mK6n

February Weekend Meeting

Meeting Date: Saturday, February 21, 2009
Time: 9:00AM PST/SLT (UTC-08:00)
Location: Microsoft Island in Second Life
Intro Session: Introducing Work Item Custom Controls with Shai Raiten
Keynote: Introduction to MSBuild with Steve St. Jean.
Second Life URL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Microsoft%20Island/190/73/22
LiveMeeting URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/join?id=TG29DD&role=attend&pw=swp%5DMm4%26H

Need an excuse to visit the Rocky Mountains this weekend?

dmckinstry — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:50:01 GMT

Denver is hosting a great tech event this weekend… the Rocky Mountain Tech Tri-Fecta! The event is being held from 8:30AM to 5PM this coming Saturday, February 21st. I’m going to be presenting on Unit Testing with Visual Studio 2008, but don’t let that stop you. There are separate tracks for .NET development, SQL and Windows Server with many great speakers including Scott Hanselman, Kathleen Dollard, Tim Huckaby and many more. If you’re in the area, this is a not—to-miss event. If you’re not in the area, this is a great excuse to hop a plane, stay an extra day and hit the slopes!

Hope to see you there!

Outlook Add-in for TFS Work Item Alerts

dmckinstry — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:04:00 GMT

If you’re someone who (like me) makes extensive use of Team System’s ability to send emails when work item’s change, you might like a new Outlook add-in that a friend of mine, Shai Raiten, has released. This free VSTO add-in for Outlook 2007 allows you to directly view or edit work items referenced in alert emails in one of three ways:

Using a standard Work Item Tracking edit form – just like you’d see in Team Explorer
Using a browser to directly view the underlying event XML
Using Team System Web Access to view or edit the work item in a web browser.

The add-in is extremely easy to install and use. It is configurable to handle many (perhaps all?) alternate TFS configurations . Here is a screen shot…

I expect Shai will post more details on how to use it soon! But for now, here is the download link: Wit-It! Outlook 2007 addin

UPDATE: Here is Shai's own post describing WIT-It.

Scrum at TSUG – Be There!!!

dmckinstry — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 04:27:47 GMT

Sorry I’ve been so lax in posting for awhile. I have a few nice posts drafted but never managed to hit the publish button… But I do have a time-sensitive post for you.

Are you interested in Scrum and/or agile development practices? Are you using a Scrum-like process or trying to adopt one? Perhaps you’re wondering which of the available Scrum-based process templates is right for your team? If so, or even if you’re just mildly curious, plan to attend the Team System User Group (Virtual Edition) in Second Life. Trent Nix is giving a repeat performance of his VSLive presentation on real-life Scrum and TFS.

The meeting is at 5PM Pacific time, 8PM Eastern time online in Second Life. Refer to my previous post for information on how to attend or the official TSUG Website. In addition we’re going to do a repeat at 9AM (Pacific time = UTC-0800) on Saturday for people outside of the Americas in different time zones.

As an added bonus, Steve St. Jean will briefly introduce us to something few mortals attempt with Team System - - How to extend the TFS Data Warehouse through custom adapters!

We hope to see you there!

How to participate in the "Team System Users Group - Virtual Edition"

dmckinstry — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:47:37 GMT

After asking fellow MVPs to help us drive visibility to the new Team System User Group (Virtual Edition), we ran across some hosting issues. Last night we had a router issue and this morning we've had a cable cut. The provider has an 8-hour response time so hopefully we'll be back soon. But in the mean time, http://www.tsug-ve.com is down! Please be patient and check-back. We hope to see many of you at our inaugural meeting tomorrow!

The TSUG website has instructions and I will generally send our an invite before the meeting. In case you're not able to sign-up at the site before then, here is what you need to do to participate:

Make sure you have SecondLife and LiveMeeting installed and configured.
The meeting is ~~Thursday, Sept 18th~~ [Update: the third Thursday of each month] at ~~6PM~~ 5PM (Pacific time = GMT-08:00). [Update: There is an additional meeting on the third Saturday of each month at 9AM Pacific time, catering to European and Middle-Eastern time zones.]
Sign into both LiveMeeting and SecondLife a little early - we will try to start on time and you may want to socialize with fellow VSTS enthusiasts. If you haven't played with SecondLife, plan to spend a few minutes going through the tutorial before you get started.
Be prepared to switch back-and-forth (Alt-Tab) between SL and LM. We will do demos in LiveMeeting and many slides and interaction in SecondLife.

Important links:

SecondLife System Requirements: http://secondlife.com/support/sysreqs.php
SecondLife Installation: http://secondlife.com/support/downloads.php
LiveMeeting System Requirements: http://main.livemeeting.com/support/sys_req.cfm
LiveMeeting Client Installation: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101733831033.aspx
SecondLife meeting location - for this meeting:
Microsoft User Group Island - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Microsoft%20Island/190/73/22
LiveMeeting invite - for this meeting:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=F8C6DP&role=attend&pw=PN6.%3CQ%5Drb

We hope to "see" you there!

A new VSTS Users Group – In Your Neighborhood!!!

dmckinstry — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:32:20 GMT

Chewing Glas (aka Paul Hacker) and Daven Finesmith (aka Dave McKinstry) are proud to announce a new users group forming in your area: the Team System User Group (Virtual Edition)!!!! In addition to the few user groups focused on Visual Studio Team System in major cities, now all Visual Studio Team System enthusiasts and users can join together to share stories and learn. Like most user groups, we will meet on a monthly basis, socialize a little, and have presentations. We plan to have demo-rich presentations and support an interactive format allowing attendees to participate and ask questions.

Unlike the ‘classic’ user group, you will be able to participate regardless of your location! You no longer have to live in one of the handful of cities world-wide to join and participate in a Team Systems community! In addition, we can now pull from a broader pool of excellent presenters from around the globe!

Our initial meetings will all be in English and are targeting an Americas-friendly time zone. But other times and places are possible. If you are interested, visit our web site: http://www.tsug-ve.com/. Sign-up and we’ll contact you with additional meeting information. It is free to join and none of the underlying technologies require fees beyond what you already pay for your computer and network access! We will not use your contact info for anything other than user group communications (approximately once per month). Our first meeting is September 18^th at 6PM (Pacific Time / SLT). We hope to see you there!!

"Not a test class" - Backward unit test compatibility from VS 2008 to VS 2005 Team System

dmckinstry — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 22:56:00 GMT

Awhile ago I was working with a client and received an error message "UTA052: MyNamespace.MyTest is not a test class" after converting a unit test project created in Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition. (Actually it was a VS 2005 nUnit/BizUnit test project converted to VS 2008 MSTest and then to VS 2005 MSTest.) The path I chose wasn't necessarily supported but it was necessary. The nearest help I could find was from MSDN Forums: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3820523&SiteID=1&mode=1. Luckily I figured out the cause of the problem and a solution. If you have run into this message and said to yourself "but it IS a test class," read on...

The scenario that led to my this problem was the conversion of a VS 2005 nUnit project to VS 2008. As expected, when I opened the VS 2005 project with VS 2008, Visual Studio successfully converted the project to Visual Studio 2008 format. I then went through the required search-and-replace and reference changes to modify the nUnit tests to be Microsoft-format tests. This was the easy part.

Next, I had to convert the project back into Visual Studio 2005 format. Why? The original conversion to 2008 was a convenience that I knew I'd have to undo... The test project was in support of BizTalk 2006 R2, which is developed in VS 2005, not 2008. I wanted to maintain the test project in the same tools as the test target.

In many cases, you can revert a VS 2008 .NET 2.0 project to VS 2005 by simply changing a few characters in the .SLN, .VBPROJ and/or .CSPROJ files. In the following snippet, changing the "10.00" to "9.0" may result in converting the solution back to Visual Studio 2005. A similar exercise may be necessary for the project files but I'll leave the specifics to you.

After bringing the solutions and project back to Visual Studio 2005, I did some minor cleanup and recreated the VSMDI and TestRunConfig files. The solution compiled without issue but when I tried to run the tests I received the aforementioned message: "Error xxx UTA052: MyNamespace.MyTest is not a test class". Of course the source code looked fine. So after all that, what is the punchline? I had the wrong reference. I was referencing the 9.0 version of Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.UnitTestFramework. Since my system had both Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 installed and the 9.0 DLL is compatible with .NET 2.0, I didn't have any issues with compilation. But the 2005 version of MSTest did no recognize the 8.0 version of the testing tools, hence the error.

Although this may be a niche problem, hopefully this blog posting will help someone else trying to perform similar unit test surgery find the solution faster.

Warning: TFS 2008 SP1 and WSS 2.0

dmckinstry — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:24:00 GMT

I usually try to avoid the "me too" style blog posts, but this one seemed like a good idea - especially since some of my clients will run across it and may not easily find the solution.

I've been asked numerous times about any unexpected side effects of installing TFS SP1 and so far I've been able to say there were no issues. But there is an exception depending upon your TFS configuration.

If you are running TFS 2008 with Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 2.0 on the same server, you need to be aware of a compatibility issue. WSS 2.0 doesn't play nicely with .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. The symptoms and a workaround are documented on the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/08/27/net-framework-3-5-sp1-issue-on-windows-sharepoint-services-v2-0.aspx.

A few hints for DB Pro startup time

dmckinstry — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:07:00 GMT

When I work with clients and show them how Visual Studio Team System Database Edition can impact their SQL Server development process most of them are very impressed. I've helped several clients get going with these tools. One common concern, when you get past the Northwinds-like databases into large and complex databases is the startup time for loading Visual Studio solutions that include database projects.

There are some ways to significantly tool improve performance. First, if you are using Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals, make sure you install SR1 and the Post-SR1 roll-up releases.

If you are using Visual Studio 2008, these fixes aren't yet available. However one specific fix can be easily performed manually with great improvements on the startup time. When I first read Gert's blog posting on database compatibility level I didn't realize that it would impact project startup performance. However it does!!!! On my test case I was able to cut the startup time almost in half (~8 minutes down to <4.5 minutes). Note that this was a large database with thousands of objects - it did a good job proving the performance improvement.

A couple of final common sense hints... Try to clean up your projects. The warnings and errors slow things down as well. Also, decouple your database projects. That is, if you can realistically have a solution with a single database project it will obviously startup and operate faster than one with a dozen database projects.

What we know about "Rosario"...

dmckinstry — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:36:43 GMT

Over the past few weeks I've been presenting a series of Technical Briefings on Visual Studio 2008 Team System. At the tail of the briefing I demo and discussed what we officially know about next version of Visual Studio Team System, code named Rosario. I could only show and talk about these futures based on what was officially documented from Microsoft and what I could surmise from the publicly available VPC.

If you want to see the specifications for proposed functionality, the following specifications are available from the Rosario Specifications site on MSDN:

Although some of these were originally posted late last year, some were posted as recently as a month ago. I hope Microsoft continues to show us where they are going. It helps us provide the feedback they need and helps us plan for the future.

And on that note, this is the future... There is no released product for Rosario, no announced release date and no licensing for the CTP VPC. There are some great features coming up but not enough to diminish what is available today. VSTS is already a great product and when it becomes available Rosario will only make things better!

A final P.S. - If you're waiting on the content posting to the "SkyDrive" from the tech briefings I'm afraid you'll need to wait a little longer. Tara and I are still playing catch-up from the time on the road!