Omar Villarreal's WebLog

Entity Framework Virtual Brown Bag Series

omarv — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 05:35:07 GMT

Hosted by the Dallas .NET Users Group, the first of a series 30-minute of Entity Framework Webcasts will take place Friday July 17th, at 12:15 PM Central Time. Use the following link to register:

http://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=139637

Visual Studio 2010 Forums available on MSDN

omarv — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:54:00 GMT

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 was made available to MSDN subscribers to download yesterday and will be available to the non-subscribers (general public) tomorrow. There are many cool new features in the different team editions of Visual Studio. If you are looking at the tools and have any questions (or answers) be sure to visit the Visual Studio 2010 forums on MSDN, you should get answers to your questions very quickly there:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/vstsprerelease

TFS 2010 Beta 1 Installation Bug

omarv — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:53:00 GMT

There is a bug in the TFS 2010 Beta 1 installation, it is described in section 1.3.4 of the Readme file but since a lot of us go read that file after installation is complete I figured the more blog posts exist about the issue the more people will know about it and avoid it. But I will not get into details or reinvent the wheel, the information is in the Readme and in this post from Buck Hodges: http://blogs.msdn.com/buckh/archive/2009/05/18/tfs-2010-beta-1-don-t-run-initial-configuration-from-the-administration-console-mmc.aspx

I just finished downloading the VSTS 2010 Beta 1 install bits, now…

omarv — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:52:00 GMT

… off to create a new VPC for it and prepare to do some demos at the Dallas VSTS UG this Wednesday evening:

http://www.DallasVsts.com

http://dallasvstsug.ning.com

Dallas VSTS UG Meeting on 1/21/09: VSTS 2010 Features Part 2 - Chris Tullier

omarv — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:13:24 GMT

Join us next Wednesday evening, January 21 @ 18:00, for a presentation by Chris Tullier. Chris will be going over the new features coming in VSTS 2010 with an emphasis on the architecture, developer, and reporting capabilities. If you weren't able to make it to PDC this year and you have yet to check out the presentation videos on Channel 9 you will want to be at this meeting!

Dallas VSTS Users Group. RSVP for the meeting here.

Upgrading TFS from 2005 to 2008 SP1

omarv — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:42:53 GMT

I recently did an upgrade on a scenario that for whatever reason I had not faced before. It was a dual-server TFS 2005 installation and the server had Visual Studio 2005 and Team Explorer 2005 installed as well as WSS 2.0. If you are trying to upgrade a server like this one, here are some recommendations:

Uninstall Team Explorer.
Well, that's what I did but it may not be necessary, read on for details... the installation guide states that if you are installing 2008 SP1 on a server that also has Team Explorer installed, you should install Visual Studio 2008 SP1 before installing TFS 2008 SP1. Well, installing VS2008 SP1 will break your WSS 2.0, it is a known problem to Microsoft. Because I decided to leave the WSS upgrade to 3.0 until after TFS was fully upgraded to 2008 SP1 I ended up having this problem, so I decided to just uninstall all versions of Team Explorer to avoid any potential risks that would delay the upgrade,.

Upgrade TFS2005 to TFS2008 RTM.
Per the installation guide.

Upgrade your WSS 2.0 to 3.0 before applying the TFS 2008 SP1.
I cannot say I had a bad experience for applying the TFS SP1 first. After the experience I explained above, I just decided it could also break WSS 2.0 so I upgraded WSS right after the TFS upgrade. The only thing to note here is that you are going to end up with one WSS site and two WSS Central Administration sites after the upgrade. You will need to provide an alternative port for the WSS 3.0 Central Administration site (other than 17012 as that one is taken by the WSS 2.0 CA, I used 17013) and the upgrade guide does not tell you how to remove the old one afterwards.

Then apply TFS 2008 SP1.
Per the installation guide.

New VSTS and TFS 2008 Trial VPCs

omarv — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 05:21:00 GMT

If you have been using any of the two Team System trial VPCs that were released months ago you are probably aware that they are about to expire. Common knowledge was that there were not going to be new trial VPCs available right away and that we would be a couple of weeks without a trial VPC. But it turns out new replacement VPCs were created and released just a couple of days ago. You will find, just like before, a VPC with TFS only and one with TFS and Team Suite but this time they include SP1 of all those products and the latest DBPro release. And for those Hyper-V fans out there, those 2 images are also available for Hyper-V. Check out this blog post from Brian Randell for details or go directly to download the images:

VSTS “all-up” Virtual PC/Virtual Server image (6 GB download, expands to 15 GB)
TFS “only” Virtual PC/Virtual Server image (3 GB download, expands to 8 GB)
VSTS “all-up” Hyper-V image (6 GB download, expands to 15 GB)
TFS “only” Hyper-V image (3 GB download, expands to 8 GB)

Happy 2009 to everyone!!

New and Improved TFS Branching Guidance

omarv — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 04:47:26 GMT

Check out the new TFS Branching Guidance document at http://www.codeplex.com/TFSBranchingGuideII. The first version was a great success and Microsoft received a lot of feedback on it. On this release you will find a lot more scenarios, answers to questions you would ask when reading the first release, a lot more graphics (diagrams)... This release is made of multiple documents:

TFS Branching Guide - Main 2.0
This is the main article which briefly explains branching concepts and introduces 3 levels of the most common branching scenario

TFS Branching Guide - Scenarios 2.0
A collection of less common branching scenarios

TFS Branching Guide Q&A 2.0
A set of most frequently asked questions with answers

TFS Branching Guide Drawings 2.0
A set of branching drawings in different formats including a large branching poster

TFS Branching Guide Labs 2.0
A couple of examples for hands on labs with step by step instruction for practicing the branching scenarios

A new DBPro release: "Better, Stronger, Faster."

omarv — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:43:08 GMT

Woohoo! It's out! Visual Studio 2008 Database Edition (aka DBPro or Data Dude) GDR has been released, and it comes it a lot of improvements. I couldn't help it, knowing what the improvements are and having used the pre-release versions reminded me of the opening sequence of the 1970's show "The Six Million Dollar man" (I guess 6 million was a lot money back then and no, I am not that old, I watched it later in Mexico, after it was dubbed into Spanish): "Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology...Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster." That is how I perceive this new DBPro release, and remember, if you own the Development edition of Visual Studio 2008, you are now also licensed for the Database edition!

Check out the official blog post about the release: http://blogs.msdn.com/gertd/archive/2008/11/25/visual-studio-team-system-2008-database-edition-gdr-rtm.aspx

Download page: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=bb3ad767-5f69-4db9-b1c9-8f55759846ed&displaylang=en

New Team Foundation Power Tool (TFPT) Version Released

omarv — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:13:00 GMT

The October 2008 version of the Team Foundation Power Tools was just released and it comes with some really nice and compelling improvements and new features. Including:

Windows Shell Extension
Enables you to perform TFS Version Control operations within Windows Explorer (this is my personal favorite of this release). If you want this feature be sure to select Custom Installation option as it is not installed by default.
Team Members (my second favorite feature of this release)
This allows you to see individual team members' Checkin History, Shelvesets, Pending Changes and more.
PowerShell support
Updates to the TFPT.EXE command
Help and Setup improvements

Check it all out here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/tfs2008/bb980963.aspx

Using the TFS API in your 64-bit development environment

omarv — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:35:54 GMT

I recently got a new laptop and I am now running 64-bit Windows Vista and today I was working on some custom code using the Team Foundation Server API. My unit tests ran great but when the time came to test the final product I started getting a weird error:

[System.BadImageFormatException]: {"Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies. An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format."}

After scratching my head a few times and making sure I had all the correct project references and that I had done everything right I started digging a little bit. I found some forum post that gave me a hint, I tried it and it worked;

When you use the TFS API you need to make sure you set the 'Platform target' project property to x86. You can find this property on the 'Build' tab or page of the Project Properties.

Dallas VSTS Users Group Meeting on Wed. Oct/15

omarv — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:34:13 GMT

Database development with DBPro as part of your application's lifecycle – D. Omar Villarreal

Note: Visual Studio 2008 Team Edition for Dtabase Developers, aka DBPro, is now part of the Developer edition (see the "Better together" section here for details) so if you own the Developer Edition and you are not using DBPro, this is your opportunity to jump-start your database development using DBPro.

We will discuss how you can take advantage of the database development tools included in Visual Studio Team System to better manage your database changes. Topics include:

Declarative database development
Efficient version control of your database
Refactoring
Unit Testing Stored Procedures
Deploying your database
Features from the upcoming DBPro GDR (General Distribution Release)
And more...

For more information visit www.DallasVSTS.com.

Microsoft Patterns and Practices Summit

omarv — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:32:22 GMT

Go register and and mark your calendars! The 2008 Patterns and Practices Summit will take place in Redmond the week of November 3, 2008. Attend the event to gain lot of knowledge and attend the "Evening events" :-)

Take a look at the sessions and the schedule.

Dallas Code Camp! - June 24th.

omarv — Fri, 26 May 2006 22:50:00 GMT

We have a Code Camp coming to Dallas next month (June 24th.). Click on the logo to check out the site. You need to register if you are interested on attending.

VS2005 Web Application Project Template Released!!

omarv — Tue, 09 May 2006 14:25:00 GMT

Finally!!

Take a look at this: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/05/08/445742.aspx