Now we have a Team Foundation Blog to read :-)
You can check a detailed schedule for the same here
So what is "Team Foundation" anyway?
"It is the server-based part of Team System that ties together many of the various pieces of the software development lifecycle. It provides a suite of source control, work item tracking, Excel and Project integration, reporting, project portal, and build automation functionality for seamless and effective management of a team-driven development project."
via Rob Caron's Blog
I am done with my Community Chat Session on VSTS 2005 yesterday. It went on very well, got around 25-30 attendees. I am very thankful to all of them for thier patience to be with me till the end of the session. I feel 1 hour is not an ideal slot to cover VSTS 2005, after starting the Q & A part of the session. I could not able to cover all the questions with in given time. So I have decided to answer all the questions from that session here in the blog with more reliable information.
Thanks very much to Ajay Sudan, {Technical Product Manager, VSTS 2005 Architect Edition} for his invaluable proactive help. I appreciate it very much. A True Microsoftee !
Please feel free to use comments to ask more questions on the same.
Q: Please compare the features with VSS so that it can be easy to understand for us??
A: VSTS gives more performance and Features compared to VSS, the SCC part of VSTS was totally written from the scratch. There will a converter available for VSS Migration to VSTS SCC.
For more info on VSS vs VSTS check this
http://blogs.msdn.com/korbyp/archive/2004/07/28/199720.aspx
Q: is nightly build process is possible through VSTS?
A: Yep, a Build server is available in VSTS team Foundation which enables scheduling builds, automation of builds etc...
Q: Can a Project Manager (As you said PM is also in SDLC) assign certain tasks from VSTS to Developers and other related team member like what we do in MS Project?
A: Yes, VSTS System will have a Client which can be used by PMs. they do not require to install VSTS system. Adding to this VSTS is very much extensible via web services, Office products like Excel, MS Project etc.
Q: How close is this with CVS?
A: VSTS SCC’s feature set is more larger in contrast with CVS.
Q: How this whole data is managed in VSTS (Analysis Data, Reports, and Communication Data, Testing results)? Any Data backup strategy it supports? (I don’t know completely if this is applicable).
A: VSTS has got Distributed System Designers (DSD), which provides an “Integrated design Experience” along with visual design and validation onboard. DSM uses a Meta model called “System Definition Model” a.k.a SDM, which describes the connectivity, relations, and configurations between system entities including runtime environments. SDM is a part of Microsoft’s Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI).
Q: How close is this with CVS?
A: VSTS SCC’s feature set is more larger in contrast with CVS.
Q: How this whole data is managed in VSTS (Analysis Data, Reports, and Communication Data, Testing results)? Any Data backup strategy it supports? (I don’t know completely if this is applicable).
A: VSTS has got Distributed System Designers (DSD), which provides an “Integrated design Experience” along with visual design and validation onboard. DSM uses a Meta model called “System Definition Model” a.k.a SDM, which describes the connectivity, relations, and configurations between system entities including runtime environments. SDM is a part of Microsoft’s Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI).
Q: What is the Team Foundation in VSTS?
A: if you can check http://one.aspxconnection.com/sudhakar/VSTS_Skeleton.jpg, you will notice that Team foundation Server is a base services platform server for VSTS System which serves “Change Management”, “Integration Services” for extensibility, “Work Item Tracking” , “Reporting”, “Project Management”, and a project team site which hosts all kinds of customizable reports, status and many more.
Q: Is VSTS will be useful for the windows platform only?
A: yes, VSTS 2005 was developed for Windows Platform, but you can connect to Team Foundation servers from other platforms as well. VSTS is extendable via web services. It means any one can write their own clients which can communicate with Team Foundation Integration Services.
Q: Will there be any way to port the current application managed in VSS easily into team system?
A: Yes, VSTS ships with a collection of Converters for previous systems like VSS.
Q: so you mean we can do all other necessary tasks of code validation, maintenance etc with VSTS, without use of third part tool... but if I want to integrate any tool like Nant with VSTS.. How can I do that?? A: Yes, http://one.aspxconnection.com/sudhakar/VSTS_Skeleton.jpg has a side bar on the right side for Industry partners, which means it is highly extendable for 3rd party. VSTS Includes a Unit testing framework which is far advanced than NUnit testing framework. There will be a converter available for NUnit to VSTS very soon.
Q: Where can we access beta bits of Visual Studio Team System?
A: http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/get/default.aspx
Q: Will VSTS have features like automatic code generation after a person completes the design?
A: Yes, VSTS’s class designer does two way sync for your design, check the diagram
Q: Is this product is available or it is in a Beta state?
A: The product is in pre-Beta state. The next Beta will be available in late-Feb/early March. Visual Studio 2005 Team System will be available in Summer 2005.
Q: Is this suite part of the Visual studio 2005 IDE?
A: Visual Studio 2005 Team System includes all the functionality of Visual Studio 2005 Professional. This includes all the core VS2005 IDE functionality, the .NET 2.0 Framework, Web development, mobile development, Win Forms, etc.
Q. What is the product version available in VSTS?
A: The December Community Technology Preview (pre-beta quality) will be available to MSDN subscribers later this month.
Q: What will be the H/W and S/W resource that needs to be existing at the client and server?
A: Please see the Visual Studio 2005 Team System Readme. http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/teamsystem/readme.aspx#sysReq
Q: What software part of VSTS will exists at the Client side
A: Please see the SKU plan and VSTS Overview document here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=35546
Q: What database does VSTS need?
A: Visual Studio Team System is built on top of SQL Server 2005. However, it is a part of Visual Studio Team Foundation, so no separate database is required.
Q: Can we use VSTS on Linux or different OS?
A: You can use VSTS services via its Extensible APIs, web services.
Q: Where can we find articles about VSTS 2005?
A: You can find all the resources from here
01. http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/teamsystem
and white papers from here
02. http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/teamsystem/whitepapers/default.aspx
I was totally dragged off from my routine work after tried Google Suggests for the first time. Wondered how it is doing all that so faster way?
Guessed it correctly on RPC calls. A great work on XMLHttp. My Buddy Teucer had given few gyan on the same from Slashdot.org and Joel On Software.
I found one more interesting analysis on the same here (Auto Complete comes of Age)
Just to dig through this, I had set up a side bar of Live HTTP Headers for FireFox and observed a very very simple communication between browser and Google.
When I tried my name "Sudhakar Sadasivuni"
From Browser to Google
GET /complete/search?hl=en&js=true&qu=sudhakar%20sadasivuni HTTP/1.1
Host: www.google.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041001 Firefox/0.10.1
Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive
Cookie: PREF=ID=153437983ed96ad9:CR=1:TM=1101787951:LM=1102999867:GM=1:S=OoygLXkhpj3r2pL8
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache
From Google to Browser
HTTP/1.x 200 OK
Via: 1.0 MSWIPGATE
Content-Length: 105
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:13:30 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Encoding: gzip
Server: Auto-Completion Server
Cache-Control: private, x-gzip-ok=""
The first GET delivers the following RPC command back to browser, which creates a DIV based on the parameters sent in sendRPCDone method.
sendRPCDone(frameElement, "sudhakar sadasivuni", new Array("sudhakar sadasivuni"), new Array("1,480 results"), new Array(""));
The red marked things are the key players in the "fast" factor of this functionality. Google is using HTTP Compression. It is encoding the content by Gzip algorithm and sending a super compressed packet of Suggestions in the form of a dynamic creation of DIVs on the box.
Just now got more on this via Srinivas...Interesting ..Is'nt it ?
Well, MS does lot of these things...via my buddy Srinivas Ivaturi
Source : Rediff http://in.rediff.com/money/2004/dec/14spec.htm
"We believe in creating a meaningful change to the society it operates in," points out Srini Koppolu, who heads Microsoft's second biggest development centre outside the United States, in Hyderabad, INDIA.
Long back I got frustrated with "Too much" of abstraction in development Visual Studio 2003 and posted this :-)
Visual Studio .NET : a TOY? or a Machine Gun ?
Now Visual Stuido Team System 2005 answers me in an extreme level I think. There are loads of things for developers to play with but as powerful as machine guns :-)
You may want to check some of those features in the following demos
01. Static Code Analyzer (View Demo)
Helps developers detect coding and security related issues earlier in the development cycle thereby reducing the overall cost of fixing code defects. In addition, code analysis tools can be used as a part of the check-in policy for a nightly build process, enabling development teams to correct defects before code is checked into the source tree. In this demo, you can see FxCop in action with in VS 2005, to warn you as a part of your project build process. This was tightly integrated with MSBuild.
02. Performance Wizards (View Demo1 , View Demo2)
Performance analysis tools in the Visual Studio Team Developer Edition enables developers to measure, evaluate, and target performance-related issues in their code, thereby identifying performance bottlenecks early on. In this demo, you can watch Code analysis by Instrumentation and Sampling. Once you are done with this, you will get an exhaustive report of your application performance, right through the lines of methods calls and timings. Well done.
Kudos to VSTS Team ! (y)
via Gaurav's MVP Communication
Oracle Introduces Oracle(R) Database 10g Release 2
From Features- "Improved Microsoft Windows support via stored procedures implemented in the Common Runtime Language (CLR) and enhanced integration with Visual Studio."
IBM DB2 Support
Ajit Mungale, my fellow MVP Buddy has got some more Info on DB2 related CLR support.
"IBM DB2 has given very strong support in DB2 8.x for CLR and overall .NET.
In DB2 8.x you can write stored procs, views and triggers using CLR (E.g. C#). Additionally IBM also introduced DB2 .NET provider for UDB/iSeries, data objects, DB2 projects and lot more.
Using DB2 8.x you can invoke Web service from DB2 SQL statement or you can publish SQL statement or stored proc as a Web service!!!
My two books on .NET DB2 (UDB and iSeries) are on the way to publish and I am working on one article which explains how to invoke Web service from DB2 SQL statement. (Hope I will get time to publish it before Xmas)
To get more info on Db2 # .NET check:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/offers/lp/db2/
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2/udb/support/?target=mainFrame&fn=c0008880.htm
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/enable/site/education/abstracts/msnet_abs.html
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/db2/library/techarticle/0311alazzawe/0311alazzawe.html#IDAHHYVG"
Microsoft India will be starting a new community awareness program called SFU(Services For Unix) User Group Tours.
Gaurav Daga, Program Manager for "Services For Unix" which was entirely developed out of Microsoft's IDC, here in Hyderabad
will be giving sessions on the same.
Session abstract: Windows Services for UNIX provides platform interoperability and application migration components in one fully integrated and supported product from Microsoft. In this session, find out how Windows Services for UNIX provides a full range of cross-platform services that can help you integrate Windows into your existing UNIX environments. Learn about the various features of the product and how each can help you to solve different key business scenarios, and understand the technical roadmap of this exciting product offering from Microsoft.
Hyderabad ! Your turn will be on Jan 6th 
More details will be announced via MUGH (Microsoft User Group, Hyderabad) soon..watch it !