VS ALM Related links and resources of 26-11-2009 session!

As promised during the DotNed session of 26-11-2009 about VS2010 ALM Futures, some related links to other blogs about the topics discussed.

- Upgrading TFS 2008 Build Definitions to TFS 2010.

- Building .net 4 apps with TFS 2008.

- PowerTools for TFS2010Beta2:
- TFS MSSCCI Provider:
- TFPT

- Scrum for Team System Version 3 - Beta 2 released

- Getting Started with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.

- VS 2005 support for TFS 2010.

- First TFS 2010 Beta 2 Patch released.

- TFS Patch Beta2 on Code Gallery as well.

- How to create a custom workflow activity for TFS Build 2010?

- Upgrade - Migrate TFS2008 to TFS2010.

- Troubleshooting SharePoint configuration issues (TF249038).

.....

DotNed Event 26-11-2009: VS2010 ALM Session

Just 3 days to go, then is it time for the DotNed(.NET&VSTS UG NL) meeting in Amsterdam. Macaw thanks in advance for the hosting of this meeting.
During this session, Ewald Hofman from Avanade NL and Hassan Fadili from Detrio Consultancy, will present the futures of the new VS2010 ALM product. The agenda of the event is:
- VS2010 Administration & Setup
- VS2010 Work Item Tracking
- VS2010 Build Management
- VS2010 Reporting
- VS2010 Test Management
- VS2010 Architect Edition (UML Integration)

This meeting begins at 18:00 by Macaw in Amsterdam.
If you are developing software and want to know how you can be more productive, this session is for you. Please register here first to attend this meeting, of course for free!!!.

Day 2 of TechEd Europe 2009

Day 2 of TechEd Europe 2009 is an interesting day for me. To begin with a short interview for the MVP Video Blog with MVP Marketing Manager (Karen-Young), thanks for that. It was a great experience and very pleased to do.
Keeping in Touch with the ALM guys is great and supporting the Community is high ecxcited as well. At INETA booth the interest for Communities is growing up and that makes a lot of things good.

We are from and to the Community. Just keep in touch and enjoy us at INETA booth for all your questions/suggestions during TechEd Europe 2009.

Later today, the welcom reception will start at 18:30, then we will have some fun with all the TechEd attendees. After that we will enjoy a Community party at WaterGate Club in Berlin. It will be a pleasure.

By by for now and later.

Cheers,

Hassan

TechEd Europe 2009 Keynote!

Better late then never. I was very disapointed about it. Just to give you some impression about the keynote yesterday. Too IT Pro!!!
As TechEd Europe is combined this year, the keynote was IT Pro based. A lot of IT Pro stuff and Announcing Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 was the only new thing I can say. The focus was on Windows7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft ForeFront and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010). Maybe because PDC will start next week in Los Angeles, but we will see what the Keynote of the PDC will cover!.

But the community feeling is so good and very intersting to be here from that perspective. Community feeling = Sharing Experiences.

Cheers from Berlin.

Hassan

TechEd Europe 2009, getting started!

TechEd Europe 2009 is getting started and very excited to be here again. The weather is not so much good, but being here is Great.
Today is starting with sessions and the "Keynote" will start at 15:00.
It is nice to meet al the community guys (INETA)from other countries and work together to get the community feeling envolved.

I will keep you informed about the TechEd news after the Keynote.

Cheers,

Hassan

Writing Custom Activities for TFS Build 2010 (Beta 1) & Implementing a WIX installer that calls the GDR version of VSDBCMD.EXE

For those who are doing a lot of Build stuff and needs to create own Custom Activites fot TFS Build 2010-Beta1, zie the link for a good explanation of How to? Thanks to: Aaron Hallberg.
Link: http://blogs.msdn.com/aaronhallberg/archive/2009/06/01/writing-custom-activities-for-tfs-build-2010-beta-1.aspx

And if you are doing some DB deployment with other tools, then is Wix maybe very helpful for you. More information can be found on the following blog of: Duke Kamstra at:
http://blogs.msdn.com/dukek/archive/2009/10/19/implementing-a-wix-installer-that-calls-the-gdr-version-of-vsdbcmd-exe.aspx

Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2, Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2& .NET FX4 Beta 2, Available (Public)

A new target is reached by Announcing Visual Studio 2010 and .NET FX 4 Beta 2 and Windows 7 OS by Microsoft on Monday october 19-2009.

To simplify the search load for the new Visual Studio 2010 & .NET FX4 Beat2 stuff, see the links bellow for more information:

Download Links:

Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2 (ISO)
Team Explorer 2010 Beta 2 (ISO)
Compatibility Patch for Team Explorer 2008

Related Resources

Upgrading to Team Foundation Server 2010
Enabling New ALM Features for Visual Studio Team System 2010 Beta 2 in Upgraded Team Projects
Compatibility Notes for TFS and Visual Studio 2010, 2008 and 2005 versions

Have fun with this great new bits and up to next release. Congrats to the product teams.

TeamReview 1.1.2 Released!

The most complete solution for Team System Code Reviews: a specific work item type and a Visual Studio add-in for a completely in IDE code review experience. TeamReview exploits the advantages of Team System and VSX to reduce waste and surface new business value from code reviews.

A new release(1.1.2) of this great tool is released and contains the following features/fixes:

- 2010 Beta 2 Support
- Fixes for UAC issues found on Windows Vista and Windows 7
- Allow for cross Team-Project code-review submissions, so source code to be in 1
Team Project and work item tracking in another. In the source control project set
up a Team Query that returns work items from the "other" work-item tracking
project. Then use this query during code reviews with TeamReview.
- Some Fixes see the list at the following location:
http://teamreview.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=30743

TechEd Europe 2009, Berlin here we come!

Just 3 weeks to go, and TechEd Europe 2009 begins.
The event information is available on the TechEd Europe site at:
http://www.msteched.com/europe/Public/event.aspx

I hope to meet you there.

If you are there, don't forget to visit the INETA Europe booth for more information about the community efforts and great goodies....

Rangers Solutions and Projects

Team System Rangers deliver out of band solutions for missing features and guidance in the Team System suite of products.

More information about VSTS Rangers projects and efforts can be found here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem/ee358787.aspx
and http://blogs.msdn.com/willy-peter_schaub/archive/2009/03/18/vsts-rangers-projects-project-announcement-vsts-2010-101-guidance-sheets.aspx

Announcing Microsoft Ajax Library (Preview 6) and the Microsoft Ajax Minifier

The ASP.NET team have released a significant new update of the Microsoft Ajax Library (Preview 6). This update includes a bunch of new capabilities and improvements to our client-side AJAX library, and can be used with any version of ASP.NET (including ASP.NET 2.0, 3.5 and 4.0), and can be used in both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC projects. 15-10-2009’s release includes the following feature improvements:

Better Imperative Syntax: A new, simplified, code syntax for creating client controls.
Client Script Loader: A new client-side script loader that can dynamically load all of the JavaScript files required by a client control or library automatically, and executes the scripts in the right order.
Better jQuery Integration: All Microsoft Ajax controls are now automatically exposed as jQuery plug-ins.
In addition to the client library improvements, we also today released a new (free) Microsoft AJAX Minifier tool. This tool allows you to substantially improve the performance of your websites by reducing the size of your JavaScript files. It can be run both as a command-line tool, and also ships as a Visual Studio MSBuild task that you can integrate into your VS projects to automatically minify your JavaScript files whenever you do a build.

For more information about this release, see:
http://aspnet.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=34488

Code Analysis Tool .NET (CAT.NET) v1 CTP available for download!

Just experiment with this tool, it works very well. This is availablae for download in two variants (32 and 64 bits)
CAT.NET is a snap-in to the Visual Studio IDE that helps you identify security flaws within a managed code (C#, Visual Basic .NET, J#) application you are developing. It does so by scanning the binary and/or assembly of the application, and tracing the data flow among its statements, methods, and assemblies. This includes indirect data types such as property assignments and instance tainting operations. The engine works by reading the target assembly and all reference assemblies used in the application -- module-by-module -- and then analyzing all of the methods contained within each. It finally displays the issues its finds in a list that you can use to jump directly to the places in your application's source code where those issues were found. The following rules are currently support by this version of the tool. - Cross Site Scripting - SQL Injection - Process Command Injection - File Canonicalization - Exception Information - LDAP Injection - XPATH Injection - Redirection to User Controlled Site.
For downloads see:
- CAT.NET v1 CTP-32 Bits download
- CAT.NET v1 CTP-64 Bits download

VSTS Rangers Projects - WCF Load Test Tool 3.0 Ships!

Again, a new milestone have been reach by VSTS Rangers by shipping "WCF Load Test Tool 3.0".
What does this tool does? This tool takes a WCF or Fiddler2 trace file and a WCF client proxy, or a WCF interface contract, and generates a unit test that replays the same sequence of calls found in the trace file for WCF and ASMX services. The code generated is easily modifiable so that data variation can be introduced for the purpose of doing performance testing.

The tool will also integrate with Visual Studio 2005/2008 Team Edition for Software Testers and installs a wizard for creating the trace and processing it from inside Visual Studio.

What’s New in 3.0? The main new feature is support for ASMX web services. The tool uses WCF’s ability to interoperate with ASMX web services to test these services. A WCF proxy must be generated from the web service’s WSDL for the tool to be able to work, but the trace does not need to come from a WCF client, the tool now also supports reading pre-captured traces collected using Fiddler2.

There have been numerous other changes and fixes, the more significant ones are:

Source code is now a Visual Studio 2008 project
Support for custom trace file parsers.
Now handles classes derived from a generic collection.
Streams are now supported on data contracts and message contracts.
Tool now continues to run even if it fails to find a method in the referenced assemblies.
Support for out and ref parameters has been added.
Timed comments (command line only)
Derived types using KnownType/XmlInclude attribute are now supported.
Fixed bug where array elements were assigned sub classes of the element type.
Fixed bug with certain types (e.g. DateTime) used as type parameters in generic collections and dictionaries.

Get the latest bits and pieces at Codeplex in the following home: http://wcfloadtest.codeplex.com

Please provide your feedback to the team in order to make things better...

Succesfull DotNed (.NET & VSTS UG NL) VSTS meeting of 11-6-2009!

DotNed(.NET & VSTS UG NL) hosted a meeting yesterday 11-6-2009 at Microsoft Innovation Center Barneveld, NL about "How you organize your projects using the new cool futures of VSTS2010" by Ewald Hofman from Avanade NL . It was a great entertainement with 14 people and good interaction. A chalk & Talk session about VSTS2010/TFS2010 will follow soon by Hassan Fadili (MVP Team System).
If you are missing this session and you are interesting in VSTS2010/TFS2010 stuf, just attend my session about "A Lap Around VSTS2010" during the SDE Event of 26-06-2009 at Hotel Houten, NL. See the event agenda for more details at SDN Site.

Great VSTS Rangers effort for VSTS and Sharepoint development

VSTS Rangers are continu working for making software development easier and possible with Microsoft tools and technolgies.
In the last couple of days, Rangers shipped important guidance packages for MOSS TFS development. For maximum reach, we have simultaneously posted to the Team System Home and Application Lifecycle Management Resource Center for SharePoint Server.

The two whitepaers are:

VSTS Rangers - SharePoint Server Custom Application Development: Document Workflow Management Project

Read about the real-world design, construction, and deployment of a custom SharePoint Server 2007 application to a mid-market enterprise customer using Team Foundation Server as an ALM platform.

VSTS Rangers - Using Team Foundation Server to Develop Custom SharePoint Products and Technologies Applications

Learn how to use TFS to support your SharePoint application development, and provide an integrated development environment and single source code repository for process activities, integrated progress reporting, and team roles.

patterns & practices: SharePoint Guidance
The SharePoint Guidance contains a sample implementation of an intranet application based on SharePoint Server 2007 that demonstrates solutions to many ALM challenges.

Peli de Hallux comes to NL and speaks for DotNed

DotNed (.NET & VSTS UG NL) is very pleased to welkom Peli de Hallux during his talk for DotNed. Peli will be next month in Europe and will speak to many User Groups.

The talk of Peli for DotNed(.NET & VSTS UG NL) VSTS session track will take place on March 9th, 2009 from 18:00 until 21:30 and will be hosted by VXCompany, thanks in advance. During his talk, Peli will discus the following content:

This talk presents 3 innovative tools from Microsoft Research in collaboration with Visual Studio DevLabs related to software reliability and testing: Code Contracts, Pex and CHESS (all tools are available for evaluation through the DevLabs incubation site from Visual Studio).

• Code Contracts provide a language-agnostic way to express coding assumptions, under the form of pre-conditions, post-conditions, and object invariants, for .NET programs. The contracts are used to improve testing via runtime checking, enable static contract verification, and documentation generation. Pex is an automated white box testing tool for .NET.
• Pex systematically tries to cover every reachable branch in a program by monitoring execution traces, and using a constraint solver to produce new test cases with different behavior. Pex can be guided by hand-written parameterized unit tests, which are API usage scenarios with assertions. The result of the analysis is a test suite which can be persisted as unit tests in source code.
• CHESS is a tool for finding and reproducing Heisenbugs in .NET and Win32 concurrent programs. CHESS repeatedly runs a concurrent test ensuring that every run takes a different interleaving. If an interleaving results in an error, CHESS can reproduce the interleaving for improved debugging.

The talk will give you a glimpse at those new technologies, along with coding demos.

Links:
Research in Software Engineering: http://research.microsoft.com/rise
Code Contracts: http://research.microsoft.com/contracts
Pex: http://research.microsoft.com/pex
CHESS: http://research.microsoft.com/chess
DevLabs: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/default.aspx

Bio of Peli:

Jonathan "Peli" de Halleux is actively working on Pex, an Automated Whitebox Testing tool for .NET at Microsot Research. Peli also collaborates with his colleagues from the CHESS and Code Contracts projects. On the side Peli also wrote MbUnit, an extensible unit test framework, many Reflector addins and other fun geek projects. Peli joined the Research in Software Engineering group in October 2006 where he has been working on Pex since then. Peli worked in the CLR as a tester in charge of the Just In Time compiler (2004-2006) and earned a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the Catholic University of Louvain (2000-2004).
Links:
Home page at MSR: http://research.microsoft.com/~jhalleux
Blog: http://blog.dotnetwiki.org

Please visit our DotNed Event site for subscription to this exclusive event. We hope to meet you there.

Cheers,

Hassan Fadili
DotNed (.NET & VSTS UG NL) VSTS track owner.

Upgrading TFS from 2005 to 2008 SP1 on a dual server deployment!

I recently did an upgrade on a this scenario by a customer 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:

Please be careful and read the installation guide form Microsoft:

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.

Good luck.

Nieuw jaar, nieuwe kansen!

Alle eerste beste wensen voor iedereen en een gelukkig 2009. Ik hoop dat iedereen net als ik vol barst van energie om dit nieuw jaar weet als een leerzaam en presterend jaar te mogen beschouwen.

Zoals eerder is aangekondigd zijn we vanuit DotNed erg druk om het programma/agenda van DotNed community voor dit jaar 2009 compleet te maken. De eesrte helft van het jaar zijn we al vol geboekt, nu nog de 2e helft van het jaar plannen.
De reguliere DotNed sessies worden afgewisseld met de VSTS sessies. Vandaar dat jullie dit jaar veel gaan zien en horen vanuit VSTS track binnen DotNed community. Zo is er een sessie gepland op 9 maart 2009 over het testen in VSTS door Peli de Halleux. Peli maakt deel uit het Team System team uit Redmond vanuit test hoek. Hij is overigens de maker van MBUnit en Pex. Meer hierover in de aankondiging van maart 2009, daarnaast zal Hassan Fadili ,VSTS (track owner binnen DotNed community) een sessie houden over: “A lap Around VSTS2010” tijdens het SDE event van SDN. De datum en locatie worden nader bekend gemaakt.
Een ding is zeker , dit jaar wordt voor mij een VSTS jaar aangezien er veel gaat gebeuren op dit gebied met de komst van VSTS2010.
Uiteraard staan we altijd klaar vanuit DotNed om jullie vragen te beatwoorden en jullie problemen op te lossen als het gaat om .NET technologie en/of VSTS zaken.
Voor nu nogmaals een gelukkig en leerzaam 2009 jaar toegewenst.