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.