VSTS User Group on MSBuild and Team Build
July 23rd, 2008
Don’t miss the upcoming VSTS user group on MSBuild and Team Build. Shad Timm from Northwest Cadence will be presenting on this critical feature of Visual Studio Team System! Shad has considerable experience extending MSBuild and Team Build to do amazing things during the automated build at several of our clients. Don’t miss this upcoming presentation. It’s Wednesday, July 30th at Lincoln Square (Microsoft’s new beautiful offices in downtown Bellevue). You can more information at the user group web site!
VSTS User Group Meeting - Tomorrow Night! (June 25th)
June 24th, 2008
I’ll be presenting a topic titled “Gaze Into the Crystal Ball: Reporting in Team System”. We’ll actually go quite deep into the reporting process, including interpreting existing reports, modifying existing reports, creating ad-hoc reports in Excel, and creating new reports using the Report Builder. It’s basically the same talk I gave at TechEd 2008 a few weeks back. It was well received there!
More information at the VSTS User Group Web Site.
Live from Tech Ed - Support for DB2
June 3rd, 2008
Bill Gates, at the Keynote for Tech Ed 2008 Developers conference announced support for DB2 within Visual Studio Team System Database Edition in an upcoming release. The date for this was not announced but it will be shortly! Stay tuned for more on this development. Essentially what this means is that DB Pros is no longer locked into just SQL Server but it will be extensible after the next updated! WHOOHOOOO!
Sexy Technology, Latest and Greatest and things still fail
May 18th, 2008
There have been numerous reports in the last year of “issues” with Twitter, Facebook, Seesmic and other “web 2.0″ sites (I put that term in quotes because I have lots of issues with what it means since I don’t think it means anything - but that’s just me personally). I keep thinking back to the days of the dot com boom where anyone could get a job - even if they didn’t know how to code. And companies were so interested in getting cool new features out that they didn’t realize they didn’t have the basics down.
Basically the problems that we see with these new sites are the same problems we saw in the dot com boom era - unstructured processes, not well understood source code and a lack of quality assurance. Now granted, this isn’t the case everywhere but it isn’t limited to these newer websites either - sites like Google and Microsoft are also prone to errors (for instance, my latest favorite error with Google is Error #102. This is helpfully addressed by this message from Google if you go to look it up:
You’re encountering a known issue with Gmail. Our engineers are currently investigating and working diligently to find a solution.
In the meantime, please try signing in to Gmail through our secured interface, available via https://mail.google.com or by clicking here.
If you continue to experience difficulties, please access your mail from the older version of Gmail by clicking Older Version at the top of any Gmail page, going to http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=1, or clicking here.
Not very helpful).
Anyway, the issue that I see in all of this is process which provides structure and control. IT organizations which dive headfirst into writing code without thinking of the consequences of not having an adequate structure and processes to support their business are looking for trouble. Some people may disagree with me and say that the “glitches” that I mentioned above are just growing pains of working with new technology. Well, if the technology isn’t ready yet, why is it being used to support $100 million+ size businesses? Doesn’t that seem kind of irresponsible? Wouldn’t you test out new technology before using it on mission critical applications? Or is it just me?
Many people have said that process gets in the way and they point to Agile development as a better way of doing things. I hate to mention it but Agile (what does that word really mean), no matter which methodology you use, is highly structured. And process never gets in the way - unless you have the wrong process. And there-in lies the problem with most IT organizations. They may have process, but it isn’t the right one so no one uses it. Good processes help support and nurish both IT and the business that IT supports. There really is a better way to do things…
Maybe I’m just ranting, but I would like to hear your thoughts.
Don’t miss the GeekFest Party at TechEd 2008!
May 17th, 2008
I’ll see you there!
GeekFest Party at TechEd 2008 Developer Conference
Let’s face it, going to technical conferences is good for your career, but it’s not a whole lot of fun. What you need is an outlet. You need to have fun. That’s where we step in.
Cheap beer and lousy pizza!
We are bringing back GeekFest! Join us at Howl at the Moon
for a night of lousy pizza, cheap beer, dueling pianos, socializing and one wild rubber duck competition….yes, a rubber duck competition.
There is limited invitations available, so what are you waiting for. If you are attending the TechEd 2008 Developer Conference you can pre-register here.
Register and pick up your “duck” ticket in the TechEd Technical Learning Center (TLC) at the Developer Tools & Languages (TLA) information desk. You must have a “dick” ticket to get into the party. One “duck” admits up to two people.
When:
Tuesday, June 3, 2008 from 7:00 PM -10:00 PM ET
Where
Howl at the Moon, 8815 International Drive, Orlando, FL 32819
Ticketing
You must have a “duck” ticket to attend the party. One duck admits two.
Geek Speak on Team Build
May 15th, 2008
Well, my Geek Speak on the Team Build was finally posted on MSDN. If you’re interested in seeing Team Build in action check it out!
Steven Borg on Team Build - Geek Speak
Team System User Group meeting - May 28th, 2008
May 14th, 2008
Don’t miss the upcoming user group meeting for Team System. We’ll be covering Unit Testing, presented by Bruce Taimana from Microsoft. See you there!
Title: Unit Testing with Visual Studio
When: 6:30 PM on May 28, 2008
Where: Microsoft Campus in Redmond - Building 118 - Mt. Sai. Room
Speaker: Bruce Taimana (Microsoft VSTS Product team)
Overview:
Unit testing is integrated within Visual Studio, giving you an easy way to create tests for your code before checking it in. This will help you produce code that will be more robust and reduce bugs. (add more if you want) Bruce Taimana is a program manager in the Visual Studio Team Test team. He worked as a tester on the product before moving into this new role. Having a testing background, influences how the features should as he designs them in his current role
Website: http://seattleteamsystem.org/default.aspx
Team System 2008 March ‘08 Power Tools
April 17th, 2008
Microsoft is finalizing the release of the Team System 2008 Power Tools and working hard to finish up SP1 which is due out a little later (the Power Tools are now available here). Here are a list of the Power Tool features:
Power Tools
- PTE - Custom Controls
- TFSServerManager Client (produces the Microsoft developer statistics and has lots of cool features)
- TFS BPA for Windows Server 2008
- Work Item Template Improvements (pre-fill in work items with certain fields)
- Add to Team Explorer Window
- Templates are a fully integrated document window
- Scriptable Team Project creation
- support for 64-bit sharepoint
TFPT commands
- Unshelve /migrate
- review (performance improvements)
- destroygl (destroy global lists)
- changedocurl (rebind documents associated with a TFS Server)
- online (performance improvements)
More Rosario Specs released
March 28th, 2008
Another group of Rosario specs have been recently published on the Rosario Specs website:
· TFS Bug Submission Portal
· Send Mail from TFS
· Work Item Tracking Linking
Kick off TechEd with NWC at PreCon!
March 24th, 2008
You know that Spring is finally here when TechEd is just around the corner! Microsoft TechEd 2008 Developers is the first week of June, registration is open, and the Session Catalog is posted . Can’t wait to see everyone there!
Northwest Cadence is proud to have our very own Steven Borg and Jeff Levinson co-presenting a full day seminar at TechEd 08 Pre-Conference. We’d love to have you join us for our PreCon Seminar: Improve Software Quality with Visual Studio Team System. How I became a Software Quality Muscle Man…Read more.
Orlando, here we come!!
VS Live! San Francisco
March 12th, 2008
Both Steve Borg and myself will be speaking at VS Live! SF. We’ll be covering 5 sessions ranging from Database Professionals to Build and Configuration Management. To get more information on the entire event and our abstracts in particular, visit www.vslive.com/sf.
Required fields on state change
February 8th, 2008
So, you have a field which you want to make required when the state of a work item changes to a given value. How do you do it? Well, I had to do it for a customer recently and forgot how difficult it can be so I thought I’d blog it. Be aware that there are probably multiple ways to do this but I’m going to give you what I think is the most logical way to do it!
You’ll need the TFS Power Tools to do it the way I’m describing it (that’s the easiest way) - hopefully I’ll get around to adding screenshots later on.
Select the work item you want to edit and go to the Workflow tab. Select the state (outlined in red) and do the following:
- Right-click and select Open Details
- Add the Ref Name for the field you want to make required for the selected state
- Open this row and select the Rules tab
- Add the WHEN condition (this is the part that just isn’t intuitive)
- Set the field (maybe System.Reason since that’s tied to the state change) and set the value the field needs to be in order for the field you want to be required to be required (read it slowly - it’s confusing)
- On the Rules tab add the Required condition (don’t need to fill in the For or Not values)
Enjoy.
Differences between VS2008 Editions
January 30th, 2008
Rob Caron has put together a wonderful comparison chart between ALL the various versions of Visual Studio 2008. Everything from the Express Editions to Team Suite. And he breaks it down into specific features. I highly recommend taking a look if you’re trying to determine which version is right for you.
By the way, I was surprised to see there were some features available in Express Editions that were not available in Team Suite! 
(But I think they’re features that are replaced by better features in Team Suite.)
Check it out: Visual Studio 2008 Product Edition Comparison
Branching Strategies
January 8th, 2008
I hope everyone had a happy new year and a safe holiday season. Now that I’m done with beginning of the year housekeeping I’m back to blogging. This is the second in a series of posts on branching strategies. Branch by Quality is the most complex and flexible branching strategy so this strategy will span several posts.
Branch by Quality
Figure 1 - Branch by Quality, basic pattern
This pattern is the ultimate in flexibility - but can also get very complex. It allows you to handle unique situations and respond to changes very quickly. It can be used for supporting multiple versions of an application or for more flexibility can be combined with Branch By Release to provide even more options for supporting multiple versions. Additionally you don’t have to manage quite as many branches as with other branching strategies. However, it does mean that the management of each branch may get complicated. It allows for branching for isolation, hotfixes and the easy promotion of code from dev to test to production.
The basic structure as shown here involves three branches (or code at various qualities) - Dev which is code that is in constant change and is therefore referred to as “soft” code, QAwhich is code that changes very infrequently (no active development is ever done on this branch) and is considered more firm than the code on the Dev branch and finally Prod which contains code which has been released to production (development is never done on the Prod branch). The red lines represent the branch hierarchy. In this case Prod is the parent of QAwhich is the parent of Dev. In reality the branching can be done in any way which creates a relationship between Prod and QA and QA and Dev. Using TFS you can branch QA to Prod and QA to Dev or Prod to QA to Dev or Dev to QA to Prod to create this relationship. The only thing this effects is the default selection of drop down boxes in the merge wizard.
The reason why we refer to this pattern as Branch By Quality is because of the quality of each branch. Dev is potentially testable, QA is potentially releasable and Prod is released code. Each branch must maintaint this quality. Another hallmark of this pattern is a single path to production. Branch by Release has multiple paths to production - each new branch is a new path to production. With this pattern, builds for production ALWAYS come out of the QA branch (not the Prod branch as you may have assumed).
The process for releasing code is to promote it from Dev to QA, build the QA branch and test the compiled assemblies. If all tests pass, you do NOT rebuild the code - you simply deploy the already compiled assemblies. Then you promote the code from QA to Prod as a safekeeping. Note also the pairs of green lines which represent merges. As before, always Merge down, Copy Up to promote the smoothest transition possible.
VSTS MVP Congrats are in order!
January 2nd, 2008
A big, big congratulations is in order for one of Northwest Cadence’s own, Steven Borg!
Congrats, Steve, on your 2008 Microsoft MVP Award!
Steven had a very active year in the Visual Studio Team System community in 2007, particularly on the West Coast. From getting a Washington VSTS user group off the ground, authoring various publications and content, and teaching hundreds about Application Lifecycle Management and Team System (and this is just a snapshot!), Steve has showed us once again how passionate he is about Team System! His contributions haven’t gone unnoticed by our team, our customers, or our friends at Microsoft. Thanks, Microsoft for your continued support and recognition through the MVP program.
From Microsoft: “Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2008 Microsoft MVP Award! The MVP Award is our way of saying thank you for promoting the spirit of community and enhancing people’s lives and the industry’s success every day. Your extraordinary efforts in Visual Developer - Team System technical communities during the past year are greatly appreciated.”