Wow... it took a little while but I finally got finished updating our site with dasBlog 1.9, the newest version after about a year of development.  We have to give it the team for their outstanding work!  Many Kudos!

What took so long was upgrading the solution to .NET 2.0 since the application comes as a 1.1 app.  For some help to upgrade the solution to the .NET Framework 2.0 see this helpful post:  http://www.dasBlog.us/viewtopic.php?t=244

Let me know if anyone needs any help with this...

Ed B.

Say you built an application that connects to TFS and you want a dialog box to appear if a user is not authorized to connect to TFS. To do this is quite simple.  There are two methods you might have seen when you are playing with the TeamFoundationServer object, Authenticate() and EnsureAuthenticated(). The difference between the two is Authenticate will always call the server and EnsureAuthenticated will only be called if the user has not already authenticated to the server. You should use the EnsureAuthenticated method as a performance point since you only want the call to go to the server if the user has not authenticated. Notice we are using the TeamFoundationServer constructor instead of the Factory; you can use the factory if you wish. The deciding point that you need to decide is if you want to reference the same object on subsequence calls and without the need to re-authenticate. Remember the factory method will return a cache instance of the object.

TeamFoundationServer tfs = new TeamFoundationServer(TFSServerName,new UICredentialsProvider());

tfs.EnsureAuthenticated();

If the user presses cancel on the dialog box then a UnauthorizedException will be thrown ,so handle it gracefully.

Ed K.

Here is a simple example of how to connect to a Team Foundation Server and display some of its properties.

To start we need to fire up VS 2005 and create a new console application.

Now that we have a new project we need to add a reference to Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.

Now we can access the TeamFoundationServer object. To create an instance of the object we will use the TeamFoundationServerFactory, we are using the factory so that we create a cache version of the object for subsequence calls.

 TeamFoundationServer tfs = TeamFoundationServerFactory.GetServer("FriendlyNameOfYourTFSServerOrURL");

Now lets display some data:

Console.WriteLine("The Authenticated User is: {0}", tfs.AuthenticatedUserDisplayName);
Console.WriteLine("TeamFoundationServer Name: {0}", tfs.Name);
Console.WriteLine("TeamFoundationServer Object GUID: {0}", tfs.InstanceId);
Console.ReadLine();

Here is the OutPut:

Thats it! Very simple and fun.

Ed K.

To build on Ed B's post of Hillarious Error, check this one out. We found this one today. Can you spot the not.

Ed K.

So, Wow... All of y'all that happen to use Facebook they have released an initial API that you can use to make applications that will read data from it once Facebook users have logged in and approved to use either your web or desktop application.  Pretty cool I think!

http://developers.facebook.com/index.php

I haven't dived too much into it since I am getting ready to leave out of town for Labor Day Weekend but at first glance:

1. One thing I don't like is that it uses the REST protocol.  For more info about it check out the Wiki on it:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer  It's pretty much making a POST of XML and then returning
2. They do say that they have plans on supporting SOAP:  http://developers.facebook.com/faq.php
3. I also noticed two guys have already made a VB.NET and a C# library to use.  I haven't looked at them yet and will take a look at them to see how well they did.  Obviously, I'll use the VB one :)  If I don't happen to think they will be useful for me, then I'll just create a Facebook.NET Library for it or just wait for them to implement SOAP so we can just use web services.
4. You can't get the entries of the logged in user's wall (or whichever user they choose to view.)  You can only get the wall count.  Boo!

Once again, it's a very early implementation.  I'm going to have to blame all those people who have nagged me for three years while I was in college about not having a MySpace and a Facebook because I broke in and now I'm glued on checking mine everyday.  I have gotten to meet up with a lot of people though that I haven't talked to in a long time.

Have a safe and fun Labor Day Weekend!  I'll be heading to Austin!

Ed B.

So... I was working with a client's application the other day and I got one of the funniest errors I have ever seen in my life.  Gotta love it!

If you ever see this error (or similar) then you really need to think about maybe refactoring a little... Anybody care to guess the complexity of this method?

Error Message:  "No overload for method MethodName takes '125' arguments."

Cyclomatic Complexity:  121 (extremely bad)
Maintenance Complexity:  13,031 (very very bad)

[Stats care of the wonderful tool:  CodeRush]

Ed B.

Just to save you a lot of time and hassle with a BizTalk installation... the computer name has to be 15 characters or less!  I guess only those of us with long names ever run into these kinds of problems :)

Ed B.

Here is a great post by Tim Rayburn on this issue. Here: http://www.timrayburn.net

It's inevitable... members of a development team are going to work really long hours.  Especially around crunch time!!!  We all know how it is!

It's both fun and frustrating to work at an organization who is growing in their software development lifecycle, process framework, and project management processes.  Almost everyone I have talked to describes places that have a less than perfect process in place for effective project management.  Even when there are policies in place, some of the times it's not even followed!

Has this ever happened to anyone?:  A resource is allocated for three different projects at a given time that have a total of nearly 90 hours of work in any given week?  And... that resource is also assigned with application management for production defects?

One of the things that makes a project run smoother is better resource allocation.  The critical path gets affected when resources are being shared between projects and application maintenance.  It's one of the "risks" that should be documented!

WARNING:  I am not a project manager.  This opinion is definitely coming from the development side of things :) I feel so bad for project managers at times.  I know that they care about just making sure that the project has a "green" light at all times and that everything will be finished on time (or early) with no defects!  I'm proud to say that I'm one of the members of the development staff that definitely strives for those same goals.

So... until later... keep being that Super Developer Resource!

Ed B.

So many people think that I work for DevExpress because of how much I rant and rave about CodeRush and Refactor Pro!

I'm telling you... CodeRush and Refactor Pro are definitely two of my most favorite tools!  But I really don't work for DevExpress... I'll blog later on both of them and some of the tools that I use from day to day that are built upon DX Core which is the foundation for both of their products and many other small tools.  If you haven't looked in DX Core (which is free) and you build or will build a Visual Studio add-in then you should definitely give it a shot.

My next plan for a coding tool that I could use from day to day is adding comments to code files in the format that I always use.  There is actually a tool that uses DX Core that does this called CR_Commenter but the bad thing:  It's only for C# code.  I thought about rewriting it for VB developers (and myself.)

Ed B.