The Ramblings of Two Microsoft .NET Developers, TFS, and Visual Studio ALM Guys --- "Yes, we are both named Ed."

Clock In Vista System Tray Not Updating????



Take a look at this....

For some reason the clock in my system tray is not updating.  Any ideas?  I hovered over it a ton of times and no refresh... Very STRANGE!

 

Ed B.

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Reflector 5.0



Tim Rayburn has an excellent post on Reflector 5.0 and highlights an awesome new feature that really rocks.

Tis a great read: Here

Ed K.

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ClickOnce Apps and Team Build!



As a lover of WinForms Apps I have been totally excited about the ClickOnce Deployment technology introduced in the .NET 2.0 Framework.

Over at the Vertigo Software Team System Blog they have included the SIMPLE steps at accomplishing a ClickOnce "publish" during a Team Build.  Thank you guys!  Take a look... Here

 

Ed B.

Posted in TFS


How To - Delete a Team Project in Team Foundation Server



Just as a reminder... The simplest way to delete a team project in TFS is:

1.  Open the Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt

2.  Use the following command:

TfsDeleteProject /server:TFSSERVERNAME "PROJECTNAME"

Where:

TFSSERVERNAME - name of your TFS Server

PROJECTNAME - name of your Team Project

Ed B.

Posted in TFS


Capgemini Group acquires Software Architects, Inc (SARK)



Press Release

This is really going to be awesome for the Sogeti Dallas office, SARK has some really outstanding consultants, especially in the BizTalk arena. We will truly have the most talent Microsoft Practice group in the area after the accquitsion finalizes.

It is going to be a great year for Sogeti!

 

Ed K.

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WalMart Video Download Service "Day One"



Being a huge fan of Vongo, well, at least before they decided to take there time on getting Vista ready, I love being able to download movies. I never have time to watch TV so, having movies on my laptop and portable video player is a beautiful thing. When I heard that WalMart finally launched their video service I was soooooo excited. I rushed home after work and prepped myself for full on "Rocky" movie downloads. The experience was a total let down. Let me show you some screen shots of the adventure.

First of all, it was hard as heck to find the system specs for the service on the website. Once I found them I was presently surprised that it actually stated OS Support "Vista". WOW!!!! A website that really states that they support Vista, very much a rarity. Wait a sec....don't get to excited.....lets try and install the WalMart software.

First I go to download the software with my FireFox Browser:
 
hmmmm.... not to pretty.

O well lets fire up IE7 and continue on our way:
 
Looks as if they have had problems in QA with the install blowing up. Nice fail safe WalMart.

Ok cool, our install went ok. Now we have to name our computer for the WalMart download manager.
 
Well crap, guess we are not going anywhere today.

Lets open up the software that was already installed to see what it looks like:

As expected..... the never ending "trying to connect" cycle.

All and all it was a sad day for Ed K. No "Rocky" movies tonight, I guess "American Idol" is on the schedule for tonight. I look forward to trying this service again soon, I see a very promising business venture here. Nice day one try WalMart.

Ed K.

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Changes to daylight-saving time for 2007 as they apply to BizTalk Server 2006



"Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 requires a hotfix to comply with the new start and end dates for DST in the United States. This hotfix will be available in February 2007. We will update this article when the hotfix is available." (Microsoft, 2007)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931961

 

Ed K.

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Security



I still can't believe that developers do not program securely, especially when they have all these great tools and best practices easily available. I just wanted to share a quick "WTF" with a recent experience I had.

I am currently looking for a house, so naturally I am calling all sorts of agents to get info and pictures before I commit to driving to look at the house. For this example, we shall say X1 company supplied we with an email with a hyperlink to view information such as pictures, builder, taxes and layout. So Cool right? Ya you bet, being able to view all this data at home before wasting my time driving all over the place. But the hyper link to the home information was a little more interesting, the URL contained there site www.CompanyX1.com then the query string http://www.CompanyX1.com/SearchDetail/AllTheGood/Search.aspx?AgentID=12345&password=IamSoSecure. Bang no need to call again, I can search all there internal listing (which I did not, I will not deal with a company that is that careless). 

Crazy?

Ed K.

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BizTalk and WMI



This will be a rather short blog post because I intend to write a much longer blog post about a this topic once I finishing coding a side project that uses WMI with BizTalk. So for now I am just going to throw down some quick, dirty code and explanation to show the power and usefulness of this topic.

If your a BizTalk guy, you probably get tired of opening the HAT and saving messages then terminating. Unless of course your BizTalk solution is just perfect and this never happens to you...ya ok.

What I am going to do is show you quick example of how to generate Managed WMI classes for BizTalk and show an example of how useful it can be.

First thing is to download this:
Management (WMI) Extensions for Visual Studio .NET 2003 Server Explorer

Next thing is connect to the BizTalk box with Server explorer in Visual Studio. Right click on the "Management Classes" and click "Add Classes"
 

Now Select "ROOT\MicrosoftBizTalkServer" and click "ADD>"

Now you see all the classes you can deal with in your Server Explorer.
Right click on "MSBTS_ServiceInstance" and select "Generate Managed Class"
Now you have a class file in your solution that you can program with.
 

Pretty cool eh?
Go ahead and generate one more class from "MSBTS_MessageInstance"

So, lets writes some quick dirty code to do something. I am sure I have at least 100 suspended messages on my local BizTalk server box to work with here :).

   11  ROOT.MICROSOFTBIZTALKSERVER.ServiceInstance.ServiceInstanceCollection _colServiceIns;
   12 
   13   //get a collection a ServiceInstance that are in "Suspended Not Resumable" status
   14   _colServiceIns= ROOT.MICROSOFTBIZTALKSERVER.ServiceInstance.GetInstances
(String.Format("ServiceStatus='{0}'", 32));
   15 
   16   //Loop though them
   17   foreach(ROOT.MICROSOFTBIZTALKSERVER.ServiceInstance _serviceIns in _colServiceIns)
   18   {
   19 
   20       Console.WriteLine("ServiceInstance GUID: "+ _serviceIns.InstanceID + "\n");
   21       Console.WriteLine("Error: " + _serviceIns.ErrorDescription);
   22 
   23       ROOT.MICROSOFTBIZTALKSERVER.MessageInstance.MessageInstanceCollection _messCol;
   24 
   25      //get a Collection of messageInstance with a condition that the ServiceInstanceID 
   26      //of ServiceInstance is equal to ServiceInstanceID of MessageInstance
   27      _messCol= ROOT.MICROSOFTBIZTALKSERVER.MessageInstance.GetInstances
(String.Format("ServiceInstanceID='{0}'", _serviceIns.InstanceID ));
   28 
   29      //Loop though the MessageInstance collection and save off the message
   30      foreach(ROOT.MICROSOFTBIZTALKSERVER.MessageInstance _messIns in _messCol)
   31      {
   32          Console.WriteLine("Saving to File");
   33          _messIns.SaveToFile(@"C:\here\");
   34          Console.WriteLine("Done Saving");
   35      }
_serviceIns.Terminate();
   36   }

All that happens here is, we get a collection of ServiceInstance that are "Suspended Not Resumable", loops through some of the properties and displays them. Then, matches up the MessageInstance with its ServiceInstance and saves off the message to a location on disk and Terminate.

Here is our output.

 

Ed K.

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Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Training



I have not seem too many companies offering quality training on Visual Studio Team System yet. I just saw that Notion Solutions have a training track offered in several locations and even on-site. Their prices look unbelievable, considering who the instructors are, Chris Menegay and Dave McKinstry, both Team System MVP's. I have seen these two guys present at Launch Events and .Net Users Groups; they are awesome! If anyone is looking for great training at an outstanding price check them out.

They have not posted a schedule/curriculum for 2007 training yet, but here is a link to the 2006 one, to get an idea of what they offer.

Here is a list of Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Training Partners.

Ed K.

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