I have downloaded and installed Safari 3 Beta on my laptop today. I am not a Browser Guru, I just want to make sure our site looks pretty :)

Ed K. 

I've been asked so I'll just say, "Sorry, I'm not the Ed B. in today's Daily WTF."  Although very funny, it's not me.

Ed B.

Ouch! Look at this map. I need to see what is happening in some of these functoids. What is a developer to do?????

A map is just complex XSL.... So to debug the functoids we need to treat it as such. First, lets Validate our map and get the location of the XSLT.

Since it validated (no errors) we have the XSLT output location in the Output Window. Copy this location to your clip board. 

Open the file with Visual Studio:

Now, right click on your XSL working area and select properties. Here you will enter the input file that will be used for the transform:

Mark your break points, just as you would a code file, and start the debug:



Now you can step through just as if it was .Net code:

Even step into the functoid code:

Ed K.

 The next set of Team System chats with the product group will be on July 3rd. 

Join the chat on Tuesday, July 3^rd , 2007 from 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time. Add to Calendar | Additional Time Zones

                -and-

Join the chat on Tuesday, July 3^rd, 2007 from 4:00pm - 5:00pm Pacific Time. Add to Calendar | Additional Time Zones

Team System product group chats on July 3rd

Ed K.

So, if you didn't know I'm a huge fan of the Quality Indicators report in the MSF for Agile Software Development process template in Team Foundation Server.  Here at Infragistics, we're evaluating the Conchango Scrum Process Template for Team System and I don't get that wonderful report I love :-(  I've been stalling (because I haven't ever written a SQL Reporting Services custom report for TFS) but I finally did it today.  It really wasn't that bad.  Thank God I already had most of the report set up for me!  There are a TON of data and metrics you can get from the OLAP cube in the TFS Data Warehouse.

If you haven't read the Wrox Professional Team Foundation Server book, then it's a great avenue for learning TFS.  It also has a good section on how to creating custom reports with the Visual Studio Report Designer.

Really the only issue with just importing the original report to the Scrum team project is the fact that Bugs are actually Sprint Backlog Items with an Item Type of Bug (as opposed to the MSF Agile template that just has a separate bug work item type) and the status of an active bug is actually "In Progress."

Steps to Modify Report

1. You need to get a copy of the Quality Indictors RDL file.  Take a look at Customizing Reports to get more information on how to do this.  I happened to create a whole new Reporting Services Project in Visual Studio called TFS Scrum Reports because I may be creating some new ones later.
2. Be sure to add the two shared Data Sources to your new Visual Studio project.  You can use the settings of the existing shared data sources on your TFS SQL Reporting Services server.  (Usually found at http://[TFS Server Name]/Reports/ or you can right-click the Reports folder under your team project in the Team Explorer window and choose "Show Report Site...")
    
3. With the report open, navigate down to the section that gets the Active Bugs metric:
    
4. Notice what it grabs for the work item type and state:
   
   MEMBER [Measures].[Active Bugs] AS ([Measures].[Cumulative Count], [Work Item].[System_State].[Active], [Work Item].[System_WorkItemType].[Bug], STRTOMEMBER([Measures].[Build Date])) + 0
   
5. Now, change these values to the following:
   
   MEMBER [Measures].[Active Bugs] AS ([Measures].[Cumulative Count], [Work Item].[System_State].[In Progress], [Work Item].[Conchango_VSTS_Scrum_SprintBacklogItemType].[Bug], STRTOMEMBER([Measures].[Build Date])) + 0
   
6. All you have to do now is save the report and upload it to the SQL Reporting site in your team project's reports folder.
   
7. Last thing, you may run into a problem with the report finding the shared data sources.  If this happens, go into the properties of the report on the SRS site and choose the shared data sources that are being used by SRS.

Really, you can use this method to port this great report into just about any process template you might be using.  Pretty much any of the OLAP metrics can be changed.

What other kinds of reports should we have?  Do you have any interesting custom reports that you find useful for the major process templates that are available on the Internets and what not?

UPDATE:  I've attached a modified report if you don't want to go through all the steps of customizing.  Just download it and start at Step 6.  It's much more fun doing it yourself though!

Ed B.

P.S. We're changing up some of our tags to better organize all of our blog posts.  May take some time...

What Does the Updated Quiescing GDR Fix?

• TFS SP1 and Hotfixes fails to install on a SQL Clustered Data Tier.
• TFS SP1 and Hotfixes may fail to install due to issues connecting to the TFS databases.
• TFS Databases may be left in Single-User mode after SP1 or Hotfix installation failure.

Source: Brain Harry Blog

Patch Download

Ed K.

There's a new Scrum process template and it looks like Microsoft has developed it this time.  You can pick it up here:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=55a4bde6-10a7-4c41-9938-f388c1ed15e9&displaylang=en

Overview

eScrum is a Web-based, end-to-end project management tool for Scrum built on the Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server platform. It provides multiple ways to interact with your Scrum project: eScrum Web-based UI, Team Explorer, and Excel or Project, via Team Foundation Office Integration. In addition, it provides a single place for all Scrum artifacts such as product backlog, sprint backlog, task management, retrospective, and reports with built-in context sensitive help.

We'll have to evaluate it and see where it ranks among the other Scrum process templates.  For now, check out some of the other ones:  (Did I miss any?)

• Conchango:  http://www.scrumforteamsystem.com/en/default.aspx
• CodePlex:  http://www.codeplex.com/VSTSScrum

Update:  HOLY CRAP! There is a ton of post-installation steps that you have to take and other items that you have to download.  If you don't happen to have the specific version of the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit that eScrum requires, then you are going to have to do a binding redirect.  If you download it from the ASP.NET AJAX Website, it is a later version.  See the Readme after you install. This setup and install experience is probably one of the worst I have ever done!  Even rivaling the TFS Beta 3 to Beta 3 Refresh upgrade!  That's saying a lot.

Now I'm just having problems with the reports after I've rebuilt the TFS Warehouse five time!  This process template undoubtedly deserves a Colbert Wag of the Finger.

Ed B.

Several people who had attended TechEd 2007 in Orlando, Florida last week had the opportunity to see the shuttle launch.  It's pretty awesome because they don't happen all of the time.  A group of us who had stayed for the weekend decided to head out to Cape Canaveral for the event.  We made our stakeout for about five hours and played cards but I have to tell you it was totally awesome.  It was extremely bright too!  I don't have the most awesome camera in the world but got some pretty cool shots.

Oh yeah - Congrats to Ed K on passing the TFS exam!  I guess I'll have to go take it now too

Ed B.

Whatever happened to this webcast? It was kinda cool...ok, somewhat cool, but I really like how it turned coding into a reality show. If anyone knows what happened or if there are any "lost episodes" please leave a comment.

Here is the WebSite. All it has on it now is "This IP address cannot be used for browsing".

Here is a list of the only 3 episodes made (as far as I know):
Pilot Episode - December 9, 2004
Building Mobile Apps and Bluetooth Enabled Kiosks - May 19, 2005
Breaking Into Vegas - February 23, 2006

Ed K

The connector, Release 1, is available for download today from CodePlex.

This is the first release of the PS2007 VSTS Connector. We've done our best to ensure that this Connector is easy to install and well documented, but if you encounter issues, please be sure to let us know via email at tfpstalk@microsoft.com, we'll do our best to get you up and running.
For other feedback and questions, please send mail to tfpstalk@microsoft.com.

Thanks for your interest in the Connector solution!
- VSTS Rangers

Source: CodePlex

Ed K

Topic : BizTalk Solution Design Review
Speaker: Dustin Hicks
Date: June 13th 2007
Location: Microsoft Campus at 7000 State Highway 161, Irving, TX 75039
Time : 6:30 PM

Description :
Dustin Hicks will be discussing the implementation details of an SAP integration project utilizing a custom written decorator pipeline framework.  Architecture design and production details will be presented and discussed in detail.  We will review the code for a generic decorator pattern, it’s implementation in a pipeline component, value passing context properties, DocumentProcessor classes and development patterns.  In addition, purchase order integration including RosettaNet (3A4) to SAP (ORDERS05) transformations and processing pattern will be presented.

June Meeting - Dustin Hicks with a BizTalk Solution Design Review

Ed K

If you use Juice as your podcast receiver and have upgraded to Vista, here is a post that will show you how to make it work.

Running Juice on Vista

Ed K

Well, TechEd 2007 in wrapping up and boy was it fun. I met a lot of great people and listened to a bunch of awesome talks; my brain and feet are tired and ready for home. Last night I went to Universal's Island of Adventure for the TechEd Attendee's Party and met up with Ed B, along with all his Infragistics co-workers, we had a great time riding a few rides and searching for Chicken and Ribs. Listed below are all the sessions I attended.

Monday 6/4/2007

DEV11-TLC -  Microsoft Visual Studio Team System and Software Factories
In this chalk talk, Jack Greenfield, co-author of the Software Factories book, talks about the current generation of factories from p&p, future directions for software factories in Visual Studio Team Architect, and integrating software factories with other parts of Visual Studio Team System. The second half of the session will be Q&A, addressing questions from the audience on these topics.

DEV231 - A Lap around Microsoft Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas"(Session Repeats on 6/8)
Explore all the new Visual Studio code name “Orcas” features, from language enhancements; improved designers; Web and smart-client development tools; to Visual Studio Team System, a suite of software lifecycle management tools poised to transform how you deliver software for Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and the Web.

DEV02-TLC - Microsoft Visual Studio Team System for Small Agile Teams
Everyone says that Agile approaches like Extreme Programming only work when you’ve got a small team of highly talented developers. I agree that Agile works best for small teams, but it’s not talent that really matters, it’s a willingness to adopt certain practices and values. Over the next forty minutes I want to explain how Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) supports the Agile practices and values that allow everyone in this room to create a top performing small team.

Tuesday 6/5/2007

ARC307 - Applying Service-Orientation to Your Development Process  (Session Repeats on 6/6)
When you develop a service-oriented application, it would be naive of you to expect that the only things you will do differently will be limited to design and technology. The development process itself needs to be service-oriented. You cannot “stare into the fire” of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) without a mature service-oriented development process supporting your effort. This session presents you with a service-oriented development process that you can apply to your WCF-based products to plan and track your progress, manage requirements, and ensure faster time-to-market.

DEV338 - Microsoft Visual C#: Tips and Tricks for the Microsoft Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" IDE
Though the releases of Visual Studio, the Visual C# team has focused on making the IDE more “code-focused” than ever before. Join Karen Liu, C# IDE Program Manager, in building an E2E application using C# 3.0 and LINQ that leverages a number of tips and tricks in the IDE to make the Visual C# developer more efficient and productive when trying to understand and write code.

ARC316 - O-O? S-O? Workflow?: Architecture Tradeoffs in the Real World
You’ve never been faced with more application architecture technology options than today. Do you use object-oriented concepts? Service-oriented concepts? How about workflow? Is n-tier client/server the right answer, or should you use SOA? The answer, of course, is that you may need to use any or even all of these technologies. Each one is designed to solve a specific problem space, and is a weak solution for other problem spaces. Join Rockford Lhotka in an irreverent and pragmatic discussion about when to use all the technology options at your disposal.

DEV05-TLC - Managing Requirements with Team Foundation Server and TeamSpec
The ability to identify and change project requirements is critical to the success of every software project. Whether your team needs to track User Requirements, Use Cases, Business Requirements, Functional Requirements, Development Requirements, Non-functional Requirements, IT Requirements, or any other type of project guiding artifact, Team Foundation Server and TeamSpec together enable a familiar experience inside Microsoft Office Word with the benefits of the team centralized requirements management store.

BOF52 - The Need for an Agile Project Planning Tool
In the world of Agile Project management, no single tool has emerged as being the de facto standard for Agile Project Planning and Management. In this session, we discuss the need for such a tool and how such a tool can extend the value expressed in tools such as Team System.

BOF79 - HealthCare's IT Wants and Desires: All Things to All People
Join a discussion of IT’s challenges providing value and performance for today’s Healthcare facilities and staff. Have you experienced: Department leaders wanting 100% up time with unfettered Internet access. Staff not understanding why scraping EPHI into local access databases conflicts with maintaining HIPAA compliance. Their Desire to purchase a proprietary department application even though the organization already owns an application that will provide 80% of the functionality.

Wednesday 4/6/2007

DEV329 - Testing .NET 3.0 Applications with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Test Tools
Attend this session to learn about using Visual Studio Team System tools for testing your .NET 3.0 applications. We start with Windows Communication Foundation testing, showing how to test both the client and the service parts of the system both with in-process and out-of-process calls. Next, we step into how to test Windows Workflow Foundation, including discussion of how to handle long running transactions. We close with how to use VS Team Test’s manual tests for testing WCF functionality.

BAP309 - Will SOA Replace ERP?
While there are different perspectives on SOA, there is widespread agreement that it is not a product or a technology but an approach—a style of architecture that uses the service model to enable integration across diverse systems. At its most strategic level, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) enables IT to meet the changing demands of businesses and to exploit new business opportunities. Microsoft Dynamics enables users to take “Real-World” approach to SOA. This session offers a deep-dive on concepts of Real-World SOA.

SOA419 - Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation Tips and Tricks from Real World Projects
In this session, we talk about real implementations of Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) together, and discuss the ways you can integrate these two technologies before the “Orcas” timeline. We start with simple integration and then move on to more seamless integration with Custom ServiceHosts and custom behaviors helping to manage the integration.

Thursday 6/7/2007

SOA217R - Programming Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation: A Developer's Primer (Repeated from 6/4)
How do you actually build and consume WCF-based services? At its core, the WCF programming model is simple and straightforward, requiring actually very little work on behalf of the developer. The session describes the essential WCF programming concepts: clients, services, contracts, and end points; and shows how to build, configure, and host simple services. After attending this session you will be able to start programming and exploring WCF.

DEV313 - Improving Code Performance with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System
Today’s customers demand responsive applications, and improving your application’s performance is becoming a must to maintain a competitive edge. This session digs into the tips and tricks of how to find and resolve performance bottlenecks with the Code Profiler and Web Load and Stress tests. We also demonstrate how managers, testers, and developers can work together to resolve and avoid performance issues.

LNC14 - (Panel Discussion) Open Source Software in Enterprise Development
What is the role of open source software in enterprise development? Can companies effectively manage the licensing and support issues? Should companies take advantage of the open source community to advance their own software applications? This panel of leading open source developers explores these questions as well as issues that you are facing today in your organization.

DEV322 - Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (Part 1 of 2): Applying Work Item Tracking and Version Control to Application Lifecycle Management
The phrase “eating your own dogfood” gets new meaning when the engineering management team for Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS) present how we organize the work, structure the source base and measure the progress of the upcoming release of Visual Studio Team System. This session introduces you to Team Foundation Server, showing you the decisions and solutions a large scale, distributed team, are making today to get the most of TFS.

Ed K

I took the 70-510 exam on Tuesday here @ TechEd 2007 and PASSED!. The exam came out of beta in April 07, while in beta the exam was 71-510, now, it is 70-510. The exam is still very rough, they have some work to do on cleaning up some of the questions. I saw 2 question where the options where the exact same...i.e.

A: I am Cool
B: Yes you are
C: I am Cool
D: Duh!

and oddly enough the repeat was the answer on one of them, so which one do I pick lol.

Anyway's......overall it was tough and geared more towards people that have been working extensively with the product. I think it would be hard to just pick up a book and study the material and pass, you need real world experience; I like it that way...that is the way it should be, certifications will carry more weight if people are not able to just pick up a book and pass the test with no real world experience with the technology.

Here are some avenues of learning I recommend to prepare for the exam:
Preparation Guide for Exam 70-510
Professional Team Foundation Server (Wrox)
Notion Solutions eTraining

Ed K

I found this awesome site of Diagrams/Posters, all of which are free for download. You need to register. Lots of posters in JPEG or PDF format.

Here is a small list of what the site contains:

I believe this site is managed by a VSTS MVP from South Africa.

Ed K.

The Patterns and Practices Team has released beta 1 of the TFS Guide. This is a free download from CodePlex. Click here to download the guide.

Parts

Chapters

• Introduction
• Ch 01 - Introducing the Team Environment
• Ch 02 - Team Foundation Server Architecture
• Ch 03 - Structuring Projects and Solutions
• Ch 04 - Structuring Projects and Solutions in Team Foundation Server
• Ch 05 - Defining Your Branching and Merging Strategy
• Ch 06 - Managing Source Control Dependencies in Visual Studio Team System
• Ch 07 - Team Build Explained
• Ch 08 - Setting Up Continuous Integration with Team Build
• Ch 09 - Setting Up Scheduled Builds with Team Build
• Ch 10 - Large Project Considerations
• Ch 11 - Project Management Explained
• Ch 12 - Work Items Explained
• Ch 13 – MSF Agile Projects
• Ch 14 - Process Templates Explained
• Ch 15 - Reporting Explained
• Ch 16 - Team Foundation Server Deployment
• Ch 17 - Providing Internet Access to Team Foundation Server

Source: Microsoft Patterns and Practices

Ed K.

We really apologize about the downtime for the last couple of days.  While we were changing web hosts we thought we would change blogging software and move all of the old blog posts over... Yeah that just didn't work out well.  Then the original dasBlog version we were using wouldn't work... We have had issues with some of the features in the past.

So what did I do????

I'm did the unthinkable... use a pre-ALPHA daily build dasBlog!  Naw, don't worry - it seems pretty stable (The dasBlog web site uses the version we are using: dasBlog 1.9.6315.0)

We're going to use the Akismet service to block comment/trackback spam (which if you didn't know we had turned off all trackbacks and stuff because we got so much SPAM that we still even need to clean up.)  We really HATE SPAM....

It's all turned back on now and we turned off CAPTCHA on the comment entry pages that people just hate.

Everyone is back up and going now so if you happen to find any problems please let us know!

Now, Ed K. is at TechEd 2007 right now and I'll be there later this week on Thursday.

Ed B.

It's out there and available:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions

MSRP:  $499.99 - OUCH!

Bad thing though is that Expression Blend (along with the rest of Expression Studio) is only available for Team Suite with MSDN Premium subscribers.  Expression Blend and Web are the only products released in the Studio as of now.  MSDN Premium subscribers without Team Suite are still licensed for Expression Web which is already available in Subscriber Downloads.

In the words of Rob Caron:

The best deal is reserved for Team Suite customers with MSDN Premium subscriptions, who will receive the entire Expression Studio. The value of Team Suite just gets sweeter.

You can read more about the Expression Studio for MSDN subscribers announcement here:  Listening to your feedback - Expression and MSDN

Ed B.

Just a quick note:

While modifing some NANT files today for our BizTalk 2006 deployment I notice the gacutil is no longer located in the framework folder i.e C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727  as it was in the previous versions of the .Net Framework. It is now located here: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\bin\gacutil.exe

Ed K.

Saturday, May 19th I'll be speaking in the Poconos in Pennsylvania at TECH Bash 2007.  If you'll be in the area, make sure you attend!

Session Topic:  Humanizing Software:  Creating Better User Experience with WPF

Session Description:  End Users today expect great and exciting experiences in their software that allow desirability, findability, and a high value of information presented. We will discuss Microsoft’s latest technology to enable developers to create great User Experiences by using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF.) We will also briefly cover User Experience (UX) and related topics.

Location: 

Luzerne County Community College
1333 South Prospect Street
Nanticoke, PA 18634-3899
800.377.LCCC

Ed B.