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Martin Hinshelwood - .NET Architect, Developer, Evangelist, Technology Enthusiast. Blog | Profile
Iain Frame - Designer extraordinaire
Greg Fyans - Accessibility Guru \ CSS Genius

Updated Wiki: Home

MrHinsh — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 23:01:15 GMT

.NET Projects - Microsoft .NET Framework

WPF/ MVVM

Heat Calls Viewer

MOSS Projects - Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server

Windows Live Projects

Xbox Live Status

News

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

TFS 2010 Work Item Seed: TFS Work Item system.id at a predefined number

Wednesday, October 20, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

TFS vs. Subversion fact check

Thursday, October 14, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Syncing many Dynamics AX instances to a single TFS 2010 Team Project

Friday, October 08, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Database corruption in TFS 2005 causes TF246017 during upgrade

Wednesday, September 29, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Team Foundation Server 2010 Event Handling with Subscribers

Thursday, September 16, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Calculating the Rank of your blog posts or pages

Friday, September 10, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

How to deal with a stuck or infinitely queued build

Thursday, September 09, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

A change for the better #3

Tuesday, September 07, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Running Android 2.2 (Frodo) on your HD2

Thursday, September 02, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Rangers shipped Visual Studio 2010 Database Guide

Wednesday, August 25, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Subscribe | View all

Components in this project

Hinshelwood Website - Development - my personal site

Contributors

Martin Hinshelwood - .NET Architect, Developer, Evangelist, Technology Enthusiast. Blog | Profile
Iain Frame - Designer extraordinaire
Greg Fyans - Accessibility Guru \ CSS Genius

Updated Wiki: Home

MrHinsh — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 17:48:21 GMT

.NET Projects - Microsoft .NET Framework

WPF/ MVVM

Heat Calls Viewer

MOSS Projects - Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server

Windows Live Projects

Xbox Live Status

News

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

TFS 2010 Work Item Seed: TFS Work Item system.id at a predefined number

Wednesday, October 20, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

TFS vs. Subversion fact check

Thursday, October 14, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Syncing many Dynamics AX instances to a single TFS 2010 Team Project

Friday, October 08, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Database corruption in TFS 2005 causes TF246017 during upgrade

Wednesday, September 29, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Team Foundation Server 2010 Event Handling with Subscribers

Thursday, September 16, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Calculating the Rank of your blog posts or pages

Friday, September 10, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

How to deal with a stuck or infinitely queued build

Thursday, September 09, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

A change for the better #3

Tuesday, September 07, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Running Android 2.2 (Frodo) on your HD2

Thursday, September 02, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Rangers shipped Visual Studio 2010 Database Guide

Wednesday, August 25, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Subscribe | View all

Components in this project

Hinshelwood Website - Development - my personal site

Contributors

Martin Hinshelwood - .NET Architect, Developer, Evangelist, Technology Enthusiast. Blog | Profile
Iain Frame - Designer extraordinaire
Greg Fyans - Accessibility Guru \ CSS Genius

Updated Wiki: News Feeds

MrHinsh — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 20:02:37 GMT

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Upgrading from GeeksWithBlogs to Wordpress

Tuesday, May 24, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

In-Place upgrade of TFS 2008 to TFS 2010 with move to new domain

Wednesday, April 20, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

My first Scrum team in the wild

Monday, April 04, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Installing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1

Thursday, March 10, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Installing Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1

Thursday, March 10, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Visual Studio ALM MVP of the Year 2011

Monday, March 07, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Do you know how to move the Team Foundation Server cache

Friday, March 04, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Should GeeksWithBlogs move to the Wordpress Platform?

Wednesday, February 16, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Do you know about the Visual Studio 2010 Database Projects Guidance?

Wednesday, February 16, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Caveat utilitor - Can I run two versions of Microsoft Project side-by-side?

Friday, February 11, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

How Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server enable Compliance

Thursday, February 10, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Do you know about the Visual Studio ALM Rangers Guidance?

Saturday, February 05, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Do you know about the Visual Studio 2010 Architecture Guidance?

Friday, February 04, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Do you know about the Visual Studio 2010 Architecture Guidance?

Friday, February 04, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Do you want to be an ALM Consultant?

Friday, January 14, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Project of Projects with team Foundation Server 2010

Tuesday, January 04, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Free training at Northwest Cadence

Tuesday, January 04, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

What to do after a servicing fails on TFS 2010

Tuesday, January 04, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

TFS 2010 Work Item Seed: TFS Work Item system.id at a predefined number

Wednesday, October 20, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

TFS vs. Subversion fact check

Thursday, October 14, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Updated Wiki: News Feeds

MrHinsh — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 20:01:45 GMT

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Upgrading from GeeksWithBlogs to Wordpress

Tuesday, May 24, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

You may remember my post on Should GeeksWithBlogs move to the WordPress Platform? well I have finally made the move anyway. There are a number of reasons that I have moved my blog, but I have had a fantastic time since my first post on Hinshelm on Composite UI Application Block! way back in June of 2006 and I have loved my time on GeeksWithBlogs.

So long and thanks for all the posts… if you are looking for me, you will find me on http://blog.hinshelwood.com

In-Place upgrade of TFS 2008 to TFS 2010 with move to new domain

Wednesday, April 20, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

I had a particularly complicated upgrade this time that required me to do two things:

In-Place upgrade of TFS 2008 to TFS 2010
Move new TFS 2010 server from one domain to another

I followed Vasu Sankaran’s post on Guidance for upgrading to TFS 2010 along with domain move to make sure I did not fall into any of the known pitfalls, but unfortunately everything went screwy when we tried to move domain.

WARNING: Do not install Team Foundation Server SP1 as part of your Upgrade and domain migration; Do it after!

There are a number of things we need to accomplish:

In-place Upgrade of Team Foundation Server 2008 to Team Foundation Server 2010
In-place upgrade of Team Foundation Build 2008 to Team Foundation Build 2010
Move Team Foundation Server 2010 Team Project Collection to a new Domain

#1 In-place Upgrade of Team Foundation Server 2008 to Team Foundation Server 2010

The best way to do a domain migration of TFS 2008 and upgrade to TFS 2010 is to do the upgrade first. The Identities Change commands required to do the migration are much more stable under TFS 2010.

Run Best Practice Analyser for Team Foundation Server 2008 and fix all problems found

Figure: There are always things highlighted in the BPA. Luckily these were all easily fixed
Backup all TFS 2008 databases

note: Make sure you remember to take the Reporting Services Key

Figure: With TFS 2008 there are a lot of databases to backup.
Uninstall Team Foundation Server 2008

It is a LOT easier to uninstall TFS 2008 than it ever was to install it
Install Team Foundation Server 2010 (But do not configure)
Install Team Foundation Server 2010 Service Pack 1 – Do not do this!
Configure Team Foundation Server 2010

Select the “Upgrade” option to upgrade the exiting TFS 2008 databases to TFS 2010. The wizard will find all of the valid databases on any instance of SQL you specify.

Figure: The Upgrade process took around 30 minutes for ~3GB of data
Configure Team Foundation Build 2010 Controller

Figure: I am running the Team Foundation Build Controller on the TFS Server

In cases of low load I always run the Team Foundation Build Controller on the same server as Team Foundation Server. This allows for less servers under low load and simplifies the topology.
Install Visual Studio 2010 Team Explorer
Install Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1
Test new environment (Create Team Project | Connect to Source Control | Connect to Work Item Tracking | Run a Build)

Figure: Agile 5 sandbox
Backup Team Project Collection

This is just a precautionary backup so I can get back to this point if I need to. I also have backups for the Team Foundation Server 2008 databases.
Run Best Practices Analyser 2010

Figure: Acceptable errors

I am OK with these errors as they will not impact the domain move.

#2 In-place upgrade of Team Foundation Build 2008 to Team Foundation Build 2010

Upgrading Team Foundation Build is even simpler than upgrading Team Foundation Server. Make sure however that you clean up all of the old build details as the upgrade will create “controllers” for all of the Build servers that you currently have.

Uninstall Team Build 2008
Install Team Build 2010
Configure Team Build 2010
Connect to Controller on TFS 2010 Server
Test Build servers

Figure: Woot, a build just runs

This is an Upgraded project so all of the builds are just wrapped “TFSBuild.proj” files.
Test All existing build definitions still run

Figure: Its even better when ALL of the builds work
Clean off all old Build Servers

I was very surprised that all of the builds still worked, but there is currently limited validation as part of these existing builds.

At this point the system works perfectly. I am able to connect to TFS, detach and reattach the collection as well as do builds and work with code. Little did I know that there was a gremlin hidden in the mix.

#3 Move Team Foundation Server 2010 Team Project Collection to a new Domain

It is now time to follow the documentation for Moving Team Foundation Server from One Environment to Another, but with the caveat that we are only migrating the Team Project Collection and not changing the domain of the old Team Foundation Server.

Remove all accounts from new Team Foundation Server 2010
Why you might ask! Guidance for upgrading to TFS 2010 along with domain move

Figure: make sure there are no groups with the same users
Install Team Foundation Server 2010 (But do not configure)
Install Team Foundation Server 2010 SP1 – Do not do this!
Install Team Explorer 2010
Install Visual Studio 2010 SP1 – Do not do this!
Install SQL Server 2008 R2 Client tools

You need this to connect to Analysis Services on a remote computer

Figure: You get TF255040 if you don’t have the client tools installed
DBA Installed SQL Server (Database Engine | Analysis Services | Reporting Services)

Figure: I always get caught by this one

Make sure that you install Reporting Services in “Default” configuration and not “SharePoint Integrated”. As the team I am Woking with usually works with reporting services integrated with SharePoint their default was naturally “SharePoint Integrated”. Luckily Reporting Services is easy to reinstall.

For some reason I always forget to install “Fill-test search” and get a TF254027. Because I always forget I neglected to tell the DBA to install also. In this case all parts of SQL are remote to the TFS server which is a configuration that I know is supported, but this is the first time I have used it.
Configure TFS selecting “Advanced” to set the Database, Cube and Reporting to use another server. At this point we are NOT installing or integrating with SharePoint.

Figure: I do love green ticks

If we want to Integrate SharePoint 2010 with Team Foundation Server 2010 at a later date we can
Add any Admin users you need

Figure: Remembering that Reporting Services in Remote
Detach Team Project Collection from OLD server

Figure: Detach before backup as changes are made to the collection

if you do not detach the collection prior to backup and move to the new server you may encounter problems trying to get the collection back up.
Backup Collection and Restore to Team Foundation Server in new Domain

Figure: You get a chance to change the name when you restore

I would recommend this as “DefaultCollection” does not really sound good. I prefer “[CompanyName]Collection” as it will make everyone feel that it is more important.
Make sure that your account has permission to the databases

Figure: Permission to the database is required
Attach the collection

Figure: Oh, why do I get a TF254078?
Lets try that again through the command line

Figure: Oh, so really its a TF246081! That's nice.

note: Make sure that you run the command prompt in elevated permissions
Rerun all previous steps without installing SP1 (the long shot)

Figure: Would you believe it!

Figure: Woooohooooo!
Change all of the Identities (Identities Change)

Well, it looks like this server is now on its 4th domain! That's right, the company has had this server since TFS 2005 and has kept it moving around. As TFS only recently gained the ability to migrate accounts I was only able to migrate some of the accounts.
Create user account groups

Figure: Adding users can be done through the project or at the TPC level
Connect up build servers

As these build server do not yet have all of the components installed to run the build I was unable to get the build running on the day. To be installed for my next visit is:
- SharePoint 2007 – The developers are creating SharePoint apps
- Visual Studio 2008 – you always need to add VS to a build server

Conclusion

After trying a while bunch of options including re-running everything from scratch without installing Service Pack 1. With the success of running without SP1 installed I am inclined to think that the product team broke something in the Attach Team Project Collection command.

References

My first Scrum team in the wild

Monday, April 04, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Over the last year I have invested a lot in Scrum. A few months ago I was assigned to teach a two day Scrum course for which I had to build and deliver the material. The team that received the beta of the course has now just finished their first sprint!

Although I was unable to be the teams Scrum Coach (paperwork relating to citizenship issues) one of my very experienced colleagues (Rennie Araucto) took up the challenge. This was Rennie’s first foray into serious Scrum and he attended the same training course; well I honestly could not have asked for a better person to take this team through its first sprint.

Figure: Pretty much the best sprint 1 burn down I have ever seen

This is probably the very best Sprint 1 burndown I have ever seen. Usually a team will over commit on at least the first, second and third sprints as well as having a tendency to remain oblivious to the opportunities they have in the Scrum process to correct their mistakes. This is usually through no fault of the individuals, but of a IT industry that has consistently taught and rewarded people for anti-patterns to delivering better software.

The data show above is the difference that can be achieve by both having a Scrum Coach and listening to their advice. Most teams fall down on the latter even when the former is satisfied, but I can only applaud the openness of The Scrum Team and their management in adopting both the action and the theory of Scrum in addition to the verbiage. I am sure once they are passed their 10th sprint there will be many changes that they want to make to the process they will have achieved, but sticking to their guns at this stage will serve them well. The trap that they could still fall into is complacency on having such a good sprint. I do worry that their second sprint could be a disaster if they fall back on unhealthy anti-patterns.

Here are a few of the questions that came up during the course of the sprint:

When are Story Points added and updated?

When used correctly Story Points are a fantastic way of doing estimation. Once you accept that we humans generally suck at estimating things far in the future as well as things we will not be doing ourselves things can get a lot better.

If we take estimation as a team effort and make sure that there is consensus within a team for how complicated something is in relation to the previous complexity estimates we should at least know which stories are more complicated to implement than the previous one. I always urge teams to reach an agreement as a whole, but not to the point of arguing over wither something is a 8 or and 8.5 (or even a 2 or a 3). When it gets to that level I always recommend an average and move on.

Back to the question, I believe that Story Points are ONLY added or changed at the Sprint Planning meeting. Rough order of events:

Backlog Creation: - Product Owner created the backlog and prioritises based on business value
Release Planning: - The Team helps the Product Owner flesh out the user stories by making sure that the Description and Acceptance Criteria are understood and that there is enough information for Test Cases to be built and development to commence. Obviously large User Stories may be broken down at this point. The Team’s initial Definition of Done may also be devised at this time.
Backlog Reprioritisation: - The Product Owner re-prioritises the backlog based the new information that came out of the Release Planning
Sprint Planning (Part 1): - The Team with the assistance of the Product Owner works through the Product Backlog in Stack Rank order to estimate in Story Points roughly 2-3 times the number of User Stories that they think they can deliver during the Sprint. The Product Owner can now roughly predict what will be delivered from the next 2-3 Sprints. All User Stories that can’t be delivered in a single Spring need to be broken down into smaller User Stories
Backlog Reprioritisation: - The Product Owner re-prioritises the backlog based the new information that came out of the Release Planning
Sprint Planning (Part 2): - The Team pulls the highest priority User Story from the Product Backlog and breaks it down into Tasks that are added to the Sprint Backlog. These Tasks are sized in Hours and the Team decides if they are able to commit to delivering that User Story. They then repeat the process with the next User Story.

In reality the pruning of the Product Backlog by the Product Owner happens all the time and anyone is able to add new User Stories to the end of the Product Backlog at any time.

We will end up eventually breaking things down into hours, so why bother doing story points at all?

This is a really common questions and is pretty easy to explain. First lets assume again that we are totally crap at estimating. If that is the case, we want to spend a minimal amount of time estimating things that we will do in the future, or even not end up doing at all. When we do a complexity estimate we let the Product Owner know that we think that things are only so big. This gives them a chance to reprioritise the things that they thought were quick wins, but which are hard, and visa-a-versa.

Now, in Sprint Planning (Part 2) we can concentrate on only doing the hard work of breaking the top story down into fine grained tasks without the need to worry that we are doing this unnecessarily. Yes, at the start we will have say two User Stories at 12 points that end up being 80 hours and 120 hours respectively, but once you get around to your next Sprint Planning (Part 1) session you will have a better idea of how much complexity you have in your application. This knowledge can only increase over time.

When should the team activate a User Story? At the beginning of the sprint or when they start working on it?

I love easy ones: When you start working on it.

In order to understand the relationship between the amount of work that you committed to and the amount of work that you got done it can be handy to see exactly what you did not even have time to start.

What do you do with stories that are not finished in a single sprint?

There is a lot of debate on this one. If you are using physical cards then that physical card just goes onto the backlog and all of the outstanding tasks go into the bin. I like to follow that with my data as well. Just move the incomplete User Stories back to the Backlog and Close it indicating that is was not done (Using the Visual Studio Scrum template you mark it as Removed with a reason of Removed from the backlog.

Figure: Agile 5.0 Task removed from the sprint backlog

Figure: Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 Task removed from sprint backlog

The User Story may then be added to the next Sprint if it is prioritised by the Product Owner. It would be up to the team to pitch its completeness or otherwise to the Product Owner in order to prioritise it.

Rule: Never leave uncompleted work in a sprint. Its untidy and causes confusion

Conclusion

This team has made some fantastic efforts for their first sprint, but should not get complacent. I am very impressed of the work that Rennie has put in and I really enjoyed our long Scrum conversations

Installing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1

Thursday, March 10, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

As has become customary when the product team releases a new patch, SP or version I like to document the install. This post seams almost redundant as I had no problems, but I think that is as valuable to other thinking of installing the Service Pack as all the problems that we sometimes get.

As per Brian's post I am Installing Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1 first and indeed as this is a single server local deployment I need to install both. If I only install one it will leave the other product broken.

Figure: Hopefully this will be more uneventful

It takes a little while for your system to be checked to see what components need updating. On my main computer this was pretty quick, but on the laptop it took some time.

Figure: There are a lot of components to update

With this update also comes an update to .NET as well as many other components.

Figure: I downloaded the full 1.5GB’s, but you could do a web install

It depends on how good you internet connection is to how long it would take to download, but as I am now in the US I decided not to trust the internet connection speeds. It took around 30-40 minutes to download the full thing which is a little slow.

Figure: I did not need to download, but that would increase the install time

So on my main computer again this was fast, but again on my netbook this took a little while.

Figure: The actual install took around 30-40 minutes (2 hours on netbook)

I was pretty impressed with the speed of the install, and as Team Explore is now out of the box with Visual Studio 2010 I don’t get the problem of the SP being installed before Team Explorer and having a disjointed experience

Figure: As I suspected, no problems with the install

Figure: Checking in Visual Studio shows that all the servicing points were successful

This was an easy experience even if the SP was over 1.5GB’s to download Hopefully I will be discovering things that work better for a good while to come, as well as not seeing holes in the product that I had no encountered yet.

What were your experiences of installing Visual Studio 2010 Service pack 1?

Installing Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1

Thursday, March 10, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

As has become customary when the product team releases a new patch, SP or version I like to document the install. Although I had no errors on my main computer, my netbook did have problems. Although I am not ready to call it a Service Pack problem just yet!

Update 2011-03-10 – Running the Team Foundation Server 2010 Service Pack 1 install a second time worked

As per Brian's post I am installing the Team Foundation Server Service Pack first and indeed as this is a single server local deployment I need to install both. If I only install one it will leave the other product broken.

This however does not affect you if you are running Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server on separate computers as is normal in a production deployment.

Main workhorse

I will be installing the service pack first on my main computer as I want to actually use it here.

Figure: My main workhorse

I will also be installing this on my netbook which is obviously of significantly lower spec, but I will do that one after. Although, as always I had my fingers crossed, I was not really worried.

Figure: KB2182621

Compared to Visual Studio there are not really a lot of components to update.

Figure: TFS 2010 and SQL 2008 are the main things to update

There is no “web” installer for the Team Foundation Server 2010 Service Pack, but that is ok as most people will be installing it on a production server and will want to have everything local. I would have liked a Web installer, but the added complexity for the product team is not work the capability for a 500mb patch.

Figure: There is currently no way to roll SP1 and RTM together

Figure: No problems with the file verification, phew

Figure: Although the install took a while, it progressed smoothly

Figure: I always like a success screen

Well, as far as the install is concerned everything is OK, but what about TFS? Can I still connect and can I still administer it.

Figure: Service Pack 1 is reflected correctly in the Administration Console

I am confident that there are no major problems with TFS on my system and that it has been updated to SP1. I can do all of the things that I used before with ease, and with the new features detailed by Brian I think I will be happy.

Netbook

The great god Murphy has stuck, and my poor wee laptop spat the Team Foundation Server 2010 Service Pack 1 out so fast it hit me on the back of the head. That will teach me for not looking…

Figure: “Installation did not succeed” I am pretty sure should not be all caps!

On examining the file I found that everything worked, except the actual Team Foundation Server 2010 serving step.

Action: System Requirement Checks...
Action complete
Action: Downloading and/or Verifying Items
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\VS10-KB2182621.msp: Verifying signature for VS10-KB2182621.msp
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\VS10-KB2182621.msp Signature verified successfully for VS10-KB2182621.msp
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\DACFramework_enu.msi: Verifying signature for DACFramework_enu.msi
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\DACFramework_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for DACFramework_enu.msi
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\DACProjectSystemSetup_enu.msi: Verifying signature for DACProjectSystemSetup_enu.msi
Exists: evaluating
Exists evaluated to false
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\DACProjectSystemSetup_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for DACProjectSystemSetup_enu.msi
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\TSqlLanguageService_enu.msi: Verifying signature for TSqlLanguageService_enu.msi
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\TSqlLanguageService_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for TSqlLanguageService_enu.msi
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SharedManagementObjects_x86_enu.msi: Verifying signature for SharedManagementObjects_x86_enu.msi
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SharedManagementObjects_x86_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for SharedManagementObjects_x86_enu.msi
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SharedManagementObjects_amd64_enu.msi: Verifying signature for SharedManagementObjects_amd64_enu.msi
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SharedManagementObjects_amd64_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for SharedManagementObjects_amd64_enu.msi
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SQLSysClrTypes_x86_enu.msi: Verifying signature for SQLSysClrTypes_x86_enu.msi
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SQLSysClrTypes_x86_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for SQLSysClrTypes_x86_enu.msi
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SQLSysClrTypes_amd64_enu.msi: Verifying signature for SQLSysClrTypes_amd64_enu.msi
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SQLSysClrTypes_amd64_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for SQLSysClrTypes_amd64_enu.msi
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.cab: Verifying signature for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.cab
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.cab Signature verified successfully for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.cab
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.msi: Verifying signature for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.msi
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.msi Signature verified successfully for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.msi
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SetupUtility.exe: Verifying signature for SetupUtility.exe
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SetupUtility.exe Signature verified successfully for SetupUtility.exe
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.cab: Verifying signature for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.cab
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.cab Signature verified successfully for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.cab
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.msi: Verifying signature for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.msi
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.msi Signature verified successfully for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.msi
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\NDP40-KB2468871.exe: Verifying signature for NDP40-KB2468871.exe
c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\NDP40-KB2468871.exe Signature verified successfully for NDP40-KB2468871.exe
Action complete
Action: Performing actions on all Items
Entering Function: BaseMspInstallerT >::PerformAction
Action: Performing Install on MSP: c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\VS10-KB2182621.msp targetting Product: Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 - ENU
Returning IDOK. INSTALLMESSAGE_ERROR [Error 1935.An error occurred during the installation of assembly 'Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WebAccess.WorkItemTracking,version="10.0.0.0",publicKeyToken="b03f5f7f11d50a3a",processorArchitecture="MSIL",fileVersion="10.0.40219.1",culture="neutral"'. Please refer to Help and Support for more information. HRESULT: 0x80070005. ]
Returning IDOK. INSTALLMESSAGE_ERROR [Error 1712.One or more of the files required to restore your computer to its previous state could not be found. Restoration will not be possible.]
Patch (c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\VS10-KB2182621.msp) Install failed on product (Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 - ENU). Msi Log: 
MSI returned 0x643
Entering Function: MspInstallerT >::Rollback

Action Rollback changes
PerformMsiOperation returned 0x643
PerformMsiOperation returned 0x643
OnFailureBehavior for this item is to Rollback.
Action complete
Final Result: Installation failed with error code: (0x80070643), "Fatal error during installation. " (Elapsed time: 0 00:14:09).

Figure: Error log for Team Foundation Server 2010 install shows a failure

As there is really no information in this log as to why the installation failed so I checked the event log on that box.

Figure: There are hundreds of errors and it actually looks like there are more problems than a failed Service Pack

I am going to just run it again and see if it was because the netbook was slow to catch on to the update. Hears hoping, but even if it fails, I would question the installation of Windows (PDC laptop original install) before I question the Service Pack

Figure: Second run through was successful

I don’t know if the laptop was just slow, or what…

Did you get this error?

If you did I will push this to the product team as a problem, but unless more people have this sort of error, I will just look to write this off as a corrupted install of Windows and reinstall.

Visual Studio ALM MVP of the Year 2011

Monday, March 07, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

For some reason this year some of my peers decided to vote for me as a contender for Visual Studio ALM MVP of the year. I am not sure what I did to deserve this, but a number of people have commented that I have a rather useful blog.

I feel wholly unworthy to join the ranks of previous winners:

Thank you to everyone who voted regardless of who you voted for. If there was a prize for the best group of MVP’s then the Visual Studio ALM MVP would be a clear winner, as would the product group of product groups that is Visual Studio ALM Group. To use a phrase that I have learned since moving to Seattle and probably use too much: you guys are all just awesome.

I have tried my best in the last year to document not only every problem that I have had with Team Foundation Server (TFS), but also to document as many of the things I am doing as possible. I have taken some of Adam Cogan’s rules to heart and when a customer asks me a question I always blog the answer and send them a link.

This allows both my blog and my understanding of TFS to grow while creating a useful bank of content. The idea is that if one customer asks, all benefit. I try, when writing for my blog, to capture both the essence and the context for a problem being solved. This allows more people to benefit as they do not need to understand the specifics of an environment to gain value.

I have a number of goals for this year that I think will help increase value in the community:

persuade my new colleagues at Northwest Cadence to do more blogging (Steve, Jeff, Shad and Rennie)
Rangers Project – TFS Iteration Automation with Willy-Peter Schaub, Bill Essary, Martin Hinshelwood, Mike Fourie, Jeff Bramwell and Brian Blackman
Write a book on the Team Foundation Server API with Willy-Peter Schaub, Mike Fourie and Jeff Bramwell
write more useful blog posts

I do not think that these things are beyond the realms of do-ability, but we will see…

Do you know how to move the Team Foundation Server cache

Friday, March 04, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

There are a number of reasons why you may want to change the folder that you store the TFS Cache. It can take up “some” amount of room so moving it to another drive can be beneficial. This is the source control Cache that TFS uses to cache data from the database.

Moving the Cache is pretty easy and should allow you to organise your server space a little more efficiently. You may also get a performance improvement (although small) by putting it on another drive..

Create a new directory to store the Cache. e.g. “d:\TfsCache\”

Figure: Create a new folder
Give the local TFS WPG group full control of the directory

Figure: You need to use the App Tier Service WPG
In the application tier web.config (~\Application Tier\Web Services\web.config) add the following setting (to the appSettings section).

Figure: The web.config for TFS is stored in the application folder
```
<appsettings>
    ...
    <add value="D:\" key="dataDirectory" />
    ...
</appsettings>
```
Figure: Adding this to the web.config will trigger a restart of the app pool

Figure: Your web.config should look something like this

The app pool will automatically recycle and Team Web Access will start using the new location.

If you then download a file (not via a proxy) a folder with a GUID should be created immediately in the folder from #1. If the folder doesn’t appear, then you probably don’t have permissions set up properly.

Should GeeksWithBlogs move to the Wordpress Platform?

Wednesday, February 16, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Geekswithblogs was my first ever blog and my first post was on 22nd June 2006. Since then very little functionality has been added. This is not a complaint, but rather an observation that it is very hard to keep up with all of the blogging capabilities that people want. My point would be: “Why bother!”

Vote now for a migration of the awesome Geekswithblogs content from SubText to Wordpress.

Having been a long time user of GWB I have been worried of late by my envy of other blogging platforms. I made a number of requests around 10 months ago for things that almost all blogging platforms provide, but which are not available on GWB.

Support other comment frameworks – The current comment system is so antiquated that it does not even have the common filters like Facebook, twitter or Google login to help prevent spam.
Tags are not listed in the RSS – This can prevent you from getting the Google juice that you deserve
301 redirects to a single URL– If you use a custom URL then all your posts are split between both the GWB URL and the custom one. This is VERY bas for SEO.

I realise that it is difficult to find time to add all of the features that all the uber geeks on this site want, so why bother… lets move to the most popular and moded platform available and allow everyone to add whatever widgets they like.

Figure: Vote for Geekswithblogs moving to Wordpress

Why would I want this?

There are over 13k plugins available
Easy augmentation model
Full mobile support
Regular releases
lots more…

This could be a turning point in the legendary history of Geeks With Blogs, be part of it…

What can I do to make this happen?

I need your help to make this happen:

Do you know about the Visual Studio 2010 Database Projects Guidance?

Wednesday, February 16, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Early on in the Team System (now Visual Studio ALM) cycle a new product surfaced within Team System that was affectionately called “Data Dude”, but had the more formal name of “Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals”. The purpose of this product was to try and make the database a “first class citizen” in the development world.

Those that started using Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals (Data Dude) loved it, but everyone else did not get it. The capabilities were a little patchy, but the one thing it did bring to the party was the ability to put your database schema under source control. This was revolutionary as previously your DBA sat as far away from the team as possible, and usually in a dark cupboard, now they could partake of all the goodness of Version Control, Work Item Tracking and automated builds.

The problem was that the understanding required to manage these projects was very different to that needed previously. Then the Visual Studio ALM Rangers got a hold of it…and produced some of the best guidance available.

Figure: Download the guidance from http://vsdatabaseguide.codeplex.com/

This guidance discusses scenarios and approaches of using the Database Projects in Visual Studio 2010 to help you use the tools more effectively and maximize their value to your organization

This guidance is focused on these five areas:

Solution and Project Management
Source Code Control and Configuration Management
Integrating External Changes with the Project System
Build and Deployment Automation with Visual Studio Database Projects
Database Testing and Deployment Verification

Each of these areas has common guidance, usage scenarios, hands on labs, and lessons learned from real world engagements and the community discussions.

The guidance is broken down into three packages:

Guidance documentation
Hands-on-lab (HOL) documentation
note: The documentation is available in XPS-only format packages or complete XPS,PDF,DOCX format packages
HOL Package

If you need assistance and no one else can help, then you may need to call the Visual Studio ALM Rangers.

The Visual Studio ALM Rangers have the mission to provide out of band solutions for missing features or guidance. They are supported by Microsoft Product Group, Microsoft Consulting Services, Microsoft Most Valued Professionals (MVPs) and technical specialists from technology communities around the globe, giving you a real-world view from the field, where the technology has been tested and used.

For more information on the Rangers please visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/ee358786.aspx and for more a list of other Rangers projects please see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/ee358787.aspx.

Caveat utilitor - Can I run two versions of Microsoft Project side-by-side?

Friday, February 11, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

A number of out customers have asked if there are any problems in installing and running multiple versions of Microsoft Project on a single client. Although this is a case of Caveat utilitor (Let the user beware), as long as the user understands and accepts the issues that can occur then they can do this.

Although Microsoft provide the ability to leave old versions of Office products (except Outlook) on your client when you are installing a new version of the product they certainly do not endorse doing so.

Figure: For Project you can choose to keep the old stuff

That being the case I would have preferred that they put a “(NOT RECOMMENDED)” after the options to impart that knowledge to the rest of us, but they did not. The default and recommended behaviour is for the newer version installer to remove the older versions. Of course this does not apply in the revers. There are no forward compatibility packs for Office.

There are a number of negative behaviours (or bugs) that can occur in this configuration:

There is only one MS Project

In Windows a file extension can only be associated with a single program. In this case, MPP files can be associated with only one version of winproj.exe. The executables are in different folders so if a user double-clicks a Project file on the desktop, file explorer, or Outlook email, Windows will launch the winproj.exe associated with MPP and then load the MPP file. There are problems associated with this situation and in some cases workarounds.

The user double-clicks on a Project 2010 file, Project 2007 launches but is unable to open the file because it is a newer version. The workaround is for the user to launch Project 2010 from the Start menu then open the file. If the file is attached to an email they will need to first drag the file to the desktop.
All your linked MS Project files need to be of the same version

There are a number of problems that occur when people use on Microsoft’s Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technology. The three common uses of OLE are:
- for inserted projects where a Master project contains sub-projects and each sub-project resides in its own MPP file
- shared resource pools where multiple MPP files share a common resource pool kept in a single MPP file
- cross-project links where a task or milestone in one MPP file has a predecessor/successor relationship with a task or milestone in a different MPP file
What I’ve seen happen before is that if you are running in a version of Project that is not associated with the MPP extension and then try and activate an OLE link then Project tries to launch the other version of Project. Things start getting very confused since different MPP files are being controlled by different versions of Project running at the same time. I haven’t tried this in awhile so I can’t give you exact symptoms but I suspect that if Project 2010 is involved the symptoms will be different then in a Project 2003/2007 scenario. I’ve noticed that Project 2010 gives different error messages for the exact same problem when it occurs in Project 2003 or 2007.
-Anonymous

The recommendation would be either not to use this feature if you have to have multiple versions of Project installed or to use only a single version of Project.

You may get unexpected negative behaviours if you are using shared resource pools or resource pools even when you are not running multiple versions as I have found that they can get broken very easily. If you need these thing then it is probably best to use Project Server as it was created to solve many of these specific issues.

Note: I would not even allow multiple people to access a network copy of a Project file because of the way Windows locks files in write mode. This can cause write-locks that get so bad a server restart is required I’ve seen user’s files get write-locked to the point where the only resolution is to reboot the server.

Changing the default version to run for an extension

So what if you want to change the default association from Project 2007 to Project 2010?

Figure: “Control Panel | Folder Options | Change the file associated with a file extension”

Windows normally only lists the last version installed for a particular extension. You can select a specific version by selecting the program you want to change and clicking “Change program… | Browse…” and then selecting the .exe you want to use on the file system.

Figure: You will need to select the exact version of “winproj.exe” that you want to run

Conclusion

Although it is possible to run multiple versions of Project on one system in the main it does not really make sense.

How Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server enable Compliance

Thursday, February 10, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

One of the things that makes Team Foundation Server (TFS) the most powerful Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platform is the traceability it provides to those that use it. This traceability is crucial to enable many companies to adhere to many of the Compliance regulations to which they are bound (e.g. CFR 21 Part 11 or Sarbanes–Oxley.)

From something as simple as relating Tasks to Check-in’s or being able to see the top 10 files in your codebase that are causing the most Bugs, to identifying which Bugs and Requirements are in which Release. All that information is available and more in TFS.

Although all of this tradability is available within TFS you do need to understand that it is not for free. Well… I say that, but if you are using TFS properly you will have this information with no additional work except for firing up the reporting.

Using Visual Studio ALM and Team Foundation Server you can relate every line of code changes all the way up to requirements and back down through Test Cases to the Test Results.

Figure: The only thing missing is Build

In order to build the relationship model below we need to examine how each of the relationships get there. Each member of your team from programmer to tester and Business Analyst to Business have their roll to play to knit this together.

Figure: The relationships required to make this work can get a little confusing

If Build is added to this to relate Work Items to Builds and with knowledge of which builds are in which environments you can easily identify what is contained within a Release.

Figure: How are things progressing

Along with the ability to produce the progress and trend reports the tractability that is built into TFS can be used to fulfil most audit requirements out of the box, and augmented to fulfil the rest.

In order to understand the relationships, lets look at each of the important Artifacts and how they are associated with each other…

Requirements – The root of all knowledge

Requirements are the thing that the business cares about delivering. These could be derived as User Stories or Business Requirements Documents (BRD’s) but they should be what the Business asks for.

Requirements can be related to many of the Artifacts in TFS, so lets look at the model:

Figure: If the centre of the world was a requirement

We can track which releases Requirements were scheduled in, but this can change over time as more details come to light.

Figure: Who edited the Requirement and when

There is also the ability to query Work Items based on the History of changed that were made to it. This is particularly important with Requirements. It might not be enough to say what Requirements were completed in a given but also to know which Requirements were ever assigned to a particular release.

Figure: Some magic required, but result still achieved

As an augmentation to this it is also possible to run a query that shows results from the past, just as if we had a time machine. You can take any Query in the system and add a “Asof” clause at the end to query historical data in the operational store for TFS.

select <fields> from WorkItems [where <condition>] [order by <fields>] [asof <date>]

Figure: Work Item Query Language (WIQL) format

In order to achieve this you do need to save the query as a *.wiql file to your local computer and edit it in notepad, but one imported into TFS you run it any time you want.

Figure: Saving Queries locally can be useful

All of these Audit features are available throughout the Work Item Tracking (WIT) system within TFS.

Tasks – Where the real work gets done

Tasks are the work horse of the development team, but they only as useful as Excel if you do not relate them properly to other Artifacts.

Figure: The Task Work Item Type has its own relationships

Requirements should be broken down into Tasks that the development team work from to build what is required by the business. This may be done by a small dedicated group or by everyone that will be working on the software team but however it happens all of the Tasks create should be a Child of a Requirement Work Item Type.

Figure: Tasks are related to the Requirement

Tasks should be used to track the day-to-day activities of the team working to complete the software and as such they should be kept simple and short lest developers think they are more trouble than they are worth.

Figure: Task Work Item Type has a narrower purpose

Although the Task Work Item Type describes the work that will be done the actual development work involves making changes to files that are under Source Control. These changes are bundled together in a single atomic unit called a Changeset which is committed to TFS in a single operation. During this operation developers can associate Work Item with the Changeset.

Figure: Tasks are associated with Changesets

Changesets – Who wrote this crap

Changesets themselves are just an inventory of the changes that were made to a number of files to complete a Task.

Figure: Changesets are linked by Tasks and Builds

Figure: Changesets tell us what happened to the files in Version Control

Although comments can be changed after the fact, the inventory and Work Item associations are permanent which allows us to Audit all the way down to the individual change level.

Figure: On Check-in you can resolve a Task which automatically associates it

Because of this we can view the history on any file within the system and see how many changes have been made and what Changesets they belong to.

Figure: Changes are tracked at the File level

What would be even more powerful would be if we could view these changes super imposed over the top of the lines of code. Some people call this a blame tool because it is commonly used to find out which of the developers introduced a bug, but it can also be used as another method of Auditing changes to the system.

Figure: Annotate shows the lines

the Annotate functionality allows us to visualise the relationship between the individual lines of code and the Changesets. In addition to this you can create a Label and apply it to a version of your version control. The problem with Label’s is that they can be changed after they have been created with no tractability. This makes them practically useless for any sort of compliance audit. So what do you use?

Branches – And why we need them

Branches are a really powerful tool for development and release management, but they are most important for audits.

Figure: One way to Audit releases

The R1.0 branch can be created from the Label that the Build creates on the R1 line when a Release build was created. It can be created as soon as the Build has been signed of for release. However it is still possible that someone changed the Label between this time and its creation. Another better method can be to explicitly link the Build output to the Build.

Builds – Lets tie some more of this together

Builds are the glue that helps us enable the next level of tractability by tying everything together.

Figure: The dashed pieces are not out of the box but can be enabled

When the Build is called and starts it looks at what it has been asked to build and determines what code it is going to get and build.

Figure: The folder identifies what changes are included in the build

The Build sets a Label on the Source with the same name as the Build, but the Build itself also includes the latest Changeset ID that it will be building.

At the end of the Build the Build Agent identifies the new Changesets it is building by looking at the Check-ins that have occurred since the last Build.

Figure: What changes have been made since the last successful Build

It will then use that information to identify the Work Items that are associated with all of the Changesets

Changesets are associated with Build and change the “Integrated In” field of those Work Items .

Figure: Find all of the Work Items to associate with

The “Integrated In” field of all of the Work Items identified by the Build Agent as being integrated into the completed Build are updated to reflect the Build number that successfully integrated that change.

Figure: Now we know which Work Items were completed in a build

Now that we can link a single line of code changed all the way back through the Task that initiated the action to the Requirement that started the whole thing and back down to the Build that contains the finished Requirement.

But how do we know wither that Requirement has been fully tested or even meets the original Requirements?

Test Cases – How we know we are done

The only way we can know wither a Requirement has been completed to the required specification is to Test that Requirement. In TFS there is a Work Item type called a Test Case

Test Cases enable two scenarios. The first scenario is the ability to track and validate Acceptance Criteria in the form of a Test Case. If you agree with the Business a set of goals that must be met for a Requirement to be accepted by them it makes it both difficult for them to reject a Requirement when it passes all of the tests, but also provides a level of tractability and validation for audit that a feature has been built and tested to order.

Figure: You can have many Acceptance Criteria for a single Requirement

It is crucial for this to work that someone from the Business has to sign-off on the Test Case moving from the “Design” to “Ready” states.

The Second is the ability to associate an MS Test test with the Test Case thereby tracking the automated test. This is useful in the circumstance when you want to Track a test and the test results of a Unit Test designed to test the existence of and then re-existence of a a Bug.

Figure: Associating a Test Case with an automated Test

Although it is possible it may not make sense to track the execution of every Unit Test in your system, there are many Integration and Regression tests that may be automated that it would make sense to track in this way.

Bug – Lets not have regressions

In order to know wither a Bug in the application has been fixed and to make sure that it does not reoccur it needs to be tracked.

Figure: Bugs are the centre of their own world

If the fix to a Bug is big enough to require that it is broken down into Tasks then it is probably a Requirement. You can associate a check-in with a Bug and have it tracked against a Build. You would also have one or more Test Cases to prove the fix for the Bug.

Figure: Bugs have many associations

This allows you to track Bugs / Defects in your system effectively and report on them.

Change Request – I am not a feature

In the CMMI Process template Change Requests can also be easily tracked through the system. In some cases it can be very important to track Change Requests separately as an Auditor may want to know what was changed and who authorised it.

Again and similar to Bugs, if the Change Request is big enough that it would require to be broken down into Tasks it is in reality a new feature and should be tracked as a Requirement.

Figure: Make sure your Change Requests only Affect Requirements and not rewrite them

Conclusion

Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server together provide an exceptional Application Lifecycle Management platform that can help your team comply with even the harshest of Compliance requirements while still enabling them to be Agile. Most Audits are heavy on required documentation but most of that information is captured for you as long a you do it right. You don’t even need every team member to understand it all as each of the Artifacts are relevant to a different type of team member.

Business Analysts manage Requirements and Change Requests

Programmers manage Tasks and check-in against Change Requests and Bugs

Testers manage Bugs and Test Cases

Build Masters manage Builds

Although there is some crossover there are still rolls or “hats” that are worn.

Do you thing this is all achievable?

Have I missed anything that you think should be there?

Do you know about the Visual Studio ALM Rangers Guidance?

Saturday, February 05, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

I have been tasked with investigating the Guidance available around Visual Studio 2010 for one of our customers and it makes sense to make this available to everyone. The official guidance around Visual Studio 2010 has been created by the Visual Studio ALM Rangers and is a brew of a bunch of really clever guys experiences working with the tools and customers.

I will be creating a series of posts on the different guidance options as many people still do not know about them even though Willy-Peter Schaub has done a fantastic job of making sure they get the recognition they deserve. There is a full list of all of the Rangers Solutions and Projects on MSDN, but I wanted to add my own point of view to the usefulness of each one. If you don’t know who the rangers are you should have a look at the Visual Studio ALM Rangers Index to see the full breadth of where the rangers are. All of the Rangers Solutions are available on Codeplex where you can download them and add reviews…

Rangers Solutions and Projects

Do you know about the Visual Studio 2010 Architecture Guidance?
More coming soon…

These solutions took a very long time to put together and I wanted to make sure that we all understand the value of the free time that member of The Product Team, Visual Studio ALM MVP’s and partners put in to make them happen.

Do you know about the Visual Studio 2010 Architecture Guidance?

Friday, February 04, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

If you have not seen the Visual Studio 2010 Architectural Guidance from the Visual Studio ALM Rangers then you are missing out.

I have been spelunking the TFS Guidance recently and I discovered the Visual Studio 2010 Architectural Guidance. This is not an in-depth look at the capabilities of the architectural tools that shipped with Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, but is instead a set of samples that lead you by example through real world scenarios. There is practical guidance and checklists to help guide lead developers and architects through the common challenges in understanding both existing and new applications. The content concentrates on practical guidance for Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and is focused on modelling tools.

There is integration into Visual Studio so all you need to do to access it is select “Architecture | Visual Studio ALM Rangers – Architecture Guidance”.

Figure: Accessing the Architecture guidance is easy

This brings up an inline version of the documentation and a kind of Explorer that lets you pick the tasks you want to perform and takes you strait to that part of the Guidance.

Figure: Access the Guidance from right within Visual Studio 2010

This is a big help when you just want to figure out how to do something and can’t be bothered searching for and through the content in the provided Word documents. The Question and Answer section is full of useful content and there are six Hands-On-Labs to sink your teeth into:

Creating extensions with the feature extension
Explore an Existing System Scenario
Extensibility Layer Diagrams
New Solution Scenario
Reusable Architecture Scenario
Validation an Architecture Scenario

I’m sold! Where can i get my hands on this fantastic content?

Download the Visual Studio 2010 Architecture Tooling Guidance and if you like it don’t forget to add a review to make the team that put it together in their spare time feel all the mere loved.

Do you know about the Visual Studio 2010 Architecture Guidance?

Friday, February 04, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

If you have not seen the Visual Studio 2010 Architectural Guidance from the Visual Studio ALM Rangers then you are missing out.

There is integration into Visual Studio so all you need to do to access it is select “Architecture | Visual Studio ALM Rangers – Architecture Guidance”.

Figure: Accessing the Architecture guidance is easy

This brings up an inline version of the documentation and a kind of Explorer that lets you pick the tasks you want to perform and takes you strait to that part of the Guidance.

Figure: Access the Guidance from right within Visual Studio 2010

Creating extensions with the feature extension
Explore an Existing System Scenario
Extensibility Layer Diagrams
New Solution Scenario
Reusable Architecture Scenario
Validation an Architecture Scenario

I’m sold! Where can i get my hands on this fantastic content?

Download the Visual Studio 2010 Architecture Tooling Guidance and if you like it don’t forget to add a review to make the team that put it together in their spare time feel all the mere loved.

Do you want to be an ALM Consultant?

Friday, January 14, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Northwest Cadence is looking for our next great consultant! At Northwest Cadence, we have created a work environment that emphasizes excellence, integrity, and out-of-the-box thinking. Our customers have high expectations (rightfully so) and we wouldn’t have it any other way!

Northwest Cadence has some of the most exciting customers I have ever worked with and even though I have only been here just over a month I have already:

Provided training/consulting for 3 government departments
Created and taught courseware for delivering Scrum to teams within a high profile multinational company
Started presenting Microsoft's ALM Engagement Program

So if you are interested in helping companies build better software more efficiently, then..

Enquire at careers@nwcadence.com

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Consultant

An ALM Consultant with a minimum of 8 years of relevant experience with Application Lifecycle Management, Visual Studio (including Visual Studio Team System) and software design is needed. Must provide thought leadership on best practices for enterprise architecture, understand the Microsoft technology solution stack, and have a thorough understanding of enterprise application integration. The ALM Practice Lead will play a central role in designing and implementing the overall ALM Practice strategy, including creating, updating, and delivering ALM courseware and consultancy engagements. This person will also provide project support, deliverables, and quality solutions on VSTS that exceed client expectations. Engagements will vary and will involve providing expert training, consulting, mentoring, formulating technical strategies and policies and acting as a “trusted advisor” to customers and internal teams. Sound sense of business and technical strategy required. Strong interpersonal skills as well as solid strategic thinking are key.

The ideal candidate will be capable of envisioning the solution based on the early client requirements, communicating the vision to both technical and business stakeholders, leading teams through implementation, as well as training, mentoring, and hands-on software development. The ideal candidate will demonstrate successful use of both agile and formal software development methods, enterprise application patterns, and effective leadership on prior projects.

Job Requirements

Minimum Education: Bachelor’s Degree (computer science, engineering, or math preferred).

Locale / Travel: The Practice Lead position requires estimated 50% travel, most of which will be in the Continental US (a valid national Passport must be maintained). This is a full time position and will be based in the Kirkland office.

Preferred Education: Master’s Degree in Information Technology or Software Engineering; Premium Microsoft Certifications on .NET (MCSD) or MCPD or relevant experience; Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) or relevant experience.

Minimum Experience and Skills: 7+ years experience with business information systems integration or custom business application design and development in a professional technology consulting, corporate MIS or software development environment.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities: Provide training, consulting, and mentoring to organizations on topics that include Visual Studio Team Foundation Server and ALM. Create content, including labs and demonstrations, to be delivered as training classes by Northwest Cadence employees. Lead development teams through the complete ALM and/or Visual Studio solution. Be able to communicate in detail how a solution will integrate into the larger technical problem space for large, complex enterprises. Define technical solution requirements. Provide guidance to the customer and project team with respect to technical feasibility, complexity, and level of effort required to deliver a custom solution. Ensure that the solution is designed, developed and deployed in accordance with the agreed upon development work plan. Create and deliver weekly status reports of training and/or consulting progress.

Engagement Responsibilities:

· Provide a strong desire to provide thought leadership related to technology and to help grow the business.

· Work effectively and professionally with employees at all levels of a customer’s organization.

· Have strong verbal and written communication skills.

· Have effective presentation, organizational and planning skills.

· Have effective interpersonal skills and ability to work in a team environment.

Enquire at careers@nwcadence.com

Project of Projects with team Foundation Server 2010

Tuesday, January 04, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

It is pretty much accepted that you should use Areas instead of having many small Team Projects when you are using Team Foundation Server 2010. I have implemented this scenario many times and this is the current iteration of layout and considerations.

If like me you work with many customers you will find that you get into a grove for how to set these things up to make them as easily understandable for everyone, while giving the best functionality. The trick is in making it as intuitive as possible for both you and the developers that need to work with it.

There are five main places where you need to have the Product or Project name in prominence of any other value.

Area
Iteration
Source Code
Work Item Queries
Build

Once you decide how you are doing this in each of these places you need to keep to it religiously. Evan if you have one source code file to keep, make sure it is in the right place. This makes your developers and others working with the format familiar with where everything should go, as well as building up mussel memory. This prevents the neat system degenerating into a nasty mess.

Areas

Areas are traditionally used to separate out parts of your product / project so that you can see how much effort has gone into each.

Figure: The top level areas are for reporting and work item separation

There are massive advantages of using this method. You can:

move work from one project to another
rename a project / product

It is far more likely that a project or product gets renamed than a department.

Tip: If you have many projects, over 100, you should consider categorising them here, but make sure that the actual project name always sits at the same level so you know which is which.

Figure: Always keep things that are the same at the same level

Note: You may use these categories only at the Area/Iteration level to make it easier to select on drop down lists. You may not want to use them everywhere. On the other hand, for consistency it would be better to.

Iterations

Iterations are usually used to some sort of time based consideration. Here I am splitting into Iterations with periodic releases.

Figure: Each product needs to be able to have its own cadence

The ability to have each project run at its own pace and to enable them to have their own release schedule is often of paramount importance and you don’t want to fix your 100+ projects to all be released on the same date.

Source Code

Having a good structure for your source even if you are not branching or having multiple products under the same structure is always a good idea.

Figure: Separate out your products source

You need to think about both your branches as well as the structure of your source. All your code should be under “Source” and everything you need to build your solution including Build Scripts and 3rd party tools should be under your “Main” (branch) folder. This should them be branched by “Quality”, “Release” or both to get the most out of your branching structure.

The important thing is to make sure you branch (or be able to branch) everything you need to build, test and deploy your application to an environment. That environment may be development, test or even production, but I can’t stress the importance of having everything your need.

Note: You usually will not be able to install custom software on your build server. Store any *.dll’s or *.exe’s that you need under the “Tools\Tool1” folder.

Note: Consult the Branching Guidance for Team Foundation Server 2010 for more on branching

Figure: Adding category may be a necessary evil

Even if you have to have a couple of categories called “Default”, it is better than not knowing the difference between a folder, Product and Branch.

Work Item Queries

Queries are used to load lists of Work Items out of TFS so you can see what work you have. This means that you want to also separate queries out by Product / project to make it easier to
Figure: Again you have the same first level structure

Having Folders also in Work Item Tracking we do the same thing. We put all the queries under a folder named for the Product / Project and change each query to have “AreaPath=[TeamProject]\[ProductX]” in the query instead of the standard “Project=@Project”.

Tip: Don’t have a folder with new queries for each iteration. Instead have a single “Current” folder that has queries that point to the current iteration. Just change the queries as you move from one iteration to another.

Tip: You can ctrl+drag the “Product1” folder to create your “Product2” folder.

Builds

You may have many builds both for individual products but also for different quality's. This can be further complicated by having some builds that action “Gated Check-In” and others that are specifically for “Release”, “Test” or another purpose.

Figure: There are no folders, yet, for the builds so you need a good naming convention

Its a pity that there are no folders under builds, some way to categorise would be nice. In lue of that at the moment you can use a functional naming convention that at least allows you to find what you want.

Conclusion

It is really easy to both achieve and to stick to this format if you take the time to do it. Unless you have 1000+ builds or 100+ Products you are unlikely

run into any issues. Even then there are things you can do to mitigate the issues and I have describes some of them above.

Let me know if you can think of any other things to make this easier.

Free training at Northwest Cadence

Tuesday, January 04, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Even though I have only been at Northwest Cadence for a short time I have already done so much. What I really wanted to do was let you guys know about a bunch of FREE training that NWC offers.

These sessions are at a fantastic time for the UK as 9am PST (Seattle time) is around 5pm GMT. Its a fantastic way to finish off your Fridays and with the lack of love for developers in the UK set to continue I would love some of you guys to get some from the US instead.

There are really two offerings. The first is something called Coffee talks that take you through an hours worth of detail in a specific category.

Coffee Talks

These coffee talks have some superb topics and you can get excellent interaction with the presenter as they are kind of informal.

Date	Day	Time	Topic	Register Here
01/04/11	Tuesday	8:30AM – 9:30AM PST	Real World Business and Technical Benefits of ALM with TFS 2010	150656
01/28/11	Friday	9:00AM - 10:00AM PST	The Full Testing Experience Professional Quality Assurance with Visual Studio 2010	152810
02/11/11	Friday	9:00AM - 10:00AM PST	Visual Source Safe to Team Foundation Server	152844
02/25/11	Friday	2:00PM - 3:00PM PST	The Full Testing Experience Professional Quality Assurance with Visual Studio 2010	152816
03/11/11	Friday	9:00AM - 10:00AM PST	Lab Manager The Ultimate “No More No Repro” Tool	152809
03/25/11	Friday	9:00AM - 10:00AM PST	The Full Testing Experience Professional Quality Assurance with Visual Studio 2010	152838
04/08/11	Friday	9:00AM - 10:00AM PST	Visual Source Safe to Team Foundation Server	152846
04/22/11	Friday	9:00AM - 10:00AM PST	The Full Testing Experience Professional Quality Assurance with Visual Studio 2010	152839
05/06/11	Friday	2:00PM - 3:00PM PST	Real World Business and Technical Benefits of ALM with TFS 2010	150657
05/20/11	Friday	9:00AM - 10:00AM PST	The Full Testing Experience Professional Quality Assurance with Visual Studio 2010	152842
06/03/11	Friday	9:00AM - 10:00AM PST	Visual Source Safe to Team Foundation Server	152847
06/17/11	Friday	9:00AM - 10:00AM PST	The Full Testing Experience Professional Quality Assurance with Visual Studio 2010	152843

ALM Training Engagement Program

Microsoft has released a new program to bring free Visual Studio 2010 Training Sessions to select customers on Microsoft Visual Studio products and how Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions can help drive greater business impact.

For more details on this program, please see the process chart below. To get started send an email to us; This training is paid for by Microsoft and you would need to commit to 4 sessions in order to get accepted into the program. So these have more hoops to jump through to get them, but the content is much more formal and centres around adoption.

What to do after a servicing fails on TFS 2010

Tuesday, January 04, 2011 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

What do you do if you run a couple of hotfixes against your TFS 2010 server and you start to see seem odd behaviour?

A customer of mine encountered that very problem, but they could not just, or at least not easily, go back a version.

You see, around the time of the TFS 2010 launch this company decided to upgrade their entire 250+ development team from TFS 2008 to TFS 2010. They encountered a few problems, owing mainly to the size of their TFS deployment, and the way they were using TFS. They were not doing anything wrong, but when you have the largest deployment of TFS outside of Microsoft you tend to run into problems that most people will never encounter. We are talking half a terabyte of source control in TFS with over 80 proxy servers. Its certainly the largest deployment I have ever heard of.

When they did their upgrade way back in April, they found two major flaws in the product that meant that they had to back out of the upgrade and wait for a couple of hotfixes.

KB983504 – Hotfix
KB983578 – Patch
KB2401992 -Hotfix

In the time since they got the hotfixes they have run 6 successful trial migrations, but we are not talking minutes or hours here. When you have 400+ GB of data it takes time to copy it around. It takes time to do the upgrade and it takes time to do a backup.

Well, last week it was crunch time with their developers off for Christmas they had a window of opportunity to complete the upgrade.

Now these guys are good, but they wanted Northwest Cadence to be available “just in case”. They did not expect any problems as they already had 6 successful trial upgrades.

The problems surfaced around 20 hours in after the first set of hotfixes had been applied. The new Team Project Collection, the only thing of importance, had disappeared from the Team Foundation Server Administration console.

The collection would not reattach either. It would not even list the new collection as attachable!

Figure: We know there is a database there, but it does not

This was a dire situation as 20+ hours to repeat would leave the customer over time with 250+ developers sitting around doing nothing.

We tried everything, and then we stumbled upon the command of last resort.

TFSConfig Recover /ConfigurationDB:SQLServer\InstanceName;TFS_ConfigurationDBName /CollectionDB:SQLServer\instanceName;"Collection Name"
-http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff407077.aspx

WARNING: Never run this command!

Now this command does something a little nasty. It assumes that there really should not be anything wrong and sets about fixing it. It ignores any servicing levels in the Team Project Collection database and forcibly applies the latest version of the schema.

I am sure you can imagine the types of problems this may cause when the schema is updated leaving the data behind.

That said, as far as we could see this collection looked good, and we were even able to find and attach the team project collection to the Configuration database.

Figure: After attaching the TPC it enters a servicing mode

After reattaching the team project collection we found the message “Re-Attaching”. Well, fair enough that sounds like something that may need to happen, and after checking that there was disk IO we left it to it.

14+ hours later, it was still not done so the customer raised a priority support call with MSFT and an engineer helped them out.

Figure: Everything looks good, it is just offline.
Tip: Did you know that these logs are not represented in the ~/Logs/* folder until they are opened once?

The engineer dug around a bit and listened to our situation. He knew that we had run the dreaded “tfsconfig restore”, but was not phased.

Figure: This message looks suspiciously like the wrong servicing version

As it turns out, the servicing version was slightly out of sync with the schema.

KB	Schema	Successful

KB983504	341	Yes
KB983578	344	sort of
KB2401992	360	nope

Figure: KB, Schema table with notation to its success

The Schema version above represents the final end of run version for that hotfix or patch.

The only way forward

The problem was that the version was somewhere between 341 and 344. This is not a nice place to be in and the engineer give us the only way forward as the removal of the servicing number from the database so that the re-attach process would apply the latest schema. if his sounds a little like the “tfsconfig recover” command then you are exactly right.

Figure: Sneakily changing that 3 to a 1 should do the trick

Figure: Changing the status and dropping the version should do it

Now that we have done that we should be able to safely reattach and enable the Team Project Collection.

Figure: The TPC is now all attached and running

You may think that this is the end of the story, but it is not. After a while of mulling and seeking expert advice we came to the opinion that the database was, for want of a better term, “hosed”.

There could well be orphaned data in there and the likelihood that we would have problems later down the line is pretty high. We contacted the customer back and made them aware that in all likelihood the repaired database was more like a “cut and shut” than anything else, and at the first sign of trouble later down the line was likely to split in two.

So with 40+ hours invested in getting this new database ready the customer threw it away and started again.

What would you do?
Would you take the “cut and shut” to production and hope for the best?

TFS 2010 Work Item Seed: TFS Work Item system.id at a predefined number

Wednesday, October 20, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

This week my customer had a requirement to have all new work items created to have an ID greater than 40,000. They have another system that stores tickets and they don’t want any conflict.

There have been a number of ways to achieve this through a database change, but it is not supported by Microsoft. This means that if you make the change and mess it up you are on your own.

In order to provide a supported way of doing this you need to use the API, and that is an interesting problem. We are going to have to use the API to create a specific number of work items, but we don’t really want those work items hanging around.

We could:

Create new Team Project
Add 40,000 work items
Delete the Team Project

But there should be a neater way and to that end, lets connect to a Team Project that we can use to create the work items in.

Dim projectPicker As New TeamProjectPicker(TeamProjectPickerMode.SingleProject, False)
projectPicker.ShowDialog()

If Not projectPicker.SelectedTeamProjectCollection Is Nothing Then

    projectPicker.SelectedTeamProjectCollection.EnsureAuthenticated()

    _Store = projectPicker.SelectedTeamProjectCollection.GetService(Of WorkItemStore)()
    _ProjectInfo = projectPicker.SelectedProjects(0)

End If

We can use the TeamProjectPicker class that the product team kindly provided to show the built in dialog to select a Team Project Collection and a a Team Project.

Figure: Getting the user to select a Team Project could not be easyer

This dialog has some different modes depending on what you are trying to achieve. You can set it to select either a Team Project Collection, one Team Project or many Team Projects.

Public Enum TeamProjectPickerMode
    ' Fields
    MultiProject = 2
    NoProject = 0
    SingleProject = 1
End Enum

Now that we have access to a WorkItemStore and know what Team Project to use to create the work items, we can start creating work items.

Dim wi As WorkItem = project.WorkItemTypes(0).NewWorkItem
wi.Title = String.Format("Seedgen {0} : Created by Hinshlabs TFS Work Item Seed Generator", i)
wi.Description = String.Format("As a TFS Admin I want to have all new work items start at a number {0} larger than the current number", _WorkItemCount)
wi.Save()

This may fail as all I am doing is picking the first work item type that is available. A better solution would be to select the first work item type in the “Requirement” category, or to give the user a list to select whatever he wants. This is just a throw away, one time bit if code, so as long as it works…

Just in case any of these work items are left at the end I have added a default Title and Description.

Once we have created this work item, we need to immediately delete it. Now, this is something that can’t be done using the UI, but can be done in code.

Dim WioError As IEnumerable(Of WorkItemOperationError)
Dim ids As Integer() = {Convert.ToInt32(wi.Id)}
WioError = _Store.DestroyWorkItems(ids)

A tiny bit of code that solves a big problem. In versions before TFS 2010 this could only be done using the Power Tool, but the product team have seen the light and added it into the core product. Remember that Deleting a Work Item CAN’T be undone and once it is gone, it is gone.

I have wrapped all of this into a ViewModel that can be used in an MVVM WPF application.

Imports Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client
Imports Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client
Imports Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Server
Imports GalaSoft.MvvmLight.Command
Imports GalaSoft.MvvmLight.Threading
Imports System.Windows.Threading
Imports System.Threading

''' <summary>
''' Seeding View Model using the MVVM Light framework
''' </summary>
''' <remarks></remarks>
Public Class WorkItemSeedViewModel
    Inherits GalaSoft.MvvmLight.ViewModelBase

    Private _SelectServerCommand As RelayCommand
    Private _SeedWorkItemIdCommand As RelayCommand
    Private _Store As WorkItemStore
    Private _ProjectInfo As ProjectInfo
    Private _WorkItemCount As Integer = 0
    Private _IsProcessing As Boolean = False
    Private _LastWorkItemId As Integer = 0
    Private _CurrentlyProcessingItem As Integer = 0

    Public ReadOnly Property SelectTeamProjectCommand As RelayCommand
        Get
            Return _SelectServerCommand
        End Get
    End Property

    Public ReadOnly Property SeedWorkItemIdCommand As RelayCommand
        Get
            Return _SeedWorkItemIdCommand
        End Get
    End Property

    Public Property IsProcessing As Boolean
        Get
            Return _IsProcessing
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As Boolean)
            If Not value.Equals(_IsProcessing) Then
                Dim oldValue As Integer = _IsProcessing
                _IsProcessing = value
                MyBase.VerifyPropertyName("IsProcessing")
                MyBase.RaisePropertyChanged(Of Boolean)("IsProcessing", oldValue, value, True)
            End If
        End Set
    End Property

    Public Property WorkItemCount As Integer
        Get
            Return _WorkItemCount
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As Integer)
            If Not value.Equals(_WorkItemCount) Then
                Dim oldValue As Integer = _WorkItemCount
                _WorkItemCount = value
                MyBase.VerifyPropertyName("WorkItemCount")
                MyBase.RaisePropertyChanged(Of Integer)("WorkItemCount", oldValue, value, True)
            End If
        End Set
    End Property

    Public Property LastWorkItemId As Integer
        Get
            Return _LastWorkItemId
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As Integer)
            If Not value.Equals(_LastWorkItemId) Then
                Dim oldValue As Integer = _LastWorkItemId
                _LastWorkItemId = value
                MyBase.VerifyPropertyName("LastWorkItemId")
                MyBase.RaisePropertyChanged(Of Integer)("LastWorkItemId", oldValue, value, True)
            End If
        End Set
    End Property

    Public Property CurrentlyProcessingItem As Integer
        Get
            Return _CurrentlyProcessingItem
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As Integer)
            If Not value.Equals(_CurrentlyProcessingItem) Then
                Dim oldValue As Integer = _CurrentlyProcessingItem
                _CurrentlyProcessingItem = value
                MyBase.VerifyPropertyName("CurrentlyProcessingItem")
                MyBase.RaisePropertyChanged(Of Integer)("CurrentlyProcessingItem", oldValue, value, True)
            End If
        End Set
    End Property

    Public Sub New()
        ' Create and wire up the Commands that I will be using
        _SelectServerCommand = New GalaSoft.MvvmLight.Command.RelayCommand(AddressOf OnSelectServerCommandExecute)
        _SeedWorkItemIdCommand = New GalaSoft.MvvmLight.Command.RelayCommand(AddressOf OnSeedWorkItemIdCommandExecute, Function() Not _ProjectInfo Is Nothing And Not IsProcessing)
    End Sub

    ''' <summary>
    ''' Calls the TFS 2010 API Dialog for selecting a Single Team Project and saves the WorkItemStore and ProjectInfo instances
    ''' </summary>
    ''' <remarks>Called by the Command object</remarks>
    Private Sub OnSelectServerCommandExecute()
        Dim projectPicker As New TeamProjectPicker(TeamProjectPickerMode.SingleProject, False)
        projectPicker.ShowDialog()

        If Not projectPicker.SelectedTeamProjectCollection Is Nothing Then

            projectPicker.SelectedTeamProjectCollection.EnsureAuthenticated()

            _Store = projectPicker.SelectedTeamProjectCollection.GetService(Of WorkItemStore)()
            _ProjectInfo = projectPicker.SelectedProjects(0)

        End If

        _SeedWorkItemIdCommand.RaiseCanExecuteChanged()

    End Sub

    ''' <summary>
    ''' Starts the Work Item generating method on a thread
    ''' </summary>
    ''' <remarks></remarks>
    Private Sub OnSeedWorkItemIdCommandExecute()
        Dim thread As New System.Threading.Thread(New ParameterizedThreadStart(Sub() ProcessWorkItems(_WorkItemCount)))
        thread.Start()
    End Sub

    ''' <summary>
    ''' Generates and then deletes each work item for the count specified by the value of Count
    ''' </summary>
    ''' <param name="count"></param>
    ''' <remarks></remarks>
    Private Sub ProcessWorkItems(ByVal count As Integer)
        ' These calls martial the action code back onto the UI thread
        DispatcherHelper.CheckBeginInvokeOnUI(New Action(Sub() IsProcessing = True))

        Dim project As Project = _Store.Projects(_ProjectInfo.Name)

        For i As Integer = 0 To count - 1
            DispatcherHelper.CheckBeginInvokeOnUI(New Action(Sub() CurrentlyProcessingItem = i))

            Dim wi As WorkItem = project.WorkItemTypes(0).NewWorkItem

            wi.Title = String.Format("Seedgen {0} : Created by Hinshlabs TFS Work Item Seed Generator", i)
            wi.Description = String.Format("As a TFS Admin I want to have all new work items start at a number {0} larger than the current number", _WorkItemCount)
            wi.Save()

            DispatcherHelper.CheckBeginInvokeOnUI(New Action(Sub() LastWorkItemId = wi.Id))


            Dim WioError As IEnumerable(Of WorkItemOperationError)

            Dim ids As Integer() = {Convert.ToInt32(wi.Id)}

            WioError = _Store.DestroyWorkItems(ids)
            If WioError.Count > 0 Then
                ' Currently eats and failures to delete. Not good, but easy to fix
                'MessageBox.Show(String.Format("Failed to delete Work Item {0}", wi.Id))
                Exit For
            Else
                DispatcherHelper.CheckBeginInvokeOnUI(New Action(Sub() WorkItemCount = WorkItemCount - 1))

            End If
        Next
        DispatcherHelper.CheckBeginInvokeOnUI(New Action(Sub() IsProcessing = False))
    End Sub


End Class

I have tried to comment at least some of this, but again this is proof-of-concept code with no warranty and could do with lots of improving.

This is a supported method of incrementing the Work Item ID to any number you like. It will take a while to get to 40,000 but I have added a “Time taken” calculation and it looks like you can increment the top ID by around 600 every minute.

Figure: As you can see, I am an artist

I have been running this with a local TFS running on my Windows 7 laptop with SQL Express so actual times may not be as advertised.

How stable is this? Well, to be honest, not very. I threw this together quickly, but with all my debugging, killing and general mashing it only left 1 erroneous work item that will need to be deleted manually.

Figure: One lonely work item that did not get destroyed

To delete this errant work item you can:

Deleting Work Items in TFS – a UI

TFS API Part 21: Delete Work Item using WorkItemStore

Conclusion

You can get your work item ID from 0 to 40000 in around 40 minutes with this app which solves the immediate problem.

Technorati Tags: TFS,TFS 2010,API

TFS vs. Subversion fact check

Thursday, October 14, 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

I spotted a good comparison of TFS vs. Subversion by Jarosław Dobrzański on DZone (you can also read the original post) but I feel that a couple of the points were either out of date, or bourn out of a lack of knowledge of the product, or even more likely I just missed the point. This article was taken from the perspective of an SVN user who has moved to TFS, and I am not in that category.

I want to take a look at each of the “Weak points” mentioned and see if there is anything in them.

>>Subversion promotes a very clear view (similar to CVS) on the files tree on the server: trunk, branches, tags. In TFS everything is in one bag – branches are simple directories among the other content of ‘the trunk’. It still looks messy to me.

This was the case in versions prior to TFS 2010, but with the new branching features it is easy to both see where your branches are and what change sets have been merged to which branches.

Figure: Branches are easy to identify

If you have your branches setup as just directories in the trunk then it is probably the case that your company is just doing it wrong. You should have a standard layout as I have shown above, and indeed this is the format that is recommended in the TFS Branching Guidance and I would recommend that you read it before you just dive into branching.

>>If you want to edit a file you need to check it out for edit so that it’s listed in Pending Changes window after it’s changed. If you edit a file directly in Visual Studio it checks it out for edit automatically; however, if you make the changes outside Visual Studio (you need to change Read-only property prior to that) and forget to check it out for edit in Visual Studio the file is not listed in Pending Changes window. Consequently, the risk of not including that item while making a check-in increases (I personally experienced that a couple of times….)

Having never used SVN and having come from a Visual SourceSafe background I have not had this problem, but I have heard this from many other SVN users and I completely agree and understand the perspective. Although I find it difficult to understand how you know which files you have checked out when you don’t have this, it looks like all the source control products are going in this distributed direction and I will just have to go with the flow.

>>It’s dedicated to Windows platforms only, but this is hardly a problem for a team who uses Visual Studio.

This one is just plain wrong. I don’t blame the author, I would be much more inclined to blame the marketing team a Microsoft for not making this as big a deal as it should be. Can you say “Team Explorer Everywhere”.

This was originally a third party product called Teamprise that integrated Eclipse into TFS, but with its purchase by Microsoft and the launch of TFS 2010 they have beefed it up so that it supports:

Apple Mac OS X
HP-UX
IBM AIX
Linux
Solaris
Unix
Windows

On top of that it also supports :

Eclipse
IBM Rational Application Developer
Adobe Flex Builder
Aptana Studio
others

This is a massive move by Microsoft to increase the reach of TFS to other platforms, and with the TFS application model being completely service based more diverse support will be coming in the future.

>>Weak support for reverting changes

I don’t know if weak is the correct word, but yes it is difficult. It was designed to be difficult as you don’t want your developers thinking that it is OK to check-in crap because they can always revert it. I don’t know about you, but I do not want to ever have to revert a change. If I do, it shows a failing in a quality gate somewhere that needs fixed.

Rollback Command (Team Foundation Version Control) (I need to rollback and entire change set)
How to revert changes checked into TFS Version Control (I just need to rollback one file)

I like this being hard…

>>It’s not a free tool

This is really only partly true. Anyone with a MSDN subscription has a licence to both run a TFS server and to connect to any TFS instance, couple that with SQL Server Standard being included in the definition of a TFS Licence then you can pretty much run TFS for free. If you have some business users that do not have MSDN, then yes, you will need to buy some retail CAL’s, but with the retail TFS 2010 at £500 that includes 5 users without CAL’s price is not an excuse not to use TFS.

If you are an open source developer with no MSDN subscription then you can use Codeplex which is completely free from end to end.

>>Complex installation

This was VERY true in TFS 2005 and TFS 2008, but in TFS 2010 the installation is so easy my Dad could do it. I blogged about this during the beta and managed to install and configure TFS 2010 in under 30 minutes.

>>Lack of switching feature. With Subversion I could easily switch between trunk and branches / tags, still using the same source directory. The action was straightforward and quick. On TFS you need to make a full check out of the other branch, which is longer and requires additional actions (e.g. IIS settings for new virtual directories)

I can agree with this, but I also agree with the way that TFS does things. I do not want developers to be under any ambiguity of which branch they are working with, nor do I want them to be able to mistakenly check into the wrong branch.

I always run each branch separately on my local development computer and the minor setup of IIS or other stuff is really just that, minor.

>>Poor support for revert (roll back). It’s not that easy to revert a check in (especially if it includes lots of files). Official roll back instruction sounds like a workaround…

Having covered this already I don’t know why it is in here twice, but never mind. The official link above while for VS 2005 is a good solution for rolling back a single file. Remember that there is high fidelity between files checked in at the same time and a check-in becomes an atomic unit. If you want to rollback a single file, then this is the easiest and least painful way. There are methods for rolling back whole change sets, but again these are things you do not really want your developers doing.

I should also note that in my 3 years as an ALM MVP and 9 years using source control I have only had to do a rollback on one occasion. It should be an edge case with edge case support so developers learn to do things correctly in the first place.

With TFS 2010 if you really want to kick that nut in the head then enable Gated Check-in’s on all of your branches. Then developers can’t check-in until the build with all of the tests pass.

Conclusion

I really liked this post. So much so that I bothered to write a response. It is always good when people that have had to move from SVN to TFS describe the differences once they have worked with it for a while. There are always things that are different and Microsoft even had to publish a VSS to TFS guide because of the differences there.

Introduction to Team Foundation for Visual SourceSafe Users

Technorati Tags: TFS,TFS 2010,Version Control

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29 September 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Team Foundation Server 2010 Event Handling with Subscribers

16 September 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Calculating the Rank of your blog posts or pages

10 September 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

How to deal with a stuck or infinitely queued build

09 September 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

A change for the better #3

07 September 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Running Android 2.2 (Frodo) on your HD2

02 September 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Rangers shipped Visual Studio 2010 Database Guide

25 August 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

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Components in this project

Hinshelwood Website - Development - my personal site

Contributors

Martin Hinshelwood - .NET Architect, Developer, Evangelist, Technology Enthusiast. Blog | Profile
Iain Frame - Designer extraordinaire
Greg Fyans - Accessibility Guru \ CSS Genius

Updated Wiki: Home

MrHinsh — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 22:15:01 GMT

.NET Projects - Microsoft .NET Framework

WPF/ MVVM

Heat Calls Viewer

MOSS Projects - Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server

Windows Live Projects

Xbox Live Status

News

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

TFS vs. Subversion fact check

14 October 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Syncing many Dynamics AX instances to a single TFS 2010 Team Project

08 October 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Database corruption in TFS 2005 causes TF246017 during upgrade

29 September 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Team Foundation Server 2010 Event Handling with Subscribers

16 September 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Calculating the Rank of your blog posts or pages

10 September 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

How to deal with a stuck or infinitely queued build

09 September 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

A change for the better #3

07 September 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Running Android 2.2 (Frodo) on your HD2

02 September 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Rangers shipped Visual Studio 2010 Database Guide

25 August 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

More votes required for Visual Studio ALM on Area51

15 August 2010 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

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Components in this project

Hinshelwood Website - Development - my personal site

Contributors

Martin Hinshelwood - .NET Architect, Developer, Evangelist, Technology Enthusiast. Blog | Profile
Iain Frame - Designer extraordinaire
Greg Fyans - Accessibility Guru \ CSS Genius

Updated Wiki: Home

hinshelmw — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:21:20 GMT

.NET Projects - Microsoft .NET Framework

WPF/ MVVM

Heat Calls Viewer

MOSS Projects - Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server

Windows Live Projects

Xbox Live Status

News

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Wpf Scale Transform Behaviour

Monday, August 31, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Wpf Ninject Dojo: The Data Provider

Tuesday, August 25, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Second blogger from my office

Friday, August 21, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Silverlight 3

Thursday, August 20, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Updating the Command Line Parser

Monday, August 17, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Wpf Drag & Drop behaviour

Friday, August 14, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

The long wait is over

Thursday, August 06, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Finding features: Calendar preview

Friday, July 31, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Creating a Data Access layer using Unity

Thursday, July 30, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

A perfect match TFS and DLR

Tuesday, July 28, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

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Components in this project

Hinshelwood Website - Development - my personal site

Contributors

Martin Hinshelwood - .NET Architect, Developer, Evangelist, Technology Enthusiast. Blog | Profile
Iain Frame - Designer extraordinaire
Greg Fyans - Accessibility Guru \ CSS Genius

Updated Wiki: Home

hinshelmw — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:21:06 GMT

.NET Projects - Microsoft .NET Framework

*WPF/ MVVM

Heat Calls Viewer

MOSS Projects - Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server

Windows Live Projects

Xbox Live Status

News

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Wpf Scale Transform Behaviour

Monday, August 31, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Wpf Ninject Dojo: The Data Provider

Tuesday, August 25, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Second blogger from my office

Friday, August 21, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Silverlight 3

Thursday, August 20, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Updating the Command Line Parser

Monday, August 17, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Wpf Drag & Drop behaviour

Friday, August 14, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

The long wait is over

Thursday, August 06, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Finding features: Calendar preview

Friday, July 31, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Creating a Data Access layer using Unity

Thursday, July 30, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

A perfect match TFS and DLR

Tuesday, July 28, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Subscribe | View all

Components in this project

Hinshelwood Website - Development - my personal site

Contributors

Martin Hinshelwood - .NET Architect, Developer, Evangelist, Technology Enthusiast. Blog | Profile
Iain Frame - Designer extraordinaire
Greg Fyans - Accessibility Guru \ CSS Genius

Updated Wiki: Home

hinshelmw — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:01:45 GMT

.NET Projects - Microsoft .NET Framework

MOSS Projects - Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server

Windows Live Projects

Xbox Live Status

News

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Second blogger from my office

Friday, August 21, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Silverlight 3

Thursday, August 20, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Updating the Command Line Parser

Monday, August 17, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Wpf Drag & Drop behaviour

Friday, August 14, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

The long wait is over

Thursday, August 06, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Finding features: Calendar preview

Friday, July 31, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Creating a Data Access layer using Unity

Thursday, July 30, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

A perfect match TFS and DLR

Tuesday, July 28, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Log Elmah errors in Team Foundation Server

Monday, July 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Disable a timer at every level of your ASP.NET control hierarchy

Thursday, July 23, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

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Components in this project

Hinshelwood Website - Development - my personal site

Contributors

Martin Hinshelwood - .NET Architect, Developer, Evangelist, Technology Enthusiast. Blog | Profile
Iain Frame - Designer extraordinaire
Greg Fyans - Accessibility Guru \ CSS Genius

Updated Wiki: Home

hinshelmw — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:57:19 GMT

TFS Event Handler
TFS Sticky Buddy
TFS Task Timer
TFS Heat ITSM
SQL Server and BIDS version Check in Policy
TFS Elmah Log Integration (Under Development)

.NET Projects - Microsoft .NET Framework

MOSS Projects - Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server

Windows Live Projects

Xbox Live Status

News

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Second blogger from my office

Friday, August 21, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Silverlight 3

Thursday, August 20, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Updating the Command Line Parser

Monday, August 17, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Wpf Drag & Drop behaviour

Friday, August 14, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

The long wait is over

Thursday, August 06, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Finding features: Calendar preview

Friday, July 31, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Creating a Data Access layer using Unity

Thursday, July 30, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

A perfect match TFS and DLR

Tuesday, July 28, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Log Elmah errors in Team Foundation Server

Monday, July 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Disable a timer at every level of your ASP.NET control hierarchy

Thursday, July 23, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Subscribe | View all

Components in this project

Hinshelwood Website - Development - my personal site

Contributors

Martin Hinshelwood - .NET Architect, Developer, Evangelist, Technology Enthusiast. Blog | Profile
Iain Frame - Designer extraordinaire
Greg Fyans - Accessibility Guru \ CSS Genius

Updated Wiki: Home

hinshelmw — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:56:54 GMT

TFS Event Handler
TFS Sticky Buddy
TFS Task Timer
TFS Heat ITSM
SQL Server and BIDS version Check in Policy
TFS Elmah Log Integration (Under Development)

.NET Projects - Microsoft .NET Framework

MOSS Projects - Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server

Windows Live Projects

Xbox Live Status

News

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Second blogger from my office

Friday, August 21, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Silverlight 3

Thursday, August 20, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Updating the Command Line Parser

Monday, August 17, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Wpf Drag & Drop behaviour

Friday, August 14, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

The long wait is over

Thursday, August 06, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Finding features: Calendar preview

Friday, July 31, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Creating a Data Access layer using Unity

Thursday, July 30, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

A perfect match TFS and DLR

Tuesday, July 28, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Log Elmah errors in Team Foundation Server

Monday, July 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Disable a timer at every level of your ASP.NET control hierarchy

Thursday, July 23, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Subscribe | View all

Components in this project

Hinshelwood Website - Development - my personal site

Contributors

Martin Hinshelwood - .NET Architect, Developer, Evangelist, Technology Enthusiast. Blog | Profile
Iain Frame - Designer extraordinaire
Greg Fyans - Accessibility Guru \ CSS Genius

Updated Wiki: Wpf Drag & Drop Behavior

hinshelmw — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:01:03 GMT

This Behaviour has been cobbled together from a ariety of sources..

Updated Wiki: Wpf behaviors

hinshelmw — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:58:26 GMT

Wpf Behaviors are a way to add functionality to a control without having to add lots of code to that control. It is born out of the need for projects build using the MVVM (Model - View - View Model) pattern to have NO code in the code behind except what you need to initilise url:MVVM|http://www.orbifold.net/default/?p=550].

Wpf Behaviors are added using Attached Properties, a feature in Wpf that allows you to add a property and value to a control that does not natively have that property.

Contains:

Wpf Drag & Drop Behavior - Allows the easy addition of drag and drop functionality in the same list, to a diferent list of the same type and to allow linking between diferent data types in lists.

Updated Wiki: Home

hinshelmw — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:00:33 GMT

TFS Event Handler
TFS Sticky Buddy
TFS Task Timer
TFS Heat ITSM
SQL Server and BIDS version Check in Policy
TFS Elmah Log Integration (Under Development)

.NET Projects - Microsoft .NET Framework

MOSS Projects - Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server

Windows Live Projects

Xbox Live Status

News

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Twitter with style

Tuesday, July 07, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Project Natal available soon

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Stuck with Vista?

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Connecting VS2008 to any TFS2010 Project Collection

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Upgrading to TFS 2010 Beta 1 and SQL Collation

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Stuck with Vista?

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Connecting VS2008 to any TFS2010 Project Collection

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Upgrading to TFS 2010 Beta 1 and SQL Collation

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Stuck with Vista?

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Connecting VS2008 to any TFS2010 Project Collection

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Subscribe | View all

Components in this project

Hinshelwood Website - Development - my personal site

Contributors

Martin Hinshelwood - .NET Architect, Developer, Evangelist, Technology Enthusiast. Blog | Profile
Iain Frame - Designer extraordinaire
Greg Fyans - Accessibility Guru \ CSS Genius

Updated Wiki: Home

hinshelmw — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:55:17 GMT

.NET Projects - Microsoft .NET Framework

MOSS Projects - Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server

Windows Live Projects

Xbox Live Status

News

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Stuck with Vista?

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Connecting VS2008 to any TFS2010 Project Collection

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Upgrading to TFS 2010 Beta 1 and SQL Collation

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Stuck with Vista?

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Connecting VS2008 to any TFS2010 Project Collection

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Upgrading to TFS 2010 Beta 1 and SQL Collation

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

You May Be a Tech Whiz, but Are You Certifiable?

Thursday, May 21, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Microsoft MyPhone service available to the public

Thursday, May 21, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Solution to connecting to TFS using HTTPS over the Internet from behind ISA

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Unable to connect to TFS using HTTPS over the Internet from behind ISA

Tuesday, May 19, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Subscribe | View all

Components in this project

Hinshelwood Website - Development - my personal site

Contributors

Martin Hinshelwood - .NET Architect, Developer, Evangelist, Technology Enthusiast. Blog | Profile
Iain Frame - Designer extraordinaire
Greg Fyans - Accessibility Guru \ CSS Genius

Updated Wiki: Home

hinshelmw — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:55:04 GMT

HinshLabs is an entity for Research and Development of .NET frameworks, sites and applications that do something interesting. Sometimes these componenets will be fully fleged real-world solutions and others that will be pure R&D of the capabilities of the .NET Framework.

RDdotNet is an entity for Research and Development of .NET frameworks, sites and applications that do something interesting. Sometimes these componenets will be fully fleged real-world solutions and others that will be pure R&D of the capabilities of the .NET Framework.

VSTS Projects - Visual Studio Team System

.NET Projects - Microsoft .NET Framework

MOSS Projects - Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server

Windows Live Projects

Xbox Live Status

News

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Stuck with Vista?

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Connecting VS2008 to any TFS2010 Project Collection

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Upgrading to TFS 2010 Beta 1 and SQL Collation

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Stuck with Vista?

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Connecting VS2008 to any TFS2010 Project Collection

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Upgrading to TFS 2010 Beta 1 and SQL Collation

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

You May Be a Tech Whiz, but Are You Certifiable?

Thursday, May 21, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Microsoft MyPhone service available to the public

Thursday, May 21, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Solution to connecting to TFS using HTTPS over the Internet from behind ISA

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Unable to connect to TFS using HTTPS over the Internet from behind ISA

Tuesday, May 19, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

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Components in this project

Hinshelwood Website - Development - my personal site

Contributors

Martin Hinshelwood - .NET Architect, Developer, Evangelist, Technology Enthusiast. Blog | Profile
Iain Frame - Designer extraordinaire
Greg Fyans - Accessibility Guru \ CSS Genius

Updated Wiki: Home

hinshelmw — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:54:44 GMT

{project:title}

RDdotNet is an entity for Research and Development of .NET frameworks, sites and applications that do something interesting. Sometimes these componenets will be fully fleged real-world solutions and others that will be pure R&D of the capabilities of the .NET Framework.

VSTS Projects - Visual Studio Team System

.NET Projects - Microsoft .NET Framework

MOSS Projects - Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server

Windows Live Projects

Xbox Live Status

News

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Stuck with Vista?

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Connecting VS2008 to any TFS2010 Project Collection

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Upgrading to TFS 2010 Beta 1 and SQL Collation

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Stuck with Vista?

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Connecting VS2008 to any TFS2010 Project Collection

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Upgrading to TFS 2010 Beta 1 and SQL Collation

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

You May Be a Tech Whiz, but Are You Certifiable?

Thursday, May 21, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Microsoft MyPhone service available to the public

Thursday, May 21, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Solution to connecting to TFS using HTTPS over the Internet from behind ISA

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Unable to connect to TFS using HTTPS over the Internet from behind ISA

Tuesday, May 19, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Subscribe | View all

Components in this project

Hinshelwood Website - Development - my personal site

Contributors

Martin Hinshelwood - .NET Architect, Developer, Evangelist, Technology Enthusiast. Blog | Profile
Iain Frame - Designer extraordinaire
Greg Fyans - Accessibility Guru \ CSS Genius

Updated Wiki: Home

hinshelmw — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:52:36 GMT

{project:Title}

.NET Projects - Microsoft .NET Framework

MOSS Projects - Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server

Windows Live Projects

Xbox Live Status

News

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Stuck with Vista?

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Connecting VS2008 to any TFS2010 Project Collection

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Upgrading to TFS 2010 Beta 1 and SQL Collation

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Stuck with Vista?

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Connecting VS2008 to any TFS2010 Project Collection

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Upgrading to TFS 2010 Beta 1 and SQL Collation

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

You May Be a Tech Whiz, but Are You Certifiable?

Thursday, May 21, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Microsoft MyPhone service available to the public

Thursday, May 21, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Solution to connecting to TFS using HTTPS over the Internet from behind ISA

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Unable to connect to TFS using HTTPS over the Internet from behind ISA

Tuesday, May 19, 2009 | From Martin Hinshelwood's Blog

Martin Hinshelwood's Blog News Feed

Subscribe | View all

Components in this project

Hinshelwood Website - Development - my personal site

Contributors

Martin Hinshelwood - .NET Architect, Developer, Evangelist, Technology Enthusiast. Blog | Profile
Iain Frame - Designer extraordinaire
Greg Fyans - Accessibility Guru \ CSS Genius