Alexey Govorin (Leshka)

Moving my blog to new location

2011-05-18T12:19:00.000-05:00

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/leshka/

Vote Now for Imagine Cup People's Choice Award!

2011-03-24T11:01:00.001-05:00

Imagine Cup started back in 2003 as a way to get students involved in the connection between people, information, and systems.

So what IS the Imagine Cup?

Simply put, it’s the world’s premier student technology competition. Beginning with local and regional competitions, Imagine Cup 2011 comes to an exciting finale at the Worldwide Finals held in New York City, United States from July 8-13,2011. . Overall, the idea is to show how technology can help solve the world’s toughest problems.

The theme of this year’s Imagine Cup is “Solving the world’s toughest problems with Technology” (e.g., poverty, energy conservation, environment, global health, etc.).

Two teams from Universities in the Heartland District have made it to the US finals for IMAGINE CUP. The teams are LIFECODE (Software Design) from Wayne State University, and MINTRUS (Game Design) from University of Louisville. Team LIFECODE and TEAM MINTRUS are made up of exceptional students, with brilliant ideas, and big hearts.

Part of the competition is public voting. Each of you, your friends, your family, or others can vote for each team once per day. LIFECODE and MINTRUS are currently in the bottom 3^rdfor voting, so let’s give them a boost and get them some more votes from the best district in the US. Visit the below links to the team’s Facebook pages, and give them your Votes:

Visit the IMAGINE CUP facebook page, learn about the projects and vote TEAM LIFECODE using the blue “vote” button next to their TEAMNAME and Picture. Click this link.

Visit the IMAGINE CUP facebook page, learn about the projects and vote TEAM MINTRUS’ facebook page, using the blue “vote” button next to their TEAM NAME and Picture. Click this link.

Codemash Talk: Demystifying Visual Studio 2010 Database Tools

2011-01-19T09:28:00.000-05:00

If you are interested in the power point presentation from my CodeMash 2.0.1.1 talk on database tools you may find it here.

The earlier version with extended deck is located at COALMG:
http://www.coalmg.org/2010/09/september-meeting-follow-ups.html

DogFood III Conference –Nuts and Bolts of Visual Studio Scrum v 1.0 Process Template

2010-11-04T08:50:00.000-05:00

The presentation deck that I used at Third Annual DogFood Conference is available for download or viewing on my skydrive.
For additional information please check out following resources:

Sharpen your Scrum Game with free Scrum Assessment
Review Scrum by reading 21 page Scrum Guide available from scrum.org
Learn more about Professional Scrum Developer Program
Download Visual Studio Scrum v1.0 Process Template
Interested in learning more about Scrum and Visual Studio 2010, consider taking one of the upcoming classes.
Follow ScrumDotOrg for updates on the state of scrum.

Presenting at DogFood v3 Conference (#dogfoodcon) - Nuts and Bolts of Visual Studio Scrum v1.0 Template

2010-10-13T23:06:00.001-05:00

Please join us for the 3rd Annual Dog Food Conference (http://www.dogfoodcon.com/dogfood/). There will be speakers from MS Gold Certified Partners, MS MVPs, IT authors, community leads, and MS corporation subject matter experts and evangelists. There will designated areas for hardware demos from HP, Polycom, Dell and Windows Phone 7. Agenda and schedule for hardware demos at download agenda links.

When: November 4-5, 2010 8:10–4:30 PM
Where: Microsoft Office - 8800 Lyra Dr, Suite 400, Columbus, OH 43240
Who should attend: CIOs, IT Managers, IT Pros, developers, collaboration specialists, CISOs, business analysts, project managers

My Abstract:
Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server (TFS) are the cornerstones of development on the Microsoft .NET platform. These tools represent some of the best opportunities for success and to experience a focused and smooth software development process. For TFS 2010 Microsoft heavily invested in Scrum and is moving some internal product teams onto the approach.

This session is not about Scrum in depth, (for that please visit scrum.org) but rather, we will cover the lifecycle of creating work items and how this fits into Scrum using Visual Studio ALM and Team Foundation Server. We will cover in detail:

How to successfully gather requirements
How to plan a project using TFS 2010 and Scrum
How to work with a product backlog in TFS 2010
The right way to plan a sprint with TFS 2010
Tracking your progress
The right way to use work items
Leveraging built-in reporting and Project portals available on the SharePoint dashboard
Reports targeted to the Product Owner / Project Manager

You will walk away knowing how to interpret and understand a project health and progress. Visual Studio ALM is designed to address many of the problems faced by teams using traditional approaches. It does

so by providing a set of integrated tools to help teams improve their software development activities and to help management better support the software development processes.

10-4, Next Chapter in My Life

2010-09-24T21:10:00.000-05:00

I have been doing consulting work at Quick Solutions since April 2004, during this time I had a privilege to work with some of the brightest people. There is no need for me to list all the talented people that are (or were) working at QSI. Quick does not need any introductions, everyone in Central Ohio knows about the company; we even have a joke that if you want to grow in your career you have to work at QSI at some point of your life.

As time is a continuum of change; the change in my life is a new job opportunity at Cardinal Solutions. I am looking forward teaming up with Jeff Hunsaker, Visual Studio ALM MVP (my new boss) to deliver the goodness of VS\TFS 2010 and .NET4. Working with Jeff will give me an opportunity to take my consulting skills to the next level.

As Archimedes said long time ago: “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth” <>, but seriously I am looking forward contributing to Cardinal Solutions practices, meeting new clients/opportunities, expanding people's awareness of Microsoft tools, .NET, and agile practices.

How appropriate that my true first (zero based) day at Cardinal will fall on 10-4 !

So I have join the club of people that have problems with using Cisco VPN Client

2010-08-27T23:16:00.001-05:00

If you are starring at the screen and see a messages like: “Unable to establish VPN” or “The VPN client agent was unable to create the interrocess communication depot” you may be in luck.

Assuming that you have checked the oblivious like, correct username/password or right server connection you may be a victim of “Internet Connection Sharing”.

I have been running Window Server 2008 R2 for some time and love it because of the power of Hyper-V with regards to managing my virtual environments. One thing that I have done is shared my Wireless Adapter with my virtual Adapter so I can get internet connectivity to my VMs while I am connected to WIFI.

Little that I knew that it would interfere with my ability to use Cisco VPN. I even un-installed and try to re-install the client to be greeted by more errors:

At the end all I had to do is to disable “Internet Connection Sharing” and Cisco VPN started to work.

I hope it will save you some time.

Accessing TFS2010 from Visual Studio 2008

2010-08-06T10:49:00.001-05:00

I have run several times into a question: Can I (How Do I) connect to TFS2010 from Visual Studio 2008? The answer is YES you can, and here what you need to do:

1. Make sure that Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008 has been installed

2. Download and install Visual Studio Team System 2008 Service Pack 1 Forward Compatibility Update for TFS 2010.

3. Configure connection to your TFS server.

In TFS2010 we now have ability to host multiple collections, groups of Team Project, so as result when accessing to TFS2010 we need to know what collection we are interested in.

General TFS connection constructed like:

http(s)://{Server Name}:{Port}/{Directory}/{Collection Name}

where as:

{Server Name}, either the name of the server TFS2010 installed on (application tier) or Fully Qualify Domain Name that would resolve to the location of your TFS server
{Port }, the port configured for TFS access
{Path}, the path to installed TFS services
{Collection Name}, name of TFS Team Collection

If you have installed TFS2010 following default suggestions it would be something like that: http://{Server Name}:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection

For example if you have downloaded VS2010 RTM Virtual Machine from Brian Keller’s blog then you can access TFS server from VS2008 by configuring connection string as:

4. But there are limitations on what you can do from Visual Studio 2008 Team Explorer with TFS2010, some of the big ones:

Creating new Projects
Working with Hierarchical WorkItem Queries
Managing Builds
Reports
etc

Due to all the new features made to TFS2010.

Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 is out in the wild

2010-07-21T16:15:00.001-05:00

Until recently only short lived eScrum template was the only attempt by Microsoft to bring Scrum framework into TFS Process. With recent attention to ALM, Microsoft took a second stab at Scrum template and they have made a fantastic job. You can download the template from Visual Studio Gallery.

There are plenty blogs, I highly recommend that you check at least:
Aaron Bjork, Announcing Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0
John Bristowe, Installing Scrum Template

Follow up on Two Day Visual Studio 2010 ALM Overview

2010-06-23T13:34:00.001-05:00

Please provide us with feedback on the event by visiting speakerrate site:

Feedback on Day 1	Feedback on Day2
http://speakerrate.com/talks/3675-two-day-visual-studio-2010-briefing-on-june-22-23	http://speakerrate.com/talks/3676-day-2-of-vs2010-alm-briefing

Let us know if you are interested on the follow up events or more of the deep dive on specific topics.

Since mostly of the time we have spent in the VS2010 IDE, here a set of Power Point Presentation that cover topics of our demos:

0. Agenda

1. Visual Studio Executive Overview presented by Randy Pagels is found on www.teamsystemcafe.net as well a numerous number of other useful resources

2. Presentation on scrum has been mostly borrowed from the PSD training course offered through www.scrum.org. And if you are interested to learn how you can take advantage of VS2010 with Scrum framework, please see 5 day training class http://courses.scrum.org/classes/title/professional-scrum-developer-net.

3. Modified presentations on how to use Excel workbooks for planning iterations and sprints, originally created by Aaron Bjork is here.

4. Great overview of third party tools (TeamSpec and Storyboarding for VSTS) that can help us to manage requirements: https://cid-bf5e5c36e45ea1bd.office.live.com/viewpermissions.aspx/SDLC-in-a-Box/SDLC-2010/SDLC4-1.3-ManagingRequirements.pptx?ref=11

5. Architecture tools in VS2010 presentation. If you are interested in learning more about Arc. Tools please visit Cameron Skinner blog and check out a great recording by Brian Keller on channel 9. Also Microsoft updated its Visual Studio Training Kit it has a great set of labs walking you through various VS features including Architecture tools.

6. Database Tools in VS2010 presentation, it goes over some of thenew features and improvements from VSTS2008 Database Professional.

7. Brief Summary on TeamBuild, including Branch/Merge improvements and workflow steps.

8. Dev tools and Test manager deck (coming soon).

9. TFS2010 Reports presentation.

10. Additional resources of interest: Team Lab Management and TFS2010 overview.

Please keep an eye on upcoming Microsoft DogFood Developers Conference conference. The site will be updated shortly to reflect 3rd Annual agenda.

Danilo Casino has local user group section at the end of the agenda document, please check it out, especially COALMG (www.coalmg.org) a user group dedicated to ALM.

Two day Visual Studio 2010 briefing on June 22-23

2010-06-05T12:45:00.001-05:00

What:
This Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) session will led by two community leads. This 2 day briefing will discuss ALM, from initial conception through requirements gathering, design, development, testing, build & review processes. We also integrate the Scrum framework, integration with non-Microsoft development and offerings for Visual Studio 2010 Team System.

Targeted Audience:
Project Managers, Developers, Architects, DBAs and Business Analysts looking for ALM and researching Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio 2010.

Speakers:
Alexei Govorine, Quick Solutions, Manager of ALM Practice and is a co-founder of the Central Ohio ALM Group, Twitter: @Leshka
Ryan Cromwell, SDS Consulting, Team Foundation Server Technical Specialist, Twitter: @cromwellryan

Agenda (draft version):

Day 1 · June 22nd

Keynote
Business Value Overview
Why Process
Team Explorer
Project Management
Architecture Tools

Day 2 · June 23rd

Development Practices
Database Tools
Team Build
Test Manager
Reports
Retrospective

Additional information on Ryan’s blog.

Where: 8800 Lyra Dr, Suite 400, Columbus, OH 43240

When: June 22-23, 2010 from 9-4:30 PM, both days..

Registration: at Microsoft US Events

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio 2010,ALM,Scrum,TFS 2010

Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010

2010-05-25T22:55:00.000-05:00

Jeff Hunsaker and I presenting at the “Path-to-Agility” conference on how to leverage Visual Studio 2010 and Scrum framework .

You can download presentation from here.

Abstract:

Interested in agile software techniques and tools? Of course you are. Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 add a whole lot of agile goodness. We'll walk through a start-to-finish project leveraging some of the latest agile features such as: Excel Planning sheets, tracking tasks and prioritizing, traceability, continuous integration and testing. Prepare yourself for the recent TFS 2010 release-leveraging this tool to take advantage of Scrum framework in your projects.

Technorati Tags: scrum,visual studio 2010,tfs 2010,excel,agile

Robbins under my deck

2010-05-06T17:27:00.000-05:00

For the second year we get robbins nesting under the deck.
This year we have setup wireless security camera to capture the action by the nest.
Enjoy the show:

Hyper-V … credentials may not be sent to the remote computer

2010-04-27T22:31:00.001-05:00

After a few weeks of not using Win2008R2 I brought Hyper-V back online and unpleasantly greeted with the message box every time I was trying to connect to virtual machine:

Afer poking around on internet the simplest solution was in the Hyper-V settings: and select ‘Use default credentials automatically’ in User Credentials section.

Apparently cached credentials got out of sync. After resetting I was able to get rid of the annoying message box

Help Columbus GiveCamp 2010 to Find a Place

2010-04-19T21:33:00.002-05:00

UPDATE #2:
If you are interested in sponsoring Columbus GiveCamp, please see attached document.

Registration is open, sign in for the event here.

UPDATE:
Columbus GiveCamp 2010 has found a place for the July 9-11th event at ICC!
Stay tuned for updates.
*****

Columbus GiveCamp is in dire need of a facility to host July 2010 event.

In 2009 while hosted at QSI over sixty volunteers were able to accomplish work on seven projects (Hopemongers, Fairy Goodmothers, Shiloh Baptist Church, Family Institute College Choir Concert Series, Volunteer Earth, TECH CORPS Ohio, Northwest Plains District Family Camp) in just two days!

Please help us to make 2010 event a reality and success, we are looking for a facility that can host around 60+ volunteers over one week-end in July with good connection to internet (must be wired and at least T1). We will take of the rest: setup of the network, getting computers, and all of the clean-up afterwards.

Contact me or Carey.

Find out more about GiveCamp.
GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where technology professionals – from designers, developers and database administrators to marketers and web strategists – donate their time to provide solutions for non-profit organizations.
Some organizations may need a new website or a renewal of an old one. For others, GiveCamp helps them make the leap from Excel spreadsheets to true donor databases. And for still others, this is an opportunity to think strategically, with the help of a consultant, about their social media presence or e-mail marketing. This is about matching the needs of non-profits with the talent of our local technology-loving community.
Any 501(3) can apply to participate in GiveCamp. Accepted non-profits will be matched with a project liaison prior to GiveCamp who will help them shape their project and answer any critical questions to ensure the weekend is a success.
For volunteers, GiveCamp provides a unique opportunity to connect with the local tech community. A typical GiveCamp draws 75 to 100 volunteers. Individuals can work with their colleagues in company teams, or they can opt to be matched with fellow volunteers who have complementary skill sets.
Everyone is welcome to head home for the evenings – but there are always the diehards who work from Friday kickoff straight through Sunday afternoon. Food and drinks, especially of the caffeinated variety, are provided, along with game systems for breaks.

Video of my LasikPlus experience

2010-01-23T13:08:00.002-05:00

After my wife has went though lasik surgery I have decided to do the same.
After spending mostly of my life being nearsighted (myopia) and have to wear glasses all the time I am looking forward to being able to see all the time. This morning when I woke I had a huge smile on my face, becuase eventhough the vision is still a little bit blury from the operation I did not need to look for my glasses.
(or perhaps I was still experience the effects of valium)

Below is the brief summary of the surgery, I spent more time waiting for the surgery than the actually getting the operation. It all boils down to:
1. prep and secure an eye
2. use laser to insert a layer of air into the flap
3. peel off the flap and use laser to re-shape corneal surface (you will hear the clicking sounds for that part, the screen goes darker)
4. put the flap back and do the same with the second eye

Tammy has recorded mostly of the operation:

Animal Shelter Fundraiser

2009-12-01T18:52:00.001-05:00

Currently my wife is doing a fundraiser for a local animal shelter. She is planning on delivering collected items on 12/13/2009. This particular shelter is short on volunteers, low on the budget and supplies.
I have heard a rumor that a dog from that place got sick from eating a mildew food.

If you are interested in helping us with a drive, please contact me.
If you choose to donate CASH it will be spend on buying items listed below.

The shelter is looking for following items:

Paper towels
Bleach
Trash Bags
Bath towels and wash cloths (new or used)
Blankets (new or used)
Pet Shampoo
Collars and Leashes (new or used)
Non-clumping Litter
Cat and Kitten Food (no red dye please)
Dog and Puppy Food (no red dye please)
Dog Toys (hard chew)
Puppy Toys
Cat and Kitten toys
Newspaper
Laundry Detergent
Distilled Water
Aluminum Cans

So far we have 12+ dog toys, 10+ collars, a blanket, several towers, and 200+ pounds of dry and can food.

Update: Big thanks to Danilo Casino for making a donation, with my match were able to get an additional 500 pounds of dry food.

DogFood v2 Session summary on: Customizing TFS Process Template to Match Your Process.

2009-11-19T18:22:00.001-05:00

My slide portion of the session has briefly covered customization and extension points on TFS. Due to time limitations I had to hide a significant portion of slides. The full version of the PowerPoint Deck is available for download.

In summary, if you are planning on customizing process template I recommend for you to follow a few simple steps:
1. Start with documenting your process. Do an ALM Assessment, as a mere a fact Microsoft has a great tool for it: Application Platform Capability Assessment. Spend the time with all the people that are involved in the process and get a "Green Light" from the management. Remember the process is not only for developers, but for the entire team (including business sponsors and clients). Create an Action Plan of the implementation steps.

2. Templates shipped with current versions of TFS are not meant to be used as is, they are just blueprints. Do not treat the process as paint, throwing it on the wall and seeing what will stick is not the best strategy for the development.

3. Do not expect by customizing TFS process guidance to go fully integrated (dynamic) environment over night. It will take time, long time. Use your Action Plan (created part of the ALM Assessment) to fully integrated ALM into VSTS/TFS.

4. Treat your TFS server as production server. Do not go and try some new ideas against. If you need to prototype a rule or workflow or workitem get yourself a test environment. Once you know that it is working well in test server, then go ahead and implement it in your production TFS.

5. Do not be afraid to make process adjustments on active projects (as long as you are following rule #4). If your project needs a new rule/workitem/field/report/etc then just implement it. At the end of the project do a retrospective and decide if the change is worth making part of the global template. If you are not willing to change and adjust the process, chances are it will become stagnant and obsolete. 100 years ago ice houses and transporting ice down the rivers was a booming business, now days we just use refrigerators...

Happy customizations!

Customizing TFS Process Template to Match Your Process at the Second Annual DogFood Conference

2009-11-02T09:48:00.001-05:00

On November 12th 2009, I will be presenting on TFS Process Template customization.

TFS is a very versatile tool that has a lot of features and capabilities. I think of TFS as a highly customizable/adoptable to my needs framework. Prior to using TFS we had a lot of different tools to manage our development progress; while we can still use them now, the beauty of using of TFS is that all the data is centralized and available from one tool. It does not matter if it is source code I am after or status report or the progress state of the requirement - I can find all this information in one place, using my everyday tools.

How do you know that the team is following the development process, standards, policies? TFS Process Templates helps to insure that development guidelines and processes are adhere by team members.
TFS comes with two Process Templates (MSF for CMMI Process Improvement and MSF Agile Software Development). In my opinion the two templates are there as an example and a starting for customization and should not be used as is.

I have seen a lot of organizations implementing TFS and using it only for source code management. I have heard many different reasons on why it has been done, starting with: we are just easing into using TFS; or we are not managing our development the "Microsoft Way", or we already have a good process and we do not want to break it, etc...

In my presentation I will show that it is easy to make changes to the process templates, we can actually make changes not only before the project starts, but during the active project. Its like magic going from fighting the tool to actually using it!

Eventhough DogFood conference is sponsored by the partner community, it would not have been possible without Danilo Casino, read more about the conference from Brian's blog.
This 2 day event will feature over 40 technology topics spread over 4 tracks.

Come and join us: DogFood agenda and registration.

You can track me down at the conference during the "Ask the Experts" in the Executive Briefing Room (4th floor) from 2:30 to 3:40 on 11/12/2009 8800 Lyra Dr., Suite #400, Columbus OH 43240

COALMG Recorded Session: Application Lifecycle: Security!

2009-09-08T15:45:00.002-05:00

Last time COALMG had Brent Huston talking about web application security, you may find the recording of the session on COALMG site

QSI Grok Talk: PEX

2009-08-26T09:12:00.003-05:00

Developers at Quick Solutions have a monthly meeting known as "Grok Talk". The meeting typically takes place during lunch. The goal of the meeting is to share information on the topic of choosing. The most recent Grok has been done by Mel Grubb on PEX.
Here is the recording of the session:

QSI Tech Night: Code Generation with T4 Templates

2009-08-14T15:19:00.005-05:00

Recently, Mel Grubb has presented Code Generation with T4 Templates at Quick Solution's Tech Nigh meeting. While we still finalizing the details on how to share those presentations with the community you may watch Mel's presentation from here:

Follow up questions from KY SDLC

2009-08-03T08:18:00.007-05:00

After the SDLC presentation we had several questions that we were going tofollow through:

Q: How can I see all created Alerts for the selected TFS Project?
The answer is Yes and No. There is no an easy UI that will tell someone of all project alerts, but this information can be easily discovered by two methods:
Option 1: Query the underlying database (not recommended), all subscriptions are stored in
[TfsIntegration].[dbo].[tbl_subscription]. If soemone chooses this path my recomendation would be: LOOK, BUT DON'T TOUCH.
There is a reson on why there is ae extensive set of API asvaialble to us, modifying data in the table may lead into path of unpredictable problems with TFS.

Option 2: use TFS API web services to aggregate the information.
you will start by calling ReadIdentityFromSource method of the http://localhost:8080/services/v1.0/GroupSecurityService.asmx service to find out the list of all users that have access to a project, assuming that you know names of the Application Groups (like Contributors, Project Administrators, etc) then you can set factor as: AccountName, and factorValue as: {Account Group Name, ex. [DCVR]\Contributors]}

Now that you have a list of users that have access to the project, you may get each person's subscription by calling EventSubscriptions method of http://localhost:8080/services/v1.0/eventservice.asmx service.

if you are not sure on what Application Groups you have, you may find them by either looking at the "Group Memebership" option of the Team Project Setting in the Team Explorer or you can use TFS APIs:

http://localhost:8080/services/v1.0/CommonStructureService.asmx?op=ListProjectsx to get the Project URI
http://localhost:8080/services/v1.0/GroupSecurityService.asmx?op=ListApplicationGroups to get the list of the groups for the selected Project URI.

More information of the TFS API can be found at Buck Hodges blog

Q: I am having a problem with check-in 50MB file, is there a setting to increase a max size of checked in file?
There are no switches in TFS that will limit a person on the size of the check-in file. Mike and I were able to check-in 100+MB file without any problems. My recomendation will be to check IIS and Application Event logs for logged messages as a strating point to troubleshoot the issue.

An interesting fact is: if you are checking large files (>16MB) then TFS deltas mechanism that is used to figure out the difference between file versions will not be used, which means that the entire file will be checked into source control. Not a big deal unless you are working with a lot of large files and have a database disk constrain. To ensure that TFS deltas mechanism is used to store file revisions you will need to update the default value of "deltaMaxFileSize" key located in {TFS Install Folder}\Web Services\VersionControl\:

Another interesting fact: by default workitem attachments are limited to 4MB sizes. To change that value one will need to call the GetMaxAttachmentSize method of http://localhost:8080/services/v1.0/ConfigurationSettingsService.asmx service.

Q: Can recorded Web Tests be hooked to the external data source to provide input values?
Yes, web test can be easily configured to support input of the values from the external sources like: database, csv, or xml. You may find additional details from my previous post: http://govorin.blogspot.com/2009/07/data-driven-web-tests-with-vsts2008.html

Data Driven Web Tests with VSTS2008

2009-07-30T13:45:00.015-05:00

Recently, I was asked if a recorded WebTest can be link to the external datasource for data feed. For example if we would like to pass different search parameters into a search page to test the logic and data of the search, we definitely do not want to have multiple tests that do the same thing. It totally make sense to have a single test that will feed different data and will aggregate/reports results back to us.

My second attempt at the webcasting runs through example on how to accomplish data bounding to the web test:

Visual Studio Team System Testers Edition has an option of recording a Web Test, once the test is created we can easily add a data source to it, by doing following steps:

1. Right Click on the web test, Select Add Data Source.
From here you will a Wizard with multiple choices:

I think that you may want to use CSV,XML types:

if you want BA or End Users to easily provide you with a test data

if the amount of data is small

you need a version history of data evolution (the file can be checked in into Source Control and deployed as part of the build process).

The Database choice is good:

large amount of data (thousand/million data points).

re-use the same data across multiple test/projects/teams/environments.

Once the data source is created, all is left is to replace hard coded values for the data from bound source.

2. Find a Post Parameter by expanding Request Form Post Parameter

3. Select Properties by Right Click on ContentPlaceHolder

4. Select created DataSource by Clicking on the drop down menu of the Value property.

5. Expand Datasource and Navigate to the needed column.

This is it, you know can run web test and feed the data from the external source.

But what if you want to add Validation and Extraction rules to your test and be able to run positive and negative tests, how do you do it with external data source?

You may take a similar approach and try to bind the value properties of the rules to data source, but you may run into a problem of setting the "Pass if Found" Boolean property.

In my opinion it would be better to convert the test to coded version and then you will have control over all aspects of the test.

6. Select Generate Code by right Clicking on the web test.

7. Make changes to the "PassIfFound" property of the rule.

Web Test Coded file from my demo can be downloaded from here

Missing Demo from SDLC KY: Branching and Merging with TFS Source Control

2009-07-28T17:18:00.006-05:00

This webcast is a brief demo of how one may use TFS Source Control and its rich set of features like: Branching, Merging, and Shelving to manage production and development code.

I have collapsed the 90 minute demo into 35 minute webcast.
This is my first webcast, so any feedback is appriciated.
At some point I will re-record it at lower resolution.

Columbus Give Camp on June 17th - 19th.

2009-07-19T10:45:00.004-05:00

Working with great number of people at Columbus Give Camp, check out our live feed.

KY SDLC Day 2 Summary

2009-07-17T23:56:00.009-05:00

It was a pretty full day, it is very unfortunate that Mike and I have run out of time and were not able to cover all the topics in needed details. In the upcoming days (weeks), I will a set of the recordings to capture testing and source control in greater details, meanwhile you may visit Team System Cafe for a great variety of information on VSTS/TFS.

On Day 2 we have covered following topics:

1. VSTS Architect
We talked about Physical, Logical, and Deployment diagrams. In the demo we have used VSTS as architects (infrastructure & software) and build master to generate/validate diagrams; model the application and to have generated code based on our models.

2. VSTS Database Professional, aka "DataDude"
Is probably one of the most under-used edition of VSTS, which by the way, is now became a part of the VSTS Developer Edition. As a DBA we have covered topics of Managing, Developing, and Deploying database. We reviewed schema compare/validation/refactoring/deployment, data compare, data generation with Data Generation Plans, visioning of database, and creation of database unit tests.

3. VSTS Developer
Since were short on the time we have skipped demoing some of the development tools and concentrated demos on how the developer can use Code Coverage, Code Analysis, and Code Profiling (Instrumentation and Profiling) to troubleshoot and improve the quality of created code.

4. Creating Unit Tests, Test Driven Development, and Data Driven Tests.
In this portion of the SDLC presentation we have talked about the importance of testing and various ways one may start doing it. It can be as easy as "right click" and "generate test" (as I heard at the PDC08: Even a VP Can Do It), to getting into xDD (where x is Test/Behavior/Domain/etc Driven Development). TDD is all about Red-Green-Refactor!

In this section we have also expanded on Code coverage and demonstrated that hooking the test to data source can significantly reduce amount of tests a developer needs to write, while still maintaining a reasonable code coverage.

5. TeamBuild
On all the projects that I have a privilege to be part of, we have also setup a Continuous Server (CI) to establish an environment for automated code build and verification. I try to have a CI setup and go on day one of the project. TeamBuild is an excellent tool for creating and maintaining solution builds, we have demonstrated build can be setup under 2 minutes and perform all kings of tasks including test execution, code analysis, build failure notifications. Since TeamBuild sits on top of the MSBuild one may use a variety of created MSBuild tasks to perform additional actions like: code promotion to QA/Testing environments (only if it passes all other validations), creation of website, registration of DLL, file updates. Using Community MSBuild Tasks from TIGRIS, we were able to change the keys of the web.config file to reflect the changes between development and QA database connection strings. There are many other good collections of MSBuild tasks, like MSBuild Extension Pack.

6. VSTS Tester
Since we had limited time we showed only only Web and Load Tests in details. VSTS Tester edition has a set of powerful tools to allow us to create and manage a variety of test types. One of the greater features is an ability to capture user interactions between the browser and the server on the TCP layer stack and being able to replay it back as a WebTest or convert it to the .NET code.

I will be putting an additional posting to cover Testing in greater details, to cover other type of tests like: manual and ordered.

7. First look into VSTS 2010
Mike has given us a teaser into what Microsoft will be releasing soon, VSTS 2010, TFS 2010, .NET 4.0 all of those tolls has many new and improved features. You may get Mike's presentation from here.

You may find a lot of material on 10-4 (VSTS2010 and .NET4.0) on:

Team System Cafe, site dedicated to VSTS
VSTS2010 Beta1, can be download from here
download a training kit on with a set of Hands-on Labs for VSTS2010, by the way Quick Solutions made contributions to the content.
a set of the web casts on VSTS2010 .NET4.0 on Channel9, known as 10-4

8. Advance Source Control, for the 4 people that waited patiently for it :)
We have talked about Branching and Merging strategies. We have run through a real-life example on how one may work on the production V1.0 code performing hot fixes, at the same time continue development of the V2.0 application , and how merge can be completed between application branches.

Since mostly of the people missed this demo due to time constrains, I will be putting a recording of it in a very close future.

Here is a great white paper on Branching Strategy

KY SDLC Day 1 Summary

2009-07-16T05:12:00.010-05:00

On the first day we have covered the following topics (SDLC deck):

1. Application Lifecycle Management
Mike has talked about the business value of the ALM, here is a link to the Power Point deck.

2. VSTS & TFS Overview
We have covered how Microsoft addresses the need for the robust set of tools for the ALM, the PowerPoint presentation is here.

3. Team Explorer Overview (Security, Collaboration, Alerts, Source Control)

Team Foundation Administration Tool was used to show how to simplify user management in TFS.
TFS Power Tools "Alerts Editor" was used to customize alert setup, a user interface to BisSubscribe.exe.
Team System Web Access and Work Item Web Access were briefly shown as alternatives to default sharepoint site and WIWA a free (no license required) workitem creation tool.

4. Customization / Setup
We have covered some of the popular TFS Templates for Agile Development

eSCRUM, used by some teams at Microsoft (by some reason the download link is broken, I do have a copy of it somewhere and will post the download link shortly)
VSTS Scrum on Codeplex, maintained by a group of MVPs, a light version of scrum implementation. It is a great starting point for customization.
SCRUM for Team Systems from Conchango, out of box fully implemented scrum template with a great set of features.

I have used TFS Power Tools "Process Editor" to modify template during my demos.

5. Work Item Management (Tools for Managing Requirements)
Besides showing a variety of ways one may create and manage work items in TFS (Team Explorer, Excel, Project, Web Access, WIWA) I also briefly demoed: TeamLook and TeamSpec.

What Software did I use for the SDLC presentation

2009-07-15T21:58:00.007-05:00

to save time and to make the demos easily reproducible I have used a trial version of Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server SP1 VPC Image, you may download from here. The image will not expire till the end of 2009, so happy exploring!

After booting into it and applying all the security patches, I have also downloaded and installed additional software and tools:
1. Team Foundation Administration Tool - to simplify permission management
2. TeamLook, from Team System Solutions - an Outlook add-on for Work Item Management (will work with TFS2005/2008 and Outlook 2003/2007)
3. TeamSpec, from Team System Solutions - a Word add-on for managing Work Items in the word (again will work with TFS 2005/2008 and Word 2003/2008)
4. Ravenflow - great tool for round trip requirements and work items management.
5. Teamprise plugin for Eclipse - java development TFS integrated development toolset
6. Sparx Enterprise Architect, UML modeling tool.
7. I do not remember if TFS Power Tools were part of the image, but in case you are missing them you may get them from here
8. Tigris MSBuild tasks - a collection of MSBuild tasks to help with TeamBuild automations

[UPDATE]
9. I forgot to include VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR R2 setup and
10. VSTS 2008 Database Edition Power Tools, I did not use any of the features during the demos, but it has a few great improvements.

Alternatively, if you want to try some of the demos/features for the VSTS2008 and TFS2008 you may want to try to use Team System Virtual Labs, it is truly a great resource.

A Two Day Event: SDLC in a Box on July 15-16, 2009

2009-07-06T08:36:00.006-05:00

WHAT:
This 2 day event will focus on application life-cycle management, we will review how one may leverage TFS and VSTS on a project, from initial conception through requirements gathering, design, development, testing, build & review processes. We will demonstrate integration with non-Microsoft development and best-of-breed partner solutions & offerings for Visual Studio 2008 Team System.

For additional information please see http://www.sdlcinabox.com/

Target Audience:
This two day sessions is targeted for Developers, Architects, Project Managers, DBAs and Business Analysts looking for ALM and researching Team Foundation Server.

Speakers:
1. Alexei Govorine:
Co-Founder of the Central Ohio ALM Group
ALM/.NET Practice Manager for Quick Solutions
2. Mike Gresley:
MS SLG Dev Tools team
3. David Baliles:
MS SLG Dev Tools team
Co-Founder of the SDLC in a Box program

WHERE:
Capitol Annex Bldg: Room 171, 700 Capital Avenue Frankfort, KY 40601

WHEN:
July 15-16, 2009 from 9-4:30 PM

Registration Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032418198&Culture=en-US

Draft Agenda of the event topics:
Day 1:

Introductions
SDLC in a Box: Background
Application Lifecycle Management
VSTS & TFS Overview
Customization / Setup
Team Explorer Overview (Security, Collaboration, Alerts, Source Control)
Work Item Management (Tools for Managing Requirements)
Architecture

Day 2:

Database
Development
Unit Testing & Test-Driven (TDD)
Code Promotion: Building & Deploying code
Functional Testing
Branching & Hotfix Demonstration
Reports
Q&A
(optional) Lap Around VSTS 2010

TF26204 error when importing WorkItems in TFS08 SP1

2008-12-11T16:21:00.004-05:00

Recently,
I have run into a problem while importing a workitem template from one TFS project to another. The error I got was slightly misleading at first:
TF26204: The account you have entered is not recognized. You do not persmission, please contact your TFS Administrator.

After, traditional WTF (mummbling) and Googling for an error I have narrow down the problem to the rules used on the template. This MSDN article was a big clue!

The Work Item template I was importing had rules with regards to user lists.
Specifically the original Project Template had a custom security group "Testers" and the WI template has rules specific to this group, in my case it was: , the new project was created with a different template and did not contain mentioned group.

At this point I had two options:
1. Modify WI template and remove all references to the non-existent security group. Good starting point is here or here.
2. Add the missing group to the TFS Project. From VS menu click Team Team Project Settings Group Memebership and click New.

I have choosen option 2. This error may also show up if you have custom lists that use "\" in this case I recomend to replace "\" with "" via option 1.

Failed to setup TFS 2008 with SQL Server 2008 on Windows 2008

2008-11-12T23:23:00.004-05:00

Finally got around to installing a brand spanky new TFS 2008 + SQL 2008 + Win2008 and out of gate run into a problem:

"The System Health Check has detected a problem that will cause Setup to fail. "
Description A compatible version of SQL Server is not installed.

So, I go over the guide and SQL install to make sure that I did install supported version for TFS08: SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition or Standard Edition and of course everything looks good.

On my second pass through the guide and find a small gotcha that I missed in the Prerequisite Installation: Team Foundation Server with a data-tier server that is running SQL Server 2008, you must integrate this service pack with files from the installation DVD for Team Foundation Server.

So to resolve the problem, one must follow instructions from the install guide: How to:

Integrate the Installation of Team Foundation Server and Service Pack 1.

bottom line: pay attention to the TFS Install Guide! ... and you may save a few hours of WTF is going on.

COALMG cross 30

2008-11-06T22:59:00.002-05:00

Dan Rigsby did a great job on presenting Agile Project Management with Scrum and we have a record attendance of 31 people out 56 members.

Looking forward to our next meeting in January, hopefully we will be able to pull it off before the Codemash

Set a Guinness World Record with downloading FF3

2008-06-17T19:20:00.000-05:00

Central Ohio ALM Group meeting

2008-04-23T15:48:00.002-05:00

First of all I would like to aplogize to everyone who signed up for the email notifications for the ALM User Group. That list was mis-placed and I was not able to add people.
so we will try it one more time with list sign up, or you can subscribe to our blog or sign through codezone.

An now i am proudly announce that we have our first meeting on 4/29/08 at 5:30 pm.
See more details at the site.

Pictures from Detroit VS2008 Launch Event & Geek Dinner

2008-03-28T21:11:00.001-05:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/69157670@N00/sets/72157604167260604/

How does an TFS geek pack?

2008-02-21T13:30:00.003-05:00

Since I have been challenge to respond by my Boss, known in the company as a QUITTER to the moving, here is how I see moving and packing from the TFS point of view:

First of all the shipping boxes would be known as a “Changesets” that may contain many different items. As each item is packed it will get a unique version id. As I move item around I would create new boxes to hold a newly moved item. Interestingly I may actually be able to “clone the item”, since the same item will be part of the different boxes. I may require a Packing Review before any of the packing is committed and the box filled. Once the box is full of the continents an automatic shipping process will kick off to verify that all my packing is done according the shipping standards and that my packing does not break other people packing, the shipping company and all other parties that subscribe to Alerts will be notified of the filled boxes. Not only one shall be able to see the contents and status of the box, but also all the requirements that prompted the filling of the box and how many times it has been re-packed due to the changing shipping/moving rules.

FRAG! I have checked in the code in TFS05 I did not mean. What do I do now?

2008-02-04T20:19:00.001-05:00

Hypothetically speaking...

Lets assume that one of my "friends" made a big mistake and have checked in the code into TFS, and broke the build, and screw up the code that was frozen & suppose to be ready to go to the production!

So, what can the "friend" do at this point, considering that once the code is checked in into the TFS source control it does become part of the permanent record.

Well the "friend" has found that the easiest thing to do, besides blaming the PM is to do following:

1. Find the Changeset that was preceding the check-in, one can do it by right clicking on the solution/project/file(s) (I think solution or project would be preferred to ensure that all changes will be rolled back) and selecting "Get Specific Version"; from the Type dropdown select "Changeset" and using the Changeset dialog to display all change for the day or person.

2. Once the code for the selected Changeset is loaded, you still have nothing to check-in, so trigger the checking process, select solution/project/file(s) and select "Check Out for Edit".

3. Now one should be able to check-in the back into the source control by selecting "Checkin Pending Changes".

4. Here is where the fun comes, during the check-in process "Conflict" dialog will popup, one should select the file(s) and click on "Resolve" choice and select "Discard Server Changes".

5. Now that all conflicts has been resolved, repeat step 3.

Alternatively, one may download Team Foundation PowerToys (TFPT.exe) and use one of the nifty commands: tfpt rollback /changeset:###; if there are any conflicts detected user is presented with a "Merge" dialog.

Mysterious ### signs during Work Items export to Excel

2007-11-28T20:34:00.001-05:00

Several of my co-workers have run into the problem of exporting work items into the Excel 2007. The problem was/is during the export of HTML type fields (like description) in some cases they have gotten #### instead of actual words.

There is a forms post that have one of the permanent solutions listed, but I found a workaround to the problem or at least temporary solution by formatting the cell/column.

option 1:

I have selected "Format Cells" -> Number -> Custom -> General -> OK

and the final result is:

option 2:

alternative approach, if one knows how to use new Excel ribbon menus would be selecting cell/column and: Home ->Style -> Normal to reset the style and to re-enable wrapping: Alignment -> Wrap Text

So what is the moral of the post? Lets stop blaming TFS and start learning on how to use Excel :)

First Impressions of Tech Ed 2007: Process + Quality + Agility = Success

2007-06-05T13:32:00.000-05:00

Key note presentation by Bob Mugila was pretty entertaining, "Back to the Future" skit was great. I like the message presented by Bob, he had mention that IT is a big pendulum that swings from what is the important at this time, and three key pilars of it are: process, quality, and agility.
From my working experience, I can totally see it. When I started to work at one of my old companies it was all about process, it was driven into my head "RUP this and RUP that", we need to have a process in place on how to take a lunch prior to taking it. Shortly after I have started to dream about the process in my sleep, the company took a turn into a new direction, that can be summarise as: "we do not care how you do it, but it must be done with 'high' quality and bug free!"

What I liked about keynote presentation is that for us to succeed, we need to do combination of all three. The idea that if you have a process in place, we can improve the quality of work (simply by doing what we do and examining the history) and of course if the process is flexible we can achieve agility without sacrificing the first two. It totally make sense, that combination of 3 is what will make any company successful. Interesting observation that at my current company we are taking the position that: process, quality, and agility is truly a single driving force/foundation to the success.

Test Driven Development & Visual Studio Team System

2007-04-22T20:34:00.000-05:00

Recently, I was given an opportunity to give a presentation on TDD and how one may use VS2005 to accomplish this task. During the presentation I have used a standard Microsoft presentation on TDD and VSTS.
During my presentation I showed several examples on how to author: unit test, manual tests, load tests, web tests, database unit tests (stored procedures), and ordered tests. We have looked closer at: Test Manager, Code Coverage, Code Analysis and how these functionality integrates with TFS. The sample solution containing all the code can be found here.

My final thoughts on testing in VSTS:
1. Visual Studio Team System makes testing easy, great auto-generation tools allow one to generate all the plumbing without any hassle; it also provides a starting point for learning how to create tests.
2. With an exception on Windows Forms UI tests VSTS allows to generate tests that will cover all the aspects of the development and testing.
3. 100% Code Coverage does not mean that the application is bullet prove, it should be used in conjunction with Code Analysis to identify if we are comfortable the number of tests.
4. all written tests should be used in regression testing, once we start to modify existing code.
5. We have "white tests" written usually by developers that deal implementation and technology details; and "black tests" written by testers (QC/QA) that deal functional requirements of the application.

An interesting thought: From the tester's point of view we need to create a "time line". For example users does something in the system, system does something in response and based on the those results user does something else. For example user creates a task, task's work flow/state triggers additional email notifications that may provide user with additional information.

So what is the problem? The problem is that we are violating several rules: Unit Test must be simple and cover small portions of the functionality and all Unit Tests must be independent of each other. My current solution for this problem:
1. use multiple asserts in the test and
2. group relevant tests in Ordered Test.

Any thoughts on it?

ORM:1, Hand Coding:0

2007-04-09T14:06:00.000-05:00

By definition I am lazy, I love using tools to reduce my workload. Object Relational Mapping (ORM) is one of those tools that I can not live without.

Several projects ago we decided that it would be better if we generate at least 85% of persistence layer automatically, but still would have control of how and when do we use ORM. NHibernate was our choice of the ORM (at time it was beta 0.8).

So why does ORM rule? Well, I would like to share a great story on how we were able to leverage NHibernate. On one of my current projects we are using NHibernate (1.03 beta) to generate the persistence layer for the use with Oracle 10G R2.
As we were reviewing and finalizing the requirements for purchasing production hardware and licenses, the client’s newly hired CIO, asked us: “why do we need to have both Oracle and SQL Server?” Of course we answered that: “we are using Oracle because it is your preferred choice of database to persist application data. SQL Server is a requirement for the BizTalk 2006, which we are using as a middleware server.”
The next question was: “What will it take to switch to SQL Server completely?” I should mention this conversation took place half way through our development effort. Our response was: “since we are using ORM to abstract the database from the application, it should only take 54 hours.”
Here is a list of tasks we had to do:
1. SQL Server Setup (Total Effort: 4 hours)
2. Database Conversion (Total Effort: 24 hours)
a) re-create 135+ tables from the Database Definition Language (DDL) scripts;
b) make unit conversion updates like: Change VARCHAR2 to VARCHAR, CLOB to VARCHAR(MAX), NUMBER to BIGINT, NUMBER (1) to BIT/BOOLEAN
c) update defaults, identities
d) update naming conventions
e) update DDL Script that generates triggers
f) update 5 stored procedures and functions
3. Code Updates (Total Effort: 10 hours)
a) Update the NHibernate XML Mapping files (82+)
b) Update the method that calls stored procedures
4. Regression Testing (Total Effort: 16 hours)

As soon as we got the green light from the CIO to go ahead and make the conversion, our DBA and Lead Developer spent one week-end making the conversion. It surprised me that our actual implementation time was 55 hours, and most of that was spent in data conversion (32 hours).

So on the following Monday, one of developers had a shocking experience. In the morning he was working on one of his features that required saving. Typically, he would open Toad to view the table he was saving to, in order to verify the results. According to him, he was getting pretty mad, because a simple save feature started to look like a nightmare. He would type the values on the form, click save, get no errors, go look for the results in Toad and see no changes in the table, sol he tries to reload the form/restart application/visual studio/computer and see that typed values are loading back, while still not showing in the database. How can you troubleshoot a problem like that?
Luckily, we have "Daily Stand Up Meetings," at which everyone gives updates on items they are currently working and have completed. So as the news of the database switch were announced, you could clearly hear swearing from the developer. Mel, feel free to add to the story.

In the end:
- listening to the boss on why we should be using ORM is 0.0001 man hours,
- choosing an ORM is 40 man hours,
- crash learning NHibernate is 80 man hours,
- getting comfortable with NHibernate is 160 man hours,
- switching database during the development without developers noticing is PRICELESS!

Josh and Brian get Codemash style haircuts!

2007-01-20T21:27:00.000-05:00

At our first Codemash convention, Josh Holmes made a bold statement: that if by the end of the conference we add 500 blog entries on the topic of the CODEMASH, then he will shave his head.
Brian Prince up the ante to 600 entries for his hair removal.

Josh and Brian on day one of the Codemash:

and this is them at the closing note of the Codemash

In case you have missed the hair cutting process or really want it to see it again, based on the people's demand, I bring you ... What 600 blog entries can achieve!

Codemash - what i got out of it

2007-01-19T15:16:00.000-05:00

In several sessions I have heard speakers talking about of what we are getting without knowing how to get concept. I feel there is a trend to abstract/simplify programming, we are getting tools that will allow us to concentrate on getting WHAT we need, and letting underlying framework to figure on HOW to fulfil the request.

This will allow us to take advantage of the hardware (multi-cores) and framework changes.

For example, if we need to loop through the list of cities and do something with result(s), if we use 'for', we are stucked with a single thread.

foreach (City city in cities)
if (city.Name == "Columbus")
whatever

but if we use LINQ, even though it does not use multi-threading right now, he are not programming on HOW we are getting the data, which leaves framework for the future evolution to make a smart decision on how to get those cities for us:
var results = from city in cities
where city.Name =="Columbus"
select city;

Codemash, QSI Party

2007-01-19T12:28:00.001-05:00

I think QSI party was a great success. I had an opportunity to talk to a lot of people, and again take a few snap-shots, see them at flickr (codemashqsi).

ps
Just trying to see Josh and Brian with shaven heads.

Codemash Networking

2007-01-19T00:54:00.000-05:00

No it is not about Brian's presentation.

So what is the networking, well it is as simple as a group of geeks getting together in the water park. what should you expect? find out for yourself at flickr (codemashnetworking)

I now do have an answer to a mind boggling question: can a Midwest developer surf?
see it for yourself "Codemash Networking".

Codemash, Day 1

2007-01-19T00:45:00.000-05:00

First day was awesome, I continue to help with running the conference. I have enjoyed all sessions I have attended, some of them have confirmed that what I am doing is "the right thing". I also saw a few new angles/perspectives from other technologies.

My thoughts on DSL, we all use it everyday, probably the most common/broad would be the language itself; obviously my English DSL skill can be improved :), but if people can understand me, that is good enough for me!

Anyway, more pictures from Codemash Day 1 event, can be found on the flickr you can use codemash or codemashday1 tags to get to the pictures

CodeMash, Day 0

2007-01-18T00:28:00.000-05:00

Day Zero of CodeMash is over! I felt it would never end, I helped to setup and run the registration for it. If you have a chance you should check out the cool WPF check-in application that was written for this event by Brian, it took him only a few hours. Obviously, not without errors, I spent several hours chasing the tail to figure it out, what in the world "User login is not part of the trusted connection", we can run the application to look up the data, but we were not able to update it; in the end it was a simple mismatch between database column name and the application field.

Anyway I have uploaded "CodeMash - Day 0" pictures on my msn spaces and a copy of them is loaded to flickr with tag "CodeMash"

42 is the answer to any problem

2006-12-08T08:00:00.000-05:00

I can now officially state and prove that solution to any problem is 42!

Let me run my solution by you. Lets assume that the problem is represented by a variable: X
My prove:
1. if x * 0 = 0
2. if 42 * 0 = 0
3. then (x * 0) = (42 * 0)
4. divide both sides of the equation by 0: x * (0/0) = 42 * (0/0)
5. since both sides of the equation contains (0/0) we cancel it out of the equation and end up
with x= 42!

Since any problem can be expressed mathematically, I can now say that the solution to any a problem is 42!

My special thanks to Dr James Anderson, from the University of Reading's computer science department, that made my prove possible.

Of course anyone with any basic math skills may point out that we are not allowed to divide by zero since it is undefined operation. In the computer world we know that division by zero produces a NAN (Not A Number) but thanks to a new number "nullity" (-0-) that Dr. Anderson proposed we can now safely divide by zero to solve all kinds of the problems!

I found his lecture extremely interesting and I have enjoyed people's responses to his solution to 1200-year-old problem. I can not wait to talk to him on December 12th

"the error code 2869" while running installations in Vista

2006-12-04T22:52:00.000-05:00

I have run into interesting problem in Windows Vista, while I was installing Web Service Software Factory and GAT I kept getting 2869 error code, followed by a few empty 'OK' prompts.

It looks like this error is due to the installation package requiring administrative rights. In my case installation package was denied contact with Visual Studio 2005.

There are several ways to fix this problem:
1. create a batch file containing msi package, and run it as Administrator
batch file will contain following line: msiexec /i {package.msi}

2. run msi from the with elevated privileges command prompt.
Find your "Command Prompt", typically located in: %SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe (or just search for Command Prompt); right click on it and select "Run as Administrator", and then navigate to your msi file

Register for CodeMash

2006-12-02T15:50:00.000-05:00

This is a great opportunity for developers to get together and exchange ideas and learn what is going in different branches of technology. I am looking forward to the event.

NHibernate repository variation on the Criteria

2006-11-29T20:39:00.000-05:00

After reading Dave Donaldson post on NHibernate repository, I was pleasantly surprised on how similar our implementations are. By 'our' I mean Kevin Spargue and I; we are using NHibernate on one of our projects. This is my third NHibernate project and this time around we have enough time to sit down and make corrections to hard learned lessons of using NHibernate. One of those days I will get around publishing our version of the NHibernate repository, but for right now I would like to add our variation on dealing with criterias.

Originally we started with the similar implementation as in Dave's repository:
public static Collection FindByProperty(string property, object value)
with an overload
public static Collection FindByProperty(string[] property, object[] value)

but then we have decided against it, and end up with creating a class wrapper that have included property value, name and operator. This implementation helped us to reduce the number of methods we need to maintain and have provided us more flexibility when it comes to & finding/filtering data.

Repository methods
public static IList Find(QueryValueCondition[] queryValueConditions, QueryOrCondition[] queryOrConditions)
where T : IPersist
{
if (queryValueConditions == null) queryValueConditions = new QueryValueCondition[0];
if (queryOrConditions == null) queryOrConditions = new QueryOrCondition[0];
IList results = new List();
Type type = typeof(T);
IList list = Find(type, queryValueConditions, queryOrConditions);
foreach (T item in list)
results.Add(item);
return results;
}

public static IList Find(Type type, QueryValueCondition[] queryValueConditions, QueryOrCondition[] queryOrConditions)
{
IList results = Accessor.LoadList(type, queryValueConditions, queryOrConditions);
return results;
}

Accessor implementation (Helper class consists of a few static methods that help us final query assembly.)

public static IList LoadList(Type type, QueryValueCondition[] queryValueConditions, QueryOrCondition[] queryOrCondition)
{
IList results = null;
ICriteria criteria = NHibernateSession.CreateCriteria(type);
foreach (QueryValueCondition valueCondition in queryValueConditions)
criteria.Add(Helper.GetCritria(valueCondition));
foreach (QueryOrCondition orCondition in queryOrCondition)
criteria.Add(Helper.GetOrExpression(orCondition));
results = criteria.List();
return results;
}

I will not dive into the details of the methods, but I do want to talk about: QueryValueCondition and QueryOrCondition.

QueryValueCondition class consists of properties wrapped around fields:
string _propertyName = string.Empty;
object _propertyValue = null;
Operators _operators = Operators.Equals;

Operators is a simple enumeration
public enum Operators
{
Equals,
GreaterThan,
GreaterThanEqualTo,
LessThan,
LessThanEqualTo,
Like,
IsNull,
In,
IsNotNull
}

This class allowed us to group a set of data into a logical unit, that contains everything we need to be able to retrieve data on a passed property value.

QueryOrCondition class contains wrap around properties for following fields:
QueryValueCondition _leftCondition = null;
QueryValueCondition _rightCondition = null;

Just an additional class that allow to group multiple properties into OR condition. So now we can use one Find method to get data by one or more properties and we have a power of matching it by various conditions.

Installing Team Build

2006-11-21T23:20:00.000-05:00

After finishing the installation of TFS, one may notice that Team Build is not installed with it. It is a separate installation. Depending on the version of the TFS it may be located in a different folder, typically it will be located under \build or \bb folders. By the way bb abbreviation is for 'Big Build' code name for the Team Build.

Anyway, once you start setup, you should see title: Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server (build) Setup. Just go through normal setup procedure.

MSDN has a great reference on TFSBuild Commands that can be handy for batch processing, like starting a build. I commonly use following:
TFSBuild start {http://TFSServerName:8080} {TFS Project Name} {TFS Build Name}

Obviously, one will have to create a build prior to using tfsbuild from command line.