Martin Kulov's Blog

I am going to teach a one day course on what is new and shining in Visual Studio 2008 and Team Foundation Server 2008. The course is delivered by WebAcademy.dk. It will be held on 13th March (this Thursday). Below is course agenda in Denmark (as Steven Forte says - I hope they know I will not speak in Danish :)). The course will be held at a wonderful location called Raadvad Kro in Copenhagen area.

A great prize is expecting its lucky winner :)

There is still a chance to register if you didn't yet.

Looking forward for this great event!!!

 

08:00-09:00 - Check-in, udlevering af materiale og morgenkaffe
09:00-09:15 - Velkomst og præsentation
09:15-10:30 - What’s New in Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5

I denne session kigger vi nærmere på alle nyhederne i Visual Studio 2008. Vi vil også lære dig hvordan du bygger dine løsninger imod forskellige versioner af .NET frameworket, og afsløre næsten hemmelige debugging tips som hidtil kun har været kendte af eliten. Vi vil også vise dig hvordan du bedst udnytter webudviklings features såsom JavaScript debugging, IntelliSense, JSON support og meget mere. Til slut vil vi lære dig hvordan Visual Studio 2008 vil hjælpe dig med at speede din udviklingstid op og forbedre dine debugging skills, til et niveau som dine kolleger vil misunde dig.

10:30-10:45 - Pause
10:45-12:00 - Implementing Best Practices with Team Foundation Server 2008

At bruge best practices i software udviklingsprocesser kan være en langtrukken og kedelig opgave. At håndtere, ændrede anmodninger, enhedstest, løbende integration, peer reviews, daily build, web, load, performance tests, defekt management…. du har hørt om dem alle, men hvor mange af dem bruger du virkelig i dine udviklingsprocesser på nuværende tidspunkt? Team Foundation server kan de fleste læse om i ugevis, men alligevel gå glip af de mest banebrydende og nødvendige features. Vi lærer dig hvordan de nye features i Visual Studio 2008 og Team Foundation Server 2008 kan bidrage til at din virksomhed leverer bedre og hurtigere resultater. Denne session vil også introducere dig til tredjepartsværktøjer der vil gøre din udvikling nemmere end nogensinde før.

12:00-13:00 - Frokost
13:00-14:15 - LINQ - the New Way for Data Access

Language Integrated Query (LINQ) er en ny programmeringsmodel fra Microsoft der gør det at arbejde med data i .NET frameworket til en simpel og ligetil opgave. I Visual Studio 2008 er C# og VB sprog kompilieringen væsentligt forbedret for understøttelse af nye udvidelser. Imens at sådanne muligheder længe har eksisteret i 3. parts værktøjer er .NET frameworket 3.5 det første til at understøtte lokal adgang til forskellige datakilder ved brug af en ny dataorienteret metode i C# og VB. I denne session vil du også lære hvordan du bruger den indbyggede Object Relational Mapping (ORM), der muliggør at modelere relationsdatabaser til objekt orienterede modeller og nemt skabe, læse, opdatere og slette (CRUD) data ved brug af .NET objekt adgang.

14:15-14:45 - Kaffe og networking
14:45-16:00 - Scenarios for Integration of WCF and WF

Med tilkomsten af Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) og Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), tager Microsoft konceptet om forbundne systemer skridtet videre. Denne session vil vise dig hvordan du integrerer WCF og WF i forskellige scenarier og lære dig hvorfor du bør gøre det.

16:00-16:15 - Pause
16:15-17:30 - Profiling, Load and Web Testing in Visual Studio 2008

Denne session vil bl.a. lære dig hvordan du tester den maksimale load på dine systemer, ved brug af de i forvejen skabte brugsscenarier. Til slut vil vi vise dig hvordan vi under load testing kan måle din kodes ydelse bedst muligt.

17:30-18:00 - Afslutning / Bingo

Kurset foregår d. 13 marts i inspirerende omgivelser på Raadvad Kro nord for København. Prisen er 3.900,-, inklusiv frokost og forplejning.

Labels: Events, Visual Studio 2008

# posted by Martin Kulov @ 3:34 AM |

Happy New Year to all of you! I hope that my blog will keep helping you solve problems that are really tough to find.

Recently I bumped into a very strange problem when I tried to open a fresh new solution from the source control and then I got a strange error -  Microsoft Visual Studio - System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException:

I wonder what the Cancel button will do here, but that is a different story.

A quick look at Solution Explorer, showed that all projects were loaded successfully except one - a Web Application Project.

I put some time to dig in with WinDbg and then I got some tips on what is going on.

In order to load the Web Application Project you must make sure that the URL that the project is using, is valid and can be resolved. This can happen pretty often since when you download a project from source control for the first time, it is highly unlikely that you will have the web site already set up.

And important note that I have to make also is that if you are running Vista, you should run in elevated privileges as well.

Using Web Application Projects is not really my choice for web site development. I would rather choose the new Web Site model. I hope that I will have the time to go further into this topic here.

The problem is reported to Microsoft and will be fixed in VS2008 SP1 (no date has been announced yet).

Labels: ASP.NET, Tools and Tips, Visual Studio 2008

# posted by Martin Kulov @ 12:22 AM |

The Visual Studio 2008 Rhythm Training VPC is a sample VPC with latest tools and frameworks from Microsoft. I found it pretty usefull if you have to make presentation or just play with the tools. This VPC does not contain TFS. A separate VPC with TFS 2008 installation will be released soon.

All programs in the VPC are patched with all updates as of 11 December 2007.

NOTE: This VPC images will expire on March 8, 2008.

The Visual Studio 2008 Rhythm Training VPC contains a pre-configured installation of Windows Server 2003, Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite, and the Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit. The training kit includes 20 hands-on-labs, 28 presentations, and 20 scripted demos for technologies such as LINQ, C# 3.0, Visual Basic 9, WCF, WF, WPF, ASP.NET Ajax, VSTO, the .NET Compact Framework, and more.

To login to the VPC, use the following username and password:

UserName: administrator
Password: pass@word1

The VPC takes about 15GB space.

 

UPDATE: There are new VPC images that will expire on 31st Dec 2008.

Username: TFSSETUP, password: P2ssw0rd

"This virtual machine is running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, SP2. It contains a full installation of Team Foundation Server 2008, Team Build 2008, Team Explorer 2008, Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite and all necessary prerequisites. In addition, it has been updated with Office 2007 SP1, current Windows Updates as of March 25, 2008, and the December Release of the TFS Power Tools. Team Foundation Server is installed in workgroup authentication mode and thus does not require a domain controller. "

A separate downloadable set of 38 hands on labs and sample data is available also.

Labels: Visual Studio 2008

# posted by Martin Kulov @ 6:40 AM |

Web Access Power Tool for Team System is just released. Brian Harry just announced the awesome news. As I said in my previous post - these guys at MS do not sleep. And it is 4am already and I can hardly catch up with the news.

Message to the Visual Studio product team at MS - guys, please take a break; we need to sleep :)

Here is the feature list (first one is my best friend) and VSTS Web Access 2008 Power Tool download page:

New linkable web pages - This is, perhaps, the coolest feature in the release. It allows you to easily link to work items, work item queries, work item query results, Changesets, File/Folder history, file differences, file contents and annotated views of files. This makes TSWA a far more powerful building block for integration with other applications. In fact, we've already started work to leverage this from notification emails so that you can get a richer experience. Because the notification emails are user configurable, you can read Neno Loje's poston how to modify work item alert emails to use TSWA links. Look forward to some future suggestions on how you can customize your checkin notification to get a richer experience using TSWA. See Buck's post for details on how to use the new TSWA links.

Custom work item controls - Web Access now supports custom work item controls. Now it is possible to create a rich client version and a web version of custom work item controls and have your fully customized experience available no matter which interface your users access. You'll find documentation for writing custom controls in the SDK folder under you TSWA installation folder.

Team Build support - Web Access has been updated to support several of the new features in TFS 2008 for build automation. Most importantly, it allows you to view the queue of builds and queue new builds.

Performance improvements - Every release of Web Access includes more performance improvements. The more we use the tool internally, the more we learn about it. Every time we find issues, we fix them and release them to you as soon as possible. The big performance improvements in this release are around server memory consumption.

No more TSWA users group - The 2005 Power Tool required that you manage a user group of web access users for security reasons. We've improved the server side impersonation and directory management to eliminate the need for this. TSWA can now manage access securely just using the permission settings you already have and no longer requires a "special" restricted group. This should make managing TSWA easier.

Documentation - It's not extensive but should be enough for you to find your way around TSWA. You'll find it located here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb892990(VS.90).aspx

Labels: TFS, Visual Studio 2008

# posted by Martin Kulov @ 3:57 AM |

Just one week after Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 are released, there is tons of information about it and you can easily lose the track of where it all started. I have tried to summarize some important links I found that target VS/TFS 2008 and .NET 3.5 release.

So here they are... Enjoy!

VS/VSTS/TFS 2008 are Shipping! – by Brian Harry

Brian explains what is like to ship a product of such a magnitude and tells briefly about the features he likes the most.

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 shipped! – by Somasegar

The obligatory Soma’s post links to a cool Channel 9 video about TFS 2008.

Visual Studio Team System 2008 ships! – by Jeff Beehler

Jeff puts an extremely helpful list of all the important features that are coming in Team System 2008. Every list item links to the original blog post from the development team. Great work, Jeff!

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 Released – by ScottGu

Of course Scott is also in this list. He blogs about the features that are coming in Visual Studio as a standalone product more oriented to the new web development features. Very useful indeed!

Upgrade: VS 2005 to Orcas – by Sudhir Hasbe

If you want to upgrade your old TFS 2005 installation, make sure you do it right in the first place and take the advices in Sudhir Hasbe’s blog.

Team Foundation Server (TFS) - Ports ... where is what?– by Willy-Peter Schaub

The list puts all the ports that you need to get TFS running, on one simple page.

2008 Installation Questions – by Brian Harry

General licensing questions from Brian.

TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

This blog post outlines one of the most significant changes in licensing for VS2008. The change is that there is no longer need of CAL when you access work items that you created by yourself. Now your customers can use the WebAccess tool to enter bug reports directly in TFS 2008 without violating the MS Eula.

Labels: Visual Studio 2008

# posted by Martin Kulov @ 3:31 AM |

Come chat with the Visual Studio Team System group – December 5th
 
Join members of the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Team Foundation Server, Team Suite, Architecture Edition, Development Edition, Database Edition, and Test Edition. In addition, discuss what's new for these editions for Visual Studio 2008.

We will be holding two sessions:

Join the chat on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 from 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time. Add to Calendar | Additional Time Zones

-and-
Join the chat on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 from 4:00pm - 5:00pm Pacific Time. Add to Calendar | Additional Time Zones
 

Labels: Visual Studio 2008

# posted by Martin Kulov @ 3:16 AM |