Unlikely bloggers…
I always like to see people for whom it is traditionally unlikely to blog to start contributing to that big knowledgebase in the either that is the blogosphere. I would like to call attention to Eric McCarthy who started blogging today and call out to all other helpdesk Hero’s to join the fray…
Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition GDR RC (release candidate)
Gert Drapers has just announced the long awaited RC for the Data Dude GDR. This is the first version that you can seriously consider using as, unlike the previous CTP’s, there will be an upgrade path to the RTM.
Infragistics WPF
I am currently getting to grips with the Infragistics WPF controls that they call NetAdvantage for WPF . So far I have found them easy to use, but the documentation of examples is very lax. Do not mistake me, these components are fantastic and do way more work for me than I would care to do myself, but if you Google a particular piece of their API invariable you will get pure documentation and no samples. If you are lucky someone has asked a specific question about it and you can skim their answers, but the likely hood of finding an answer to your question is negligible in my experience.
Wakoopa
I am having a little bit of fun with this application and I though I would share. it logs all of the applications that you are using and gives you stats on it. How about joining the Microsoft MVP (MVP’s only please) team, or creating your own…
MSBuild and Business Intelligence Packages, Ahhhhhh!
I have been trying to get a handle on doing an automated build of our Business Intelligence solutions and I am always running into problems around the (IMO badly build) BI Packages that are installed via SQL. They do not support Test, they do not support build. There has been no thought given to how people working on them are going to build test and support them and even the project files are not written in the same schema as the rest of the Visual Studio bits. I would have thought, with Team Foundation Server in its third year and second version that this would have been rectified in SQL 2008, but no such luck.
Branch Compare…A Life saver
In my recent troubles with branching and merging I found (it was not lost, I just did not know about it) a fantastic tool, that has actually been part of the power tools for about two years , for comparing two branches. Cool…
Hosted TFS, and cheap….from Phase2
I received a wee email from Kevin Doherty the CEO at Phase2 . These guys host lots of useful things and the had obviously decided to host TFS as part of their offering.
TFS Usage Statistics
Stats on out TFS Instance. Not much but growing. Users Recent users: 18 Users with assigned work items: 27 Version control users: 36 **Work Items **Work Items: 636 Areas & Iterations: 179 Work item versions: 5,642 Attached files: 46 Queries: 150
How-To: Display your Outlook calendar on you’re My Site
I thought I should explain how to enable the “My Calendar” web part on you’re my Site (homepage). Here is my “MySite”, as you can see I have a horrible picture, but if you check out the red rectangle you will see the “My Calendar” control has already been added to your site.
How-To: Allow other users to interact with workflow on your MySite
If you want to be able to use workflow on you’re my site that will allow you to assign tasks to your colleagues, then you need to take a couple of thing into consideration. The most important is to give any users assigned tasks access to the tasks list that you are using for your workflow.
Branch madness!
I know that I have not been posting in a while, and I hope to remedy that. I have been working on getting our internal team up to speed on using TFS as a full ALM tool and not just for source control. I am getting a lot of resistance on creating work items ( as this is a PM’s job !) but we are making progress.
Sync extension for Lists/Collections or whatever
I recently found the need to Sync two lists. I have one list that is used for display, and I want to dynamically sync that list with a new one by applying a delta.
Team System MVP
Well, I have just joined the auspicious ranks of Team System MVP’s , now numbering 73 worldwide. You can see my profile on the MVP site. My name will now appear along side Mitch Denny and Tiago Pascoal . Wow… I have a lot to aspire to…
Development and Database combined
Microsoft has just announced that the two products, Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Developers and Visual Studio Team Edition for Developers as been combined. From today if you Own either version in 2005 or 2008 flavours you will also have access to the other.
Creating a WPF Work Item Control
I have a little custom control I need added to my Visual Studio Team System projects. This control will allow specific groups of users as representatives of Advocacy groups with in the life cycle model to sign off a Requirement or Change Request from within Visual Studio.
Windows Live Wave 3
With the new Windows Live Wave 3 betas now available I am looking forward to many of the features I have already previewed in the beta of Windows Live Messenger 9.
My first ALM and second VSTS presentaton!
It seams as if they went well! The plan of under preparing and over delivering worked a treat… Because I know the topics the lack of a prepared script allowed me to concentrate more on emparting knowlage and less on keeping to a set of arbitrary notes the go to pot as soon as the first question is asked.
Working from a Mobile again!
As I am traveling today and I am not taking a laptop, I want to be able to do a little personal work from my mobile.. What I would realy like is to be able to monitor and edit my CodePlex (Team Foundation Server) work items from my phone! And I am not talking about some crappy web based solution, I hate not being able to work offline, but a Smart Client application like the one I am using now (Diarist 2) that can let me work away with cached work items and then sync later!
Presenting Aplication Lifecycle Management: Precursor
I am doing a presentation this afternoon on Application Lifecycle Management (ALM). This is the first time that I have ever presented on this topic, and I found out that I was doing it on Friday!
A problem with Diarist 2!
{Rant} I think that it would be good to remove the drop down to select your blog from the main blog writing page. I tapped it by mistake when I was trying to select a piece of text and lost my whole post…
Team Build Error
I received a confusing error from MS Build on Friday. I assumed that it was a GDR version issue for the top level message:
Visual Studio 2008 and the GDR CTP16
Well we have been having a few problems with the GDR . Essentially when we import our database it complains about dependencies. We have many stored procedures that call stored procedures that call stored procedures! This seams to give the GDR fits. Maybe we are doing something that we are not supposed to, but SQL does not complain.
Found GDR Bug: At least I think it is.
This is not isolated to GDR, but seams to exist in Data Dude as well. If you create the following SQL: 1: CREATE VIEW [dbo].[v_SomeView] AS 2: SELECT [BH].[Col1], 3: [BH].[Col2], 4: [BH].[Col3], 5: [BH].[Col4], 6: [BH].[Col5], 7: CASE WHEN [BHPP].[OtherCol1] IS NULL THEN -1 ELSE 1 END As [Col6], 8: CASE WHEN [BHPP].[OtherCol1] IS NULL THEN 'Not Applicable' ELSE 'PowerPack' END As [Col7], 9: CASE WHEN [BHPP].[OtherCol1] IS NULL THEN [BH].[Col5] ELSE [BHPP].[OtherCol2] END As [Col8] 10: FROM [dbo].[Table1] as [BH] 11: LEFT JOIN (SELECT [OtherCol1], [OtherCol2], [OtherCol3] 12: FROM [$(CMD)].[dbo].[Table2] 13: WHERE [OtherCol1] <> -1) as [BHPP] 14: ON [BH].[Col2] = [BHPP].[Col2] And add it to your Database project, but using proper table names :) You will get the following error for every use of [BHPP]:
TFS Sticky Buddy Update
The Sticky Buddy has been updated to fix the following problems: VotesIDTitle22598Application has stopped responding" when Logging into CodePlex and a Domain is not entered in the UserName field12630Handle large number of work items in the node display This means that if you run TFS Sticky Buddy from now you should get v1.6.
LINQ to XSD
Absolutely brilliant. That’s what I think of Linq to XSD. Disappointed that is only works in C#, but having to use C# for a single project out of a solution it is a small price to pay to get the functionality.
Installing Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2
After I got my computer rebuilt (due to Problems with Team Explorer after installed Visual Studio 2008 SP1 RTM ) I did not reinstall IE8 Beta 1 as I knew that Beta 2 was soon to be available.
Cool new feature in IE8
It may be simple, and it may be small, but the feature that hit me first and greatest in IE8 was the address bar enhancements. This feature alone would have me upgrading:
Compatibility view in IE8
If you were worried about your pages viewing correctly in IE8 Beta 1 you had to restart your browser to enable “IE7 Compatibility mode”. Now it is easy:
WPF Threading
I was having a problem getting multi threading working with the ObservableCollection, and struggled to find a solution. So I asked my friend Google and after a while it directed me to Kevin’s blog and specifically to his post on WPF Cross-Thread Collection Binding - Part 4 - The Grand Solution .
Calling an object method in a data trigger
Calling a method on an instance of an object in WPF is not as easy to figure out, but with the help of this Internet thing I managed it. Say you have a DataTemplate that renders a WorkItemType as a button that is selectable:
