Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition

What has changed for Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals (aka VSDB, DB Dude) in the 2008 edition?

1. Installation: No more additional setup. In Visual Studio Team System 2008 VSDB completely integrated in the standard setup, so no more additional downloads. All you have to do is to make sure the Team Database Edition option is checked in the features to install window.  The database project functionality is only available in two of the Visual Studio Team System SKU's:
   • Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition.
   • Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite.
2. The Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition is based on the v1.0 functionality plus the Service Release 1 functionality.
3. Solution Explorer performance improvements, especially when your project has large number of objects stored under a single node instead Solution Explorer.

What about the great features of VSDB 2005 power tools?  Not available yet. MS trying to release a new VSDB 2008 Power Tools release targeting later this month.

Technorati Tags: DB Dude,VSDB,Visual Studio for Database Professionals

Rosario November CTP is now available

According to Jeff Beehler:

I'm happy to announce that the next Community Technology Preview of Rosario (officially known as Microsoft® Visual Studio® Team System code name “Rosario” November 2007 CTP) is now available.  Customers can immediately begin downloading the VPC images from our download page.

Download and check what's coming up next for Visual Studio Team System!

 

Technorati Tags: Rosario,Team System

Visual Studio Team System chat - December 5, 2007

Do you want to discuss features available in Team Foundation Server, Team Suite, Architecture Edition, Development Edition, Database Edition, and Test Edition? You can join members of the Visual Studio Team System product group chats.

There will be two chat sessions.  (times in the Jerusalem time zone)

• Join the chat on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 from 20:00 - 21:00 Jerusalem Time. Add to Calendar
• Join the chat on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 from 02:00AM - 03:00AM Jerusalem Time. Add to Calendar

DEV215: Presentation and Demo Download

I uploaded my presentation, done in DevAcademy2. Now you can download, use and review it.

Presentation - DEV215 Integrating Databases Into ALM

Demo -  DEV215 Integrating Databases Into ALM

DevAcademy2 Summary

Yesterday I presented at DevAcademy II event - an annual developers event organized by Microsoft Israel. It was a great event and highly-professional. I really enjoyed it.

A big thanks to Microsoft Israel for the technical and logistical planning and execution of this event.  Both speakers and attendees commented it was great and professional.

I'll post later the download link of my presentation and demos -  DEV215: Integrating Databases Into ALM.

See you in the next event!

Photos - Thanks to Mr. Adi Avnit.

How would you spend $100 on MSBuild?

Dan Moseley, a developer on the MSBuild team, wants to know how you would prioritize features for the next version of MSBuild by asking, How would you spend $100 on MSBuild?

This is a great opportunity to influence the future of MSBuild, so be sure to post your opinion.

My choice:

Visualization - $30

Msbuild debugger - $25

Vc support - $20

Extensible functions - $5

Inline tasks  - $20

 

Technorati Tags: MSBuild

Dual boot: Vista and Win Server 2003

Wow! It was a long long long installation weekend. My Laptop's hard disk died a week ago, and I got new one which means installations!

I need both Vista and Server 2003 with Dual boot configuration on my laptop. Vista is my work and development machine, server 2003 hosted Team Foundation Server - my presentations machine.

It seems that this is not so easy to configure dual boot with Vista...after 2 formats and re-installation I finally succeeded!

Why does it so complicated? earlier versions of the Windows are incompatible with the new Windows Vista startup method. Windows Vista uses a new Boot Configuration Database (BCD) store. This store contains a boot menu and all the information about operating systems that are installed on the computer. Therefore, a Boot.ini file that is from an earlier version of the Windows operating system cannot be used to start Windows Vista.

How did I solve it? I found this useful KB and a great tool: EasyBCD.

Next time I'll be smarter...

Technorati Tags: Vista, Dual Boot

Team Foundation Server 2008 Installation Problems

I just installed Team Foundation Server 2008 and I got couple of errors during installation. Even I had followed the installation guide to the letter, I got some errors:

• Error 28905: WiDbLoc: Could not list of fields to localize from the database. Clicking Retry wasn't the appropriate workaround...I found this post and I understand that after I changed SQL Server's TCP/IP status of the enabled, I didn't restart the SQL Server service. Restart it and the error disappeared.
• Setup Error 28100: Failed to load EventService proxy object: Requested registry access is not allowed.  Do not interrupt the installation! Thanks to Xenopz Blog I found the workaround to fix it.  Execute:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\BIN>stsadm -o addpath -url http://localhost/Reports -type exclusion

The virtual server that is referenced here is not in the config database. After starting the sptimer (execute "net start sptimer" on the command prompt) and restarting IIS, the installation continued without problems.

Technorati Tags: Team System, TFS 2008

LINQBridge - Use LINQ to objects in .NET 2.0

I really like LINQ, but what if I want to use it and the target framework is not .NET 3.5? There is a way to use LINQ to Objects in .NET 2.0 projects. LINQBridge makes this possible. I saw it today but I didn't try it yet. (I'll be soon)

How it works?

First, it's important to understand that C# 3.0 and Framework 3.5 are designed to work with CLR 2.0-the same CLR version that Framework 2.0 uses. This means that the C# 3.0 compiler emits IL code that runs on the same virtual machine as before.

This makes Framework 3.5 additive-just as Framework 3.0 was additive-comprising additional assemblies that enhance the existing 2.0 Framework and CLR. So there's nothing to stop us from writing our own assemblies that do the work of Framework 3.5 (at least, the critical bits required for local LINQ queries).

Go to LINQBridge official page - you'll find there more info as well as source code.

Technorati Tags: Linq

Visual Studio 2008 Training Videos

Ready to learn about Visual Studio 2008? How it will make you more productive? Check out the training videos below.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/bb655906.aspx

You can signup to MS Developer Academy

Event: Microsoft Developer Academy II

Event ID: 1032359731

Date: 27/11/2007

Location: Airport city (near Ben-Gurion airport) at Avenue convention center

Register now, before it's too late. This time, only registered users can attend in the event. So hurry up...

Yo can signup here.

My session:

Where: Arava Hall

When: 13:15-14:30

About: Integrating the database into application lifecycle management with Visual Studio Team System for Database Professional. Read more...

So signup and see you there.

VS2008 Language Support Presentation

You can download the first part of my presentation about VS2008.

The first part is about the new language features.

The agenda:

• Multi-Targeting Support in VS 2008
• Object Initializes
• Lambda Expressions
• Var Keyword
• Automatic Properties
• Extension Methods
• Anonymous Types

Download from here.

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio 2008, Presentation

Release Date for Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5

Microsoft announced today that Visual Studio 2008 will be released before the end of November 2007.  Great News!

 

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio 2008

.NET Framework 3.5 Commonly Used Types and Namespaces poster

Paul Andrew introduced the .NET Framework 3.5 update to the Commonly Used Types and Namespaces poster. You can download it from here. (PDF version).

Technorati Tags: .NET 3.5

TFS Build Lab 1.0 Released

TFSBuildLab 1.0 is released on CodePlex.  

This is a project to simplify the day to day operations when using automated builds on TFS.

This project handles common Team System issues such as:

• Continuous integration builds
• Scheduled builds
• Build queuing
• Event notifications
• Manual and automated build cleanup

What features included in V1.0:

Service

• Automatic rescheduling when adding new scheduled trigger.
• A report for displaying statistics from the triggers and retention policies.
• Support for overriding build script parameters both for CI and queued builds.
• Support for only deleting the build drops.
• Support for configuring retention policies based on build quality.
• Performance improvements by introducing caching

Admin Client

• Added feedback when deleting multiple builds.
• Support for forcing reaching on the server.
• Support for overriding build script parameters on queued builds.
• Support for overriding build script parameters on triggers.
• Added range parameters when listing log entries to limit the result data.

Checkin Policies

• Removed the need for TfsBuildLab when using the restricted paths policy.

Technorati Tags: Team Build, Team System, MSBuild

Top Posts From October

Cross posted from: http://blog.maordavid.com

Well, October was an interesting month. I wrote 30 posts, and these are the 5 posts you mostly interested:

1. Query XML using XLINQ - How to query XML data using XLinq.
2. C# Coding standards guideline - a guideline which was written by Juval Lowy.
3. Linq to XML - Adding,Updating and Deleting data - How to add,update and delete XML data using Linq.
4. I Search with Google’s experimental - new from Google Labs: Experimental search. I explain there what is it and how to use it.
5. Reset autonumber (IDENTITY) column in SQL Server - How to reset the autonumber - identity column in a table.

That is my review of October posts. Comments, suggestions and links to things you think I should be talking about always welcome.

Thanks for reading!