Skinner's Blog

I wanted to make folks aware of a seemingly small but quite important new feature found in the toolbox for any of the new diagram types in the 2010 Architecture product. ( This is also a feature that all new designers built with the DSL toolkit can enjoy...

In this last post I introduced you to some *very* basic understanding of how DGML works. Now I want to take that knowledge out for a test drive. :) What I've decided to do is a couple of things. I've decided I'm going to show how to visualize Java code...

In this previous post I introduced you to the new format, and then this follow on post showed some of the examples of how the format is used to back some common graphs you can expect in the product. In this post, I'm going to talk about a couple ways...

Wow, last week was a whirlwind! Dave Mendlen and myself spent a lot of time with our friends in the press on both coasts, and everywhere in between, talking about the next release of Visual Studio and Visual Studio Team System, now officially called ...

It became clear from the emails and comments to my last post that I should probably spend a little more time describing the functionality found in the VSTS 2010 CTP a bit better, specifically that functionality involving the Architecture Explorer and...

On other TFS news, one of our partners, Readify, has gone live with a service that hosts Team Foundation Servers for customers, among other things. Check out this post for more details .

We’re here, TechEd Boston! I truly can’t believe how fast this conference has snuck up on us, as we have been planing on making our initial public CTP available here for a number of months now. But it is upon us, we are ready ( Yeah! ), and the conference...

Brian Harry just blogged about a conference we’ll be hosting on the Redmond Microsoft campus this November 16-18th. If you do get a chance, drop by. I’ll be giving a talk about lessons learned and challenges overcome while I led a few product team transformations...

In my last post , I discussed the benefits of the Tier Interaction Profiler found in Visual Studio 2010 Premium. If you are accessing a database via ADO.NET APIs ( which includes the new Entity Framework 4.0 features ), you can get the same benefits from...

I’m 35,000 feet in the air while I make this post ( which always geeks me out :) ), coming home after a few days participating in some events I pointed out in my last post . Although these trips are always tiring, they are also always *very* informative...

One of the many great things about the new IntelliTrace feature in Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 is the ability to walk up to a code base you are not familiar with and determine where to set your first break point. How many times have you walked up to some...

As I alluded to here , we want to make sure your migration from beta2 to RC goes smoothly. In order to make that transition as smooth as possible, I’m happy to announce a simple command line tool that will automatically upgrade your beta2 modeling projects...

Jennifer Marsman , Developer Evangelist extraordinaire, has just blogged about the recent launch tour she organized. She was an absolute task master during this tour, making sure all details were covered and accounted for! It was a fantastic experience...

Today we released the Feature Builder Power Tool for Visual Studio 2010 Preview for RC on the Visual Studio Gallery .  This power tool helps you easily create rich Visual Studio extensions which you can share with others on the Visual Studio Gallery...

Since the initial release of the Debugger Canvas last summer, the team has been busy taking all the great feedback from you, acting on it, and preparing a new release. That release, Debugger Canvas 1.1, has just been released on DevLabs! The teams has...

Whether you are doing pre or post mortem debugging, whether you are using Visual Studio or WinDBG, one of the most important things you can do ( short of not writing the bug in the first place! ) to ready yourself for a productive debugging session is...

Please be sure to check out the two videos ( more to come! ) here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/teamsystem/dbpro/

I am thrilled to make this post today! Today Microsoft has announced the existence of Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals ( see the press release here )! What’s this? It is the fourth role in the Visual Studio Team Suite ( check here...

( For those of you just joining, please see Part One and Part Two . Thanks! ) Third Step: Establish test data Cool! Now we are off-line, we have a testing database all ready to test against, all in the comfort of our own “sandbox”. Now let’s talk...

( sorry for the delay, but trying to get a vacation in! :) ) Our CTP4 is out! Please download and get us your feedback! Biggest change to the bits involves the seperation of the solution view vs. the ( currently named ) "Schema view". Let us know what...

We're putting the final touches on our CTP5/Beta drop ( due out this Monday!!! ). The team has been absolutely moving to make this drop sing for you guys, so we'd love to hear tons of feedback from you, once it becomes available this Monday ( believe...

Alright, a little out of sequence, but done nevertheless! :) Please go here to see the latest MSDN webcast entitled " Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals (Part 2 of 4): Managing and Deploying SQL Server 2005 Schemas ". That actually...

I just finished posting a request for all you "Data Dude" CTP users out there to please click this link and take a product feedback survey. Please take the time ( shouldn't take you more than 15 minutes )! We take your feedback seriously, and very much...

I will be participating with my partners at CA to present a "Taming and Managing Database Change" webcast on August 14th from 1PM EST - 2PM EST. The general gist of the webcast is to show how ERWin 7.2 sits on top of the DBPro project model, and how the...

I just wanted to make sure everyone had heard of the great news that was announced today at VSLive! in San Francisco. Quest Software has announced that it will be building atop the rich extensibility infrastructure that is present in what was the VSTS...