In honor of TechEd (The Developer Edition) going on this week, our Public Sector teammates have declared this week Visual Studio MythWeek . They did short videos (about 5 minutes in length) to try and debunk the most common myths around Visual Studio...

I guess my IQ really is getting lower now that my kids are getting older because I just had one of the "slap on the forehead" moments. As developer tools specialist, I've been working with VS2008 to build .NET 3.5 samples and occasionally I...

Speaking of Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition (aka DBPro), Gert Drapers was interviewed for Channel 9 and talked about the new General Distribution Release (GDR) for DBPro that was announced this week at TechEd 2008. You can read more about...

On May 23, I did a webcast for the .NDU on Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition. All .NDU webcasts are recorded, so in case you weren't able to attend them live or want to see any part that you missed, here's a link to my session . I always...

Its rare that a senior developer, architect, or operations person doesn't know about Sysinternals tools, but it happens. For the few of you who don't know what I'm referring to, Sysinternals is the brand name for more than 70 separate advanced system...

The Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) will be held in Los Angeles October 27- 30. Registration opens today at: http://www.microsoftpdc.com . This PDC will be one of the first really big showings of the Rosario release of Team System....

[NOTE: This article has nothing to with the Phoenix Framework for software optimization. I just want to recognize the brilliant men and women in our world space program.] I'd like to think I've been an amateur astronomer for years, but if you really luck...

My teammate, Rob Cameron, runs a regular webcast series called .NET Developer Update (.NDU) that covers technologies that .NET developers are interested in. This month's topics covered database develop. My colleague, Mike Wilmot , covered What's New in...

In another life, I wrote a shareware program called DLL Checker . I wrote it because I was constantly cleaning up customers' systems of conflicting DLLs. Starting with Windows Me and Windows 2000, Microsoft introduced the Windows File Protection feature...

The next Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Visual Studio Team System code-name "Rosario" April 2008 is now available for download. Check out Jeff Beehler's blog for more details about the latest feature sets that have been included in this...

I haven't jumped on the DVR bandwagon yet simply become I'm trying to cut down on the amount of TV I watch. Not that there's a lot of good shows on TV now but that will change now that the Writers' Strike is over. But I digress. A colleague of mine pointed...

One of the pros to TFS you'll hear (or have heard) from Microsoft is the fact that its an integrated solution built from the ground up using existing Microsoft technology. When you see TFS demonstrated end-to-end -- being able to manage tasks, requirements...

One of the great things about Visual Studio 2008 is it's ability to work multiple .NET Frameworks (.NET 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5 to be exact). Unfortunately, .NET 1.0 and 1.1 developers will still need to have Visual Studio .NET 2002 and Visual Studio .NET 2003...

Communication Sector recently hosted a Developer Days event in New York. There was a lot of content presented and number of people have asked us for copies of our decks. I've uploaded a copy of the Visual Studio 2008 Team System Overview deck (7.6Mb...

As you may or may not know, the 2008 Launch Wave Global Kick-Off event is happening on February 27th in Los Angeles, CA. This launch event will showcase Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008, and SQL Server 2008. This site has more information about...

LINQ is really cool and is "baked" into the .NET 3.5 framework, so much so, that you don't have to add the LINQ to your References because its inlcuded with your project. When you create a new project, the System.XML.Linq is right there. Your fingers...

Out in the field, some of my colleagues make fun of the fact that I still do my demos in VB. What can I say, having worked with VB since Day 1 and having programmed in Uni-BASIC, Applesoft BASIC, Commodore BASIC, GW-BASIC, QuickBASIC, and even VB for...

Having inherited a lot of code in past lives as a development lead or dev manager, determining code complexity was something that always fascinated me. I use to have conversations about this with some of my senior developers about this. Luckily, we had...

With the release of VS 2008 behind us, come and 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...

As promised earlier this month, VS2008 and .NET 3.5 would RTM in November. Today, it was released to manufacturing (RTM) and is available for you download via your MSDN subscription. All editions are available: Express, Professional, Team System, and...

At TechEd 2007 Barcelona and DevConnections Las Vegas, we announced that Visual Studio 2008 (aka Codenamed "Orcas") and .NET Framework 3.5 will be released by the end of this month. Previously, we had stated that they would be released by the of this...

On Saturday, August 11, the DBPro team release their first set of Power Tools. When you look at the list of features in this release, you'd swear they released a whole new version of the product. Gert Draper's blog provides a breakdown of all the features...

Brian Harry, a VSTS Product Group Manager, just published what he believes to be the final feature list that is going to be in Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server release. It's a pretty extensive list. I highly recommend you check it out. http...

Over the past few weeks, the Visual Studio Development team has been very busy helping enable the .NET development community with enhancements to Visual Studio and advanced looks into what's to come in future versions of the product. Let's start with...

At Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference, Kevin Turner announced the date for the joint launch of SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008! They will all be launched together at an event in Los Angeles on February 27, 2008 . Here...