Building a RESTful Web Application in ASP.NET 2.0 ( from the Internet track) Representational State Transfer (REST) is means to provide access to, and deliver information based on a unique identifier, such as a URL. In the Web 2.0 world, REST interfaces...

This week I have been giving a lot of thought to how stories should be written for Scrum projects. I was just reviewing some of the stuff on Mountain Goat Software's site . The INVEST acronym hit home with me - this is a good set of guidance on how to...

After several months of work, changing dependancies, a couple designs, and a handful of UI attempts, we are getting ready to release a Beta of the community platform we have been working on ( Codename: Athens Microsoft.community). Athens Microsoft...

Today, at the Microsoft® Worldwide Partner Conference 2007 in Denver, CO, Kevin Turner, Microsoft's Chief Operating Officer, announced that Windows Server® 2008, Visual Studio® 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2008 will launch together at an event in Los...

On Monday I presented to the Redmond/Seattle .NET Developer's Association. The topic was, Implementing the MVC Pattern in ASP.NET . Interestingly, the ASP.NET Framework follwos the MVC pattern (or at least it could be argued that it does, although I think...

One day last week, I was reflecting on the day I had, whihc included a Sprint retrospective of a failed Sprint - the second consecutive failed Sprint. This got me thinking about accountability. Specifically in the terms of Scrum methodology. In a Scrum team of peers from different disciplines (and different managers), such as PM, Dev and Test, how is the team held accountable for their results?...

With the release of the Visual Studio 2008 SDK , software vendors can now build IDE's on top of the Visual Studio 2008 Shell . This enables software vendors to build IDE's that leverage the power of the Visual Studio 2008 IDE, without requiring the end...

With the recent release of Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 1 to MSDN Subscribers, I have gotten a few questions. As questions come in, I’ll do my best to answer them here. One of the first questions I got was about how LightSwitch applications manage and...

Let’s face it, going to a technical conference is good for your career … …but it’s not a whole lot of fun. You need an outlet . You need to have fun . Cheap beer and lousy pizza. We are bringing back GeekFest! Join us at Lucky Strike for a night of pizza...

Today is my final day at Microsoft. Over the years I have had the pleasure of pranking someone who works for me. It started when he was a college intern and I would lower his desk one inch a day until he looked like he was sitting at a pre-school desk...

Today it was announced Oracle support will be available for Visual Studio Team System 2010 Development through a Database Schema Provider (DSP ).  Quest , a provider of Database Management Solutions, is developing the Oracle DSP for Visual Studio...

Notes from the Mix06 conference, day two keynote....

Want to keep up on news from the Visual Studio Team System team? Want to get updates from live events and presentations? Want general pointers to valuable content? You can do so in real time by following MicrosoftVSTS on Twitter. Follow our account today...

OK, mea culpa . TechEd 2008 North America has been over for a few weeks now, and I have not yet posted my wrap up. I'll keep it short and sweet, but there are some cool resources I want to point out. This blog has moved to http://www.dougseven.com/blog...

Seven (7) new white papers focused on the key benefits of Visual Studio Team System are now available in both Word and PDF format. The white papers expand on the seven key benefits outlined in the summary paper " Key Benefits of Microsoft Visual...

The Visual Studio team that brought you the SharePoint developer tools in Visual Studio 2010 is happy to announce they have created a set of power tools that make developing SharePoint 2010 sandboxed solutions even easier.  Below is the list of features...

Scott Cate has started a Video Blog showing Visual Studio Tips and Tricks. Starting with Tip of the Day posts originally done by Sara Ford over 2007 and 2008, the Video blog is a great way to see Visual Studio in action. Scott already has the first 20...

Let’s face it, going to technical conferences is good for your career, but it’s not a whole lot of fun. What you need is an outlet. You need to have fun. That’s where we step in. Cheap beer and lousy pizza! We are bringing back GeekFest...

This morning we made the official announcement of the next release of Visual Studio and the .NET Framework. This includes Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio Team System 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0. This blog has moved. See http://www.dougseven.com...

On Monday, 13-Oct I will be presenting a session at my local (and favorite) user group, the .NET Developers Association . For this session I will be providing a demo-filled tour of the next release of VSTS - Visual Studio Team System 2010 . This is your...

Recently I was involved (only a little) in preparing some of the Visual Studio Launch content for the February 27th launch event (and subsequent worldwide events). During the preparation we held "train-the-trainer" meetings where people who...

TechEd 2008 Developers is less than two weeks away, and of course that means we are down to crunch time. I am a co-Track PM for three tracks - Developer Tools & Languages (TLA), Development Practices (DVP), and Windows & Frameworks (WIN). That...

In March and April I am actually a bit busy espousing prolifically about topics near and dear to me. I have a couple internal Microsoft events I am speaking at - one to what we call our Inner Circle Partners , and the other to System Integrators . In...

Notes from the BillG keynote on day one of the Mox06 conference....

On his blog yesterday, Soma (Sr. VP of Developer Division at Microsoft), announced that Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 2 will be coming soon. I can tell you, we are really excited about LightSwitch, and apparently you are too (you’ve downloaded...