Want to know how Microsoft handles branching and merging? Then take a look at this great guide for doing branching and merging with TFS available on Codeplex.
In particular, read the Feature Crews: How Microsoft Does It section which discusses the feature crew model which originated in the Office team and is now used in Dev Div.
Here are some key engineering approaches that make it effective:
All makes sense, right? Still, it's surprising how many s/w projects blur the line between code complete and feature complete in particular, which as the guide discusses makes it hard to estimate project completion dates due to stabilisation issues. Compounding the problem, it's also hard to reduce scope to make a deadline if a feature has been coded but not stabilised.
Mashup University & Mashup Camp Dublin have been rescheduled for November. You can find all the details here: http://mashupcamp.com/ Mashup University is now on November 10-11, and Mashup Camp is from November 11-12.
So what *is* Mashup Camp...? Started in February 2006 in Silicon Valley and now in its fifth edition, Mashup Camp -- the world's first (and still the only) event that's dedicated to the advancement and social networking of the software mashup community -- is coming to Europe. Mashup Camp's founders David Berlind and Doug Gold invite you to join them at the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, Ireland for a crash course in mashup development (good for beginners too) and "unconference" style discussions, networking, hacking, contests, and entertainment. Mashup University (a program component of Camp) which includes an introduction to mashup development and how-to presentations from API and technology providers, starts on November 10th followed immediately thereafter by Camp (the unconference part).
The last camp/university had really unique and interesting topics - be sure to watch for the schedule when it's available! I'll be talking about both Microsoft Popfly (a mashup/webpage/gadget builder written in Silverlight) and using Windows Live Services to create next generation, low cost user experiences.
If there are other topics you'd be interested in or things you'd like me to cover, feel free to contact me and let me know. See you at Mashup Camp!
I mentioned in my talk last night at Cineworld that there were a few cool training opportunities coming up in Dublin for those interested:
The tools and technologies Microsoft has built for web developers and designers helps them work better together in creating immersive experiences on the web. Find out how software from Microsoft is pushing the envelope of what's possible on the Web today. Includes speakers like Florent Pajani, Philippe Deltenre, Martin Tirion and Ciara Murphy.
Register here: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032351946&Culture=en-IE
11 October 9:30 - 16:30
IT Pro Security training. With security being such a key concern for all companies we are holding this one day training event for IT Pros to learn more about how to address security issues. Includes speakers such as Brian Honan, Dave Northey, Colm Fagan and Michael Riva.
Register here: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032349614&Culture=en-IE
Developer Security Training Event12 October 9:30 - 16:30
Developer Security training event. With security being such a key concern for all companies we are holding this one day training event for developers to learn more about how to address security and .Net issues. Includes speakers such as Brian Honan, Martha Rotter, Cormac Keogh, Paul Hogan, & Ronan Geraghty.
Register here: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032352090&Culture=en-IE
We in the Developer & Platform Group in Microsoft Ireland are about to kick off our early adopter program for ISVs (the successor to the Ascend / Touchdown programs - see http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/isv/bb190411.aspx - that some of you may have been involved in).
Microsoft is committed to ensuring that partners engaged in our early adopter programs have all the resources necessary to build applications for the seven technologies included in the program this year: SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, 2007 Office, Microsoft Dynamics, and Web UX. Once enrolled, you will be able to view “tracks” associated with each technology and choose from several different areas of concentration. You will be able to profile your company’s application, invite your colleagues to use the system, get technical support, learn about instructor-led and on-demand training, and more.
If you are an ISV / partner in Ireland and are interested in enrolling then please contact me to check your eligibility and to learn more about the program. If you want to learn more about the above technologies and are planning to start using them within the next 6-9 months then this program will give you the resources you need to make the best use of these technologies.
If you haven't heard, Halo3 is launching this coming Tuesday!! In Dublin, they are doing it up right by throwing a fantastic launch party Tuesday evening, September 25th.
Lucky Clare has gotten her hands on a couple of tickets, and she will be raffling them off for those interested. See her blog for more details, or just send her an e-mail at claredil@microsoft.com with a subject line of "Halo3 Launch - yes please!" Winners will be notified Monday evening, so get them in fast!
Considering our upcoming security event for developers, this is a very timely Computer World article not least because it highlights the contribution of the SDL in reducing vulnerability counts in Microsoft products:
"The biggest contribution in the security space has been the [SDL]. We have processes in place now where we build documented-threat models at design time. And as you build and architect code, you are always mitigating against these threat models. The threat models get updated during the course of development to keep them current. At the back end of the process, we have a final security review where we look at the product and all the bug scrubs and all the work we have done to see if the product is ready to ship from a security perspective. This, I think, is the biggest change. If you look at our vulnerabilities year over year in product after product, our vulnerability counts are going down dramatically as our products get better." Scott Charney, corporate vice president of Trustworthy Computing (TwC) at Microsoft Corp.
Want to know more? Come along on Oct. 12th and learn about the SDL and the case for building security into the development lifecycle.
I mentioned earlier that I would have more details on the upcoming Silverlight event in Dublin and now I do! The event is Thursday, September 27th at 19:30 at the Cineworld Complex on Parnell Street. It's of course a free event and following that we'll have a fun drinks reception. Cineworld is where we held the IMTC earlier this year, and it is a fantastic venue!
http://www.irishdev.com/EventDetails.aspx?id=888 has everything you need to know. Registration is required, although the event itself is free, so make sure to head over to http://www.irishdev.com/ to register.
But that's not all - InnerWorkings has teamed up with MTUG to offer attendees to this event access to one hour of FREE hands-on Silverlight training! And even more, they're offering in addition a 15% discount on additional training courses and lessons! Find out more about this sweet deal here: http://www.innerworkings.com/promotions/8b8d3a3f-2125-4025-863a-bbfdc85f128c/mtug-silverlight-promotion
Thanks to IrishDev, MTUG and InnerWorkings for all their help with this event! I am definitely looking forward to it. As I mentioned, be sure to register. And in the meantime, if you have questions or have items you'd like me to cover, feel free to e-mail me by using the contact form on this blog or leave a comment.
See you next week!
Check out http://www.microsoft.com/sql/2008/overviewdemo/ for a new video that provides a high level overview of what's in SQL Server 2008. Quite an easy way to learn about the platform for the next generation of data-driven applications!
Martha and I will be making our first trip to Cork on Monday 24th September for a talk on Visual Studio 2008 (including demo)...more details below. If you're in the Cork area hope to see you there!
MTUG Cork Presents : Visual Studio 2008
When: Monday, 24th September 2007, 7-9pm.Where: Hillcrest Suite, Imperial Hotel, South Mall, CorkSpeakers: Ronan Geraghty and Martha RotterCost: Free, but registration required.For more information: Please click here
Overview: An overview of the new features in Visual Studio 2008. See new features including LINQ, multi-version targetting and lots more
This talk has been organised by MTUG Cork, Microsoft Technology User Group, which runs hold regular meetings for those interested in learning more about Microsoft technologies such as .NET and SQL Server
This is a simple example of how to ensure that an (animated) ad created with Silverlight (in this case an ad for my blog :-)) can remain always visible regardless of whether your user scrolls down or not - in this case I anchored the ad to the top left hand corner of the page. (Depending on your perspective this is either the coolest + most useful or else potentially most annoying use of ASP.NET AJAX and Silverlight to date :-))
The example uses the AlwaysVisibleControlExtender from the AJAX Control Toolkit. I originally tried using the ASP.NET Futures release here, putting the futures xaml control directly inside the UpdatePanel, but turns out it's not possible to have a the futures xaml control within an UpdatePanel - an exception is thrown.
However, after a bit of experimenting I got it to work, still using the AlwaysVisibleControlExtender using javascript to explicitly create my ad via Silverlight.createObjectEx().Turns out this works pretty well - you can see the effect below in the two screenshots - my ad is anchored to the top LHS, and in the second screenshot although I have scrolled down the ad remains anchored. The nice thing about it is that this happens completely smoothly - no flashing or any other nasty visual effects, even when a postback to the server occurs via the dropdown in the middle of the page.
I've attached the source for the sample site to this post, so you can download it from here. Take a look, and let me know what you think!
Next steps for the example would be to change the ad in response to what the user selects from the drop down - hopefully I'll get around to this sooner rather than later.
Cross posted from ronan's blog
I'm talking to a lot of companies about Team System at the moment, both existing users and potential users - in both cases I try to get the message across that Team System will help reduce the burden on individuals to support a given process, be it CMMI, MSF Agile, SCRUM or an existing in-house process.That's one of the great things about Team System - it's extremely powerful, but still flexible enough that ultimately you can use it to support any process.
But here's the thing - the other part of the message is that you can also use it to support a broken process or a process that is not appropriate for the particular project that you are working on. If there are inherent flaws or gaps in the process such as too-low acceptance criteria / flawed release processes then ultimately what you deliver will be graded "Could do better". It may be that your existing process is perfectly adequate - in which case great and you can use Team System to support it or enhance it. If not then the decision to use Team System needs to be followed by a decision on what process or processes it should support, and this doesn't have to be a one-size-fits-all approach since you can use different processes with different Team Projects.
The experiences documented in Implementing Visual Studio Team System in the Microsoft OEM Division's IT Center of Excellence back this up : for example, OEM IT had existing defect tracking processes which they ported to Team System and enhanced. They also paid particular attention to their test case management processes.
My suggestion would be to take a similar approach - don't jump in as soon as the install is complete (although by all means have a scratch Team Project so people can get accustomed to the new system). Spend some time hammering out the finer details of your process or think about how Team System can enhance your existing process. Know what your branching strategy will be. Decide how best to take advantage of reporting and create custom reports if needed. Do read http://www.codeplex.com/TFSGuide. And refer back to it over time. Use the process editor tool. Update the prescriptive guidance. Be vigilant in closing the gaps in the process, refine or change it if you see oversights.
In summary, don't assume the job is done when Team System is installed. Yes, at that point it will still give you savings in areas like time spent on automated builds, traceability etc. But wouldn't it also be nice to use it to help reduce rework and test case regression, to help you refine your estimates for subsequent iterations?
So far for me LINQ to SQL has been perfectly adequate and has just worked without any intervention needed.However, if you want to get more control than LINQ to SQL gives you then you might want to take a look at LINQ to Entities.
I've yet to delve into it in too much detail, but among other things
Here's a good place to start to learn more.
If you want to start using it you'll need to download the ADO.NET Entity Framework Beta 2 and the ADO.NET Entity Framework Tools August 07 CTP which contains a preview of the ADO.NET Entity Designer for use with VS 2008 beta 2.
As I mentioned last week, this week is Web2Ireland 2007 Week. There are lots of activities going on for people interested in the Web 2.0 space here in Ireland. Thursday will be especially exciting, with PitchCamp, DemoBar and the FOWA Roadtrip. If you're looking for something a bit more laid back with some interesting discussions, try OpenCoffee on Friday at the Morrison Hotel.
I also wanted to take an opportunity to say how thrilled I am that Mike Butcher has returned to covering TechCrunch content for Ireland and the UK! He already has a post up on the success of Europe's Seedcamp and the six teams who won funding. Keep your eye on http://uk.techcrunch.com/ for more TechCrunch-related news in Ireland and in the UK.
Web2Ireland Week: Web2Ireland.org represents Web 2.0 here in Ireland. They are helping to organize a variety of events during the week of September 10th - September 14th including a Paddy's Valley Meet-up, an OpenCoffee and the DemoBar. Also in conjunction with the DemoBar is the FOWA (Future of Web Apps) Roadtrip. Information about these events can be found here.
BarCamp Galway: BarCamp Galway takes place on September 22nd in, where else, Galway! It's a free conference for people who are passionate about technology. Find out more information, volunteer, or pick a topic to speak about here.
Silverlight Event: More details to come on this, but block your calendars for Thursday, September 27th at Cineworld in Dublin. I'll be talking about Silverlight, of course, as well as Expression and dynamic languages.
Welcome to our first episode of Net Nuggets! In this webcast, I will show you how to use (the newly released) Expression Encoder to easily turn your videos into Silverlight web applications!
Net Nuggets are a new series of (hopefully) helpful and informational webcasts, podcasts and videos that you'll be seeing weekly on the Ireland DPE blog. If there are specific topics you'd like us to cover or things you have questions about, don't hesitate to contact us and let us know!
By the way - this video is a Silverlight application of course as well, and it's being hosted by Silverlight Streaming! For information on how to host your own applications on Silverlight Streaming, check out http://silverlight.live.com/. It's free!
Just added details of the Innovate On program to the Microsoft Ireland ISV Resources page. Innovate On provides a set of product portals where you can find tools and technologies to develop your products more quickly. For example, if you want to ensure that your solutions qualify for the Certified for Windows Server 2008 logo, you'll find resources there that can help.
So I use VPCs quite a lot and today I decided that I would test drive the upgrade experience from TFS 2005 to TFS 2008 beta 2. I have VPC that's fully tooled-up for VSTS 2005 with some existing team projects, code in source control and what have you. Here's what I found and hopefully you will find some of these resources useful:
0) Back up your databases. Do what I say, not what I do - I didn't bother because I'm using a VPC and can just throw away everything at the end :-)
1) Run the setup.exe for TFS 2008 beta 2 and kick off the install for TFS 2008
2) The only real hiccup I had in the whole process was the following dialog box:
You may or may not run into this - it depends on whether your existing installation is configured to use a local account or not. I was, so I saw the problem.
A quick look around and turns out there's a download available for beta 2: FIX: Upgrade to Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2008 Beta 2 fails with "There is no team project named in source control" or "TF220059: The installation process cannot continue"
You need to download that fix, update the two original beta2 files (TeamBuildUpgrade.exe and GetCurrentTfsProperties.exe) then kick off the install of TFS 2008 beta 2 again. As you can see below it picked up that I was upgrading:
Installation completed successfully this time round for me.
3) I then installed Team Foundation Build
After this there were a few things I needed to configure Build Agent ports and security. Rather than going into the details here I'll just reference the blog posts / online docs with the instructions I followed:
http://blogs.msdn.com/buckh/archive/2007/07/27/team-build-compatibility-between-2005-and-2008.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/buckh/archive/2007/07/20/tfs-2008-build-agent-configuration-options.aspx
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/9d102aca-89b5-4d1c-aafc-94590022a96a(VS.90).aspx (configuring ports)
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb552180(VS.90).aspx (wcfhttpconfig)
http://blogs.msdn.com/buckh/archive/2007/08/02/tfs-2008-beta-2-how-to-add-a-network-service-account-to-the-build-services-group.aspx
4) At this point I just fired up a copy of VS 2008 beta 2, pointed my Team Explorer at my TFS and migrated my solution to VS 2008 format and checked back in the updated files. I was then able to set up a CI build definition for the project which built successfully.
It all went pretty smoothly which was a nice validation of everything I had heard about the upgrade path.
One final thing I'd like to mention. I'm running the VPC on my laptop, so the Health Check came up with the following info for me about my VPC which I then proceeded to ignore :-)
Great news for Silverlight fans: the release to web of Silverlight 1.0 was announced this morning! Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in to allow rich media and interactive experiences on the web. Silverlight 1.0 includes a Javascript programming model, built-in codec support for VC-1 and WMV video plus WMA and MP3 audio, and rich graphics, animation & UI support. It also allows for streaming of media over the web. You can find out a lot more about the capabilities of Silverlight 1.0 at silverlight.net
Along with this, Microsoft announced the release to the web of one of my favorite products, Expression Encoder 1.0. Expression Encoder can be downloaded here. It's a great tool which will encode your media for you to use in Silverlight applications. It has a lot of slick features which I'll talk about in my next post. Expression Encoder makes it very easy and fast for you to create and share Silverlight media on the web.
SURPRISE ANNOUNCEMENT: Today Microsoft announced a partnership with Novell to provide Silverlight on Linux! This is really exciting news! The implementation of Silverlight on Linux will run in Frefox, Opera and Konqueror browsers and on all Linux distributions. Moonlight, as the project is called, will support both programming models of Silverlight, that is 1.0 Javascript & 1.1 .Net.
Want to create a custom search engine? It's pretty easy! All you need to do is to create a Live search macro for any topic, and a home page is automatically created for your macro so that you can bookmark it / share it etc - you just use the wizard and either specify a list of web sites or use full Live Search in conjunction with operators to create a custom search. You can create any number of macros for hobbies / work and even share them with other Windows Live users on the Windows Live Gallery.
Here's what the search engine homepage for the Developer and Platform Group in Microsoft Ireland looks like:
Currently it searches using the following definition:
site:http://blogs.msdn.com/ronang OR site:http://blogs.msdn.com/ckeogh OR site:http://blogs.msdn.com/martharotter OR site:http://blogs.msdn.com/ireland OR site:http://blogs.technet.com/daven OR http://blogs.msdn.com/clare_dillon
And here's what a typical set of results looks like:
It's a pretty neat way of limiting the scope of your searches. If you want to take things a step further you could take a look at the Live Search Interactive SDK which would allow you to
There is such a role in Microsoft as "ISV Developer Evangelist", and while that's not my official title a large portion of my job is focused on working with ISVs to make the best use of Microsoft technologies and to some extent to help them navigate both Microsoft the organisation and enormous product list of the company.
To this end I have created a page on my blog dedicated to topics and information of interest to ISVs in Ireland and Northen Ireland. Initially I have included links to relevant training and licensing programs, but over time I want it to grow into a useful central resource where in addition to blog posts, you will find information on how to partner with Microsoft, Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) and links to support, partner programme and contact information.
Here's the link to the page: Ireland ISV Resources. To give you an idea of what's there, check out the ISV Innovation link. If you opt for Visual Studio 2008 you will find a link to a 4 part series on Visual Studio 2008, and an upcoming Web Seminar on VS 2008 (10th Sept 2007).
I'd be really interested as to whether you think this is a good idea and most importantly what information you'd like to see show up on this page. In fact if you have suggestions for guest content I would definitely like to hear from you.