Do you remember the good ol' days before the ApplicationException class in the .NET Framework became " persona non grata "? I sure do. If you were to look at .NET code that I wrote years ago, you'd probably see ApplicationException being used all over the place. After all, this seemed like a great...

In a previous post , I mentioned an issue I've been having with Expression Web 4 crashing on me. In that post, I mentioned a few ways that you can create a mini-dump for a process (e.g. with Visual Studio, WinDbg, or ADPlus). A couple of weeks ago, one of the developers on the Expression Web team...

Another "hiccup" this week after upgrading my Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2008 environment to TFS 2010 ... This morning I discovered that when you upgrade a managed C++ project from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2010, the project is updated automatically to target .NET Framework 4. Unlike most...

Here's another issue I encountered when upgrading my Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2008 environment to TFS 2010 ... While it's generally a good assumption that a solution that builds without error in Visual Studio 2008 (and on a TFS 2008 build server) will build without error after updating the solution...

After upgrading my Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2008 environment to TFS 2010 , I found that I needed to tweak my TfsBuild.proj file in order to successfully build on my new TFS 2010 build server. In a previous post, I detailed the process that I recommend for incrementing the assembly version with...

Last week I installed Visual Studio 2010 on my primary desktop. This morning, I opened my Fabrikam.Demo solution in the new version of Visual Studio, but chose not to upgrade the target framework when prompted by Visual Studio during the solution upgrade. In other words, I chose to leave the Target framework...

In my previous post , I extolled my love of typed DataSets in .NET because they are not only quick to design and update, but also very easy to understand. Essentially, if you can read an entity-relationship model (à la ERwin or a Visio database diagram) -- which I suspect nearly all developers...

First off, my apologies to Paul Simon regarding the title of this blog post -- but I simply couldn't resist ;-) When architecting and building solutions for customers, I tend to make heavy use of typed DataSets. I believe I used them on my very first .NET project almost ten years ago, because I...

In my previous post , I provided a walkthrough of Test-Driven Development (TDD), based on a very simple scenario (truncating a string to a specific number of characters). In this post, I'll provide another example using a more complex scenario. Suppose that we are developing a Web application and...

In part 1 of this post , I provided my high-level thoughts on doing Test Driven Development (TDD) in the real world, but I didn't get around to walking through an actual sample. To start off simple (but still real world), let's imagine we have a scenario where we need to truncate a string to a limited...

Earlier today I presented a "Knowledge Transfer" session to a team of developers on my current project. If you've ever worked with consultants, you've probably experienced a "KT" session or something similar. In essence, it's just a meeting intended to cover one particular feature area of the solution...

Last month I wrote a post detailing how to increment the assembly version for each build . However, incrementing the assembing version is only part of my recommended build and deployment process . The following figure illustrates how deployments to the Development environment (DEV) are automated using...

A few years ago I developed a class ( SharePointSearchUrlBuilder ) for working with SharePoint Search URLs. The class is used to easily build or parse the various query string parameters used by SharePoint Search (e.g. keywords, search scope, additional query terms, etc.) and serves as the foundation...

Last summer I wrote a post about best practices for .NET assembly versioning and made the following statement: The AssemblyFileVersionAttribute should be incremented automatically as part of the build process. In the comments for that post, someone asked exactly what I meant by that -- specifically...

Last summer I wrote a post introducing my simple, but highly effective approach to logging -- including a Logger class that is really just a thin wrapper around the System.Diagnostics.TraceSource class. A few months ago, I enhanced the Logger class to log exceptions in a consistent fashion. I used...

If you've ever worked with me on a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 project -- or if you've read my Sample Walkthrough of the DR.DADA Approach to SharePoint -- then you've probably seen the following comment: Note: Referenced assemblies must be specified with a path corresponding...

I added another tool to my Toolbox yesterday: SketchPath. The SketchPath site labels it as "The XPath Tool" but I'd say it more like " The XPath Tool." I've seen a few other tools for quickly building and testing XPath expressions against an XML document, but they pale in comparison to SketchPath...

As I mentioned in my previous post , this week I incorporated Password Minder into my "Toolbox" Visual Studio solution that is scheduled to build daily through Team Foundation Server (TFS). It's not that I really need daily builds of Password Minder; rather it's just been something on my "TO DO" list...

In my previous post , I briefly mentioned the Code Analysis feature of Visual Studio in the context of using check-in policies with Team Foundation Server (TFS). However, there's a lot more to talk about with regards to using Code Analysis. If you are ever find yourself "starting from a clean slate...

I love using Team Foundation Server (TFS). There's just an amazing amount of "goodness" for software development that comes out-of-the-box; and there's even more available from Microsoft and other sources in the form of add-ons (many of which are free). From a source control perspective, one of my...

In a previous post, I briefly discussed a simple branching strategy for Team Foundation Server (TFS). This was somewhat of a follow-up to another post in which I briefly referenced a great article titled The Importance of Branching Models in SCM . If you haven't read this article, I highly recommend...

This post provides a high-level walkthrough of the build and deployment process that I typically recommend on projects that I am involved with. It includes a series of illustrations that capture key concepts at various points in time. Specific parts of the process -- such as the development and build...

I started another new project this week. Typically one of the first tasks on any new development project is to create a Development Plan that provides consistent guidelines and processes for the Development team. On this new project, another Microsoft consultant had already created a draft of the...

In a previous post , I briefly touched on the "DEV-TEST-PROD" triad of environments that I typically recommend (at a minimum) for every organization doing any form of software development. This post describes, in greater detail, the various environments used for developing, building, testing, and...

During the more than three years I spent helping Agilent Technologies migrate their Internet site from their legacy, proprietary platform to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007, we unfortunately never used Team Foundation Server (TFS). Instead, we used Visual SourceSafe (VSS) in combination...