Brian Keller: Technical Evangelist for Team System

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Virtual Machines Updated Again!

briankel — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 09:45:54 GMT

Brian Randell has once again updated the Visual Studio Team System 2008 virtual machines for us, since they were about to expire at the end of this year. The new batch includes the latest Windows Updates as well as a new expiration date – January 31, 2011.

This means it is also time to update my download manager post… I think this will make it the 5th edition of that blog post? So without further ado, start your download managers!

http://blogs.msdn.com/briankel/archive/2007/09/06/a-more-reliable-and-faster-download-experience-for-rosario-vs08-vpc-s.aspx

Now Available: Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Virtual Machines with Sample Data

briankel — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:01:00 GMT

Just in time for the holidays, we have posted a brand new virtual machine (VM) which is pre-configured with Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2, Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2, and sample data that you can use to help learn the product, perform demonstrations, etc. This VM included everything you need to learn and demonstrate the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) capabilities of Visual Studio 2010 beta 2 (with the exception of Lab Management). This VM is available in the virtualization platform of your choice (Hyper-V, Virtual PC 2007 SP1, and Windows [7] Virtual PC). Hyper-V is highly recommended because of the performance benefits and snapshotting capabilities.

We also have a preliminary set of 7 hands-on labs (which also double as demo scripts) that you can go through with this VM, with more in the works. Note that each lab/demo is designed to work in isolation from the other labs/demos, so be sure to have a rollback strategy in place (VPC undo disk / Hyper-V snapshots) prior to working on a lab/demo. To download these labs please visit http://cid-8c96cc4d0756cacb.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public/Blog%20Attachments/2010%20Beta%202%20Labs?uc=3 (you can click on “Download as ZIP file” to grab everything at once). These labs will be making their way into a refresh of the Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit soon. The “Working with the Visual Studio 2010 Virtual Machine” document is a work in progress and will be updated in the coming days, but for now it should have everything you need to get started. Any questions, just ask… feedback on these labs/demos is welcome!

This image will effectively stop working on April 9, 2010 when the SQL Server Trial stops working. You will also receive Windows activation messages while using this VM – this is because of the way Windows Server 2008 trial behaves and is to be expected, so you can ignore / cancel these activation dialogs when prompted. If you want to get rid of these activation warnings you can activate the image using your own product key (e.g. from your MSDN Subscription). You may want to do the same for the copy of Office which is installed, and even update SQL Server to a full version if you are feeling bold.

I suggest using a download manager for these files since they are very large. My download manager of choice is Free Download Manager. You can use your own favorite download manager, but you may need to adapt the instructions below as appropriate.

Download and install Free Download Manager. This utility provides:
- Auto-resume support for interrupted downloads.
- Multiple simultaneous download streams for (usually) a much faster download experience.
- As the name implies, it's completely free.
Select the appropriate URL’s depending on your preferred virtualization platform and copy (CTRL+C) them to your clipboard.

###Select This Section and Copy It (CTRL+C) For VS2010 Beta 2 Hyper-V - Do Not Include This Line###
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0001.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0002.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0003.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0004.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0005.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0006.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0007.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0008.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0009.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0010.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0011.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0012.rar
###End - Do Not Include This Row In Your Selection###

###Select This Section and Copy It (CTRL+C) For VS2010 Beta 2 Windows [7] Virtual PC - Do Not Include This Line###
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0001.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0001.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0002.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0003.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0004.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0005.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0006.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0007.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0008.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0009.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0010.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0011.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0012.rar
###End - Do Not Include This Row In Your Selection###

###Select This Section and Copy It (CTRL+C) For VS2010 Beta 2 Virtual PC 2007 SP1 - Do Not Include This Line###
http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0001.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0002.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0003.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0004.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0005.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0006.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0007.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0008.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0009.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0010.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0011.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0012.rar
###End - Do Not Include This Row In Your Selection###
Launch the user interface for Free Download Manager (either from the Start Menu or via the system tray icon if FDM is already running).
Click File -> Import -> Import List of URLs from Clipboard.
When prompted for a download group, accept the default and click OK.
You are now free to minimize Free Download Manager while the files download. By default, they will be saved to c:\downloads.
Note: It may take up to 24 hours from when this post is published for the files to become available in your region as they replicate across our CDN. You can easily select all files within Free Download Manager and select “Start Download” if they fail the first time.

The download details pages contain more information on each of these releases.

Download details pages:

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (Hyper-V)

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (Windows [7] Virtual PC)

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (Virtual PC 2007 SP1)

Remember that you can install all of this software for yourself by downloading the installers from here.

Happy downloading!

Using a download manager to quickly download Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

briankel — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:40:00 GMT

10/21 Update: These instructions now include public links to the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 ISO’s.

The instructions in this blog post are meant to accompany 10-4 Episode 33: Downloading and Installing Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. Please view that video for additional context, including a step-by-step walkthrough for installing Visual Studio 2010 beta 2.

Note that the ISO’s for Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Ultimate are are multi-part RAR files. After you download these files run the first file in each set (the EXE) and it will extract the ISO file for you.

Download and install Free Download Manager. This utility provides:
- Auto-resume support for interrupted downloads.
- Multiple simultaneous download streams for (usually) a much faster download experience.
- As the name implies, it's completely free.
Select the following list of URL’s and copy (CTRL+C) them to your clipboard. You can select all four files at the same time.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/5/c/85c7cca1-7d25-4c9b-85fc-5e837a393a0b/WS08_RTM_x86_EnterpriseVHD.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/C/0/9C036510-3218-4258-8B03-67DC1D6A497C/SQLFULL_ENU.iso
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/B/7/1B71259E-9D37-4EB7-BC8A-1B53DF7C7D86/VS2010B2TFS_3PartsTotal.part1.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/B/7/1B71259E-9D37-4EB7-BC8A-1B53DF7C7D86/VS2010B2TFS_3PartsTotal.part2.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/B/7/1B71259E-9D37-4EB7-BC8A-1B53DF7C7D86/VS2010B2TFS_3PartsTotal.part3.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/A/1/FA1DAEA6-B719-461D-96B0-31C9C63680C8/VS2010B2Ult_4PartsTotal.part1.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/A/1/FA1DAEA6-B719-461D-96B0-31C9C63680C8/VS2010B2Ult_4PartsTotal.part2.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/A/1/FA1DAEA6-B719-461D-96B0-31C9C63680C8/VS2010B2Ult_4PartsTotal.part3.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/A/1/FA1DAEA6-B719-461D-96B0-31C9C63680C8/VS2010B2Ult_4PartsTotal.part4.rar
Launch the user interface for Free Download Manager (either from the Start Menu or via the system tray icon if FDM is already running).
Click File -> Import -> Import List of URLs from Clipboard.
When prompted for a download group, accept the default ("Other") and click OK.
You are now free to minimize Free Download Manager while the files download. By default, they will be saved to c:\downloads.

Remember to watch 10-4 Episode 33: Downloading and Installing Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 for additional instructions on how to install these files.

Download links for other Visual Studio 2010 SKU’s (e.g. Express, Agents, etc.) can be found here.

Get ready to “go live” with Team Foundation Server 2010 beta 2!

briankel — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:50:00 GMT

Beta 2 of Team Foundation Server 2010 is ~~going to be~~ available ~~very soon~~ NOW! - ~~unfortunately that’s all that the marketing team will let me tell you right now. :-)~~ But the best news is that beta 2 of Team Foundation Server 2010 will have a “go live” license, meaning that you can use it for your day-to-day application building (unlike beta 1 which was limited to just evaluation, tire kicking, learning the new features, etc.). There will also be some (limited) support available to help you adopt beta 2. We are ramping up our product support teams now to help you take advantage of this option. ~~More details later on what “go live” means exactly and how we’ll be helping your organization take advantage of it…~~ More details on the Beta 2 "go live" can be found here.

But in preparation for beta 2, there are some things that you can be doing now in order to take advantage of the release as soon as it’s available for download. The Team Foundation Server product team has put together some great guidance which can give you a checklist of things to do as you prepare to take advantage of beta 2. This guidance is available as an overview in a PowerPoint deck, or in greater detail in the Word document. I’ve uploaded both of them for you to check out.

Overview presentation (.PPTX)
Detailed checklist (.DOCX)

These documents are somewhat rough (our professional writers were hard at work on the product documentation for beta 2!) but they should give you a good framework with which to begin having discussions within your organization about adopting Team Foundation Server 2010 beta 2.

Was this helpful? Is there more that we can be doing to help you get ready? I would love to hear from you (either via my blog comments, or you can email me directly).

Visual Studio: The Documentary

briankel — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:39:22 GMT

It’s here! Our team just published Visual Studio: The Documentary to Channel 9. I had the opportunity to help contribute to this piece and I’m really proud to see the finished product. Tina and team did a great job of pulling together lots of historical content, interviews, screenshots, box shots, random tidbits, etc. to really tell the story of Visual Studio past, present, and future.

Part 1

Part 2

If you like this style of documentary you may also want to go back and watch The History of Microsoft, which is another documentary that Tina produced for Channel 9. I love this stuff…

Slides from my TechEd Brazil Sessions

briankel — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:55:00 GMT

Last month I had the opportunity to visit Brazil and present at TechEd Brazil 2009 to share my passion about what’s coming in Visual Studio Team System 2010.

I finally got around to uploading my slides from two of my presentations. The decks aren’t scripted so if you weren’t at my talk you might be missing some of the context required to understand what I was talking about, but there’s a lot of content in there which may still be useful if you’re trying to wrap your head around what’s coming in VSTS 2010.

ALM201 - New Features in Visual Studio Team System 2010
This session will be a quick tour through some of the great new features coming in Visual Studio Team System 2010. This includes new project management capabilities (hierarchical work items, agile reporting, iteration planning, MOSS dashboards); branching and merging visualizations; new tools for application architecture; historical debugging; test impact analysis; and a brief overview of the new testing capabilities (for more on testing see my other session!).

ALM302 - Software Testing with Visual Studio Team System 2010
Are you tired of spending hours trying to reproduce and diagnose bugs? Do you have a hard time getting testers and developers to talk to each other? Is it difficult to determine which tests are most important to run after you produce a new build?

If so then this session is for you! Software testing is perhaps the #1 area of investment for Visual Studio Team System 2010. During this session we will explore manual testing, lab management, data diagnostics adapters, the “actionable bug”, functional UI testing, test impact analysis, and much, much more which will help you more easily find and eliminate defects from your software.

This was a really fun set of sessions to deliver. Unfortunately it’s impossible to cover everything that makes up Visual Studio Team System 2010 in two hours – there’s just too much good stuff coming out!

Why BCC can be bad thing for large email distribution lists (and what to do about it)

briankel — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:43:23 GMT

If you work at a large company like I do, then you probably participate in at least a handful of email distribution lists. An email distribution list is a single email address (e.g. example@microsoft.com) which allows you to send a mail to one address which is then delivered to 1 or more people (potentially even thousands of people).

A common practice is to use inbox filtering rules (such as those offered by Microsoft Outlook) to route mail sent to these distribution lists into a subfolder in your inbox. This way when I’m interested in catching up on the latest discussions on a particular topic I can browse that subfolder instead of being constantly barraged with such messages in my main inbox.

So far so good, right? The problem that happens is when somebody decides to take a discussion “offline” by BCC’ing the distribution list. The intention is good, and goes something like this:

Original mail
From: Joe
To: Widgets Discussion
Hey everybody! I need help selling a Widget to my customer in North Dakota. Who can help? – Joe

Reply:
From: Steve
To: Joe
Bcc: Widgets Discussion
Hi Joe,
I can help, let’s take it offline. Bcc’ing Widgets Discussion. – Steve

Now when Joe replies he will only be replying to Steve, since there’s no need to involve the rest of the Widgets Discussion distribution list. This reduces “noise” for the rest of the Widgets Discussion recipients who don’t need to be involved with Joe and Steve’s ongoing sale discussion. Good, right? Yes, but the problem is that when Steve bcc’d the Widgets Discussion alias it broke inbox filtering rules. Inbox filtering rules such as these rely on knowing that the message was sent to the Widgets Discussion alias in order to route it to the appropriate inbox subfolder – but with a bcc you don’t get that information (that’s the whole purpose of a blind carbon copy). Now every one of the hundreds (thousands?) of people on the Widgets Discussion alias just got a message in their inboxes that they have to manage (e.g. delete) instead of just having that message land in the appropriate subfolder.

So what’s the alternative?

A much better alternative which allows for the inbox filtering rules to continue to operate and for Steve to take the discussion offline is for Steve to simply send two mails. So the conversation would go like this:

Original mail
From: Joe
To: Widgets Discussion
Hey everybody! I need help selling a Widget to my customer in North Dakota. Who can help? – Joe

Reply to all:
From: Steve
To: Joe; Widgets Discussion
Hi Joe,
I can help, let’s take it offline. I will email you separately. – Steve

Private reply:
From: Steve
To: Joe
Hi Joe,
I’d love to help. I’ve sold lots of Widgets in North Dakota. Do you have time on Thursday to meet? – Steve

Notice that the first reply was sent to everybody, and the second reply was sent only to Joe. This extra step takes a few extra seconds on behalf of Steve, but can save the hundreds or thousands of people on the Widgets Discussion from getting the “inbox spam” which occurs when the act of BCC’ing breaks your inbox filtering rules.

Think this could work for you or somebody you know? Please pass it along! Here’s an easy-to-remember URL: http://tinyurl.com/FightInboxSpam

Zoom in/out with Visual Studio 2010 editor

briankel — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:27:28 GMT

Edit: The keyboard shortcuts below will only work with builds of Visual Studio 2010 post-beta 1. So this is something to look forward to for beta 2, coming “soon”!

Visual Studio 2010 now supports the ability to zoom in and out of the text editor by using the mouse wheel. I love this feature for a couple of reasons:

- Makes it easy to pop in and out of your code to toggle between the “big picture” and “code level” views.

- Very nice when showing code to a group, such as during a demo to a large audience, or during team code reviews.

But what if you don’t have a mouse wheel? It turns out that there are keyboard shortcuts for this.

Functionality	Command	Keyboard Shortcut
Zoom in	View.ZoomIn	Ctrl+Shift+period
Zoom out	View.ZoomOut	Ctrl+Shift+comma

The team has also added a zoom indicator in beta 2, similar to what you see in other applications like IE or Word. Here’s a screenshot:

Thanks to Brittany Behrens on the VS Editor team for this information. Check out the VS Editor blog for more great tips on the new Visual Studio 2010 editor!

Faster bootup time (sort of) for Windows

briankel — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:47:14 GMT

When Windows boots up, it will automatically start many of your services prior to you even logging in. This means that by the time you log in, many of the services your machine uses are already started and you don’t have to wait for them to launch.

But your startup applications (like Outlook, Messenger, etc.) don’t start up automatically until you actually log in. This is “by design” in Windows since (among other reasons) until you log in, Windows doesn’t know which user you are going to sign in as and hence which user’s applications and application settings should be used.

This past week, I was in a discussion with some colleagues over this fact. We all agreed that if you’re the only person who uses the machine (the only user) then it would be really nice to have all of your applications start up automatically before you even log in. This way you could boot up your machine in the morning, go grab your coffee, log into your PC and start working right away.

I came up with a solution (ok, a “hack”) which allows this to work. My friend Steve Smith did a great job of blogging the process I outlined, so I’ll just link to his post. As Steve points out this is not without its risks (it creates a couple of security holes) but if you are a good steward of your PC’s physical security (and making sure you lock it when you’re away) then it should be an acceptable solution.

I’ve tested this on Windows 7 but it should work on most (all?) versions of Windows. Well, except for Windows 3.1, of course… which means I’ve just alienated part of my blog readership. Sorry, guys.

Visual Studio Team System Rangers Web Site Goes Live

briankel — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:00:04 GMT

The Visual Studio Team Systems Rangers is a group that I’ve been fortunate to work with for the past few years. They consist of VSTS product team members, top-notch Microsoft Consulting Services specialists, and VSTS MVP’s who have a straightforward mission of creating great content for Visual Studio Team System. In the past this content has included whitepapers, training content, add-ins, power tools, and more, all targeted at accelerating the adoption of Visual Studio Team System.

Until recently, the VSTS Rangers team has been working pretty much “behind the scenes” – they work on a lot projects which get surfaced via services engagements, or via sites like Codeplex, but they didn’t generally maintain a very public-facing brand. But as their resume for producing killer content has grown, they are now becoming something of their own brand. This is great to see, since you know that if you are checking out a project produced by the Rangers it is sure to be a good one.

Which leads us to… the VSTS Rangers Web site. My friend Willy-Peter summarized the new site on his blog. If you work with Visual Studio Team System, then this is a must-have site on your list of favorites.

And on that note, I’m very excited about the latest project I’m working with the Rangers on… stay tuned for more about that coming at the end of September.

This Week on Channel 9 with Amanda Silver

briankel — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 08:56:14 GMT

Despite Dan being gone on paternity leave (we miss you Dan!) it’s been a great month for This Week on Channel 9 due to the great guest hosts we’ve been getting!

This week we were lucky enough to get Amanda Silver to drop on by. Amanda has been on Channel 9 in the past and is always exploring new ways to improve life for developers. Check out this week’s episode to watch Amanda school me on STM.NET and tell us how she uses Sketchflow! Amanda also talks about her former life as a Unix sysadmin – nice!

Next week I’ll be on the road teaching customers about VSTS 2010, but we have two awesome guest hosts lined up… stay tuned!

Habib Heydarian visits This Week on Channel 9!

briankel — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:52:04 GMT

When it comes to developing software, Habib Heydarian is one of my personal heroes. Not only is he a brilliant guy with a lot of great ideas about the future of software development, but he is also passionate about teaching people about software and showing off the cool stuff his team is working on. Check out his blog to see what I mean.

I had the pleasure of having Habib on This Week on Channel 9 today for a chat. I especially loved Habib’s explanation of Spec# and Boogie.

10-4 Episode 30: Database Schema Extensibility

briankel — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:57:12 GMT

Visual Studio Team System 2005 saw the introduction of the Team Edition for Database Professionals product, which allows database developers to perform such functions as version control, unit testing, test data generation, refactoring and more against SQL Server databases. In Visual Studio Team System 2010, Microsoft made this area of the product extensible in order to support 3rd party databases. Quest Software is hard at work on a database schema provider to support Oracle database development from within Visual Studio Team System 2010.

In this 10-4 episode I sat down with Daniel Norwood of Quest Software to get an early look at "Project Fuze."

PDC Workshop Announced: Developing Quality Software using Visual Studio Team System 2010

briankel — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 05:47:08 GMT

It’s that time of year! Today we launched the Microsoft PDC 2009 registration and announced some of the sessions which will be presented.

There is a lot of great content coming to this year’s PDC, but I wanted to call out one piece in particular that I’m particularly proud of. The Developing Quality Software using Visual Studio Team System 2010 workshop will happen the day before PDC and is a really great way to come up to speed on Visual Studio Team System 2010. Todd and Chris are rock star presenters who are extremely excited about presenting on this topic, so this promises to be a valuable session. Since it’s a workshop happening the day before PDC officially begins you will need to specify that you want to attend this during your PDC registration, so be sure to consider it as you are planning your trip to L.A.

Developing Quality Software using Visual Studio Team System 2010

Todd Girvin, Chris Tullier

Poor software quality causes unnecessary losses for companies every year. Learn how Visual Studio Team System 2010's new code quality features can improve your teams ability to discover flaws early and to better understand the root cause of any issue. There are tools for everybody including architects, developers, managers, and testers.

During this full-day workshop, we’ll start at the beginning with requirements and design, and then move into unit testing, debugging, testing, and collaboration. We will complement these with demonstrations of code quality best practices that have proven to work on a variety of projects. Come see how much easier it can be to improve code quality by using VSTS 2010!

I hope to see you there!

10-4 Episode 28: An Introduction to the Historical Debugger

briankel — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 21:06:33 GMT

The new Historical Debugger coming in Visual Studio Team System 2010 promises to revolutionize the way you debug managed applications. You can think of it as something of a VCR for your debugger; "rewind" the debugging trace to examine the state of your application at various points in time so you can all-but-eliminate the guesswork about where to place your breakpoints prior to pressing F5.

To view comments or leave your own for this video please visit Channel 9.

This quick overview screencast will give you just a taste of the capabilities offered by the Historical Debugger. For more information check out:
http://www.tinyurl.com/ProteusBehindTheScenes
http://blogs.msdn.com/HabibH