Desultory of an Architect - Christian Thilmany's Blog : Team Foundation Server

Updated Team System Futures Content on codeplex.com -- Team System 2008 and Beyond

Christian J. Thilmany — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:16:00 GMT

Team System 2008 and Beyond (90 Minutes)

Team System 2008 provides allot quality feature improvements over 2005 and with the release of VS 2008 SP1 many more options are now available. Although Rosario is months away we also take a good look at what lies ahead and how Team System will target new roles such as the pure tester as well as the business analyst.

Through slides and demonstrations, this session will provide some of the highlights of those new features in VSTS 2008, SP1, and Rosario using SP1 Beta and CTP12 of Rosario. We will demonstrate the new Test Runner as well as the new Test Case Manager Interface. We will demonstrate historical debugging and even take a look at the facelift that Team Architect has been given.

Go to www.codeplex.com/almspecialisttoolkit for details.

Expression Studio Content to come .......

Using Team System Web Access using HTTPS

Christian J. Thilmany — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:05:00 GMT

You can use HTPS with TSWA with Forms based authentication. We do have customers using it with SSL, and some of our own internal deployments using it.

Enabling SSL is just like enabling it for a regular IIS website.

Bypassing Prompt using VSSConverter Utility When Converting From VSS to TFS

Christian J. Thilmany — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:12:00 GMT

http://www.epocalipse.com/blog/2006/04/05/vssconverter-tip/

If you need to run VSSConverter (The command line utility to migrate SourceSafe projects to Team Foundation Source Control ) from a batch file and you don’t want the utility to prompt for the VSS admin password, you can set the environment variable SourceSCMPasswd to the admin password and set HATCONTESTING to “yes”

vssconv.bat:
set SourceSCMPasswd=VssPassword
set HATCONTESTING=yes
vssconverter.exe migrate settings.xml

Microsoft Support for Team Foundation Server with Non-MS Virtualized S/W

Christian J. Thilmany — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:28:00 GMT

If anyone are curious about what Microsoft’s official support policy for TFS in a non-MS virtualized environment (e.g. VMWare, etc.) here it is. Key points hightlighted. Basically having premier services makes this better but either way they may have to duplicate the issue in a non-virtualized environment to get support.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897615/en-gb

Except as described in this article, Microsoft does not test or support Microsoft software running together with non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software. For Microsoft customers who do not have a Premier-level support agreement, Microsoft will require that the issue to be reproduced independently from the non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software. Where the issue is confirmed to be unrelated to the non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software, Microsoft will support its software in a manner that is consistent with support provided when that software is not running together with non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software.

For Microsoft Premier-level support customers running non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software from vendors with which Microsoft does not have an established support relationship that covers virtualization solutions, Microsoft will use commercially reasonable efforts to investigate potential issues with Microsoft software running together with non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software. As part of that investigation, Microsoft may require the issue to be reproduced independently from the non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software. Where issues are confirmed to be unrelated to the non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software, Microsoft will support its software in a manner that is consistent with support provided when that software is not running together with non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software.

New Team System Content --> From Performance Tuning to Testing to General ALM. Announcing the ALM Specialist Toolkit!!!!!!!!!

Christian J. Thilmany — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 04:15:00 GMT

Ok way too long for my own good but I need to pick up allot of slack when it comes to sharing these days. My half year resolution (read: beginning of FY09 for us at Microsoft) begins today and blogging is the included endeavor. I've been busy with a few things I'd like to share mostly work related in the areas of ALM, Team Suite, and UX experiences (does experience get cancelled out here? :-)). Let me first begin by sharing out a content project I've been working on to help partners and customers get more familiar with Visual Studio Team Suite and Team Foundation Server. This content has been put together over the last year and varies from focusing on Team System Overviews to Profiling to Web Testing, to Code Analysis to Customizing Team Foundation Server so on and so forth. If you are interested in any of these sessions feel free to download them at your leisure.

You can download the abstract plus the sessions at: www.codeplex.com/almspecialisttoolkit

Here are just a few the abstracts for that content:

Session Title

Description

Customizing Team Foundation Server 2008 (2 Hours)

Team System provides allot of out of the box features and templates such as MSF for Agile. However, in many cases you may need to customize elements of Team Foundation Server to fit your organization and your requirements.

Through slides and demonstrations, this session will provide an introduction into the “What, How, Why, and Who” of customizing Team Foundation Server. You will learn what can be customized from Process Templates to Reports to simple configurations. You will also learn when you customize and who can help you with that work. Demos are open ended and depend on what areas of customization are important to the customer e.g. process template editor.

Session Title

Description

Improving Application Performance using Team Suite (60 Minutes)

What is Team Suite and how can it be used to improve application quality? Specifically what components in the Team Developer and Test Edition of Team System 2008 can be used to improve application performance from web applications to smart client applications?

Through slides and demonstrations, this one hour session will introduce Team Edition for Developers and Team Edition for Testers from a performance tuning perspective. We will discuss and demonstrate how to use code metrics, web testing (including web services), load testing, targeted code analysis, and profiling dashboards. We will discuss how you can use Team Suite to tune the performance of any application and how to eliminate the complexity and noise of these tools by focusing on what is important.

Session Title

Description

What’s New in Team System 2008 (90 Minutes)

With the next major version of Team System code-named “Rosario” still months away Team System 2008 provided an incremental yet significant step forward to improving Team Development. Many of the features of Team System 2005 were significantly improved and a few new features have been added.

Through slides and demonstrations, this session will introduce these new capabilities comparing what was in Team System 2005 with what is now included with 2008. We will demonstrate both new Team Foundation Server and Team Client features such as Annotations, Folder Compares, Code Metrics, Profile Hot Pathing, Improved Web Testing, Improved Load Testing, and more.

Session Title

Description

ALM Executive Value (90 Minutes)

Despite years of effort to improve, building software solutions to address business challenges continues to be exceptionally difficult and, more often than not, less than entirely successful.

This session will introduce Microsoft’s approach to helping teams overcome common development challenges, more effectively manage the application lifecycle, improve project success rates and focus on the delivery of high quality solutions that correctly address business needs.

Session Title

Description

Value-Up Software Development (60 Minutes)

What is Value-Up software development? What’s the big deal about Agile methods? How can Team System help development teams take a value-up approach to building solutions?

This one hour session will briefly introduce the concepts behind value-up software development, a way of building software that incrementally delivers business value. We will also discuss the Agile methodologies that support this concept and how this approach delivers business value to end users sooner while enabling the constant refinement of requirements necessary to building the proper solution to effectively address business needs.

Session Title

Description

Team System 2008 for Developers (60 Minutes)

What is Team Suite? What components make up the Developer Edition of Team System and how can it be used to improve development quality?

Through slides and demonstrations, this one hour session will introduce Team Edition for Developers. We will discuss and demonstrate how to use code metrics, unit testing, code analysis, and profiling. We will also demonstrate TDD with unit testing and how Team Foundation Server can be added to play a big role in improving test result reporting and build management.

Session Title

Description

Team System 2008 for Testers (60 Minutes)

What is Team System? What components make up the Team System Ecosystem? How can Team System help improve the quality of my applications through testing? What testing features are currently in this version of Team System? How can Team Foundation Server be used to manage Test Cases?

Through slides and demonstrations, this one hour session will briefly introduce Team Foundation Server (TFS) as well as focus on the Team Edition for Testers product. We will discuss and demonstrate how to create tests ranging from web tests, manual tests, generic tests, load tests, and ordered tests. We will also demonstrate unit testing and how TFS can play a big role in improving test result reporting and collaboration.

Session Title

Description

Team System 2008 for Database Professionals (60 Minutes)

What is Team System? What components make up the Team System Ecosystem? How can Team System help improve the quality of my database-based applications? What schema design, testing, comparison, and data deployment features are currently in this version of Team System? How do I include database deployment in my automated build?

Through slides and demonstrations, this one hour session will briefly introduce Team Foundation Server (TFS) as well as focus on the Team Edition for Database Professionals product. We will discuss and demonstrate how to import database schemas, work in an ALM world, learn how to leverage source control with database artifacts, create database unit tests, leverage data generation features, and much more.

Session Title

Description

Team Development With SharePoint (90 Minutes)

Are you new to Lifecycle Management (ALM) yet part of the SharePoint Development Team within your organization? Want to leverage SharePoint development best practices such as testing for performance across all SharePoint projects?

Through slides and demonstrations, this session will introduce these team best practices that can be utilized by SharePoint development teams by using Team Foundation Server and the Visual Studio Team Editions. We will explore how to leverage Team Suite to test portals, web parts and integrated applications and take a quick look at how SharePoint developers can leverage Team System as a whole.

Session Title

Description

Team System 2008 for Java Developers (60 Minutes)

Similar to the Session above “Team System – Not Just for .NET Developers” however this session dives a little deeper into the aspects of using the Teamprise Plug-in and only focuses on Java.

Through slides and demonstrations, this session will introduce these capabilities and explore what can be done with Team Foundation Server for Java Developers using Eclipse and the Teamprise 3.0 Plug-in, the Teamprise 3.0 Command Line Tools, and Teamprise 3.0 Explorer. We will specifically look at how the new version has added build support for managing Ant builds using Team Build and how customizations can be made to support most third party java tools e.g. Unit Testing and Code Coverage.

Team System and Team Foundation Server Java Capability Matrix

Christian J. Thilmany — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 23:51:00 GMT

I wanted to put together the java functionality covered by Team System to communicate the value of TFS even with the java community. For those writing java applications with Eclipse, TFS is a very viable option with the addition of a plug-in from Teamprise. Along with TFS web interface called Team Web Access TFS now becomes a truly cross-platform alternative for ALM.

	Java Dev	Java Dev	.NET Dev	.NET Dev
Capability	Teamprise V2 for Eclipse	Teamprise V3 for Eclipse ***	Team Explorer for VSTS 2005	Team Explorer for VSTS 2008
Basic Version Control	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Advanced Version Control	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Integrated Build Management	Yes with Ant	Yes	Yes	Yes
Continuous Integration	Yes with CruiseControl and CruiseControl TFS Plug-in	Yes with CruiseControl and CruiseControl TFS Plug-in	Yes with CruiseControl or any third party CI Tool	Yes
Basic Build Reporting	Yes with Teamprise MS Build Ant Tasks	Yes	Yes	Yes
Advanced Build Reporting	Yes with Teamprise MS Build Ant Tasks **	Yes with Teamprise MS Build Ant Tasks **
Basic Test Case Management	Third Party	Third Party	Yes	Yes
Advanced Test Case Management	Third Party	Third Party	Third Party or Rosario	Third Party or Rosario
Basic Requirements Management	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Advanced Requirements Management	Third Party or Rosario	Third Party or Rosario	Third Party or Rosario	Third Party or Rosario
Work Item Tracking and Full Life Cycle Management	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Integrated Project Reporting	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
External Project Access (Any Browser)	Yes - Teamprise Not Required	Yes - Teamprise Not Required	Yes - Team Explorer Not Required	Yes - Team Explorer Not Required
Configurable Process	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Document Management	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Office Integration	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Integrated Unit Testing	Yes with JUnit	Yes with JUnit	Yes	Yes
Automated Testing	Yes with JUnit	Yes with JUnit	Yes	Yes
Optimized Support for Distributed Teams via Proxy Server	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Command Line Access	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Code Coverage	Yes (Several Plug-ins Available)	Yes (Several Plug-ins Available)	Yes	Yes
Support for Linux, Mac OS, and other Unix	Yes	Yes	N/A	N/A