Euan Garden's BLOG

When is a bug a bug and when is it an incomplete feature

2009-04-21T05:25:52Z

Had a fascinating conversation with one of our partners today, the meeting was about how they should be integrating all the new test artifacts in VSTS 2010 (Test Cases, Test Plans, Test Configs, Shared Steps, Test Points, Test Results) into their customised process guidance. They already have some Test artifacts in their current guidance and we were discussing how to morph that into the new world.

The conversation quickly turned to what we call the “No More No Repro Scenario”. This is where we file, with a min of mouse clicks, a bug with lots of data from the test case such as; video, historical debug log, steps, action log, screen shots, event log, etc etc etc.

In classic agile a bug that appears before a feature is “done done” in a sprint is just work that needs done to complete the feature and is treated like anything else on the Sprint backlog (it may require discussion but assuming its valid…). If the bug appears outside of a sprint or the bug is found in a area that is not currently being worked on then its a product bug and after review/prioritisation with the customer, it can be added to the Product backlog.

Hence in the case of the partner when they find a sprint related bug, its not filed as a bug as we know it, but a product bug can be a (WIT) bug.

Now the problem, we know how to file a rich bug to support the “No More No Repro” scenario, but if a (WIT) bug should not be filed but instead something added to the Sprint Backlog, how do we handle that from MTR? Well in reality we are not sure yet and that’s what we were discussing.

Incidentally we have a similar problem in Developer Division that we solved a different way. We work as feature crews in branches, we develop new features and when they are ready we integrate them into the parent branch and they work their way up the branch structure to Main, where we produce CTPs, Betas etc. We track bugs found and fixed before the feature is integrated (ie before it is done) differently than post integration bugs (or bugs found say in VS 2008 that may also apply to VS2010). We do this with an extra field on the bug WIT which dictates whether a given bug is a product bug (post integration/completion) or a feature bug (pre integration/completion). Some teams have a 0 tolerance(or very low “bug hell”) policy for feature bugs whereas product bugs tend to go through a triage/prioritisation process (hence there reason we sometimes are not super fast in responding to connect items as they by their very nature are product bugs).

Clear as mud? Excellent.

Do you have more than one “bug type”? How do you handle them?

FAQ: SQL Server 2008 SP1 released, but how does the fix list relate to CU4 that was just released?

2009-04-15T00:23:00Z

I have received a ton of private mail on this, hence rather than just pasting the same answer in I’m going to take it on here.

Interestingly enough I explained this problem, with a slightly different context, back when 2005 SP1 came out here, but lets go through it again with 2008 context. Bob Ward has an excellent post on this here, so if you don’t want to read the waffle below follow that link.

Releasing something as large and broadly used as a SQL Server Service Pack is a mind boggling undertaking, there are literally millions of tests to run, the closer you get to release the more expensive every change in the code is as tests may need re-run (stress and perf tests are particularly expensive to run). Hence the team tries to raise the bar on fixes during the SP cycle so that by the end the fix must be high priority and present low risk of regression.

The SP takes many months to gestate and during that time the team will release hotfixes/QFEs and these days cumulative updates (CU’s). to begin with these changes are automatically ported into the SP source tree but at some point close to the end this has to stop. After this point the trees diverge, hotfixes continue to be released to the wild but not added to the SP tree.

Hence there is a problem, when the SP releases it has a bunch of fixes that were never released as hotfixes, plus it has gone through lots of testing that is not applied to hotfix/CU engineering, hence orgs want to deploy quickly. HOWEVER there have also been hotfixes released that are not included, if you have the latest hotfix/CU and then apply the SP, you are going to lose some of these hot fixes.

The solution is that there is a post SP hotfix rollup or CU that is generated soon after the SP comes out to resync.

All right now onto the 2008 SP1 specifics;

CU4 was released on March 19 as defined by this KB. However the SP1 KB says that SP1 includes everything up to and including CU3, however that’s not strictly correct, it appears as if 6 fixes made it into SP1 according to Bob.

Applying SP1 over CU4 WILL wipeout the remaining fixes in CU4 with the exception of those 6, so if you have CU4 installed you should probably wait for SP1-CU1 to come out as that will have all of the missing fixes. You are then going to have to install SP1 and then CU1 to get to the best known state.

On the upside I think its AWESOME that this SP can be uninstalled AND slipstreamed, these feature requests have been outstanding for a very long time, great work SQL Team.

Now there are some things I think that could be done to make things easier;

1/ When the SP1 installer runs it could detect that CU4 is installed and point out that some fixes are going to be rolled back, it would be awesome if it could list those fixes but I’d take the warning for now.

2/ The KB needs to be crystal clear so that we don’t need blog entries like this, and Bob’s one and no doubt several from the MVPs that will be needed over time.

3/ The team might need to think about clearer separation, I think part of the confusion comes from the fact that SOME of the CU4 fixes are included but not the majority, it may have been better to not include any of the CU4 fixes given the dates, but then of course hindsight is always 20/20…

Thoughts?

UPDATE: SP1 CU1 is now out so the fixes are aligned.

PDC: D-1

2008-10-27T06:34:49Z

Spent this morning at the convention centre getting some help from the onsite Tech Support guys with a demo hardware disaster that had an unfortunate impact on my codecamp session. Apologies to the attendees for the lack of focus on the session as I was fighting the hardware all the way! However folks seemed to like the Pex Demo, CodedUI Test and the Unit Testing tips and tricks.

Spent the afternoon hangin out at PDC Pre-Cons, first of all the Agile Pre-Con, its always great to hear Mary Popendeick speak and this was excellent as ever. Then went and hung out in Brian Randall's VSTS Pre-Con and caught the panel at the end, that turned into the Brian harry show :-)

One thing to watch out for this year is that as part of the attempt to make the event greener there are no bottles of water as part of the conference snacks/fluids, hence there is a water bottle that's part of the giveaway, I recommend using it :-) Another thing to note about the give aways is that the bag is very simple as the money that goes on the bags went into "the goods" thats the hard drive we are giving away later in the event, a great trade off IMO.

I got to wander around the event hall (Big Ass Room), some of the vendors stands look really cool and there seemed to be TONS of swag so get busy on Monday night at the reception.

My other big WOW from wandering around today was the number of Surface Computers, there must have been more than 20 between the BAR, speaker lounge, and various other areas where folks were seated.

Right time to rest up for the keynote tomorrow, I bumped into several folks whose technology will be part of the Mon/Tues keynotes and there is quite the buzz.

PDC: D-2

2008-10-27T06:24:38Z

Its Saturday and I am hanging out in the fabby LA weather, high 80's today. I spent the day at the SoCal CodeCamp, no sessions for me to present today so I got spend the day listening to other folks. There is nothing more educational than watching other people present on the product you work on every day. I went to a couple of interesting test sessions, one on SQL Server and another one on design.

Got to watch the dodgy aussie brothers present (Grant Holliday and Charles Sterling) on VSTS2010, great stuff.

All of this was conducted on the spectacular USC campus which was only 10 mins away from the Convention Center, it was weird watching a bunch of gray haired old foggies like me and Charlie Calvert having lunch surrounded by the students in the cafeteria.

Great location for an event I thought, although I thought it could have been a tad easier to find our way around :-)

Yipeeeeee, PDC time!

2008-10-23T04:42:00Z

Yep I'm off to LA at the end of the week. Originally I was supposed to do a session on Software Quality and Diagnostics for Services, but we gave that slot to some other folks, then I was not going, then I was added to the booth/lounge team and now I also have lunch panel on the future of unit testing(more of that in another post). I've been telling folks for a while that I think this is going to be the biggest PDC since at least the 2000 one where we launched .Net on the world and maybe even further back than that.

I'm going to be in LA for a week and its going to be a busy week, I'm posting my current schedule below, if you want to chat just mail me. Otherwise see you in LA!

Fri 24th: Seattle->LAX on Alaska, staying at the Marriot Downtown

Sat 25th: SoCal Code Camp at USC not doing anything specific this day, just going to hang out, and maybe throw some rotten fruit at Chuck during his session

Sun 26th: Code Camp again, hanging out and also impersonating Chuck for this session where I'll sneak in some VS2010 demos as well as VS2008

Mon 27th: PDC

8:30 - 10:30 Keynote watching

10:30 - 3:15 Sessions and hanging out

3:15 - 6:30 Lounge Duty in the Tools and Languages Lounge

6:30 - 8:30 Partner Expo

8:30 - 10:00 Show Off Competition

10:00 - ... SLEEP!

Tues 28th: PDC

8:30 - 12:30 (Marathon) Keynote watching

12:30 - 6:30 (Marathon) Lounge Duty in the Tools and Languages Lounge

7:00 - ??? VSTS Influencers Dinner

7:30 - ??? PDC Party, Universal Studios

Wed 29th: PDC

8:30 - 10:00 Keynote watching

10:00 - 12:00 Sessions and hanging out

12:00 - 1:00 Panel Session on the Future of Unit Testing, with Peter Provost, Jim Newkirk, Peli De Halleaux and others

2:00 - 5:00 Lounge Duty in the Tools and Languages Lounge

6:00 - 9:00 Ask the Experts

Thur 30th: PDC

8:00 - 11:00 VSTS Customer Breakfast

9:30 - 12:30 Lounge Duty in the Tools and Languages Lounge

12:30 - 3:00 Sessions and hanging out

3:00 - ??? Various customer meetings

Fri 31st: LAX->Seattle, Collapse in a heap and try and recover!

SQL Server 2008, Reportbuilder RTMs

2008-10-20T20:35:00Z

Get it here

High performance loading in SSIS for Oracle and Teradata

2008-10-06T03:55:00Z

While SSIS has always been able to load SQL Server at high speed it doesn't use any of the high speed Oracle APIs that are available. Well there is now a new high performance loader for Oracle and another one for Teradata. Downloads are here.

Slipstreaming SQL Server Updates/Service Packs in SQL 2008, almost

2008-09-30T23:32:00Z

One of the most common asks for SQL Server related to servicing/patching (after uninstall of updates/SPs) is the production of slimstreamed media, ie where the Update/SP and the RTM are included together in a single plackage. Now there are a couple of reasons to do this, the first is to save time and complexity for the person doing the installs, the second is to allow issues in setup to be addressed. Well as part of the re-architecture of SQL 2008 setup the later scenario was enabled in a clear but perhaps unintuitive way.

If you snag the first Update for 2008 one of things it can do is put down updated setup files, that can then we be used by the rtm installer...

Bob Ward from SQL CSS has a great post that explains it in detail here.

SQL Server 2008, Report Builder

2008-08-25T23:18:00Z

Ok so not everything for SQL Server 2008 is available yet, Report Builder is going to have a lag, you can find RC 1 here. This should work with RTM SQL 2008. Here are some of the changes from the last RC;

Easy to use wizards for creating table, matrix and chart data regions.
Support for directly opening and editing reports stored on the report server.
Support for using server resources such as shared data sources.
A query designer for Microsoft SQL Server data sources.
Enhancements to the Report Builder 2.0 ribbon.

SQL Server Express 2008, Advanced Services and Tools now available

2008-08-25T20:40:00Z

Get it here.

That should not be all the pieces of SQL Server 2008 available.

SQL Server 2008, Express Edition now available

2008-08-11T19:56:00Z

Get it here. No tools or advanced services yet, but they will be here shortly. Good info on this page but beware its download link points to 2005 still.

SQL Server 2008: Why do all the Microsoft web sites still point at and talk about SQL Server 2005

2008-08-07T20:26:00Z

In short there is a "rolling thunder" plan to both release bits and update all the sites.

Yesterday the MSDN subscriber sites were updated, also the MVP and TAP sites.

Today Eval Edition and Feature Pack became available

SQL Server 2008 Installation Confusion, VS 2008 Sp1 and NetFx 3.5 Sp1

2008-08-07T20:13:00Z

Ok lots of folks are confused and are having their installations bounced. There is some info in the release notes but this is the definitive KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956139

Let me try and explain;

SQL Server 2008 has dependencies on (and includes) VS 2008 SP1 and its components (BIDS is just VS 2008, SSMS uses components), plus NetFx 3.5sp1. SQL includes the RTM versions of both of these, HOWEVER they are not broadly released yet. There is a check in SQL Server Setup that if you have an old version (Beta, RC, whatever) it will bounce the install and ask you to upgrade to the RTM bits...which of course are not yet available independent of SQL.

KB lays out the options but for now here they basically are;

1/ Don't install the components that need SP1 of VS (basically the tools) yet, install the services and then install the tools later when Sp1 is out.

2/ Use a clean machine that does not have previous versions of VS 2008 (and I think Netfx 3.5) on it.

Of course this begs the question when are these bits going to be available for VS independent of SQL, well given the RTM bits are part of SQL you can imagine its not going to be long. And as Express is released by VS and SQL at the same time, thats when Express should also come out.

Clear as Mud? I try...

UPDATE: Thanks to a question from Dave it looks like option 2 above is going to make life VERY difficult for you if you want a box that has SQL 2008 RTM and VS 2008 Pro/Team SP1. I've pinged several folks in SQL and VS setup teams to see if there is a problem, my advice for now would be to wait until VS SP1 ships if you want an easy route to have everything on the box.

SQL Server 2008 RTM

2008-08-06T17:00:00Z

I'm forward dating this, but as you read this the bits should start becoming available. Congrats to the team on a focused release < 3 years since the last release.

The various SKUs and supplimental bits such as the Feature Pack are going to be coming available over the next few weeks.

Once all the links go live I'll update this post with the links.

Enjoy

Update: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/downloads/default.aspx Has Ent, Dev, Std, Web and Workgroup for subscriber downloads, can't see Express or Ent Trial yet on the non subscriber pages.

Update: Today Eval Edition and Feature Pack became available

SQL 2008: Technet/MSDN Subscriber? Download RC0 now

2008-06-08T01:31:00Z

Details are here http://blogs.technet.com/dataplatforminsider/archive/2008/06/07/sql-server-2008-rc0-now-available-for-subscribers.aspx

More info once I have mine downloaded and installed under Hyper V