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Acceptance test Engineering Guide

Beta 2 of this guide has just been released:

http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=TestingGuidance

The first guide will cover the discipline of acceptance testing from several perspectives and contexts. It will provide models, heuristics and a set of actionable job aides rooted in a sample app. The focus is on:

• How to Plan for Acceptance Testing
• What Kinds of Acceptance Tests to Run
• How to Create and Run Acceptance Tests
• Defining What “Done” Means
• How to Justify Your Approach

Surface SDK finally there for all Microsoft Partners

Go here and register: https://partner.surface.com/en/Pages/default.aspx

If you are not a Microsoft partner yet then this is the place to go to:

http://partner.surface.com/EN/Pages/MicrosoftPartnerProgram.aspx

Azure Services Platform coming to Europe

Great to read on the MS Datacenters blog that we are bringing the Dublin datacenter live tomorrow, July 1st.

http://blogs.technet.com/msdatacenters/archive/2009/06/29/microsoft-brings-two-more-mega-data-centers-online-in-july.aspx

The Dublin, Ireland, data center is our first mega data center built outside of the United States. This building covers 303,000 square feet, with 5.4 mega watts of critical power available now. Over time, the data center can expand to a total of 22.2 mega watts of critical power, growing with our business and customer demand. The facility makes extensive use of outside air economization to cool the facility year round, resulting in greater power efficiency with a resultant reduction in carbon footprint.

Let’s hope we will be able to set the geo location bit for Azure applications soon to keep the data in Europe. This might be interesting for legal reasons and for bandwidth/network speed related challenges.

Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit

Looks like there will be a lot of interesting content at the Worldwide Partner Conference.

For instance the session abstract about the Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit reveals some interesting information such as the expected availability.

Since many of you ISV’s are also offering hosted solutions, I thought that especially the Toolkit for Hosters would be of interest to you.

If you want to start building your Private Cloud today, you can visit the website and get an early start: http://dynamicdatacentertoolkit.com/

Session details:

CI011 Building the Foundation for a Cloud Computing Infrastructure

Presenters: Hyder Ali, Radhesh Balakrishnan, Frank Zakrajsek

Tue 7/14 | 3:30 PM-4:30 PM | 252-254

Get an overview of Microsoft's cloud computing infrastructure strategy and how it can help customers lower costs while improving agility within their datacenters. We share the architecture and demo both the Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit for Hosters (available now!) that enables hosting Partners to offer managed servers in a hosted environment, and the Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit for Enterprises (available Q4 CY 2009) that enables building the foundation for a Private cloud.

Session Type: Breakout Session

Track: Core Infrastructure

Competency Focus: Advanced Infrastructure Solutions, Networking Infrastructure Solutions, Security

Level: Intermediate

Partner Type: Hoster, Independent Software Vendor, Systems Integrator/Services, Value Added Reseller

Product: Servers: Windows Server

Windows 7, the boxes

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/06/23/check-out-the-new-windows-7-packaging.aspx

Very clean designs, I like that. I’m also really happy to see that the boxes are simplified.

First time I tried to open a Vista box, I had to go search the web. Embarrassing? Microsoft even created a special page for it. See first link… http://www.bing.com/search?q=opening+a+vista+box&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox

Gerd Debruycker blogs about Virtual Conferences and football marketing

Gerd Debruycker is an event veteran at Microsoft. He has been driving many events succesfully amongst which Tech Ed and many others.

Finally Gerd started to blog. http://gerdde.wordpress.com/

He blogs about Virtual Conferences and about football marketing. He playes football with the best at the time.

Enjoy!

Hans

Belgian VSTS Case study

Recently, a new case study was released highlight the benefits that ADAM saw from implementing VSTS.

Dutch: http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/cases/?case=adam

French: http://www.microsoft.com/belux/fr/cases/?case=adam

Adam is a software house active in the sector of Digital Asset Management. They engaged with Compuware to introduce Visual Studio Team System to their developer team and implement VSTS as a the toolset that supports their Application Lifecycle.

As expected they are seeing a lot of benefits from it. They automated a lot of tasks which would otherwise be executed manually – like the build process – and find it much easier now to switch between projects. Read the cases study to find out about the other advantages they are seeing.

(In the picture on the left Pieter Gheysens and on the right Michael Vanhoutte).

Free 24h support on Windows 7 Application Compatibility for ISV’s

Read more: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/06/microsoft-offers-windows-7-compatibility-tech-support-free.ars

Windows 7 General Availability October 22nd

Windows 7 RTM: 2nd half of July

Windows 2008 R2 RTM: same timeframe

Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program: soon

Windows 7 General Availability: October 22nd.

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/06/02/the-date-for-general-availability-ga-of-windows-7-is.aspx

Windows 7 Software Logo Toolkit BETA

The announcement…

Microsoft is pleased to announce the public availability of the Beta release for the Windows 7 Software Logo Toolkit.  The toolkit allows ISVs to submit and receive the “Compatible with Windows 7” logo for their products.

Improvements, including self-test for applications, instant approval of passing applications, and a streamlined waiver process dramatically speed up the logo testing and the submission process. Fees for logo submissions have also been eliminated. 

As a valued logo partner, the “Compatible with Windows 7” program also offers a variety of benefits including co-branding, MS partner points, and premier placement on a variety of online consumer facing sites.

Here are a few simple steps towards getting started:

1. Download the Beta logo toolkit here: https://connect.microsoft.com/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?SiteID=831&DownloadID=19072
NOTE: this link also includes the logo requirements document, toolkit release notes, a toolkit user’s guide, and an overview of the submission process.

2. Submit the test report from the toolkit via: https://winqual.microsoft.com.

3. If a waiver is needed for a failing test case from the toolkit report, the streamlined waiver process can be initiated by completing the online form at the following link:
https://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/CreateFeedbackForm.aspx?FeedbackFormConfigurationID=3419&FeedbackType=3&SiteID=831&wa=wsignin1.0

Some additional information you may find helpful:

· Logo artwork and marketing guides can be downloaded from http://winqual.microsoft.com immediately once the following has been completed:

o The passing logo report is submitted and the logo policies are accepted

o The Software Logo License Agreement is signed online

· Instructions on how to perform the two manual tests can be found in the release notes.

· Windows 7 Logo Waiver/Exception Request: https://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/CreateFeedbackForm.aspx?FeedbackFormConfigurationID=3419&FeedbackType=3&SiteID=831

· Only test results generated by the Beta release of the toolkit can be used to submit for the logo

· Additional frequently asked questions (FAQ) and the corresponding answers are maintained at the following location:

o Technical FAQ:
https://connect.microsoft.com/content/content.aspx?ContentID=11911&SiteID=831

o Business FAQ:
https://connect.microsoft.com/content/content.aspx?ContentID=11912&SiteID=831

Please note, now that we are now accepting officially logo submissions we are no longer accepting logo prequalifications.

We look forward to your participation in the Windows 7 Software Logo program.  

Windows 7: Windows 7 API Code Pack

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/WindowsAPICodePack/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=2636

Today all new features in Windows 7 can only be accessed through WIN32. With .NET 4.0 a lot of it will be exposed through WPF 4 etc… but for some features you’ll need interop.

This code pack is a great help. Check it out.

Changing my mind about IE Explorer 8 and Web Slices

When I first heard about Web Slices, I wasn’t excited. Then I saw Kris Amerijckx (kidpaddle on twitter) announce that he implemented Web Slices on MSN.be so I checked it out. To my own surprise, I’m still using it after more than a week.

It’s pretty cool to get the MSN news straight form my favorites bar in IE8. Heck, I wish my newspaper (De Standaard) did the same.

The only thing I fear is that I will be running out of space on my favorites so I still need to see if there’s a solution for that.

If you haven’t tested it already. Here’s how it works.

1. Browse to a page with web slices on it. For instance www.msn.be

2. add the web slice

3. use the web slice from your favorites bar

Putting a slice on your page seems to be pretty light weight: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc304073(VS.85).aspx This is the HTML you will need.

<div class="hslice" id="slice1">
   <p class="entry-title">Game System - $66.00</p>
   <div class="entry-content">
      <img src="game.jpg">
      <p>Auction ends: <abbr class="endtime" title="2008-02-28T12:00:00-05:00">6 hours</abbr></p>
   </div>
   <a rel="feedurl" href="www.ebay.com/game.xml">Subscribe to Feed</a>
   <p>This item updates every <span class="ttl">15</span> minutes.</p>
</div>

Windows 7: UX Guide already updated

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511258.aspx

There are quite a few new UI featuers and UI changes in Windows 7. Enough to check out out the Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines I bleive which has been updated with information about the new jumplists, touch and more.

VS2010 and .NET 4.0 Training Kit – May Preview

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=752CB725-969B-4732-A383-ED5740F02E93&displaylang=en

Check out the training kit for more information about WPF 4.0 features to tap into Windows 7 and much much more.

Hans

The Identity Developer Training Kit

Many of the ISV’s I meet operate in a 'best of breed’ vertical where customers mix and match solutions from different vendors. This brings very clear challenges to the table. How does your solution integrate best with other solutions and also how do you manage identities in this heterogeneous environments.

Here’s a toolkit to train yourself or you developers on some this latter issue of identity management.

The Identity Developer Training Kit is a set of hands-on labs and resources designed to help developers to take advantage of Microsoft’s identity products and services. Being designed for developers, the kit focuses on the Geneva Framework: however it also gives guidance on how to take advantage of Geneva Server, Windows Live ID, the Microsoft Federation Gateway and the .NET Access Control Service (which is featured in a renewed and expanded lab). Most of the tasks are demonstrated both for ASP.NET web applications and for WCF services. We went to great lengths for eliminating as much as possible the friction that is traditionally associated with security samples, by providing configuration scripts and tools which automate many of the setup steps.

I’m really glad to see this type of content being produced as I know it addresses some of the key issues Belgian ISV’s are facing.