Jason Zander's WebLog : Visual Studio

Sample: Get Calendar Data Using Exchange Web Services (C#)

Jasonz — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:00:00 GMT

When someone asked my former manager David Treadwell what he did on a daily basis his answer was “Go to meetings and delete email”. Unfortunately that often describes my life as well. It is always challenging to manage your time. I want to ensure I’m spending enough on technology, people, customers, etc. To make this easier, I’m using the Categories feature of Exchange to code each meeting I have (these are my custom categories):

At a glance I can then tell what kind of meeting I’m headed to next. But I still need a way to understand how I’m spending my time every month. What would be great is to collect all the category data from all my meetings and then get the ratios. This blog covers a sample that does that.

There are several ways you can get your calendar data. In this case the task is very simple: collect all calendar items in a given month including the category setting. The easiest way to do this is to use Exchange Web Services support to ask the server for the data directly. The sample has a library which can be used to connect to EWS and collect all the calendar items and a console application which provides an easy way to drive the program logic. The following shows the overall structure of the sample code (click for larger image):

The diagram was generated using new Generate Dependency Graph feature of Visual Studio Ultimate. The graph is created by shredding the binaries themselves so we find everything.

There are a few key areas to look through for EWS code. The first is the GetExchangeProxy helper which sets up the connection to Exchange using ExchangeServiceBinding. In this case we are using integrated Windows security so that a userid/password is not required (you could supply them as an alternative):

The next interesting helper method is BuildQueryFilter which is responsible for creating a FindItemType filter class. This class allows you to construct a query for the server to find the data we care about. The code builds up a series of arguments to scope calendar items between the start and end dates. For example, this snippet of code sets a criteria of all dates greater than or equal to the start date:

A similar block of code sets the filter for less than or equal to the end date. Finally these two conditions are combined with an And clause to essentially mean “>= start AND <= end”:

Once the filter is set, we can retrieve all of the calendar items we asked for. In this case I’m returning the array in our own CalendarItemList which will allow us to enumerate the data from the client code. The GetNextItem method will then strip the full Exchange calendar item (with over 100 fields) down to just a handful we care about and return the data in a CalendarItemData instance. There are a huge number of fields available for return. You can use the DebugTraceCalItem helper method to dump the entire type if you are interested in pulling back more data.

The console application then becomes pretty easy: parse and validate all the arguments, connect to the exchange server, then write each calendar item out in a comma separated view (CSV) format. The output can either be written directly to a file or to the console for redirection to other locations. At that point it is very easy to simply open the file directly in Excel where you can edit it, create charts, analyze it, etc.

I’ve included a sequence diagram in the project which demonstrates the core logic of the Run method (click for larger image):

(Note that generating a sequence diagram with VS Ultimate is very easy: just place your cursor in the method and right click to run “Generate Sequence Diagram”)

Running the application is now very simple:

timespent /start:9/1/2009 /end:9/30/2009 /out:c:\temp\sept09.csv /mailpath:https://mydomain/ews/exchange.asmx

“mydomain” in this case is the domain address for your Exchange server. You can get this from your exchange administrator (it will likely match the path you are using on your phone to sync your mail over the air).

You can download the Exchange SDK from MSDN here. You can download a full copy of the source code here.

Enjoy!

Announced at TechEd Europe, Teamprise Client Suite Acquisition

Jasonz — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:58:42 GMT

This afternoon in Berlin I gave the Developer General Session (keynote) around Visual Studio 2010. As part of that keynote we have formally announced the purchase of the Teamprise Client Suite from Teamprise (a division of SourceGear). You can read details on Brian Harry’s blog here.

I’m very excited about bringing Teamprise into the Visual Studio family of products. Many of you work in heterogeneous environments and having the Teamprise Client Suite means you can collaborate through Team Foundation Server (TFS) even if parts of your team are working with other systems like Eclipse. I want to welcome the new Teamprise employees who now join our team at Microsoft!

Also at during the keynote I had a chance to bring three of our partners on stage to demo their new products base on Visual Studio 2010:

Micro Focus demonstrated their new COBOL support in the IDE including using the editor extensions for visually showing code flow, architecture diagram extensions (through DGML) for showing a flowchart of code logic, and new visualization support for seeing a preview of mainframe terminal displays.
Quest Software demonstrated their Oracle support for the advanced database features (now part of Visual Studio Premium and Ultimate). With this support you can now import Oracle schema directly into Visual Studio, refactor database schema, and the other pre and post production features.
PreEmptive Solutions demonstrated their new support for instrumentation of code which can return runtime statics and information about how code is executed in the wild. New support includes extensions for the architecture diagram (through DGML), a new margin control with preview of runtime data, and an inline WPF based graph system so one can review data directly in their editor next to the code which is impacted.

All of these solutions demonstrate the advanced features we are now starting to see on the core investments made with VS2010 (including the new editor, WPF investments, DGML, and others).

TechEd has been a lot of fun so far. For those of you here in Berlin, I look forward to seeing you at the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the “fall of the wall” this evening. Enjoy TechEd!

Tutorial: Getting Started with TFS in VS2010

Jasonz — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:00:00 GMT

Earlier this month we announced the new Basic configuration for TFS. This configuration gives you an easy to set up version of TFS that supports source control, work items, and builds. It is a great place to migrate your Visual Source Safe assets and pick up new features in the process. Now that we have released the formal Beta 2 bits for VS2010, I wanted to do a walk through on how to get started using the system.

This post will be most helpful for those of you who have not installed or used TFS before. TFS can support sophisticated environments that include reporting, SharePoint integration, support across multiple domains, distributed databases, etc. I’m not going to cover any of that here. Instead my goal is to help you understand “why TFS” and how you can get started using the system. In a future post I will walk through the process to convert a Visual Source Safe database into TFS in case you are coming from a VSS deployment today.

First let’s talk about “why TFS?” The goal of Team Foundation Server is to create a central repository with a set of tools that make it really easy to collaborate between roles. You could try to stitch together multiple disparate systems as follows:

In this case each system has its own storage, own set of identity for assets, own commands and tools. Getting this going is like trying to hook up a set of custom stereo components: you can pull it off but it’s going to be a lot of work and you are missing out on some stuff.

What I’d rather have is a system which can integrate these items together and then enable my default work flow through the system:

This integration enables some very common scenarios. In a typical day I’m going to edit source code, build the product, test it, file bugs, fix them, lather/rinse/repeat. When the entire work flow is supported with one integrated repository then all items can be related to each other. As an example when I check in bug fixes I’d really like to see those defects resolved with the change set recorded (see sample below).

The Basic configuration of TFS allows you to do precisely this which is a big improvement over just having source control. The full version of TFS then adds new features including automated testing, virtual lab deployment, and architectural validation (to name a few). This expands your work flow as follows:

You can decide which of these new components you add when you use the Visual Studio Premium and Ultimate SKUs.

There are many ways to access TFS. As an engineer your most typical access point will be a version of Visual Studio. But if you are a tester you can use the new Test and Lab Manager product (no VS install necessary). If you are a project manager, you can also use the Web interface, Excel, Microsoft Project, or (new for VS2010) MOSS support for dashboards. More on this later.

In the rest of this post I will give you some step by step instructions on how to get going with TFS using the basic configuration for your first project.

Getting Started

Now that you have the conceptual level it’s time to hook things up. You should start by doing the steps listed in Brian Harry’s TFS post here. This will get all the required software on your machine with a default collection, creatively enough called DefaultCollection.

At this point we can connect to the TFS collection from Visual Studio. The easiest way to accomplish this is to use the Team Menu (you can also use the link from the home page):

You will be asked to find the Server where TFS lives. In this case my Windows 7 machine is called JLZB2REL. Add the server to the list using the Add button, then click Close:

At this point you can select the server from the combo box and then the DefaultCollection, then click Connect:

The Team Explorer tab will now have your server connection and DefaultCollection, but we don’t yet have a TFS Project to store anything in yet:

For this tutorial I have created a new Windows Form project to act as our sample solution (File, New Project, Windows Forms). If you try to add this new code project to source control, you will get an error. For example:

After you select the “Add Solution to Source Control” menu item you get the error “No team project source control folders are available.”:

The error isn’t that intuitive (especially given the word project is used for both TFS and inside your VS code solution but are different things). The error means you must create an actual TFS project to contain all of the assets for your work. In the Team Explorer, right click your collection and choose New Team Project:

In this case I’m going to create a TFS project for an Accounts Payable system. This project will contain all of the solutions, data, etc required for the overall system. After entering the data, click Next:

The Agile template is the default but you can also select CMMI. You can find more details on MSDN about the project template types. If you are using any agile methodologies (like TDD) this is a fine choice. After making a choice, just click Finish:

You will get various status updates as the project is being created:

After success, click the Close button:

Team Explorer will now have the project ready to hold Work Items, Builds, and Source Control:

At this point you can update the project collection. Let’s add the new solution to TFS again. Right click the project in the Solution Explorer and select Add Solution to Source Control:

At this point you could create a new folder in TFS for the solution or just take the default. When you are happy, click the OK button:

Upon success the Solution Explorer will now show the files are under source control (see the ‘+’ symbol in front of the files):

You will also see the list source control actions taken to publish the solution. Add a comment and then click Check-In:

Confirm the check-in by clicking Yes.

At this point your new solution is in TFS and ready for Work Items.

Work Items

You can create work items directly inside Visual Studio using the Team Explorer, through the web front end, and the Test and Lab Management tool. To look at your work items, open the Team Explorer and expand the Work Items, Team Queries item. You can then double click any query (such as Active Bugs) to see any items available to you:

Our TFS project is empty so there are no active bugs in the list:

Let’s create a new item just to get us in business. Select the Team, New Work Item menu. Here you can create several types of work items to track features, defects, etc. We’ll select Bug to get going:

Enter any data you want for the new bug and click Save Work Item to commit it to the database:

If you now refresh your active bug query list, you will see the new bug:

Let’s add a real bug to fix our project. In my example I just created a default Windows Forms application. We’ll want to update the title:

Now we need to fix the bug. Navigate back to the Solution Explorer, select Form1.cs then choose Check Out for Edit:

Click the Check Out button to confirm:

The file will now have a check mark next to it so you know it is open for edit:

As you update the Text property of the main window, VS will automatically check out any dependent files for you:

This is a Windows Forms application but it works on all solution/project types. Now that we are happy with the code change, select the Pending Changes tab in the bottom of VS:

In this case we are fixing a bug, so click the Work Items icon button:

Select bug #2 which tracks our title error. We are going to resolve it with this check-in:

Add any comments you want and click Check-In, then Yes to confirm:

If you refresh bug #2, you will now see the status changed to Resolved and the history is updated:

Notice the change set (the set of source control changes) have been automatically included in the history.

At this point you could continue to create and fix bugs as required to ship your solution.

Other Ways to Explore TFS

I mentioned that you don’t have to use VS itself to access the TFS repository. We’ve done a lot of deep integration with other clients like the Web and Office. As an example, I can simply pull up my web browser and go right to my server by using the server name (where 8080 is the default port): http://jlzb2rel:8080/tfs/

At this point I can explore my collections and projects. If you select the new AccountsPayable project we just created then the Continue button, you get more details. In this case by navigating to the Work Items tab I can find the bugs in the system including our newly resolved bug:

This is a really easy way to explore your project from any machine with no setup required. There is similar support for using Excel, Microsoft Project, etc. This kind of access makes it easy for all people working on your project (engineers and project managers) to work together.

At this point you have a very useful set of assets you can use to get your job done. For those of you using VSS today, you might be very happy with just this level of support. You can put down this tutorial now and come back later if you want to try some advanced features, for example the testing scenario I showed using beta 1 in this tutorial.

Build Support

The next typical part of your work flow will be to automate your builds for the product. Assuming you followed Brian’s installation instructions, you now have local build support on your machine with TFS Basic. The first step is to navigate to the Team Explorer, right click on Build Definitions, and select New Build Definition:

This will give us a set of definitions to fill out, just like a code project property page:

The Trigger page allows us to decide when builds are kicked off. You have many options to pick from:

By default this is manual which is the option we will use. We will have to kick of our own builds with this option.
Continuous Integration is very helpful when you want to have a new build after every check-in. This allows you to validate new changes right away rather than waiting later when many check-ins get mixed together.
Rolling builds give you a way to batch changes together which is very handy when builds are starting to take a while and you can’t afford to do every one.
Gated Check-ins allow you to ensure all check-ins build before they are committed to TFS. This makes sure you never expose a build break to other members of your team.
Scheduled builds are useful for getting a daily build out for the entire team to try out.

You can create and use many different build definitions which allow you to employ different build types for different purposes.

You can explore all the tabs at your leisure (each is fully documented with the product). But we need to resolve the yellow warning sign on Build Defaults by giving the build a place to store our new build, in this case a public UNC I created on my machine:

Now you can save the build definition to TFS. If we go back to the Team Explorer we can queue a build of the project:

We’ll get a confirmation dialog where we can just select the Queue button:

This will then queue off a build on my machine as shown by the status page:

If you double click the queued build you will get the detailed status of the build:

From here you can see warnings and errors, view the log file, navigate to the drop, etc. As an example if you select the “View Log File” link you can see the executed build script (subset):

If you select the Open Drop Folder link you will be taken to our drop location:

Now anyone can pick up the build and do their daily testing, release to a customer, etc.

At this point you really have everything you need to make full use of the Basic configuration of TFS.

In the future I will do a tutorial on how to hook up the Virtual Lab system (part of Visual Studio Ultimate) which allows you to deploy complex applications to a Hyper-V environment and do automated testing.

Creating a New TFS Collection

[Note this section is totally optional] You can store all of your work in one TFS Collection if you like. If you are a Visual SourceSafe user today, this is just fine and you can skip this whole section. But if you want to create a new top level collection, it is pretty easy. The first step is to start then Team Foundation Administration Console:

After the console starts, select the Team Project Collections item and click the “Create Team Project Collection” link:

Fill in a name for the project collection and any description you want, then click Next:

Accept the defaults for the data tier, then click Next:

The Basic configuration for TFS does not support Lab Management, so just click Next on this step:

At this point all the required data is configured and you can click the Verify button:

The verification step will ensure the collection can be created:

Once it passes, click the Create button:

This will provision all the required pieces of the TFS store per our configurations. Click Next and you are done:

You will now see the new project collection with the default version:

Announcing VS2010 / .NET Framework Beta 2!

Jasonz — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:07:00 GMT

I’m happy to announce that Beta 2 is now ready for download! MSDN subscribers may download the beta immediately with general availability on Wednesday. Beta 2 comes with a “go live” license which means you can start using the product for production related work (see the license agreement with the product for more details).

Download Beta 2

I have a few tutorials queued up which I will be publishing over the next several weeks; stay tuned.

The biggest change you’ll see with these release is the change to the SKU line up. The goal with the new line up is to reduce the number of SKU’s you have to think about and install and make it a very simple set:

Visual Studio Express: the free Express SKUs for C++, C#, VB, and Web have been updated and released with this version and give you the basics for writing applications
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN: professional development tools as you are used to today with the addition of source control integration, extensibility, etc.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN: Premium has everything in Professional plus advanced development (including profiling and debugging), advanced database support, coded UI testing, etc. Rather than buying multiple “Team” SKUs, you can now get this combination of features in one box.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN: Ultimate has everything in Premium plus additional advanced features for developers, testers, and architects including features like Intellitrace (formerly Historical Debugging), the new architecture tools (UML, discovery), etc. All of the scenarios we’ve talked about are supported with this version of the product.

In addition to these changes, Team Foundation Server (TFS) is now available with all versions of Visual Studio 2010. You can get started with TFS Basic and work up to full multi-sever support, SharePoint integration, etc as your needs grow.

The new “Test Elements” SKU is designed for testers who don’t need to write code. You can manage your test cases, work items, and do manual testing using the SKU. Because everything is integrated through TFS, you can continue to collaborate with the entire team.

The UI has been refreshed with a new start page that gives you quick links to common tasks or background on programming tasks. I have TFS Basic installed on my laptop; you can see Team Explorer support for source control, work items, and builds:

Beta 2 now ships with several new project types we’ve mentioned before such as Windows Azure (under “Cloud Service”) and SharePoint, all available for C# and Visual Basic programmers:

In addition support for Silverlight 3 and ASP.NET MVC 2 are included in the build.

As an engineering team, the goal for Beta 2 was to work very hard on performance, stability, and the integration of the feature set. Our focus is now transitioning to getting your feedback on the product and preparing for the release candidate (RC) milestone which is our final milestone before shipping the product. Please download the beta and send us your feedback.

Enjoy!

Jason

Announcing TFS Basic!

Jasonz — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:21:02 GMT

If you are a SourceSafe user you know VSS is an easy to install and easy to use source control system. TFS gives you a much more powerful system including not only source control but also work item tracking and build support. Today we are announcing the new Basic configuration for TFS coming your way with Beta 2 of VS2010. Brian Harry has a great post introducing the new configuration and going over some history and design goals. My favorite features:

You can use SQL Server Express as the database
The install runs in about 20 minutes and configures everything for you automatically
It can run on your client machine

I’ve been using it to build out several new tutorials I’m queuing up for Beta 2. It’s awesome! Stay tuned for Beta 2 and make sure to give it a try...

Announcing the XP2Win7 Reference Application

Jasonz — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:46:21 GMT

If you are like me you’ve been using Windows 7 for a while now and it’s a great release! There are a number of very cool features in the system, including things like touch and sensor support. We want to make sure it is easy for you to get started lighting up your application, managed or unmanaged, with the new system. To that end I’m happy to announce the availability of the new XP2Win7 Reference Application which you can download here:

XP2Win7 Reference Application

The download contains a full set of reference material and source code. The demo is a fully functional application called PhotoView which shows many categories:

Infrastructural work like Restart & Recovery, and IO Optimization
User interaction support like jump lists and local search
And cool Windows 7 light up with touch and sensors

The application makes it easy to explore each feature with a tab pane at the top:

In this example you can see a light sensor plugged into the left (the bar chart mixer view).

Win7 is going to be an awesome release and I hope you will find this application a great resource to get started.

Enjoy!

MVC 1.1 for VS2010 Beta 1 Released

Jasonz — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:43:11 GMT

The MVC framework for ASP.NET allows you to create applications that follow the model/view/controller architecture. VS2010 Beta 1 did not have MVC built-in to the product but you can now download it here. MVC will be included in the final release of the product.

After installation you will have MVC templates installed for both VB and C#:

Scott Guthrie has a fantastic walk through on MVC using the VS2008 product which is also be relevant to V2010 (modulo a few dialog changes here and there).

Enjoy!

VS2010 Tutorial: Building VS Extensions with the Beta 1 SDK

Jasonz — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:00:00 GMT

The SDK is used to create extensions to Visual Studio itself like those you can find on VS Gallery. You can download it here. The installation is done on top of an existing install of VS 2010 and gives you a set of build tools, templates, and a short cut for debugging devenv.exe (VS) that can be used for testing your new extensions.

Once you get the SDK installed, you will find a new set of templates. Let’s start by doing File, New Project. Type ‘editor’ in the search box to find example editor extensions:

Select the ‘Editor Text Adornment’ template and click OK. This sample template extends the editor with a Text Adornment which basically gives you the ability to change how text is displayed. By default this adornment finds all instances of the character ‘a’ and highlights them.

Build the solution (Ctrl+Shift+B). The template automatically packages the new .dll into a .vsix file (basically a zip with some dialogs, the code, and other data required to extend VS). It then copies the new package into the Extensions directory for the test instance of VS:

Now hit F5 to debug the new extension. Because you are extending Visual Studio itself, the test instance of VS is launched:

This is a separate instance of devenv.exe as shown by tlist:

Notice the key difference is devenv.exe is launched with a special /rootsuffix flag which gives it a different instance for the extension location:

In the experimental instance of VS, open a text file (such as the one generated for this add-in). When it loads, you’ll notice the editor extension is in effect and has drawn a red box around every ‘a’ in the file:

The code is pretty straightforward. The constructor sets up a event handler for layout changed, whenever the change happens every line is scanned, within each line when an ‘a’ is found a red box is placed around it.

If you open the .vsixmanifest file you will get an editor for all the settings an extension needs:

This includes things like the images you will see when you browse / install the extension, the description, etc.

Extensions can be easily shared with your friends. To install an extension, either double click the VSIX file to install it or copy the unzipped extension contents to your extensions directory.

In addition to local usage, you can also publish (or acquire) extensions from the VS Gallery. This is easy to do from inside VS by choosing Tools, Extension Manager:

If you select the Online Gallery, you will find all the controls, templates, and tools from the public site:

You can easily download and install an extension by selecting it and hitting the Download button. In this case I’ll download the Demo Dashboard which is one of our samples:

After you download the file (assuming you accept the license), you will be prompted to restart VS so the extension can be loaded:

If you select Restart Now, VS will start again and restore your state. The new extension is now in place:

Once you have written an extension you really like and you think others may want, you can use the VS Gallery site to upload your item:

You can update, delete, etc your extension after it is uploaded.

As you can see, loading new items, creating new items, etc is very straightforward. I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Enjoy!

Azure: New Support for the Cloud, New Skills Not Required

Jasonz — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:00:00 GMT

Last October at PDC, the Windows Azure team released the first CTP of Windows Azure along with the first SDK for developers who are interested in pushing their apps to the cloud. The team committed to releasing regular SDK updates, and today we are announcing an update to Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio. This release includes:

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 support
Update for Visual Studio 2008 support
Improved Visual Studio integration with Development Fabric and Development Storage

This is in addition to the current Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio, which includes:

C# and VB Project Templates for building Cloud Services
Tools to change the Service Role configuration
Integrated local development via Development Fabric and Development Storage services
Debugging Cloud Service Roles running in the Development Fabric
Building and packaging of Cloud Service Packages
Browsing to the Azure Services Developer Portal

One of our key goals is to make your skills as a developer easily transferrable to new domains. If you learn .NET, pick a favorite language (like VB or C#), and learn Visual Studio, then you can easily use your skills to target the ASP.NET, Silverlight, SharePoint, Windows Mobile, and even the Xbox. The tooling support for Azure brings your same skill set forward into the Cloud.

You can download the latest SDK for Windows Azure here. If you’re interested in the cloud, check out the Windows Azure CTP and the SDK. Make sure to check out the how to videos here.

Enjoy!

VS2010 Tutorial: Testing Tutorial (Step 2)

Jasonz — Tue, 26 May 2009 10:00:00 GMT

Last week I posted the Step 1 tutorial for creating a WPF application from scratch using Visual Studio 2010. In this post, I’m going to create a test plan and test case for the application using the new Visual Studio Test and Lab Manager project.

For this tutorial, I’m using Visual Studio Team Suite 2010 (which includes all of the roles and TFS access). I’ve already added the demo to TFS so I have full source control. For the sake of demonstration, I’ve commented out the final fix from the walk through so the label does not update:

When I run the application, the label is not updated:

The Tester

To create my test, I’m going to run the Test and Lab Manager tool from the start menu:

The main page has tabs for test plans, tests, and for tracking work items:

First I need to connect to my TFS server by click Add. My server is VLM13267036 (auto generated name by our internal Hyper-V testing tools):

I’ve already got a collection with my code stored in the Projects folder:

Next I’ll select Projects and choose the Connect option. This prompts me to set a context:

I’ll choose “Set context” which brings up the editor for my new context:

I’ll select New:

I can now edit all of the properties:

After all data has been entered, click Save and Close. The new item is now in our list:

Double clicking the item allows me to add a new test case to this test suite:

Here you can fill out all details for the test case:

Steps can now be added by clicking on the “Click here to add a step”:

I’ve added a few steps including launching the application, hitting the buttons, etc:

Now hit Save and Close to go back to the test case list. The Plan is now complete. We can run it any time a new build is produced, for each flavor of build, for different configurations, etc. To execute the test, change focus to the Test tab:

Our test plan and test case are already in the list. Right click the test case and select Run:

This will launch the test case. The manual test runner window docks itself to the left side of my desktop so I can see both the steps I want to run and the full Windows desktop:

The “Start test and record” option allows me to not only do the testing steps, but it will also allow recording a WMV of all the steps I do as well as recording my steps to help me author coded UI tests (big helper with automation). This is really handy if you want someone to see exactly what you did to produce a bug and automate testing in the future.

In this case I will select “Start test”. Notice the Test Runner now shows the steps I created above:

The first step is to “Launch the PicViewer application” which I’ll do by running the application. Since that worked, I’ll press the combo box status item behind the step and select ‘Pass’ from the drop down:

The item is now marked as passing:

I’ll repeat the process for the next two steps, so far so good:

When I get to my last step, I discover the file path isn’t actually set. That makes this item a failure. Select the drop down box and choose ‘Fail’ from the list. I’m automatically asked for comments on the failure:

Since I didn’t record a video of my steps, I would like to give the developer a screen shot of what went wrong. Select the camera tool bar button:

This will bring up a capture tool turning the cursor into a cross hair that allows me to select a region of the screen. I’ll select the top of the application to demonstrate the busted label:

Notice that the failed test now has a .png file added with the image:

I’ve got enough supporting data now so I’ll create a new bug using the toolbar:

I’m now prompted to create my bug with a description, etc:

Notice the detailed test steps I’ve taken have already been added to the bug:

As has my screen shot (the .png file):

I’ll now do a Save and Close which will commit the bug to TFS as a Work Item. Finally I’ll do End Test then Save and Close the test runner. This will return us to Test and Lab Manager.

as a tester, I could now double click the test case and see all of the same data I just saved for the failure:

I can also select My Bugs and see the bug filed for this issue (since I conveniently assigned it to me):

And just to show how everything is wired together, I can open Visual Studio, Team Explorer and look for bugs assigned to me there as well:

At this point my job as a tester is now done.

The Developer

As a developer, I can now open the bug and read through the issue. If I select Other Links I’ll find the .png which I can open to see the issue:

Sure enough, the label is not updated. If a WMV had been recorded, I could have actually watched the testing steps in action. Because the bug is quite simple to find and fix (some idiot commented out the update line!) I can simply make my fix and test it.

Now that things are fixed, I want to check in the bug fix and resolve the work item at the same time. Click on the Pending Changes tab in VS and select the correct work item:

Now we can Check In the fix:

I can now verify the bug has been Resolved:

In Summary

A key goal for Visual Studio Team System 2010 was to reduce the number of times a tester and developer wind up in a ‘no-repro’ situation. There are several things I’ve demonstrated in this tutorial which help:

Test case steps are documented and set up for repeatable execution
Pass/Fail steps are outlined and stored in bugs automatically
Video capture is allowed to see all steps taken, and screen snapshots are easy to acquire and file with a bug
System information including build number, OS, etc are recorded for you (System Info tab)
Although not shown, I could also have collected all of the historical debugging traces from the run as well
All data from test cases, results, work items, and source code are kept in TFS and can be shared by test and dev

I hope you’ll pick up Beta 1 and try this set of tutorials for yourself. Let us know how well it works for you and if you have any suggestions. I should also point out the work item tracking, auto resolve, etc are all part of VS 2008 so a great way to get prepared for the new version is to get TFS deployed today and get your projects into the system.

Enjoy!

VS2010 Tutorial: Build a WPF App (Step 1)

Jasonz — Fri, 22 May 2009 10:00:00 GMT

For this post I’m going to build a WPF application from scratch using VS2010 Beta 1. Along the way I’m going to show off a few new features of the product. I built this demo using the Beta 1 build on Windows 7 RC, but it should work fine on other systems as well.

If you haven’t already downloaded the software, you can find a great walk through of how to do that on Channel 9 from Brian Keller. Brian explains how to install the entire product, including TFS. TFS is not required for Step 1 (this tutorial), but will be for Step 2.

First we’ll start off in Visual Studio 2010 and do a File, New Project. I’m going to select “WPF Application” and call my application PicViewer (this is the new Beta 1 dialog):

This will give us the default project template including a Window with a Grid and my default C# project code:

To start, I’m going to drag the Window out to be larger which you can do by dragging the actual window in the designer or you can edit the XAML Width=”” tag. I’ll make mine 700:

At the top of the application we want a button to display the Previous and Next pictures in the list. We also want to display the full path so we’ll need a label. Step 1 is to add a row to the grid. In this case I’ll select the <Grid> label and move the cursor to where I want the row:

When I make the row, it also adjusts the XAML for this page as follows:

Let’s adjust the first row Height to “35” instead of “29*” just to make sure my buttons are of reasonable size. The aesthetics are really up to you.

We want WPF to do the layout of the buttons and the label. To do this, create a <StackPanel> bound to Grid.Row=”0”. The StackPanel by default flows items vertically so let’s change the Orientation to “Horizontal”. You can do this either by using the XAML editor or by dragging the items from the ToolBox. Your final markup should look like the following:

Let’s drag a button onto the Row from the Toolbox:

I want this to be the Previous button. I’ll do this by editing the settings in the Properties window:

First change the Name field to “buttonPrev” and then change the Content setting to “Prev”. Repeat this process by dragging another button to the right of the Prev button and edit that item to Name “buttonNext” and Content “Next”. You should see the following:

This is functional, but doesn’t look good. We can add some white space around the buttons in the StackPanel by setting the margin which defines how much space should be around an item. Select the Prev button and change this setting:

which will give the button a Margin of 5 on all sides (you can independently set left|right|top|bottom as well). Repeat the same for the Next button. At this point you’ll see the following:

Finally drag a label to the right of the Next button making the Name “labelPath” and set the Width to “400”. When you are done, your XAML markup should look as follows (you can edit the text if it isn’t just right):

To display our pictures, we will need to have an Image control in the bottom. To do this, drag an Image control from the ToolBox to the bottom of the grid. This will do the following:

This is a case where having the Smart Tag feature of Windows Forms would be really handy. This is on the feature list but not yet in the WPF Designer. In this case I’m going to edit the XAML itself to remove everything the designer added except the Grid.Row, Margin, and Name settings. Make your settings look like the following and the image control will now fill the bottom of the grid with a nice white space border:

Now the look of the application is coming along and we need to add some code to make it work. To start, double click on the title bar of the Window to create a load handler:

Repeat this process by double clicking on the Prev and Next buttons. This will give you the following code outline:

For this picture viewer, I’m going to get a list of jpg files from my Windows 7 user directory and display those. What I’d really like to do is write the view code in Window1.xaml.cs in a way that makes sense to me, then go write the underlying logic. To get started, I’m going to declare a new instance of a class that doesn’t exist yet:

Because the class doesn’t exist yet, I am getting the red squiggles under the type. That’s ok, we’ll create the class in a minute.

The next step is to stub out all the view code in this file. We’ll start with the Window_Loaded() method. Notice that even though the class has not been defined, Intellisense will include the type after the new keyword so you can use it:

We want to initialize the list and display the first picture when the application starts. The code is as follows:

Once again I have parse errors for items which don’t exist which is ok. Move on to the Previous button handler and start typing in that method. When I get to the DisplayPicture function call, you’ll notice the function doesn’t show up in the IntelliSense window because it doesn’t exist yet.

If you hit <Ctrl>+<Alt>+Space you’ll change the mode into “consume first” which means I want the editor to give me these names while I’m typing. Now when I start typing, my new (and undeclared) function shows up in the list so IntelliSense doesn’t auto-complete on items already in the completion list:

My code then looks like the following:

I’m happy with this basic view logic. Now I need to actually create the support class that finds my pictures. Let’s start by placing the cursor on the PictureList class declaration then press the <Ctrl> key and the period (<Ctrl>+.) at the same time to expand the smart tag. You’ll get the following pop up:

Select the first menu item, “Generate class for ‘PictureList’”. This will add a new file, PictureList.cs, to the project and generate the class PictureList in that file. Now that the class has been defined, the squiggles go away:

You will then notice all the methods you have invoked on the class are showing up as syntax errors. Put your cursor in the Init() method and press <Ctrl>+. to get the following:

Select the menu item so the code is generated for you. Repeat this process for the Peek(), Prev(), and Next() methods. If we then open PictureList.cs file, you will find the following code stubbed out for you:

Notice that because the code we wrote to consume methods like _PicList.Peek() expect a string back, the editor has automatically given the methods a return type of ‘string’.

Now I’ll add the logic to retrieve a list of jpg’s from the Windows install and give me the ability to walk through them:

The last step is to write the DisplayPicture method in Window1.xaml.cs. I can do this once again by selecting the method name and hitting <Ctrl>+. and then fill out the code as follows:

This code will take the jpg and convert it into a BitmapImage that can be displayed. The next line of code sets the Source of our XAML image contorl to this bitmap so it can be displayed on the screen.

The program now builds cleanly. I will set a breakpoint in the Peek() method as well as the DisplayPicture method. Do this by placing the cursor on those functions and hitting the F9 button (notice the red breakpoint circle in the margin):

Now let’s run the application by hitting the F5 button. Our first breakpoint in the Peek() method is now hit:

You’ll find your breakpoint marked in yellow where we stopped. In addition you’ll find the traditional Call Stack view in the lower right. Because I’m using Visual Studio Team System, I also have the “Debug History” view on by default:

The default settings have captured interesting information about the execution of my program so far including all of the Registry accesses my program has made (either by me or the underlying system) and system events (like breakpoints, exceptions, etc).

If I hover my cursor over the _PicList variable in the editor, I get a pop up watch window. If I hover my cursor over the little square at the end and click:

then you will get a sticky DataTips window in the editor (the arrow is just to demonstrate the result, it isn’t in the editor):

This is a simple example of using the new WPF editor. The sticky DataTips window is a WPF adornment to the text buffer tied into the debugger. You can use it like a normal watch window by expanding the array contents, etc.

Let’s hit F5 and continue the program. My application now works including the Prev and Next buttons:

The only issue is the name of the file is not being updated. Click the Next button again to our break point in DisplayPicture(). There is no code to update the label in this method:

To fix this, let’s add a new line of code:

With the Edit & Continue feature you can make new code changes while the application is running. Update the code to the following:

Now press F5 to continue and the path is updated:

There are a couple of fit and finish things I’d like to change. Let’s stretch the image to fit by adding Stretch=”Fill”:

Next let’s add a rectangle to frame the picture:

You can then select the rectangle and set the Fill property to give it a color. This brings up the new inline color palate:

I chose a blue/black color and you get the following:

The final XAML markup then looks like the following:

This sample could be improved in a number of ways, including using data bound controls to enumerator classes, adding all the proper try/catch logic, etc. But my main goal here was to show off some editor / designer features so I’ll leave that as an exercise to the user.

Enjoy!

General Download of VS2010 / .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1

Jasonz — Wed, 20 May 2009 05:54:35 GMT

On Monday I posted a detailed walk through of Beta 1 here. Beta 1 has been available to MSDN subscribers since Monday and will be available to everyone as of 10 AM PST today (Wednesday May 20). I’m about to catch a plane from JFK to Seattle so I’m posting the links now:) They will be live after 10 AM PST:

This beta does have full setup available so you can provision it yourself. The product is designed to work cleanly with VS2008, however like any pre-release software you should be careful about using the product on your main machine. We are not (yet) opening the product up for general ‘go live’ usage; our goal is to get your feedback on the feature set and direction we are headed.

I really want to hear your feedback! I will definitely follow blog comments, but the best way to give us that feedback is through the Visual Studio 2010 / .NET Framework 4 Beta 1 site. You can get your issues and suggestions routed to the teams directly by going through this route.

Over the next week I’ll be posting a couple of tutorials that you can use to try out new functionality. Stay tuned…

Announcing VS2010 / .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1!

Jasonz — Mon, 18 May 2009 23:50:30 GMT

I’ve mentioned a couple of times that Beta 1 was imminent and now it is ready for download for all MSDN subscribers! You can download the beta here. General downloads will be available on Wednesday, stay tuned here for the formal announcement.

We’ve added a lot of great functionality for VS2010 and .NET Framework 4.0. the rest of this blog, I want to highlight a few areas you should give a try as you kick the tires on the beta.

Shell / Editor

The New Project Dialog supports multi-targeting (including the new 4.0 framework) and a new online access to VS Gallery:

We’ve added the new Tools Extension Manager which allows you to download new templates and other materials from VS Gallery directly from within VS. For Beta 1 we’ve posted a few demo examples for you to try out. Look for more as we get the ecosystem going:

Code focused work

We’ve added a lot of “code focused” features which basically makes the editing experience much nicer. For example:

Consume first, fault in
Writing test cases using the system
Quick search (Ctrl + ,): works across VB & C# & C++
Call Hierarchy

If you like the TDD approach, you should enjoy the new support.

Office Programmability

To make Office programming easier with C# and VB, we’ve added the new ‘dynamic’ keyword, named parameters, and optional parameters. In addition, you can build your application with the ‘No PIA’ support which means you no longer need to actually deploy a PIA.

In the following example, the first shows how you write code today and the second shows you the one line of code you would prefer to write and now can with VS2010:

much better:

This simple application now creates a new Word document and adds some text:

Language Improvements

We’ve made several improvements to our languages for this release including working on our parity efforts between C# and VB. As an example, VB now has automatic properties which removes the verbose syntax for get/set:

In this case VB has a unique feature of initialization as well. The next big change in this release for VB is to remove the dreaded ‘_’ at the end of continuing statements:

VB also gets statement lambdas (the ability to write inline subroutines):

And finally collection initializers:

C# also has a set of new features including the dynamic keyword shown above for better Office programming.

F# now ships with VS2010 which means you can start using the language as soon as you install (no separate download).

The following code example shows the class sum of squares method written both in F# and in C# for comparison (|> is the pipeline operator which means it sends results from one operation to the next, just like | on the command line):

F# allows you to execute code directly in the interactive console:

WPF Designer

The WPF designer has been updated to include key features like data binding. If you are Windows Forms programming trying out WPF you will definitely be happy with this new set of features:

Master / detail forms are easy using the foreign key:

Silverlight

Silverlight tooling is also built into the product:

Web Tools

Web tooling has been updated with this version including the addition of HTML snippets. This feature is incredibly handy if you are like me and spend more time in text than in UI designers:

JavaScript IntelliSense has also been updated for performance and accuracy. As you start to type new code, the editor will infer what you meant and update as you go:

This work also tracks namespaces you might create and handles inline comments for a better editing experience:

JQuery now ships with VS with great IntelliSense support:

C++

We’ve made a significant number of improvements to the C++ support in VS2010. Among them:

Build support has been moved to MSBUILD to enable better scaling, diagnostics, extensibility, and easier customization
New project editors can be used to create your own build lab scripts
C runtime multi-targeting (makes it easier to move to new versions of VS)
Improved code focused work including quick search, improved IntelliSense, etc

Creating build lab scripts:

Including easy use of relative paths:

Example of multi-targeting (V9 == 2008, V10 == 2010). You can also create your own extensions for other configurations:

binds to the right set of lib paths.

Quick search is indexed using a local database making it fast and easy to find things:

IntelliSense has also been improved to understand macros and #ifdef’s for more accurate editing.

Team Arch

Visual Studio Team Architecture has been updated to support standard UML (V2.1.1). With this support you can do architecture diagrams, sequence diagrams, etc:

Adding an artifact using the designer:

activity diagram:

Activity editor:

Integration with TFS including documents:

structural diagrams:

The Architectural Explorer allows you to browse through your namespaces and explore the structure of your application:

Once you find the code you want, you can create a sequence diagram to understand the code flow better:

You can view you entire system at the block level as well (handy for checking layering):

Test and Lab Manager

The new Test and Lab Manager tool (which is written using WPF and does not require the full Visual Studio install) allows you to manage both test cases as well as lab (virtualization) configurations:

Test plans are easy to create, execute, and track:

I will be posting a tutorial walk through of doing manual testing using the tool soon.

TFS

TFS includes several new features including branch visualization and easier tracking of changes through the system:

visualize your source hierarchy:

Source annotations now track back through branching operations so you no longer just see the person who made the branch operation. In addition, you can visualize a changeset and see where it has been applied:

Another changeset view:

Drag and drop can move a changeset from one branch to another:

change moved:

Build automation now targets the new Workflow support in .NET Framework 4.0. You can use the new designer to outline your builds:

TFS Reporting

Hierarchical work items are now supported:

Same in Excel:

As well as MS Project:

Rich text editing was common request for work item tracking. Turns out I had a dentist appointment during the Beta 1 demo walk through :)

TFS is the backing store for all work items and can be accessed via Visual Studio, Test and Lab Manager, as well as Office. Here you can see the same query run in Visual Studio as well as Test and Lab Manager:

TFS Web Access was added with VS2008. We’ve made upgrades to these features with VS2010 including integration with MOSS:

You can edit your main portal as a user and add your own webparts:

You can also create/edit webparts using Excel server:

And then publish them back:

Summary

Wow, that’s a lot of features! What’s amazing is that I haven’t actually covered everything in the release. We also have a number of advanced parallel computing advances, SharePoint tooling, new WorkFlow features, etc.

You can find instructions for downloading the feedback and sharing your feed back here. The best way to get prepared for VS2010 is to get VS2008 deployed today. You can find everything you need on our home page here.

Enjoy!

VS2010: On Triangles and Performance

Jasonz — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:55:37 GMT

In February I blogged about the new look for VS2010. You gave us a huge amount of feedback which I really appreciate. I wanted to follow up on a couple of the themes that popped: the outlining mode with triangles and performance.

Outlining
You spoke loudly and clearly that you didn’t like the triangle outline mode. Based on this feedback, the team actually changed this feature in mid-flight during Beta 1 to reflect your feedback: no more triangles!! Here are some updated screen shots:

Hovering the cursor anywhere on the line highlights that region, double clicking the line will collapse it:

Once collapsed you can hover over the […] region to see a preview of the underlying buffer:

The region can then be expanded again either by clicking on the ellipses or the [+].

I want to thank everyone for weighing in on the new design. Your feedback directly led to changes in the product and as a result you’ll never see the original design in a public build.

Performance
Performance is another area you called out and something I care passionately about myself. In the interest of transparency I want to provide some updates about how we are doing and where we are headed.

First, we measure a *lot* of scenarios both with the core of the VS Pro experience but also with TFS server operations. We have literally hundreds of goals we track in the product. When a developer checks new code into the tree, it is also measured against a set of those goals to check for regressions (Regression Prevention System or RPS). As an example of these scenarios, a typical end to end test for VS Pro might include:

Start VS & load solution
Scroll down in a large file
Type a new method
Show Add Reference dialog
Add new form
Show toolbox
Add new control to form
Add event handler to control
Open existing form
Build/rebuild
Step into (F11 10 times)
Stop debugging
Close VS (w/solution open)

This is just an example but essentially I want to take a very typical daily usage of the tool and make sure it works really well. In addition to raw times for every step, we also do a version where we weight some of the steps as more important. For example you may only start VS once a day (or less) but you are likely to be typing all day long.

We run these scenarios on a variety of hardware, multiple versions of Windows, using our primary languages (C#, VB, C++, etc), using our presentation technologies (XAML, HTML, Windows Forms), etc.

For Beta 1 we are making progress on performance but it is not yet where I want it to be. For example the VB / Windows Forms application is actually doing pretty well while the VB / ASP.NET application is slower than VS2008 (similar with C#).

I’m committed to having the new innovations in VS2010 (editor, WPF, etc) while still maintaining a fast environment. I’ve asked Rico Mariani to dedicate a significant amount of time working on performance for this release to help make sure we get there.

Beta 1
We are getting *very* close to releasing Beta 1. Stay tuned here for the formal announce of the release and keep sending us your feedback!

New Name for Test and Lab Tools

Jasonz — Tue, 12 May 2009 18:56:27 GMT

At the Professional Developers’ Conference (PDC) in October last year, we disclosed information on a generalist testing tool (codenamed “Camano”) within Visual Studio® Team System 2010 that focuses entirely on test case management. Today we have formally named the tool: Microsoft Test and Lab Manager! Test and Lab Manager will be available with several of the Visual Studio Team System products including Visual Studio Team Test 2010.

We expect that there will be plenty of cases where generalist testers will want to manage and execute test cases without installing the entire Visual Studio system on each machine. To help make that easier, we will also release a scaled down edition for generalist testers called Visual Studio Team Test 2010 Essentials.

This gives us a great line up of test related products:

Visual Studio® Team Test 2010	Support for the specialist tester including Web and load testing capabilities in addition to the ability to create automated test suites. Executes in the Visual Studio environment for test professionals. Comes with Microsoft Test and Lab Manager.
Visual Studio® Team Test 2010 Essentials	Support for the generalist tester including the ability to manage test cases and manual/automated test execution. Installs as a scaled down product for easy access on test machines.
Visual Studio® Lab Management 2010	Support for creating virtualized environments with snapshot capabilities. You can now execute your tests using the lab capabilities and save the state later for both development and test usage.

The new products are a great addition to the Visual Studio Team System product family and are a key part of our goal to help cut down on the number of “no-repro” scenarios that are experienced today between developers and testers.

We are finalizing Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 as we speak. I hope you will install the builds and send us your feedback!