Jeff Nuckolls {Application Platform and Development Tools} : Visual Studio

Unit Tests with Visual Studio 2008 (screencast)

jeffnuck — Sat, 10 May 2008 01:06:00 GMT

Test Driven Development (TDD) has long been advocated as a "best practice" in software development. Without picking apart the details with this theory, I'll just summarize the concept:

prior to jumping in with both feet, writing functional code, start with stubbed out methods/functions/classes/etc... (you might use Class Designer for this part)
second, create a test harness that aligns with the functional requirements... these should test for "expected" results and compare them with "actual" results returned from the functional code (class/method/etc...)
finally start adding code to your stubbed classes/methods... and refining this code until your tests harness receives all "expected" results

Creating these test harnesses can be a cumbersome task and seem to take time away from the valuable development time. Visual Studio can automate a majority of this for you saving you tons of time without bolt-on 3rd party tools, and most importantly recover that valuable development time "without" sacrificing quality code!

Instead of rambling, I recorded a quick 7 minute screencast to get you started in Unit Testing with Visual Studio 2008:

Note: This just touches the surface, but will hopefully prove a decent introduction.

Web Tests in Visual Studio 2008 (screencast)

jeffnuck — Sat, 10 May 2008 00:03:00 GMT

If you are interested in testing your web applications, Visual Studio offers a great way to do this without bolt-on or expensive 3rd party tools. Auto-record, configure, and even generate coded versions (C# or VB) of your web tests, then reuse with/without Load Tests. You can also add Data Sources (databases, CSV files, and XML files), Validation rules, and Extraction rules to your web tests.

Here I have provided a short screencast to demonstrate "some" of the features for creating Web Tests with Visual Studio 2008:

Enjoy!

Visual Basic 6.0 IDE goes out of support

jeffnuck — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:40:00 GMT

In just 1 week from today, on April 8, 2008, the Visual Basic 6.0 IDE will no longer be supported. If you haven't converted all your apps to .NET shame on you (I mean that in a pure-poor-humor sort of way, in fact it's widely recognized that migrations aren't always straight forward, each migration strategy may differ depending on several variables... prior planning and a knowledgeable consultant is my best advice), but don't freak out... Microsoft will continue to support the VB 6.0 runtime for all existing application in all the next versions of the Windows OS including Windows Server 2008 and Vista. However; who knows how many years the runtime will be supported, so you might want to start considering a migration plan, if not for supportability concerns, then to take advantage of the performance, security, power of the .NET Framework and the productivity of Visual Studio 2008. (Click here for more information about Visual Basic 6.0 life-cycle and mainstream support.)

Technical References for Migration:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vbasic/ms789186.aspx

Webcast:

Using the Interop Toolkit to Migrate VB 6.0 applications to .NET

Books:

Upgrading Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 to Microsoft Visual Basic .NET w/accompanying CD-ROM

Upgrading Visual Basic 6.0 Applications to Visual Basic .NET and Visual Basic 2005 (Patterns & Practices)

{Get-R-Done!}

Upgrade TFS from the Trial edition to a licensed copy...

jeffnuck — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:51:00 GMT

If you were an early adopter and/or just testing out Team Foundation Server 2008 and now want to upgrade to a licensed copy without reinstalling on new hardware see this MSDN article for the appropriate steps: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms404852.aspx

(Note if you are a Volume Licensed customer, you may need to call product support because you will not have a Product Key in this case.)

Step-by-step Introduction to LINQ to SQL

jeffnuck — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 04:23:00 GMT

Here I’ll give you a quick introduction to LINQ using Visual Studio 2008. Click here to learn more about LINQ in general, otherwise download a 90-day trial Visual Studio 2008 (if you are a student you can download the professional edition for FREE) and fire it up!

First we will look at some very basic LINQ to SQL query using code and the “Linq Relational Designer”, and then we’ll do another example to show you a code/query-free way of doing the same thing using the LinqDataSource.

Linq to SQL (via code and Object Relational Designer)

1. Open Visual Studio 2008 and create a new ASP.NET Web Application (here I’m using C#, but you could just as easily use VB.NET)

a. File-->New-->Project-->Visual C#/Web-->ASP.NET Web Application

Once the project is loaded, we need to first add a database to the project (I am assume that you have SQL Server 2005 Express Edition installed and running… it should have installed with Visual Studio 2008 by default, unless you selected otherwise).

Now I’ll walk you through creating a sample database for this example or use your own existing database for the rest of this example.

2. Right-click the “App_Data” folder and select Add-->New Item

3. Once the Add New Item windows opens select Data/SQL Server Database and name it Students.mdf as follows:

You should now be able to view you database in the “Server Explorer” window as it is below. Now we can start creating your database.

4. Right-click Tables and select Add New Table.

5. Define your columns as follows, be sure to make the StudentID column as an Identity field incrementing by 1.

6. Save your new table as “Students” and then populate it with some fictitious data…

Now we can add a Linq to SQL Class…

7. From Solution Explorer, right-click you LinqDemo web application and select Add-->New Item-->Linq to SQL Classes

8. Name it LinqToStudents.dbml and click Add.

9. The Object Relational Designer should open.

10. From Server Explorer, drag and drop you Students table that you just created into the left pane of your designer surface. It should appear as follows:

11. Save All and Build for good measure…

12. Back to the Default.aspx page let’s Drag and Drop a DataGrid server control from the Toolbox on to Designer View. (auto format it if you want, but don’t configure any datasources at this time).

13. Right-click anywhere on the Default.aspx page and select “View Code”, this should open the Default.aspx.cs class file.

14. Add the following code to the Page_Load event.

LinqToStudentsDataContext linqStud = new LinqToStudentsDataContext();

var allstudents = from stud in linqStud.Students
where stud.StudentID != null
select stud;

GridView1.DataSource = allstudents;
GridView1.DataBind();

15. Now you can click F5 (to run in Debug mode) or Ctrl + F5 (to run without the debugger), if you just click F5 for the first time you might get the following Information Windows letting you know that its modifying the Web.config file for you to allow debugging. Just click OK.

Your application should start up in Internet Explorer and display all of the data from your Students database table in the GridView control.

Albeit a basic example, you have just completed your first Linq To SQL application. CONGRATZ!

Linq to SQL (via code and Object Relational Designer)

Now that we did it the “hard” way (not really), let’s take a look at an even easier way to Linq our GridView control to a SQL table.

1. Using the same project and Default.aspx page in the previous example. Let’s first DELETE all the code you just added to the Page_Load event of the Default.aspx.cs class file and then Save and Close that file.

2. From your Toolbox, drag and drop the LinqDataSource server control (under Data) anywhere onto the Designer View of your Default.aspx page.

3. You can now select “Configure Data Source” from the LinqDataSource you just added as follows:

4. Once the “Configure Data Source” window appears you can the LinqDemo.LinqToStudentsDataContext option from the “Chose your context object” dropdown, and select Next.

5. On the next screen, just accept the defaults and click Finish.

Back to the Default.aspx Designer View… now we can bind the GridView to our newly created LinqDataSource.

6. Select “LinqDataSource1” from the Chose Data Source dropdown list of your GridView control as follows:

7. Save and Run (F5)

Internet Explorer should open and display data from your database if everything was wired up successfully.

Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 Integration

jeffnuck — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 04:24:00 GMT

Consider this a pre-post... I received a lot of questions in regards to the integration of VS 2008 and SQL 2008. As of the current date SQL 2008 was just released as a CTP while VS 2008 has already be made publically available. The main things that folks are realizing is the lack of SQL 2008 project templates in VS2008 as well a database validation and other DB Pro tools in support of SQL 2008. I will post a link to some workaround information that should be available on MSDN shortly, but note that this integration "IS" coming... an update to Visual Studio 2008 will be available in conjunction with SQL 2008 when it ships, if not sooner.

Visual Studio 2005 & Team Foundation Server Integration and Functionality

jeffnuck — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 00:59:00 GMT

Click on the thumbnail to enlarge: