Jeff Beehler's Blog : Data Professional

early release of Database Edition updates

jeffbe — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 18:12:11 GMT

Gert Drapers, group manager for the team responsible for the Team System Database Edition, recently announced an early release (Community Technology Preview) of some updates to that product. The biggest motivation behind these updates was to fully support the upcoming release of SQL Server 2008 later this summer. But, while we were making these updates, we also made a whole bunch of other changes in anticipation of supporting different database providers. If you’re interested in learning more, you should certainly review Gert’s announcement.

TeamData and TeamBuild: together at last

jeffbe — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 13:21:25 GMT

I was happy to see this morning that Gert posted an article discussing the latest issue of CoDe Magazine which includes a very detailed article on using TeamData with TeamBuild to help automate the sometimes arcane process of building and deploying applications which use databases (don't they all?) and tighten the feedback loop between developers and database professionals.

Aggregating popular Team System blogs

jeffbe — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 17:02:53 GMT

Blogs have quickly become a primary means for the Team System team to communicate with our community and as a result we have dozens and dozens of valuable blogs from our team. Because of this distributed approach, it’s hard for our customers to navigate and track all of the blogs related to various topics. We’ve also heard from many customers that they tire of the endless cross posts between our blogs…the echo can sometimes be deafening.

To help us dampen the echo and to provide one place for customers to go to learn about their favorite portions of the product, we are now aggregating the best Team System blog articles on each of the role specific Team Centers. As we learn more about how this approach works (and doesn’t work) for us and our customers, we’ll evolve this program. To get us started, I have identified key posts and posters to help us kick off this program. Please take a look, subscribe to your favorite feeds and let us know if this help you to stay in touch with us better.

Thanks!

jeff

Team System (rss)

Architect (rss)

VSArch

Developer (rss)

Test (rss)

Database (rss)

TFS (rss)

Project Manager (rss)

Team_WIT_Tools

Watch Channel 9 video on news from DataDude

jeffbe — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 17:21:22 GMT

Brian Keller just announced the availability of a new Channel 9 video featuring Gert Drapers (aka Data Dude) covering various topics including the recent Service Release and Power Tools from our team. Enjoy!

DataDude ships again!

jeffbe — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 18:31:46 GMT

As if releasing their service release as well as VS2008 Beta2 last month wasn't enough, our DataDude team has done it again...this time shipping Power Tools that extend the functionality of Visual Studio Team Edition for Data Professionals to meet the needs of our customers. Gert has a more extensive list of what's available, but here's a quick summary:

Dependency Viewer
More refactoring support
Extended Data Generation
New MSBuild Tasks
T-SQL Static Code Analysis
Schema Manager API

Congratulations to the DataDude team. I can't wait to see what the do for an encore!

Upcoming Team System webcasts

jeffbe — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 02:36:00 GMT

Adam Gallant recently posted a listing of many Team System webcasts that are scheduled for the next 10 months or so. Some of them look really interesting...maybe I'll listen in and learn something too! His blog has a full listing...I've just included the Team System related broadcasts here:

Whew!

Company uses Team System Database edition to tame workflow

jeffbe — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 00:08:00 GMT

An article on TheServerSide.NET recently highlighted Configuresoft's usage of Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals and the benefits they realized by doing so. If you haven’t read it already, here are a couple quotes to whet your appetite:

“Sometimes when you think about C# or Visual Basic, the database is an afterthought. [Visual Studio Team 2005 Edition for Database Professionals] makes the database developer a first class citizen, and now the developers have a single platform to work with."
Malone said this major initiative would have taken 18 to 24 months to develop using a traditional development process and tools. Visual Studio Team 2005 Edition for Database Professionals enabled a release of the new product in only 12 months.

Good stuff!

Watch our TechEd 2007 sessions

jeffbe — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 00:29:00 GMT

The Team System team and community delivered quite a few talks at TechEd 2007 last month and I'm happy to announce that the recordings of these sessions, demos and all, are now available on the web for your viewing enjoyment. Here's a quick listing:

DEV347: Unit Testing and Test Driven Development: Brian Randell and Doug Seven
DEV309: Best Practices for Team-Based Software Development: Joel Semeniuk
ARC303: Building Your Own Software Factory: Edward Bakker and Jezz Santos
DEV313: Improving Code Performance with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System: Marc Popkin-Paine and Steve Carroll
DEV320: Writing Maintainable and Robust Applications with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System: Abhijit Rao and Noah Coad
DAT317: Database Schema Versioning: How to Use Microsoft Visual Studio Team System for Database Professionals and Team Foundation Server to Version and Deploy Your Databases: Gert Drapers
DEV322: Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (Part 1 of 2): Applying Work Item Tracking and Version Control to Application Lifecycle Management: Brian Harry
DEV336: Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (Part 2 of 2): Customizing Team Foundation Server for Application Lifecycle Management: Jeff Beehler
ARC315: Loose Coupling in Practice: Composite UI Application Block (CAB) in the Real World: David Platt
DEV329: Testing .NET 3.0 Applications with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Test Tools: Mark Michaelis
DEV337: End-to-End Database Development with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals: Duncan Davenport
ARC305: Practice-Centric Software Development with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server: David West and Ivar Jacobson
DEV210: Microsoft Solutions Framework 4.0 Core and its Families: Rafal Lukawiecki
DEV335: What's New in Microsoft Visual Studio Team System for Testers, New Features in Visual Studio 2008 and Best Practices for Testing AJAX, SharePoint, and Reporting Services: David R. Williamson
DEV321: Best Practices for Deploying and Migrating Projects to Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server: Doug Neumann
DEV301: Integrating the Database into the Application Lifecycle Using Microsoft Visual Studio Team System for Database Professionals: Duncan Davenport

I think Noah's talk (with Abhijit demoing) got the highest rating of all of these and of course you've got to watch mine!

Enjoy!

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 is available!

jeffbe — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 00:07:49 GMT

I'm sure there will be many more posts (from me and others) but I wanted to get the good word out quickly that Visual Studio Beta 2 is now available for download! It's been a long haul but I'm really excited about what we've achieved. I'm confident it's ready for people to really pick up and use on a daily basis. But what really matters is to hear what you think...please let us hear from you!

For more information, please see Soma's announcement. If you just want to get to the bits, please head to our recently redesigned Developer Center on MSDN.

Woohoo!

DataDude Service Release 1 is now available

jeffbe — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 17:00:11 GMT

Service Release 1 (SR1) for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals is now available. It addresses numerous known code defects as well as providing support for

Cross-database references
Support is improved so that you can reference objects within different databases by using database project references or by referencing a database metafile (.dbmeta). This support reduces or eliminates the cross-database reference warnings within a database project.
Improved file support within SQL Server file groups
You can define files within file groups as database project properties instead of having to create files and file groups within the pre-deployment storage script.
Variables
A Variables page is added to the database properties. This new page enables you to define setvar variables for use in the deployment scripts.

Additionally, SR1 supports the latest service pack release from Microsoft SQL Server 2005. Currently, the latest service pack is Service Pack 2 (SP2). SR1 also supports the Windows Vista operating system.

The knowledge base article describing the release can be found here and you can find the actual download here.

Congratulations to the DataDude team for wrapping up this release!

Database support survey - we need your input!

jeffbe — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 16:51:51 GMT

Brian Keller is taking a survey on which 3rd party database providers we should partner with for upcoming releases of our Database Professionals product:

Survey: Which databases should Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals support?

The team who builds Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals is collecting input on which 3rd-party (non-Microsoft) database providers they should be partnering with for future releases. Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 are the two databases supported in the current release, but the team is investing in infrastructure which would allow partners to build support for non-Microsoft databases as well.

If you would like to provide your input please take 5-10 minutes to respond to this brief survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=zKzfU_2b_2fBDQqyvECGt88hVQ_3d_3d

Your feedback is very important and will be used directly by the product planning teams. Even if you don't use Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals today, but you are interested in the functionality it provides for database change management, please consider taking this survey or forwarding it on to a colleague.

If you've got an opinion on this, please share it with us!

MySpace uses Team System

jeffbe — Sun, 06 May 2007 18:25:19 GMT

At last week's MIX07 conference, our friends from MySpace talked about the technology they use to offer up one of the most popular personal networking websites in the world. The growth they've experienced over the past few years is remarkable and along they way they've had to innovate many new solutions to help them meet the needs of their burgeoning user bases.

A recording of their MIX07 presentation is now available and within it they discuss their use of Team System...they've been early adopters of our tools starting late in 2005. The entire presentation is very interesting but if you want to just hear the Team System related portions, jump to:

8:50 - Code management with TFS

11:50 - Testing with Team Test

44:30 - Managing database development

Cool stuff!

Pre-release of DBPro service release now available!

jeffbe — Sat, 05 May 2007 16:01:37 GMT

The DataDude team, aka the team that develops Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals, has just published a preview of their first service release. Remember, they released their v1 product in December 2006 so they're following close behind that with this update. It's not just bug fixes either...they've included a number of new features:

3+4 part name resolution through a new feature called "database references"
File groups and files are now part of the project settings and can e fully parameterize then to fit your deployment needs (this replaces the need for the storage deployment script)
SQLCMD variable support; this is enable through a new project property page for creating and editing variables that you can then use inside your scripts. Variables are stored inside the project file and can be mapped to MSBuild properties.

Some day Gert will explain to me what all that means but in the meantime check it out and let us know what you think. We're hoping to get the final version out soon so any early feedback you can provide us would be greatly appreciated.

Three more Team System case studies available

jeffbe — Wed, 02 May 2007 02:55:58 GMT

With three new case studies available, we bring the total number for Team System to five:

New! KBC Bank used Microsoft Visual Studios Team System and Team Foundation Server to improve application-building methodologies, increase productivity, and accelerate application deployment.
New! EDS used Microsoft Visual Studio Team System to support a more efficient global development strategy, realigning its internal software development assets and improving the productivity of its developers and testers.
New! Dell: By using Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server to deploy a global source code management platform, Dell is able maintain a centralized repository for all source code and provide it to developers on a just-in-time basis regardless of their location. Improved source code management has also enabled Dell to consolidate its source code onto fewer servers, redeploy 100 system administrators, and improve the productivity of its developers.
A social networking Web site used Microsoft Visual Studio Team System to improve the productivity of its developers and project managers as well as to reduce software costs.
A global manufacturer deployed Microsoft Visual Studio Team System to improve the consistency and efficiency of internal software development, enabling it to support adoption of the widely recognized Capability Maturity Model for software development. This enabled the company to increase developer, project manager, and tester productivity while improving software quality.

Each of these presents a compelling case for the benefits of adopting Team System. I don't understand the methodology they use to calculate the ROI...personally I think the most interesting sections are the key benefits / costs and lessons learned.

Enjoy

Another chat - by popular demand

jeffbe — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 00:43:36 GMT

Based on the feedback that we've received on our upcoming chat, we decided to add another session later in the day to accommodate folks in other timezones. Of course it'll be on Saturday in many timezones around the world so hopefully folks will still be able to join us. Here are the two times we'll be chatting:

Join the chat on Friday, April 27th, 2007 from 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time. Add to Calendar | Additional Time Zones
Join the chat on Friday, April 27th, 2007 from 4:00pm - 5:00pm Pacific Time. Add to Calendar | Additional Time Zones

In the future, we'll schedule our chats on days other than Fridays to avoid running into the weekend for those of you ahead of us.