Espresso Fueled Agile Development

Data Access Guidance Refresh

mpuleio — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:41:00 GMT

Over the last few weeks (in my copious spare time between midnight and six in the morning), I have been updating the Data Access Guidance code base to VS2010B2 in prepration for a few talks I am giving on Data Access patterns. As soon as I am happy with the code, I will post something on our the project's codeplex site at http://dataguidance.codeplex.com/ .Unfortunately, there were enough changes between beta1 and beta2 that this has been a bit more work that I anticipated. However these changes will allow me to remove a fair bit of code that we had put in around dealing with foreign keys in POCO scenarios, as that functionality is in Beta2.

Additionally, as soon as I have a chance (again in my spare time when I should be sleeping), I will continue the process and get the code working under VS2010 RC.

Also, you should see Don's response to some questions on the Data Access project site (http://dataguidance.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=79170) around what happened to the project and why these updates are happening opportunistically as opposed to as part of my day job. :-)

Web Client Developer Guidance

mpuleio — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:18:00 GMT

For the past several months, I ahve been working with Blaine and Francis on the Web Client Developer Guidance project. This project (when we ship) will provide further guidance for web developers who are creating risch responsive web applications. We have spent considerable time focusing on things like javascript, MVC development, security, separated presentation, unit testing, and a number of other areas. In addition to a solid reference implementation (read as "intentionally incomplete sample application"), we alswo have the source for a re-usable library that helps create modualr, composable web apps with DI in either ASP.NET WebForms or ASP.NET MVC. For more information, check out:

the project on CodePlex at http://webclientguidance.codeplex.com/.
Blaine's blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/blaine/
Francis's blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/francischeung/

We currently have our bi-weekly code drops available for download. And we are wrapping up the code and focusing on the written documentation. Please feel free to provide feedback via the disccussion lists on codeplex. If you do, please use the tag "Web Guidance v-Next (not WCSF)"

Over the next few weeks I hope to write up a few blog posts around some of the challenges we raninto and solved so far, as well as the design decisions we made.

Data Access Guidance Drops available

mpuleio — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:16:07 GMT

For the last few months, I have been working with Don on developing guidance for developers who have to deal with data access. We have a CodePlex project over at http://dataguidance.codeplex.com/ up and running. We have been working for a while, but (unlike most p&p projects) we have been building on pre-beta technologies, which meant we could not ship our source code in a way that you could consume it. Recently, Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 and ASP.NET MVC for VS2010 Beta 1 were made available publicly, meaning we could ship our code. Two weeks ago, we finished an iteration and made available our first public drop (Drop 2009.06.17) using Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1, Entity Framework 4, ASP.NET MVC for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1, and the Composite Application Library from Prism. This week, (after another two week iteration) we released another drop (Drop 2009.07.02), building on what we had and improving it a bit. Check out the project and the code (which is still evolving), and give us some feedback on how we are doing things and what you think of our implementations of the Repository pattern, the specification pattern, our RESTful service implementation, and the rest of the code. Keep in mind, we are focusing on the data access part of the project, and the rest (the web app and WPF app) is there to show how to use the data access layer.

Also, look for a new drop every two weeks (or so) until we finish the project.

Enjoy…

If you missed the patterns & practices summit....

mpuleio — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:37:00 GMT

Ajoy has posted that three of the sessions have been made available online at pnp Summit videos online. Since one of the three sessions is one that Grigori and I did about the Acceptance Testing Guide, Driving Development with Acceptance Testing, I figured I'd share the information. The other two sessions are Ade talking about distributed agile development, and a discussion with Ajoy on the new SharePoint guidance from p&p that I have mentioned before (Guidance on SharePoint, Unit testing SharePoint). If you missed the Summit and want to attend next year in Redmond (or elsewhere), keep an eye on http://www.pnpsummit.com/, which will eventually be updated with information on the next conference.

Who is using WCSF?

mpuleio — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:48:51 GMT

Blaine and I would like to ask the community to let us know "who is using WCSF?" We know that WCSF has been fairly successful based on:

WCSF has been downloaded a few times (ok, it is really many thousands of times)
The discussion forums on CodePlex are fairly busy
Direct customer engagement with a number of companies

However, there are a lot of folks who are using WCSF that we do not know about. Since we get requests all the time about who is using WCSF, the size of projects, the size of dev teams, etc, we would love to collect some more data and statistics. So, if you have used or are using WCSF on a project, let us know via comments, email, or discussions on CodePlex. If you have stopped using it, please let us know why, so we can possibly address concerns.

To make things simple, I have created a thread on the WCSF CodePlex discussion forum so you can easily provide feedback: http://www.codeplex.com/websf/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=41405

Thanks.

Where is WCSF headed?

mpuleio — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:24:19 GMT

Blaine & I have been getting a lot of emails, messages, comments, etc about WCSF. There are a lot of people interested in a public statement from patterns & practices about the roadmap for WCSF and future support of WCSF, in addition to the "normal" feature requests.

Well, we have some good news: Blaine has publicly released the WCSF roadmap in his blog as Roadmap for WCSF.

Basically, right now, we are asking for feedback from the community. Let Blaine and/or I know what you want via our blogs, email, or the WCSF CodePlex site at www.codeplex.com/websf. You can also create work items/ issues on the WCSF CodePlex site and have people vote on them (http://www.codeplex.com/websf/WorkItem/List.aspx).

Thanks in advance for the feedback...

[Edit: I created a specific thread on the CodePlex discussions board to facilitate feedback: http://www.codeplex.com/websf/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=41403). Enjoy]

Back from vacation... and a lot has happened in the last week

mpuleio — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 22:48:30 GMT

I took a week off, which was good. I visited family and spent time relaxing and playing video games. (Fallout3 rocks so far!!). I got back this morning to hundreds of emails to go through. After reading almost all of it, there were a few things that happened recently I wanted to share... Here are the highlights:

Grigori and I have been working (with Gerard and Jon) on the Acceptance Testing Guide...and we released a beta. (Grigori talks about it here: News: Acceptance Test Engineering Guidance BETA1, and the guide is under Releases here: http://codeplex.com/TestingGuidance). We would appreciate feedback.

Unity 1.2 and Enterprise Library 4.1 were both released. Way to go Chris, Grigori, and the rest of the team. (Just Released: Microsoft Enterprise Library 4.1 and Unity 1.2 and And we're live! Entlib 4.1 and Unity 1.2 are released.) Unity had some very neat (and hard to implement) stuff added to it in this release. I know since I paired with Chris on a small part of re-work that allowed the Policy Injection Block functionality to be added. This is a good, solid release of both projects.

p&p opened up the patterns & practices Agile Development Showcase, starting with a paper Ade wrote on Distributed Agile Development at Microsoft patterns & practices. I reviewed the paper and bounced ideas around with Ade. The paper has a LOT of information and helpful hints. (Ade's blog post about it is here: patterns & practices Agile Showcase)

The Redmond patterns & practices Summit is this week (http://www.pnpsummit.com/). I've got to prep for a talk tomorrow after being out for a week (fun). Here are a few other random posts on the topic: patterns & practices Summit in Redmond, Crazy Times Ahead - PDC, P&P Summit, Tech Ed EMEA). The Summit is always fun, and I am looking forward to it.

After the Summit, I'll be ramping down on the Acceptance Testing project now that the Beta is out. I will continue to work on it, just not as my primary focus, as it gets cleaned up, reviewed, re-worked, edited, etc. I'll blog soon about my next challenge.

How to migrate from CAB/SCSF to Composite WPF

mpuleio — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 20:12:10 GMT

Blaine recently posted that there is a CAB to Prism Comparison Available on Codeplex. This links to Composite Application Guidance for CAB Developers, a download from the CompositeWPF community site.

While this document does not help you decide IF[*] you should switch from CAB/SCSF to CompositeWPF, it does help with HOW, the differences between the two coding models, where the WorkItem went, how to emulate the behavior of WorkItems, and a few other interesting things. If you are a CAB developer considering the transition to WPF, you should definitely read this.

[*] Deciding which to use should be fairly simple: If you already know CAB/SCSF and you need to work in Windows Forms, stick with CAB/SCSF. If you need to host some WPF widgets in a Windows Forms environment, use CAB/SCSF. If you need a full WPF stack, use the Composite WPF guidance. If you are not constrained by the technology choice, things get tricky and the decision should factor in a whole bunch of factors including (but not limited to) which framework you are more comfortable in, which your team is more comfortable with, and where you see future investments in technology going. For each team/group/organization/company this is a different decision with different factors to consider.

Finally, a common Service Locator

mpuleio — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:03:57 GMT

I know that this is old news by now, but Chris Tavares, Glenn Block, and a few others around here have been working with a number of folks from the wider .NET community to create a common wrapper for IoC containers. Chris & Glenn created a community site (http://www.codeplex.com/CommonServiceLocator) and shipped it about two weeks ago (http://www.codeplex.com/CommonServiceLocator/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=17694).

Here are a few more posts about it:

The interface itself is pretty darned simple, and creating a wrapper around any IoC implementation should be pretty darned simple.

Personally, I think this is great, as it will allow us developers at p&p a way to easily create guidance using DI/IoC without tying our users to a particular container implementation, which has been a long requested feature. I know Prism did a great job with this concept already, and created their own facade, but this is a further step in the right direction as the broader DI/IoC community seems to be behind it. When/If I get a chance to work on WCSF again, I'll definitely go about hiding the container behind this interface.

Acceptance Test Engineering guide Alpha Available

mpuleio — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Last night I posted the Alpha version of Acceptance Test Engineering guide - How to Decide if Software is Ready for You or Your Customer to the Acceptance Test Engineering CodePlex community site. There are 300+ pages of content. It is still a bit rough, has some gaps in it, and needs some work, but there is a lot of good information too.

I would ask for some help from the public (developers, testers, PMs, and folks who act as customers or sponsor software projects): Read the Alpha (or just part of it) and reply to the Feedback Discussion with anything you think we got wrong, anything we got right, or anything we missed entirely. Thanks.

What is a "brown-bag talk"?

mpuleio — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:20:56 GMT

In past posts, and the recent Unit testing SharePoint post, I have mentioned "brown-bag talks." This has spurred emails from non-native English speakers asking me what in the heck a brown-bag talk is...

I am not sure if this is a Microsoft term, or a wider industry term (I think I remember it from my pre-MS employment, but that was a long time ago). Either way, it is a meeting over lunch where one person presents something they found interesting. The p&p dev team has organized a series of lunches every couple of weeks to talk about new and interesting technologies we are working with, and I have also seen brown-bag talks that cover just about any subject you can think of.... from reports about a conference someone just attended to a slide show about someone's vacation. The "brown-bag" part of the name is an indication that even though the meeting is at lunch time, lunch is not provided and you need to bring your own lunch. As a weird quirk of American culture, folks who bring their own lunch to work (rather than eating in the cafeteria or elsewhere) often carry it in a brown paper bag, hence the term.

Sorry about the confusion. In the future, I'll try to explain colloquialisms or not use them at all.

Unit testing SharePoint

mpuleio — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 00:38:00 GMT

Francis has an article on Unit Testing SharePoint 2007 Applications

He also did a brownbag talk on this yesterday, which was very interesting and brought up a few big challenges and ways to work around them.

Enjoy

Guidance on SharePoint

mpuleio — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:38:31 GMT

You all might be amazed by the number of emails, messages, and calls I get asking for any of the following:

Guidance on SharePoint
Requests to add SharePoint Guidance to WCSF
Requests to add "Office applications" support to SCSF

Well, I can finally help out folks looking for guidance on how to build SharePoint applications by saying "go check out the CodePlex project for patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance (http://www.codeplex.com/spg)." If you are hoping for SharePoint support in WCSF, you should probably check this out too.

Blaine and Francis are leading the effort on this project. I understand that they are tackling a few big challenges that customers have ranked as the most important including (this list is from the project's Vision Scope slide deck):

Unit testing and debugging
Packaging and deployment
Setting up a team development environment
Unclear which SharePoint features/ components to use and when
Solution maintenance/upgrade
How and when is SharePoint Designer applicable

If you do SharePoint development, you should check it out.

See Real Results With patterns & practices

mpuleio — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:38:43 GMT

I visited the p&p homepage on MSDN today, and saw an announcement for a research report by Nucleus Research about patterns & practices, and what companies that use our guidance think the benefits are. Check out See Real Results With patterns & practices (an overview) and download and read the full report. As a member of p&p I thought it was informative and showed a few areas that we can improve. It also showed areas where customers have reaped big benefits from using p&p deliverables, which I would be interested in if I were "out in the real world" and looking to re-use one of the p&p application blocks or an open source alternative. To borrow a few lines from the report:

"THE BOTTOM LINE
Companies use Microsoft patterns and practices to make their development environments more productive, consistent, and standardized. Whether used by an independent software vendor, consultancy, or enterprise, patterns and practices can accelerate project cycle times, reduce costs, and shift application development efforts away from code building and toward maximizing business benefits."

-- Guidebook: Microsoft patterns & practices, Nucleus Research Inc., April 2008,
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3696068D-BE4A-4731-AB15-492377AA4C6D&displaylang=en

Enjoy.

Acceptance Testing Guide Community Preview 2 Available!

mpuleio — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 20:16:38 GMT

As I have mentioned before in a few posts (Acceptance Test Engineering Guidance, Acceptance Testing Guidance Survey, and Acceptance Testing Guide Update), I am working with a team on guidance around acceptance testing. We still have a lot of work to do our the guide, but we have made available a second community preview to show you how things are shaping up and to give you a chance to provide feedback.

Check these out:

The Acceptance Test Engineering Guidance community site on CodePlex (so you can follow the project)
An announcement about the guide (which is being handed out at the Agile 2008 conference this week)
The second community preview of the guide (it is a bit rough, but you should be able to see where we are headed with it)
Provide Feedback on Community Preview Aug 4, 2008 (so we can make changes, add topics we missed, etc).