Tulsa TechFest 2007

The second annual Tulsa TechFest is coming up next month on October 19th and 20th.  There are currently over 50 speakers geared up to present at this years conference with around 15 tracks.  Some of the current speakers include:

• Jason Zander - General Manager for the .NET Framework
• Sean Alexander - Director of Silverlight
• Michael Scherotter - Microsoft Developer Evangelist, San Francisco
• Wally McClure host of the ASP.NET Podcast
• Bill Vaughn - Awesome INETA Speaker RETURNS

And, let's not forget myself :-)  I'll be presenting on What's New with Team Foundation Server 2008 on Friday at 1:00.  This will be my first time at Tulsa TechFest, although not my first time in Tulsa.  I grew up in Oklahoma about 60-90 minutes south-southeast of Tulsa and I also have a sister that currently lives in Tulsa so it will be fun visiting with her.

I'm looking forward to attending and presenting at this year's event and hope to see you there.

Cool LINQ Utility

Like a lot of you out there, I've been spending a bit of time learning the new Language Integrated Query (LINQ) features available in the .NET Framework 3.5 (still in beta).  LINQ provides some very powerful capabilities for querying not only databases but other data types as well (e.g. XML, .NET collections, arrays, etc.).  Although the syntax is similar to SQL, it is not exactly the same which offers a bit of a learning curve.

I came across a utility called LINQPad a few days ago that has been helping me get over the learning curve with LINQ.  This utility offers functionality similar to the query functionality in SQL Enterprise Manager.  You create ad-hoc queries using the LINQ syntax and view the results in a hierarchical format (where applicable).

There is an interesting challenge on the LINQPad site that goes as follows:

• Locate the shortcut for SQL Management Studio on your Start Menu and move it some place else.
• In its place, insert a shortcut to LINQPad.
• For the next week, perform all your ad-hoc SQL queries using only LINQPad.

I'm currently about 2 days into the challenge and I have to say that it's a completely different mindset.  I also have to admit that I've cheated at least once and used SQL Enterprise Manager to run some queries because I was under a time crunch and didn't have the time to figure out exactly how I could use LINQ to achieve a particular problem.  However, I suspect that after another week or so I should have a very good understanding about the LINQ syntax (at least for database queries).

You can download and read more about LINQPad here.  Also, here are a couple of good LINQ reference sites for anyone starting out with LINQ:

• The LINQ Project
• 101 LINQ Samples

Missing Silverlight Assemblies in VS 2008 Beta 2

If you happen to be one of the many that is giving Microsoft's Silverlight 1.1 Alpha version a trial run, you may have ran into the same issue I did.  When I created new Silverlight projects in VS 2008 Beta 2, the Silverlight assembly references had a warning icon next to them stating that they could not be found.  The fix is quite simple - Microsoft has released a refreshed version of the Microsoft Silverlight Tools Alpha for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2.  I uninstalled the old version, installed the new version, and everything worked fine.

Team Foundation Server 2008 Feature List

Brian Harry has posted what he's calling the (most likely) final feature list post for TFS 2008. It is an impressive list with a few new features listed that won't show up until RTM (i.e. they're not in beta 2). He also re-iterates the compatabilities between VSTS 2005 and VSTS 2008.

You can read the full list here. I've included the new (RTM) items below as well just to show what's coming.

• Enable support for Reporting Services on any server and any port
• Support for SQL 2008 (aka Katmai)
• TFSDeleteProject now permanently deletes (destroys) version control content
• New role for many operations activities - You don't have to be server administrator to run many of the admin utilities any longer
• Enhancements to tfsadminutil - New capability to configure accounts, connections, etc on both TFS and the TFS proxy

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 - Released

As of a short while ago, Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 was released.  This also includes the .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2.  Silverlight 1.0 RC is expected to be released within the next couple of days.

Also, these releases (Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2, as well as Silverlight 1.0 RC) come with a "go live" license that allows you to start development now and not have to worry about a supported upgrade path when the final versions ship later this year.

Here's a list of the installation disc images that can be downloaded:

Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition Beta 2

Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition Beta 2

Visual Studio Team System 2008 - Team Suite Beta 2

Visual Studio Team System 2008 - Team Foundation Server Beta 2

Visual Studio Team System 2008 - Test Load Agent Beta 2

MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2

Also, there are a couple of VPC images that can be downloaded as well:

Visual Studio Team System 2008 - Team Suite Beta 2 VPC

Visual Studio Team System 2008 - Team Suite & Team Foundation Server Beta 2 VPC

The Visual Studio Express Editions can be downloaded from here.

The Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2 can be downloaded from here.

You can read more about these releases from Soma, Rob, Brian, and Scott.  I'm sure there will be lots to write about over the next few weeks as everyone gets into the nuts-and-bolts of Beta 2.

TFSInfo Updated

Just a quick post to let everyone know that the TFSInfo utility has been updated to also report the version number of the Team Foundation Server's data tier schema (per this post).  TFSInfo now reports the TFS version based on the Application Tier as well as the Data Tier.

You can read more about it here.

Vista Sidebar Gadget for Team Builds

Jim Lamb has released a Windows Sidebar Gadget that allows you to view completed and failed team builds.  The current version is compatible with Visual Studio 2008 Beta 1 (i.e. "Orcas") and should also be compatible with beta 2 once it's released.

You can read more about it and/or download the gadget here.  Jim also provides a short video demonstration of the gadget on his blog page as well.

Refreshing TFS Version Control Status Icons

I've seen a some posts lately related to the version control status icons that are displayed in the Solution Explorer within Visual Studio 2005 Team System.  The problem with these status icons is that they do not automatically update to reflect the current status when a file is checked out or back in.  Even refreshing the Solution Explorer does not refresh the status icons.  To see this in action, open a solution in Visual Studio and have someone else check one of the solution files out.  Refresh your Solution Explorer by right-clicking on a project and selecting Refresh.

There is a way to refresh the status icons - by clicking on File-->Source Control-->Refresh Status.  This will update the status icons to reflect whether a file is checked in or out.  If you're like me and prefer to use the keyboard when possible, you can easily assign a hotkey to this command by:

1. Click on the Tools-->Options menu item within Visual Studio.
2. Click on the Environment-->Keyboard node.
3. Enter "tfsrefreshstatus" into the Show commands containing textbox.
4. Select the entry "File.TfsRefreshStatus".  This is the command that is executed when you click on File-->Source Control-->Refresh Status.
5. Enter a shortcut by clicking in the Press shortcut keys textbox and pressing Ctrl+R, Ctrl+S (or any other command sequence you wish) and click on the Assign button.  See the screen shot below for an example:

Although I'd rather see the status icons update automatically, this is an easy workaround.

Exposing TFS with the Hamachi VPN

I am currently working on a project that has developers distributes across two sites.  We wanted to make use of Team Foundation Server but didn't want to expose the server to the "world".  There are a couple of options available to us and we chose to go down the VPN route for two main reasons:

1. Cost - by utilizing the LogMeIn Hamachi VPN (more on that in a minute) we had to spend only $39 rather than the hundreds of dollars an SSL certificate would have cost us.
2. Ease - setting up the VPN was very simple - both on the server as well as the client.

What is the LogMeIn Hamachi VPN you might ask?  Here's what they have to say on their web site:

LogMeIn Hamachi is a VPN service that easily sets up in 10 minutes, and enables secure remote access to your business network, anywhere there's an Internet connection.

It works with your existing firewall, and requires no additional configuration. Hamachi is the first networking application to deliver an unprecedented level of direct peer-to-peer connectivity. It is simple, secure, and cost-effective.

Once I downloaded and installed the VPN software it took me less than 10 minutes (as advertised) to get everything setup and running.  Once I had the VPN configured on the Team Foundation Server machine, an external developer installed the same software on his machine and was accessing TFS within a few minutes.

We did run into one snag during our initial setup.  The external developer noticed that he could access documents via SharePoint but little red X's were appearing next to the Documents and Reports folders in Team Explorer.  It turned out to be a name resolution problem.  He just added the TFS machine name to his hosts file (along with the server's IP address) and everything was good-to-go.

Regarding the $39 that we spent on the software... there is a free version of the software that we initially used to get everything setup and working.  However, the free version does not run as a Windows Service so we had to have an active session on the TFS server during our initial testing.  Once we determined the VPN would work for us, we spent the $39 to upgrade which let us switch to a Windows Service configuration with a single click.

So, if you're looking for a simple, quick, and inexpensive solution for exposing your Team Foundation Server securely, you may want to check the LogMeIn Hamachi VPN out.

Microsoft's Largest Launch - Ever!

Microsoft announces today (July 10th) that Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 (formerly code-named "Orcas") will be officially launched together on February 27th, 2008.  Although it appears that Visual Studio 2008 is still set for release later this year, I have to say I'm a little surprised (although not too much) by the release date.  I had the impression these tools would be available a little sooner than this since the 2007 PDC in Los Angeles was canceled with this message:

We are currently in the process of rescheduling this fall’s Professional Developer Conference. As the PDC is the definitive developer event focused on the future of the Microsoft platform, we try to align it to be in front of major platform milestones. By this fall, however, upcoming platform technologies including Windows Server 2008, SQL Server codenamed “Katmai,” Visual Studio codenamed “Orcas” and Silverlight will already be in developers’ hands and approaching launch...

At any rate, I will definitely be ready to start using Visual Studio 2008 as soon as it's available.  And, since Visual Studio 2008 is planned to be released along with a "go-live" license, I may start using it a lot sooner than that.

You can read more here and here.