Willy-Peter Schaub's Cave of Chamomile Simplicity

A journey through the world of Microsoft Team System

Our first review paper of the Team System product has been published on http://www.saarchitect.net under http://www.saarchitect.net/viewarticle.aspx?articleID=218.

Is complexity a necessity or merely a complexity?

See http://www.saarchitect.net for a new article “is complexity a necessity or merely a complexity” which looks at the concept of “simple” solutions instead of “complex” solutions.

An article looking at Team System is currently under review and will be posted in due course.

Enterprise Libraries - 9.6 out of 10 (Some more Gotchas and Status)

1. Gotcha: Handlers will be executed in the sequence in which the were defined. If you wish to log and replace or wrap, ensure that you configure the logger first, then the replace/wrap handler.
   
2. Exception types, unlike handlers, can be specified in any sequence. EL will pick the exception type best describing the exception and will default to the exception type, if defined, only if no match can be made. This is one of the features that makes this product "rock"!
   
3. We are busy implementing Mvp extensions throughout EL and have achieved some exciting speed improvements. The performance of EL is, in our 'humble' opinion the last stumbling block, before we can stamp EL as Enterprise ready. Mvp extensions are showing exciting improvements in terms of performance and therefore we have clocked up our confidence/satisfaction by .1 q;-) If anyone has got experiences in this area that would be valuable to the community, then please share them with us.
   

Enterprise Libraries - 9.5 out of 10 (Some Gotchas)

We are still busy with the research and internal developer readiness evangelism on Enterprise Libraries (EL) and have also successfully integrated EL into two solutions under construction. Looking at the ease of use and productivity enhancements delivered by EL I have decided to increase my satisfaction from 9 to 9.5 out of 10! EL “rocks”.

Herewith a few gotchas we picked up so far ...

1. When using a signed version of EL, make sure that you generate the configuration files with the EntLibConfig.exe program signed with the same strong name key file, otherwise the configuration editor will blow with message “An unhandled exception has occured...could not create ...ConfigurationManagerSectionHandler“.
   
2. When calling ConfigurationManager.WriteConfiguration() please take note that the public key token of the calling program is inserted into the configuration file. This token is checked when calling ConfigurationManger.ReadConfiguration() ... if they do not match, no joy in loading the configuration and a sign of unhappiness “Could not create Microsoft.Practices.Enterpriseibrary.Configuration.ConfigurationManagerSectionHandler“.
   
3. Do not use spaces when defining configuration sections in the configurator. For some reason EL is not too happy with us at time of calling ReadConfiguration(), throwing up its keyboard in horror with message “Your App ... has an invalid token“.

Quick Reference Posters

Team System Quick Reference Poster

VS.NET 2005 - Looking at the December CTP Release (Part 2)

After numerous installations and dummy runs, we have come to the conclusion that the December CTP should not be used for evaluations for or demonstrations of Team System. It should not be seen as negative, because we have all knowingly entered the world of BETA instability on a voluntary basis.

The good …

We will release a whitepaper on www.saArchitect.net in due course documenting our findings, extreme “excitement” and evangelism for the product.

The bad …

• We suggest that no production project is considered with the November and especially the December CTP. Instead wait for VS.NET BETA 2 which is scheduled for end-March, which will include BETA-1 of Team System and therefore probably a more reliable environment.
  
• Project dependencies are not yet reflected in the work items. Team stakeholders, especially developers, need to consult the project plan for dependencies on a regular basis to take note of dependencies.
  
• A mountain of MSF Agile work items are created and these are not clearly assigned to categorized buckets on creation. BETA-2 promises to address this rather confusing ‘feature’.

The evil …

• As the Middle Business Tier and Data Tier of Team System are currently using different builds of the .NET2 Runtime, a one-server environment is not possible. Instead one needs to commit two servers or use Virtual Machines to host the two servers, following each step of the BETA installation guidelines rigorously. The BETA2 and RTM promises us a single server and more importantly a more user friendly and robust installation ... in the interim take cognizance of the fact that we are working with pre-BETA software and hang in there ... it will be worth it.
  
• When working with Virtual Machine, ensure that you configure the VMs to receive equal processing time, otherwise there will be timeouts during the Team project creation process. If a creation fails there is no support/cleanup functionality available. Again BETA2 and the RTM promise support in this area.
  
• If you want to work with the diagram designer tools ensure that you work with the November CTP, because the December CTP will test everyone’s patience with the regular exceptions (0x80004003) thrown by the designer. These errors can normally be ignored, but in some cases lead to spectacular IDE crashes, which in turn has corrupted designer diagrams on several occasions. 

The moral of the story is currently …