Willy-Peter Schaub's Cave of Chamomile Simplicity

May 2006 saArchitect Community Event (Johannesburg, Cape Town)

While sessions on Identity Management, WinFX (hands-on labs), VSTS/TFS (hands-on labs), BizTalk and Project Methodologies remain on our list of planned activities, the format of the session in May has been changed.

The May session will be hosted by BB&D and the community leads of the two saArchitect regions, Hilton and Willy.  Dual sessions will be held in both Johannesburg and Cape Town, which will be connected using video conferencing.  The two communities will be offered a unique opportunity to meet each other and share ideas in an open discussion forum.  Snacks and drinks will be provided.

The core objectives of the session are:

1. JHB and CPT communities to meet each other
2. Community to discuss the way forward with saArchitect ... what works, what does not and what is missing?

There is limited space available and you are urged to register early by emailing your details (name, email and region) to maria@bbd.co.za.

Date:       18th May 2006
Time:       18:00+
Location: BB&D Johannesburg & Cape Town
Maps:      Refer to www.bbd.co.za.

Please ensure that you do not forget to attend, as your non-attendance would prevent another of our community from attending.  We will confirm registrations with everyone who makes it into this exciting session.

Developer Readiness Program - Outline Brochures

VSTS RTM: The Journey, Part 7 – Team Project (Eco 1 - 16 Complete) - Stuck on the Composite Build Trenches

DevDays 2006

The dates are:
   6th June   : Durban (The Hilton)
   8th June   : Jo’burg (Theater on the track, Kyalami)
 14th June   : Cape Town (The Lord Charles)

More details of the event will be sent as Microsoft moves along in the planning. The focus at this year’s event is security and Vista development, which promises coverage of new ground.

Our communities (i.e. saArchitect and saDeveloper) and MVPs will be visibility at the events and we invite you all to come over for the DevDays sessions and for discussions with the communities and MVPs.

Technology Newsletter Volume 1 - Meet the BB&D Microsoft Technology Unit members

Give us a visit and get a glimpse of what our unit is currently researching and evangelising. Refer to http://www.drp.co.za/media/MTU.Newletter.pdf on http://www.drp.co.za/default.asp?id=media/content_editorials for a copy of our first technology newsletter. 

VSTS RTM: The Journey, Part 6 – Team Project (Eco 1 - 16 Complete) - Where are the Web Based Artefacts in the Automated Build

… here comes the crunch …

If we take a look at the drop location after the build completes, we find that the web application and web services have not been deployed to the release folder in the drop location! Huh?

In Visual Studio 2005 web projects do not have a project file and at this stage these “projects” are not included in the TFS Build drop location. Looking at the previous illustration we will also note that the two projects were not even built in the first place.

To include these projects in the automated build we need to specify “Mixed Platform” when defining the build as follows:

Alternatively we can checkout the test project file and make the following changes:

<!-- CONFIGURATIONS
The list of configurations to build. To add/delete configurations, edit this value. For example, to add a new configuration, add following lines - The Include attribute value should be unique for each ConfigurationToBuild node.
-->

<ConfigurationToBuild Include="Release|Mixed Platforms">
<FlavorToBuild>Release</FlavorToBuild>

<PlatformToBuild>Mixed Platforms</PlatformToBuild>

</ConfigurationToBuild>

Checkin pending changes and re-do the build. We will notice, as shown in the next illustration, that the two projects are now included in the build. They are, however, not included in the drop location and we will need to use an xcopy to deploy the new build to the actual hosting server.

There are probably a dozen other ways of skining this build and the associated anomaly, however, as we do not support manual editing of solution files, we favour the documented route of mixed platform build, followed by a XCOPY to deploy the artefacts not found in the drop location to their correct destination.

Also explore http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/reference/infrastructure/wdp/default.aspx, which provides a MSBuild compatible project used to specific options of building VS2005 web projects. When used under Team Build, a subdirectory named _PublishedWebsites is created under the drop location containing all the web directory contents. Although this add-in does not perform the XCOPY, it presents a consistent build and drop environment for all project types.

Thanks to the Garret from BB&D MTU, and Chris and David from http://www.notionsolutions.com/ who have contributed to the content of this post.

Team System Developer and Tester Tools (Unit Testing, Web Testing, Load Testing, Profiling, Code Analysis (FxCop and PREFast) and Code Coverage) MSDN chat

Please participate in our team wide public chat that occurs regularly on the 3rd Wednesday of the month @ 10am.  You can participate from your office while you work.

Join the chat on April 19th, 2006 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific time.      
Our team, Team System Developer and Tester Tools (Unit Testing, Web Testing, Load Testing, Profiling, Code Analysis (FxCop and PREFast) and Code Coverage) is having a MSDN chat on Wednesday, April 19th, at 10:00am (PST, 1pm EST) at http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats. There will be PMs, Devs and QAs from the team to answer your questions.

VSTS RTM: The Journey, Part 5 – Version Control ... VSS or TFVC?

Recently a colleague emailed me for guidance on the installation of Team Server. When the next email arrived a while later with the question “Am I correct that if we want to utilize Visual SourceSafe 2005 we need to install Team System Server”, I knew I should have asked a few more questions in the first iteration of emails. At least he had the opportunity to explore Team Foundation Server, SQL, Sharepoint and Reporting Services … and in his own admission had lots of fun.

BUT, to use Visual Source Safe 2005 you do not need to install Team Foundation Server, which comes with its own Version Control engine. Both products are separate and “independent” products from each other.

Visual Source Safe (VSS) 2005 … is the new edition of the version control solution that has shipped with Visual Studio for some time. It is still file based, but requires no services from Team Foundation Server … it is a separate and completely independent solution. Sorry Matthew, I should have elaborated on this last week 

Team System Version Control … Team Foundation Server is the battle ship that offers a complete software development life cycle, or at least the foundation, to the solution teams and one of its services is the Version Control engine, which is tightly integrated into the TFS and its process. Unlike VSS, it is SQL Server 2005 based and exposed by an ASMX web service. Yes, we could use it independently by accessing the web service, however, its true strength are only utilized in conjunction with TFS. There are also some peculiar differences with VSS, such as the ability to define add|delete permissions in VSS, but not in TSVC. TSVC offers shelving, which resolves my concern of where to put what in a secure way when going home, but not wanting to commit changes to the build. They also offer a good medium for once off code reviews, but are unfortunately not really suited for managed and “workflow” based code reviews as yet. Using a two branch promotion concept, for example, gives a better audit trail of changes and authorization thereof. Take a peek at “Team System Source Control” one http://www.drp.co.za/default.asp?id=technologies/content_technologies_t for one of our quick reference posters, which covers TFS.

Migrating from VSS to TSVC … the move from VSS to TFS can be done using the VSS Converted, which can perform an analysis on the VSS databases and migrate these to TFS version control.

So what about the Proxy … we all have had the pleasure or pain to work in remote locations, with version control servers on the other side of the planet, accessed via the worst possible connectivity. While 3^rd party tools decreased the pain in the VSS world to some extent, you can install Team Foundation Server Proxy, which caches previously accessed source control files, either on the same server as the TFS application tier or even on a separate server. The Version Control Proxy caches both current and prior file revisions in GZip (non-deltified version) compressed format, which are sent to the Version Control Upload Handler on the server during a check in. Interestingly enough the files in a changeset are committed to the server and according to the “visible check in-process” the check-in operation completes before the delta process comes to life on the server in a background process that periodically sweeps the system looking for deltification work to do. Another important note is that the proxy is a circular cache, which means that items fall out based upon age when the size threshold is exceeded. Note that historical checkouts are not cached. For more information on the proxy, check out the screen casts on http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=62788.

This post does not deliver justice to any of the products referred to herein. Make sure that you explore the products and their documentation in more detail, because all have their place in our binary yes|no, on|off environment.

saArchitect Community Session - An overview of Connected Services Framework (CSF)

Although we had an extremely poor and disappointing turnout at today’s session, Ernst presented an interesting and interactive session on the mysterious Connected Services Framework. The interactive session was an excellent opportunity for us to explore the technology and share our thoughts on where this technology can add value and where it seems to be in conflict with other technologies.

It is disappointing to report that 70% of those who RVSP and registered for the event neither apologized, nor showed up for the event … as a result a lot of excellent food went to waste!

Simon won the SQL Pocket Administrator’s book, Anthony took home a memory stick, while Derek finally succeeded in winning the MSDN Team Architect software package. Well done guys ... enjoy your prizes!

Ernst, thanks for your efforts in preparing and presenting the session. The 7/10 for the session and 7.67/10 for the presenter proved that the session was appreciated by those who made it to the session.

We wish the community a happy Easter and a safe journey for those traveling over the long weekend.

VSTS RTM: The Journey, Part 4 – Version Control ... a minor hurdle

In an attempt to demonstrate that the Logical Data Centers can be designed separately from Application solutions we split the Calculator Logical Data Center (LDD) file in a separate solution. However, when performing the simple "Add Solution to Version Control" our import failed with:

The project C:\LabFiles\CalculatorSolution\TFVC\CalculatorSolution.sln cannot be added to source control. In folder C:\LabFiles\CalculatorSolution\TFVC,
it overlaps a project that is already bound to source control at a lower root. To avoid this problem, add the project from a location below the binding root of the other source controlled projects in the solution.

Note that this error has many meanings (like a confused Chameleon in a smartie box), but in this case we stumbled across an issue with the RTM release which causes the "TfsProvider code to miscalculate the common root for the solution files because it is located in a folder that is at a peer-level to the folder containing the solution".

Resolution is to move the logical data center file into the main solution and the import. We will advise on information regarding a hotfix or service pack to this issue once available.

In the interim beware of this rather difficult issue to troubleshoot ... if only error messages could be more detailed, i.e. indicate which file is causing the import to fail, rather than ... overlaps "a" project ...

A special thanks goes to the VSTS team which assisted us in troubleshooting this issue (SRQ060411600745).

VSTS RTM: The Journey, Part 3 – Team Project (Eco 1 - 7 Complete)

Looking at quick reference poster "Team System" on http://www.drp.co.za/default.asp?id=technologies/content_technologies_t, we have completed steps 1-9 of the VSTS Ecosystem or "snail" as we like to refer to the diagram, up to and including this post.

3. Create Team Project … Creating a Team project showed no surprises from previous builds and had a visual feeling of being quicker … could be the 1G RAM assigned to the Virtual Machine. The only issue we picked up is that Reporting Services is temperamental to say the least, however, the guess at the moment is that VPC timeouts are causing the Team Project and Reports to go out of synch … as soon as we have resolved I will create a “Eureka Reporting Works” post.

4. Select Process Methodology … RTM ships with MSF CMMI and MSF Agile, whereby we will need to add a simplified and blank process methodology ourselves. The SCRUM process template, see details on http://www.scrumforteamsystem.com/en/default.aspx looks really exciting and may just be the one that I will favour … both MSF process templates still make me nervous in terms of work items and iterations.

5. Work Items … do not try MS Project to manage work items if it has not been activated yet. TFS and MS Project are unhappy campers … smiles returned after activating MS Project, although I am now one activation short as I am merely “playing” on a temporary VM.

Steps 6 to 7 of the EcoSystem are self explanatory and we will therefore cut this post short at this point, focusing on modeling tonight. Modeling has been one of the most controversial features of VSTS and therefore I need to guzzle some Chamomile tea first.

See you later … reporting live from a rocking VSTS session.

saArchitect (Gauteng) - An overview of the Connected Services Framework (CSF)

VSTS: New Load Testing Quick reference Poster

Our team has released a new quick reference poster, by NPVW, for VSTS on http://www.drp.co.za/default.asp?id=technologies/content_technologies_t, concerned with Load Testing.