Willy-Peter Schaub's Cave of Chamomile Simplicity

2007 comes to an end ... 2008 will be exciting

Before we all vanish, I would like to thank all my colleagues for a really great technology 2007 year, during which we conquered many technology and technology awareness challenges.

The most recent success story is the latest release of the Power Tools, which includes the 2008 compatible TFS Best Practice Analyzer tool. Find information and download the latest treasure chest from here. See summary below.

Next year we are looking forward to a growth in SA Architect, a technology event in Kuwait (watch this space), the MVP Summit and many, many more technology information sharing and awareness events. The focus in our area is all around Team Foundation Server 2008, Interoperability between Windows and Linux and trying to keep afloat in the huge wave of innovation that we will be faced with during 2008.

Our message for 2008 is "Using the right technology for the right solution, making interoperability a feature not dream and as always keeping it simple". The following illustration has created great turmoil when it appeared on the home page of our internal technology readiness portal, but it will remain because it represents our commitment to make technology integrate and communicate seamlessly.

For many, many years (started in the NT 3.1 CTP days...) we have been telling Microsoft that they should market their immense interoperability capability more aggressively ... now that we have WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) and a set of open standards, we will prove that it is not only possible, but a viable business and technology initiative.

I wish everyone a happy and safe jump into 2008! May the new year bring happiness, success and simplicity to your life!

TFS Power Tools summary ... what's new in a snap view?

1. Find in Source Control tool provides the ability to locate files and folders in source control by the item’s status or with a wildcard expression.
2. Open a selected folder in Windows Explorer straight from Team Explorer.
3. Quick Label feature allows labels to be easily applied to a given selection of files and folders in the Source Control Explorer.
4. Build Notification tool that runs in the Windows task bar notification area monitoring the status of the build definitions you have specified.
5. Additional TFPT.EXE commands for configuring Team Explorer connection settings (tweakui) and for  destroying Work Items and Work Items Type Definitions (destroyWI, destroyWITD).
6. TFS Best Practices Analyzer for use with a Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server deployment.
7. The Process Template Editor updated for use with Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server.
8. Bug fixes and removal of Power Tools that are now included within Team Foundation Server.

Back from leave and far too relaxed ...

After 3 weeks of technology free holiday in the cold and beautiful Europe, I have settled back in SA and am trying to remember how to logon to the various servers and services I have not missed for a second q;-) The following pictures are drawn from 400+ photographs and should demonstrate why my mind was committed to family and the surroundings, which were absolutely stunning. All were made in the Pilatus/Glaubenberg region, which is the chain of "hills" south-west of Luzern. It is an area you "must" explore when you visit Switzerland!

Little church, just below the Pilatus peak.	The view from our Langis room, up on the Glaubenberg. The view was definitely much better than the views from the outside, when we used to drive and walk past the Guesthouse during military manoeuvres.	After 11.5km of up and downhill skiing, my son simply had enough...
We tried hard to build a snowman during the last hour on the Glaubenberg berg.	Christmas feeling in the mountains at Schwendi Kaltbad.	See, no mobile, no laptop, no laptop bag, ...

A sabbatical back to 1982 and a view of the future for boys...

It is the first real (>1 week) holiday since 1991 and the first time my boys are venturing overseas. We are all going to visit my good old home, Switzerland, and spend an entire week on the Glaubenberg (Coordinates:46°53′27″N, 8°6′31″E) where I spend a number of good, cold and at times hard military months in 1982 and 1985. For me it will be an opportunity to finally "enjoy" the walks and the views from a civilian perspective, while for my boys it will be a glimpse of the future when they too complete their Alpine walk-up-to-be-able-to-walk-down-only-to-slog-up-again-wondering-why-we-are-doing-it basic military training.

Infantry school 204, Liestal, 1985

2007 was a great year for the SA community, for the TFS/VSTS product team and in terms of terminology in general. This will be my last blog post for 2007 and I will neither be online by laptop (have to leave it at home), nor mobile phone (have to switch it off) ... in short, we will have a great family holiday.

I wish everyone a safe and joyous festive season. Take care of yourself and your family and return to 2008 relaxed and full of energy ... there will be lots of technology challenges awaiting us all.

TFS QA - How do I change the processing interval for the Data Warehouse?

Team Foundation Server synchronizes the relational databases and the OLAP database, typically used for reporting, on an hourly basis by default. This behaviour can be confusing for project managers, for example, who typically produce a report after applying a bulk of status changes, only to find that the changes are not reflected. They are likely to be processed, but not synchronised to the OLAP database.

1. You can start a synchronisation by typing the following URL: http://<@@TFS@@>:8080/Warehouse/v1.0/warehousecontroller.asmx
   where @@TFS@@ is the name of your TFS Server.
2. Select Run, to start the synchronisation process.

Alternatively you can change the interval to be less or greater than the default hourly update:

TFS QA - How do I enable tracing for troubleshooting?

There are two ways to enable tracing ... either by updating the web.config file, which is the permanent solution, or by communicating with the service as outline, which is a temporary update that is purged when IIS is reset.

This article refers to RTFS services, which can include: Services, VersionControl, Warehouse and WorkItemTracking.

Updating the web.config file:

1. Locate the service, i.e. WareHouse, using the Internet Information Services Manager.
2. Right-Click -> Select properties -> Choose ASP.NET tab and Edit Configuration.
3. Under Application settings, consider changing traceWriter and traceDirexctoryName.
4. These changes are made permanently to the configuration file  and service going forward.
5. You will have to cycle the application pool to ensure that the above configuration change takes effect.

Chatting to and instruction the service:

• In IE, locate the following URL: http://<@@TFS@@>:8080/@@Service@@/tftrace.aspx?traceWriter=true&All=@@MODE@@
  where @@TFS@@ is a placeholder for your server name, @@Service@@ on of the following services: Services, VersionControl, Warehouse and WorkItemTrackin, and @@MODE@@ a placeholder for None, Errors, Warnings, Information and Verbose.

I must be honest, I prefer the web.config file update option, because running the above command results in a blank screen ... no OK, perhaps, failure, ... just nothing. This is confusing and forces you to go to the log file to check if logging has been enabled. The advantage of the above is, that there is no need to restart IIS or to recycle the application pool.

You have the choice ...

TFS - How do I limit the size of attachments?

By default TFS enforced a work item file attachment size of 4,096 kilobytes, which is normally adequate for most organisations.  The maximum is 2 gigabytes.

If you increase the value you need to be cognisant of the disk utilisation and aware that the change is not per user, or per project, but for the TFS Server.

So how does one change the value then?

1. Type the following URL: http://<@@TFS@@>:8080/WorkItemTracking/v1.0/ConfigurationSettingsService.asmx?op=SetMaxAttachmentSize
   where @@TFS@@ is the name of your TFS Server.
2. For the maxSize  parameter enter the maximum size in  bytes and click invoke to apply.

TFS ... SDLC Guidance or Dictatorship

I am busy working on another whitepaper, which looks at TFS and whether it introduces a guidance environment or a dictatorship in terms of the team project and chosen methodology.

The paper looks at Team Foundation Server (TFS) and its fundamental objective to implement and mentor software engineering practice and the associated process improvement. It also asks the simple question whether Team Foundation Server delivers Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) guidance or SDLC dictatorship, outlining the objectives of TFS, such as allowing an organisation to revisit their practices, conventions and overall development environment.

... an extract: "The ugly face of TFS, and any other technology for that matter, is that when used incorrectly the product may have a detrimental impact on the solution team stakeholders, viewing it as dictatorship environment and most likely blaming it for any lack of progress overall and it is subsequently retired. Complex and high-level governance processes are often difficult to motivate to the stakeholders, to implement and to maintain, fuelling any negative sentiments towards the technology.

The exciting face of TFS, when used correctly, is that it introduces a transparent, collaboration friendly and process guiding team environment for all associated stakeholders.

While not all the benefits can be reaped in the short-term (envisioning phase), it promotes process engineering practices and process improvement, in the medium (evolution) and long term (maturity) as shown in the following illustration. The secret with TFS is, that it is best implemented in small and controlled phases as mentioned on page 3 and discussed in the “TFS Post-Installation” whitepaper

Figure 5 - Mentorship

Ongoing technology and process mentorship, as shown, introduces further guidance and sharing of good practices and prior learning of the technology and similar environments."

Has anyone got some comments and/or opinions which we should consider as part of the whitepaper?