41 posts from: Corporate Coder
Visual Studio Team System 2008 and TFS 2008 Virtual Images
(Indexed 2008-01-28):
Since I use virtual images of TFS for some of the things I'm doing, thought I'd let you know that these virtual machines are available now on MSDN. The nice about these images is the preinstallation of Visual Studio Team System, and Team Foundation Server. I'd also wish for preinstall of at least the BI studio stuff for SQL Server 2008, but having the other parts already installed is great. Hey, these images are trials. But if you have an MSDN subscription or buy a valid version o...(truncated)...
MVC for ASP.Net
(Indexed 2008-01-21):
I'm a little late to the party on this, but Microsoft is going to release their MVC for ASP.NET. In Object Oriented programming I'm looking at this model, and I'm not initially sure if this helps. If you already are creating loosely coupled SOA or standard objects, then what would be the reason for MVC? We're already using Patterns, so I don't think that it will take the place of my current coding practice. I'll keep looking at this to see what I might be missing, but...(truncated)...
TDD and Visual Studio Testing
(Indexed 2008-01-13):
This blog post by Uncle Bob at Objectmentor got me thinking about how Visual Studio automated Testing can help in your Test Driven Development effort. First off, let me say that I fervently agree with Uncle Bob that TDD cannot be replaced by automatically generating tests. The intent of Test Driven Development is for your tests to drive your development (duh!). So if I have to create my objects first, and then generate my tests, our tests could not possibly be dring our development.That seems...(truncated)...
Blog post on Project 2007 Reporting Extensions
(Indexed 2008-01-04):
Check out this interesting post over at Project Programmibility called Reporting Database Extensions: Local Custom Fields Custom Code. This shows how to create a server side event in Project Server 2007 that caches custom fields for your reporting. It shows how to cache Task Text fields, and their lookup values, but it also gives hints on how to extend for other data types. Enjoy!Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it![Image]
SOA at Robert Bosch
(Indexed 2008-01-02):
Here's a great video interview on ARCast TV from some colleagues of mine at Robert Bosch (David Dickinson and Davie Swies). The video is about how this internal group has been evolving their SOA strategy, and how that works practically in a Microsoft centric world. There is some mention of the Agile practices that this group has been utilizing (my group works in parallel with them and we use similar methodologies). David Dickinson group has done some great work on SOA in an enterprise env...(truncated)...
More on moving from to Agile from mainstream Project Management
(Indexed 2008-01-02):
If you need more info on how to move your Project Management organization from mainstream or waterfall project management methods, here is an article from Doug Dicarlo that might be interesting. Doug makes some points about the book Preston Smith wrote Flexible Product Development. I think point 2 on his list is in my mind the most critical issue. In plan driven project management, following the plan is what counts. In agile, what the customer wants rules. This means that you CAN'T plan...(truncated)...
Project Managers and Testing
(Indexed 2007-12-28):
Johana Rothman has a great article in stickyminds titled What Project Managers Need To Know About Testing. Her main point is to make testing an integral part of your project plan. I would argue that if you are using an agile methodology testing is baked into the project. XP and Scrum assume that you have to pass acceptance tests for stories to be complete.The Kanban system that David Anderson and Corey Ladas write about is FDD at heart. But their kanban board includes testing in the board, s...(truncated)...
More on Using Kanban to manage your maintainence backlog
(Indexed 2007-09-18):
[tags: Agile, Project Management, Lean, Change Management]As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been experimenting with using the I saw David Anderson mention Kanban System to test how this would work in our organization. As mentioned earlier the paper A Kanban System for Sustaining Engineering explains This method. See my previous post for an explanation of what we are attempting. I wanted to share a couple of issues I've encountered and how I deal with them. First, we have set up the sy...(truncated)...
Win subscription to PM PrepCast.
(Indexed 2007-09-10):
[tags: ASP.NET, Orcas, C#, VB.NET, Linq, OR mapping] Hey folks, Cornelius Fichtner over at the PM Podcast has generously offered a free one month subscription to his Prep series the Project Management Prepcast for my many readers . So Mom, please enter, then I can get one! Kidding, I know more than Mom is reading this, so to win, simply Seriously simply click on the email menu option, and put PM Prepcast drawing in your email, and in two weeks (September 23rd) I'll randomly ...(truncated)...
Using Kanban to manage your maintainence backlog
(Indexed 2007-09-10):
[tags: Agile, Project Management, Lean, Change Management] If you have not been looking at how David Anderson is utilizing a Kanban system at Corbis, read his articles on it here. The paper A Kanban System for Sustaining Engineering explains how they have implemented a pull system that utilizes lean and agile principles to assist in application mainatainence mode. Davids group at Corbis also uses this in full blown project development. I am planning on implementing this as a pull system for on...(truncated)...
Unit Testing Multithreaded methods.
(Indexed 2007-08-08):
[tags: ASP.NET, Test Driven Development, TDD, C#, VB.NET, Unit Testing]On my latest project, our team encountered an issue where we had to use Threading for our business objects. So we enabled threading on our object. But our Unit Tests encountered problems when running with threading enabled. I had some issues with getting my unit tests to pass. After searching the web I couldn't find instructions on exactly how to do this, so thought I'd pass on my solution. [TestMethod]public void TestThr...(truncated)...
Agile Practices do not mean forget the architecture!
(Indexed 2007-05-23):
[tags: ASP.NET, Orcas, C#, VB.NET, Linq, OR mapping] Doctor Dobbs has an interesting blog post by Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz entitled "If You build it... wil they come". This post describes how to use JEDUF or Just Enough Design up Front. He does a great job explaining what this means, and it's something some of our groups implement where I currently work. I must say I'm a little late to the game on this but have been trying to use this idea, because the developers in my group would like so...(truncated)...
What is The Entity Framework?
(Indexed 2007-05-16):
[tags: ASP.NET, Orcas, C#, VB.NET, Linq, OR mapping] Shawn Wildermuth has an intersting introduction to the Entity Framework on theserverside.net. This article introduces a new data access concept that is beyond OR Mapping, or generating code for data access, and it sounds extremely interesting. From his description, this framework can be utilized by dba's, coders and business anlalysts, utilizing sql statements, or classes etc. I haven't had a chance to play with this yet, but the po...(truncated)...
More thoughts on Test Driven Development with Sharepoint 2007
(Indexed 2007-04-15):
I wanted to follow up on my last entry. One thing I didn't mention in my last post is how the TDD is accomplished. I believe you can use both Unit Testing and Automated Customer Acceptance tests as in standard projects, in project with MOSS. For Automated Customer Acceptance Tests, you could use something like Fitnesse. In my experience doing TDD with MOSS (as a Project Lead/Manager), using standard patterns can be useful. As I mentioned in the last post, we create objects that eventual...(truncated)...
TDD development with Sharepoint 2007
(Indexed 2007-04-15):
Andrew McConnells recent blog entry on "Real SDL & TDD for SharePoint". His call for community leaders to contribut to this discussion. While I'm not necessarily a MOSS community leader, I could be considered a leader in the ASP. NET field (I'm a Microsoft MVP among other things). Having become involved heavily with Sharepoint development in the last 2 years, I do have some observations on this very topic. My most recent project involved creating an application using MOSS as our "ap...(truncated)...
Creating Filtered lookup dropdowns in Sharepoint 2007
(Indexed 2007-03-24):
[tags: Sharepoint, Sharepoint 2007, MOSS, lookup fields, Sharepoint Designer, Frontpage] For the current project I am lead on, we are using Sharepoint 2007 as the "framework" for our application. Specifically MOSS. There are a lot of advantages inherent in using Sharepoint in this capacity. The UI is pretty much handled, since any customizations must look similar to the standard corporate sharepoint site. Versioning, Document libraries all come standard. Creating data dictionaries vi...(truncated)...
Evaluating your agile team
(Indexed 2007-03-08):
[tags: Agile Software Development, Project Management, eXtreme Programming, Crystal, Agile Team] Just read this article http://dan-thinks.blogspot.com/2007/03/agile-team-evaluation...(truncated)... by the agile jedi. It got me thinking how a team could be evaluated. Now we are just about finished with our first release using a XP style methodology. We're not totally XP, but we do stories, iterations, and partially customers on - site. And while I am not a manager doing evaluations (I...(truncated)...
Experiences from the Agile Front, Using a War Room
(Indexed 2007-02-06):
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted. I’ve been leading a full time agile project, and have not had a ton of time to post. I also went to central Florida over Christams, and hated to come back to the cold Midwest. While I can’t divulge specifics, I can recommend checking out Robert Martins book Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C# for some good practices for leading an agile project. One practice that I believe helps coding tremendously, is the...(truncated)...
Podcast to prep for PMP Exam
(Indexed 2006-11-29):
Not exactly a techie post, but if you are working to become a project manager, you may be interested in this. From the Project Management podcast, Cornelius Fichtner the host has introduced the Project Management PrepCast. I’m not shilling for PMI here, but I do believe that if you want to be involved with Project Management, as I do, getting a PMP certificate is needed. Even while I’m utilizing agile methodologies, I still need to deal with heavier methodologies in my projec...(truncated)...
New Project Server blog for developers
(Indexed 2006-11-13):
[tags: EPM, Microsoft Project, Project Server 2007, PSI] Hey folks, there's a new blog out there from Patrick Conlan, Phil Smail and Chris Boyd (part of the Project Team at Microsoft), that has some great code related to the new Project Server Version. It looks like you might get additional sample code on this site. For all you folks using Project Server 2007, enjoy! http://blogs.msdn.com/project_programmability/default.aspx Eric Landes Bosch CIT2/Web 401 North Bendix Ave. Sou...(truncated)...
Test Automation article with Excel
(Indexed 2006-11-10):
Here’s an article on how you can complement some of your testing methods using Excel directly for automated tests: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/11/TestRun/default.aspx After going through some training on using among other techniques, fitnesse, for automated acceptance tests, I had some questions on our customers using that specific tool to create the tests. Most of the folks there agreed that Excel is a front-end that most can use. While fitnesse does have the abili...(truncated)...
Automated Customer Acceptance Testing with Report Builder
(Indexed 2006-09-19):
I've been mulling over how to automate our Customer Acceptance Testing (CAT) process for a while now. Currently all our CAT is done manually in front of the customer. It's not agile at all. However, our systems are built combining tools like InfoPath, Sharepoint, workflow software, Project Server, and .NET Web Services so there's not always an easy way to introduce automated testing for everything. I tried using Fitness but I had a couple of problems with it. The main problem I ...(truncated)...
Quick Upgrade to the Beta 2 Technical Refresh for Project Server 2007
(Indexed 2006-09-18):
I haven't seen this covered anywhere else, at least in quickstart form, although there are a lot of detailed walkthroughs, including this one at technet. So I thought I'd pass this on for anyone else looking for a quick start to installing the TR. BTW, this is for an existing Beta2 install with minimal data (in other words, I don't care what happens to existing data). First thing to do is to stop your Search Service from the administrative panel in Sharepoint. Next, remove Window...(truncated)...
A couple of new articles
(Indexed 2006-07-26):
Just a bit of self promotion here, and I'm looking for some feedback. I've recently published 2 articles on Crystal Alliance, and was hoping for some feedback on these. One is called "Creating a Task Summary Crystal Report from Project Server" and the other is called "Creating a Project Velocity Crystal Report using Microsoft Project Server". These articles should help introduce you to the Project Server 2003 database structure. Hopefully, soon, I can revamp these to go against Project Serve...(truncated)...
Continuous Integration with Team Foundation Server
(Indexed 2006-07-17):
Jeff Atwood at Vertigo Software did some refactoring of the CI sample for TFS that Khushboo developed. The setup was real quick, and I had this version of the sample up and running in < 15 minutes. I hadn't read all the MSDN article on the original, and discovered one thing to make sure of is to have a build named CI in your team builds of the project you are utilizing CI with. For anyone intersted in CI with TFS, enjoy![Image]
Great post on Creating an Analysis Server BI Project with TFS
(Indexed 2006-07-11):
Eric Lee posted a great video on how to create KPI's from the Team Foundation Server warehouse. Apart from being a great tutorial on how to create new measures for TFS for your organization, I've found this to be a quick and dirty tutorial for creating an Analysis Server project in Visual Studio 2005. I'm sure there are other good ones out there, but coupled with my interest in TFS, this really helped to get a handle on creating a new cube. You'll need at least the SQL Server BI portion of Vi...(truncated)...
Future BI Direction for Microsoft.
(Indexed 2006-06-08):
Since I use a lot of Microsoft enterprise tools, including BI stuff like OLAP and Reporting Services, this link on Dr. Dobbs was interesting to me. http://ddj.com/dept/database/188702217?cid=RSSfeed_DDJ_DataBase discusses PerformancePoint Server 2007. The next Generation BI stuff from MS is apparently going to move Excel as the centerpiece of the user experience, is what I get out this article. That's a good thing for involving more users in the BI space, IMO. I know I'd love to see more rob...(truncated)...
MSF Agile Project Template
(Indexed 2006-05-24):
It's been a while since I posted, and my last post was about the lack of an MSF Agile Project Template in the list of Templates available in Project 12. I'm also a little miffed that the Microsoft folks who put together the MSF Agile download didn't include a little more in their project templates that come with that download. As far as I can tell these templates are blank. I decided to try my hand at creating my own generic MSF Agile Template. I'll put this out here to get feedback from any...(truncated)...
Visual Studio Team System Presenation at MADNUG tonight!
(Indexed 2006-04-19):
If you happen to be near South Bend, IN tonight, don't forget to stop by the MADNUG meeting at Signal Learning. Paul Hacker from Notion Solutions is giving a talk on Architecting Solutions using Visual Studio Team System. For direction check out the map at www.madnug.net[Image]
Some interesting webcasts from INETA.
(Indexed 2006-04-12):
I noticed some interesting webcasts that are available to INETA members (chances are if you belong to a .NET users group you are a member). You can check out the list here. I thought I'd blog about a couple of them. Tommorrow night is "Crossbow Building WPF and Windows Forms hybrid applications". Looks interesting if you do a lot of Windows Forms stuff. I'm excited about "SharePoint 1, 2, 3!" on April 19th, "Improving your web applications user experience with Atlas" on April 26th, and "U...(truncated)...
New VSTS Methodology templates
(Indexed 2006-04-03):
Conchango has released the Scrum Templates for Visual Studio Team System. These are free add-ins, so enjoy!. Hat tip to David Anderson at Agile Projectmanagement.[Image]
Modifying Sharepoint WSS Issues List with Jscript
(Indexed 2006-03-24):
I know this may be listed elsewhere, but I wanted to pass on this to anyone working with the Sharepoint templates out there. I had a problem where I need to set a date field (field2) to read only in an issues list. This read only field will be populated once an initial date field (field1) with that dates value on save when issue is started. The requirements specified that field2 will not ever be changed. Because I specified this as a date field, I was able to achieve the readonly status on t...(truncated)...
Project 2003 Adding Tasks via C#
(Indexed 2006-03-16):
Treb over at Evil Doctor Porkchop (who apparently does not want to link to my blog!) had emailed me about how to do something using VBA in Outlook. Basically, how could you add a task via outlook to a project (not necessarily projectserver). So I immediately got back to him a week or 2 later :-). Here is my kind of answer. Using some code that Larry Duff had sent, here is how I accomplish modifying tasks, this is in C# (.NET 1.1 framework) though. VBA would be similar in how this is called,...(truncated)...
RSS Toolkit for ASP.Net2.0
(Indexed 2006-02-23):
Scott Guthrie shows how to use the RSS Toolkit for ASP.NET 2.0 as a data source on his blog. This is a very cool tool from Dimitry on the ASP.NET team that allows users to consume and expose RSS via ASP.NET 2.0. Scott's site has a great example on how to use this.[Image]
Issue With Web Service as Data Source for Reporting Services
(Indexed 2006-02-23):
Something interesting I found utilizing the BI stuff available in Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. Another developer and I were asked to create a quick demo version of a report, that sourced data from a list on Sharepoint. I have already done this using a custom Web Service I created that goes against a sharepoint site list. The web service gets list information and also queries a database to get other information not available on the list. The problem I encountered in this new servic...(truncated)...
Project 12 EPM Feature List
(Indexed 2006-02-14):
Jack Dahlgren Project Blog goes over a Project 12 feature list. I like his list but wanted to add a few features that I find exciting. Obviously (Jack mentions this), the Reporting database rewrite is huge. Having custom field views dynamically generated by the tool is a nice feature that will make my team more productive. Also, the Active Cacheing is a big deal for anyone currently doing global implemnetation (we are). No need for Terminal Server anymore for your folks using Project Client...(truncated)...
Techincal Chat on the C# IDE VS 2005
(Indexed 2006-02-04):
February 23rd is when this Chat is on msdn. Check out this link if you're interested.[Image]
Great post on reasons to use OLAP
(Indexed 2006-02-01):
Here's a great post on the Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 blog site about why to use OLAP or SQL Server 2005. I would add one more reason, which is utilizing a front-end most end-users are familiar with, specifically Excel. [Image]
Project Server to Team Foundation Server Connector
(Indexed 2006-01-30):
At the Project Server Conference a couple of weeks ago, Kevin Kelly mentioned that currently TFS integration with Project is primarily through mpp files, not through project server. Big disappointment here, but I did find the the PROJECT SERVER VISUAL STUDIO TEAM SYSTEM CONNECTOR GotDotNet Workspace. I have not had a chance to test it, but will blog about that when I get a chance to. In the meantime, anyone interested in checking this out let us know what you find. Keep in mind you have to ap...(truncated)...
New articles on utilizing Crystal with DotNetNuke
(Indexed 2006-01-27):
Shameless plug here. I've had the final 2 articles in my series on creating a Report Manager for DotNetNuke published on aspalliance, Creating a DotNetNuke Private Assembly with Crystal Reports - Part 3, Creating a DotNetNuke Private Assembly with Crystal Reports - Part 4. Enjoy![Image]
Project Conference Thursday
(Indexed 2006-01-20):
Well, we wrapped up the project Conference today. Got some great information on creating project server specific web parts. What I didn't understand in this session was how there is still a sharepoint web part method of developing, and an asp.net 2.0 web part method. I'd appreciate more enlightenment here.Another couple of sessions with Larry Duff went over PDS and how the PDS calls map to new PSI (Project Server Interface I believe) classes. Yes that's right, PSI is an object oriented archi...(truncated)...