Sunday, September 30, 2007

VSTS Web Access for TFS 2008 Updated

MS released a new version of VSTS Web Access.

This release is a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of what will ultimately be the 2008 version of the VSTS Web Access Power Tool.

This release (and the final 2008 release) can be used with either a TFS 2005 or a TFS 2008 server. In either case, you will need to install a TFS 2008 Team Explorer on the machine you install Web Access on.

Since TFS 2005 did not support build queuing, that functionality will not be available when this and future versions of Web Access are used with a 2005 server.

The only things left to do for the Final Web Access Power Tool release for VSTS 2008 are publishing some documentation, producing the localized builds and going through the final release process. The final version will be released about the same time VSTS 2008 is released.

The big advances in this update include:
  • Built against the TFS 2008 object model - In previous versions of Web Access you had to install Team Explorer 2005 on any machine you were installing Web Access on. With this version, you will now be installing Team Explorer 2008 instead. In some future version, we hope to remove the requirement to install any version of Team Explorer.
  • Custom control support - We've added support for web based work item custom controls and have included a folder of documentation and samples on how to create them.
  • Build queuing - We added UI for the new TFS 2008 feature of build queuing. You can start new queued builds and view the build queue (in addition to the preexisting abilities - like viewing build details).
  • Localization support - We've added support for localizing the web interface and are preparing to hand off our text to the localization team so they can begin preparing localized versions for the final 2008 Power Tool release.
  • Bug fixes & Performance improvements - We've received a number of reports and done more testing ourselves on the last version of the Power Tool that we shipped and we have fixed everything we know of.

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

VSTS for DB Professionals SR1 Power Tools

VSTS for DB Professionals SR1 Power Tools is now available on MS

The Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals Power Tools is a set of enhancements and tools that compliment and improve the user experience of Team Edition for Database Professionals

This release includes 5 new refactoring types, a new dependency viewer, additional data generators and editors, 2 new MSBuild tasks for Schema and Data Compare as well as the introduction of the TSQL Static Code Analysis feature

TSQL Static Code Analysis
  • Static Code Analysis - A precursor to the functionality that will be in future versions of VSTS that will allow you to perform Static Code Analysis on T-SQL code.

Refactoring

  • “Move Schema” Refactoring - Allows a user to right click on an object and move it to a different but existing schema
  • SP Rename Generation - Generate a new script that will contain sp_renames for all rename refactored objects that the user can then execute.
  • Wildcard Expansion - Automatically expand the wildcard in a select to the appropriate columns.
  • Fully-Qualified Name Support - Automatically inject fully-qualified names when absent in a script
  • Refactoring extended to Dataset - Refactor into strongly typed dataset definitions

MSBuild Tasks

  • Data / Schema Compare Build Tasks - MSBuild tasks that can generate scripts as if the user had run the Data / Schema compare UI

Schema View

  • API Access to Schema View - Insert / Update / Delete to schema View and list schema objects and their associated files

Dependency Tool Window

  • Dependency Tree - Show the dependencies ( incoming / outgoing ) for selected schema objects in a new tool window

Miscellaneous Tools

  • Script Preprocessor - Expand SQLCMD variables and include files and command line version (sqlspp.exe) & an MSBuild version ( wraps the command line version )