TFS Admin Tool 1.4 Beta Released

The TFS Admin Tool 1.4 beta is now available on CodePlex.

The new beta version provides support for SQL Server 2008. It also contains a lot of code cleanup as housekeeping so that the full set of Code Analysis Rules run against the code come back largely clean or suppressed (suppressed a minimum amount).

TFS Code Coverage Check-in Policy

TFS Code Coverage Check-in Policy is now available on CodePlex.

The TFS Code Coverage Check-in Policy enforces that the latest test run of the current solution has code coverage enabled and that the total code coverage percentage is not below a certain, configurable, threshold value.

It reads the information from test results folder stored locally beneath the current solution.

To ensure that the user actually ran all the necessary tests, this check-in policy should be combined with the Testing check-in policy, that ensures that the user has executed all tests from a predefined test list.

Creating T-SQL Static Code Analysis Rules

Gert Drapers wrote a great detailed post on how to Create T-SQL Static Code Analysis Rules as one of the new features in the GDR release is that you can create your own T-SQL Static Code Analysis rules.

The post will guide you through creating your first rule.

New VSTS Virtual Machines

The VSTS Virtual Machines are all updates with fresh bits and expiration dates and now available in 4 different flavors on Microsoft Download Center thanks to Brian Randell

The new Virtual Machines are a VSTS “all-up” image with Team Foundation Server, Team Build, Team Explorer and Team Suite with the latest SP1 installed, and a TFS “only” image with just Team Foundation Server, Team Build and Team Explorer with the latest SP1 installed. But they are produced as Virtual PC 2007/Virtual Server 2005 R2 Compatible images and Hyper-V Compatible images to suite everybody’s needs …

The images are updated with the following:

• The latest Virtual Machine additions or Integration Services Components.
• All of the latest Windows Updates as of December 1, 2008.
• Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1
• Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite SP1
• Team System Web Access 2008 SP1
• Team Foundation Power Tools, October 2008 Update.
• The latest MSSCCI Provider.
• Team Explorer 2005 (this allows you to work with TFS from Visual Studio 2005 which is installed so that you can edit and customize TFS reports)
• The GDR for the product formally known as Visual Studio 2008 Database Edition (aka Data Dude).
• Current Process Explorer, Process Monitor, and Background Info.

All can be downloaded as follows:

• VSTS “all-up” Virtual PC/Virtual Server image (6 GB download, expands to 15 GB)
• TFS “only” Virtual PC/Virtual Server image (3 GB download, expands to 8 GB)
• VSTS “all-up” Hyper-V image (6 GB download, expands to 15 GB)
• TFS “only” Hyper-V image (3 GB download, expands to 8 GB)

Enjoy :)

VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR Language Releases

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Team just released 6 additional languages of the recently released GDR on Microsoft Download Center as follows:

Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan)

• http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/9/D/19D1CB8C-82A8-4736-AFF4-51F2E343A312/Readme.mht
• http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/9/D/19D1CB8C-82A8-4736-AFF4-51F2E343A312/setup.exe

German

• http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/E/F/6EFD0F85-C8C3-4B47-9426-22B0ED4D12CE/Readme.mht
• http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/E/F/6EFD0F85-C8C3-4B47-9426-22B0ED4D12CE/setup.exe

Spanish

• http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/1/0/A10A906C-5CB9-4DAE-9CC2-B4B233B8AD6B/Readme.mht
• http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/1/0/A10A906C-5CB9-4DAE-9CC2-B4B233B8AD6B/setup.exe

Italian

• http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/3/1/6313DB42-DBC5-499F-AB3E-2119689A6A3E/Readme.mht
• http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/3/1/6313DB42-DBC5-499F-AB3E-2119689A6A3E/setup.exe

Japanese

• http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/D/1/3D14DB8E-4507-4AC3-BE96-DDD5E1FF1C8B/Readme.mht
• http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/D/1/3D14DB8E-4507-4AC3-BE96-DDD5E1FF1C8B/setup.exe

Korean

• http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/C/2/0C2CAB8A-08D4-4354-9883-502C2639DB04/Readme.mht
• http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/C/2/0C2CAB8A-08D4-4354-9883-502C2639DB04/setup.exe

VSTS Database Project Import Scripts Add-In

Patrick Sirr posted a detailed post about the latest VSTS Database Edition GDR Import Scripts Add-In that is amazing.

In this blog I’ll introduce you to the Import Scripts add-in to the General Distribution Release (GDR) for Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition. With this add-in Visual Studio can import multiple scripts to populate a target database project. I’ve included the source code but, in order to compile the install project you’ll need to install Votive 3.0 (I used 3.0.4707.0).

Team Foundation Server Build 2008 Reference DeskSheet – V2.0

Mike Fourie had a few minor updates on the handy reference to aid your work with building software in TFS 2008.

System Center 2008 Management Packs for TFS 2008

System Center 2008 Management Packs for TFS 2008 is now available for download on Microsoft Download Center

The Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2008 Management Pack monitors exposed services of TFS. This management pack includes event rules and monitors. It is designed to proactively monitor quality and availability of TFS services and even automate recovery in some scenarios.

Feature Summary

• Auto discovery of TFS components
• Leverages ASP.NET MP and SQL MP
• Implements containment hierarchy reflecting logical architecture of the Product
• Implements a proper health model using Monitors
• Contains tasks, diagnostic and recovery for certain failures
• Events indicating service outages
• Alerts indicating configuration issues and connected data source changes
• Verification that all dependant services are running
• Targeted running of BPA against TFS Servers from Operator Console

New monitoring capabilities can be easily added.

VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR is now RTW

I recently blogged about VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR RC1 which is now finally a RTW available for download from Microsoft Download Center :)

TFS Build 2008 Reference DeskSheet

Thanks to Mike Fourie for the great handy reference that will aid working with Team Builds on TFS 2008

Team System Web Access Translations

Some of Team System MVPs started working on creating some translations for Team System Web Access through CodePlex as the TSWA Community Translation Project

The great work resulted in 7 new languages that are now available through CodePlex as follows:

• Croatian
• Portuguese (Brazilian)
• Turkish
• Danish
• Swedish
• Polish
• Dutch

Another release is currently in progress that will contain:

• Norwegian
• Arabic
• Portugese

TFS Collaboration Providers

Team Foundation Server Collaboration Providers is a new CodePlex Project that targets Community Contribution for Collaboration providers for different IM and VoIP integration as the TFS 2008 Power Tools enables rich integration with other team members via IM and VoIP chat.

The Power Tools integrates with Live Communicator and Windows Live Messenger Out of the Box.

Skype Provider Initial version is now available as the first Collaboration Provider in the project with more to come ...

TFS 2008 Web Services List

Never thought of listing all TFS 2008 Web Services before until I needed to start access them directly.

Below is the full list of Web Services which comes in two versions, V1.0 and V2.0 for backward compatibility I believe ...

• Build Service
• V1.0
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/Build/V1.0/BuildController.asmx
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/Build/V1.0/BuildStore.asmx
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/Build/V1.0/Integration.asmx
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/Build/V1.0/PublishTestResultsBuildService.asmx
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/Build/V1.0/PublishTestResultsBuildService2.asmx
• V2.0
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/Build/V2.0/BuildService.asmx
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/Build/V2.0/Integration.asmx
• Services Service
• V1.0    
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/Services/v1.0/AuthorizationService.asmx
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/Services/v1.0/CommonStructureService.asmx
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/Services/v1.0/EventService.asmx
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/Services/v1.0/GroupSecurityService.asmx
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/Services/v1.0/ProcessTemplate.asmx
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/Services/v1.0/projectMaintenance.asmx
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/Services/v1.0/Registration.asmx
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/Services/v1.0/ServerStatus.asmx
• V2.0
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/Services/v2.0/GroupSecurityService2.asmx
• Version Control Service
• V1.0
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/VersionControl/v1.0/Administration.asmx
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/VersionControl/v1.0/Integration.asmx
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/VersionControl/v1.0/ProxyStatistics.asmx
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/VersionControl/v1.0/Repository.asmx
• Warehouse Service
• V1.0
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/Warehouse/v1.0/warehousecontroller.asmx
• WorkItem Tracking Service
• V1.0
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/WorkItemTracking/v1.0/ClientService.asmx
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/WorkItemTracking/v1.0/ConfigurationSettingsService.asmx
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/WorkItemTracking/v1.0/ExternalServices.asmx
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/WorkItemTracking/v1.0/Integration.asmx
• http://YourTFSServerName:8080/WorkItemTracking/v1.0/SyncEventsListener.asmx

TFS Sticky Buddy

Sticky Buddy is a Digital Dashboard that will run off Team Foundation Server and allow teams to display information on the status of their development on one or many projects.

The application will consist of a main screen that queries a TFS Server and pulls a list of projects that the user can select for display and within each project it will display the iteration tree.

This tree will be displayed as a set of concentric columns that are populated with "Change Requests" and "Requirements" that are currently within that iteration path.

Each of the Work Items displayed will show limited information about itself, which user it is assigned to, its Area and title. But it will also display the number of sub items within each item. This will give an indication of the length of time necessary to complete all of the sub-work items within that iteration so it can be moved on to the next.

A set of rules will determine the color or icons associated with each item based on their status. These rules may include:

• Is this item overdue?
• Does this work item have any blocked work items associated with it?
• Does this work item have any risks associated with it?

Sticky Buddy is available on CodePlex

VSTS 2008 TFS Power Tools - October 2008 Release

The TFS Power Tools October 2008 Release is now available for download on Microsoft Download Center

New in the October Release

Team Members (NEW!)

• Adds a new node under each Team Project to the Team Explorer called "Team Members" that identifies people who work on the project.
• Serves as a "pivot point" for information about and operations on people and teams.

Windows Shell Extension (NEW!)

• Allows core version control operations within Windows Explorer without using Team Explorer.

PowerShell Support (NEW!)

• Provides a PowerShell pipeline and cmdlets for TFS. Initial support is for basic version control operations.

TFPT (Updated)

• tfpt searchcs - the Search Changesets Power Tool brings up a dialog from which the user can search for changesets that match specific combination of criteria including server path, committed date range, committed user, check-in comments and check-in notes.
• tfpt unshelve /undo - finds all pending changes in your workspace that match the changes in the shelveset and undoes them (including deleting the local files for pending adds).

Silverlight™ Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is available for download from Microsoft Download Center

This package is an add-on for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 to provide tooling for Microsoft Silverlight 2.
It can be installed on top of either Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with SP1, and it provides a Silverlight project system for developing Silverlight applications using C# or Visual Basic.

This download will install the following:

• Silverlight 2 developer runtime
• Silverlight 2 software development kit
• KB956453 for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
  and/or
  KB956485 for Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with SP1
• Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
  and/or
  Silverlight Tools for Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with SP1

Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 includes:

• Visual Basic and C# Project templates
• Intellisense and code generators for XAML
• XAML design preview
• Debugging of Silverlight applications
• Remote debugging of Silverlight applications for Mac
• Web reference support
• WCF Templates
• Team Build and command line build support
• Integration with Expression Blend

VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR RC1 is now available

Gert Drapers has just announced that VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR Release Candidate 1 is now available for download from Microsoft Download Center.

This version will provide an upgrade path to the RTM so it worth trying out …

The documentation as well is available for downloading.

Team Foundation Build Load Balancer

A new project is released on CodePlex called Team Foundation Build Load Balancer that balances builds between the build agents defined in a Team Project and thus reducing the time developer's wait for builds to complete.

It’s a very simple command-line application that is designed to run in a scheduled job to balance queued builds between multiple build agents irrespective of which build agent it was queued on.

VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR September CTP is now available

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition GDR September CTP is now available for download through Microsoft Download Center

In addition to providing support for SQL Server 2008 database projects, this release incorporates many previously released Power Tools as well as several new features.

The new features include distinct Build and Deploy phases, Static Code Analysis and improved integration with SQL CLR projects.

Database Edition no longer requires a Design Database. Therefore, it is no longer necessary to install an instance of SQL Express or SQL Server prior to using Database Edition.

SQL Server Support
SQL Server 2008

• All new data types:
  Intrinsic (date, datetime2, datetimeoffset, time)
  Built-in SQL CLR types (geography, geometry, hierarchyid)
• New DML
  Merge, table parameters, …

SQL Server Configuration Options

• Server option settings will be verified prior to deployment or set during deployment additional 1st Class Object Type Support
• Rules, defaults, Asymmetric keys, symmetric keys, certificates, …

Projects
Server Projects

• Server objects and option settings may be implemented in a separate Server Project
• This enables a team to define a standard a configuration for their SQL servers and reference it from their Database Projects

Partial projects

• Allowing code sharing between projects by including files from a different project, where the code is included as-is from the originating project and the source code control ownership remains with the originating project
• This enables code reuse and single sourcing while having a single deployment unit

Composite projects

• References to other database projects or .dbschema files that contribute to the same deployment unit.
• This enables the separation of development roles and responsibilities and composition of Databases using multiple projects.

Single sourcing of external artifacts
SQL-CLR references allow the user to create a reference to a SQL-CLR project or SQL-CLR assembly. This automatically becomes an ASSEMBLY type in the Database Project

Build and Deploy
The Build process now produces a separate portable schema output that is fed in to a redistributable deployment engine
A redistributable deployment engine. For example, to implement a setup application that deploys the Database Project.

Refactoring
Preservation of Intent

• Enables the deployment of refactoring changes as intended by the user (renames are deployed as renames not as drop/add statements for example)

New Refactoring Operations
Wildcard Expansion
Move Schema
Fully Qualify
Extensibility point which enables the ability to develop and deploy custom refactoring types and targets

Schema Compare
Now supports comparing Projects, Databases or dbschema files in any combination. For example, Project to Project, which has not been possible until now.
Object Type Filtering
Additional ignore filtering options

T-SQL Static Code Analysis
Including the ability to develop and deploy custom rules

Dependency Viewer
View the dependency relationship between objects in your schema

Unit testing
Supports execution with other ADO.NET providers

Data Generation
Design-time enhancements

• Smaller .dgen file
• Support for undo/redo
• Foreign key replacement
• Separation of population status into new display window

Runtime enhancements

• By default uses SqlBulkCopy to populate target tables
• Capability to register different outputs for generated data – i.e. generate to Excel or to file so you can use BCP to load
• By registering a custom output we have the capability to execute scripts at different points during data generation (i.e. before start/after completion or before/after a table

Extensibility
Data Generators
Statistical Data Distribution
Test Conditions
Static Code Analysis Rules
Refactoring Types
Refactoring Target

VSTS 2008 SP1 and IE8 ...

IE8 is coming up soon as Beta 2 is already out in the open, and one of the major changes in IE8 - I actually just came across it by chance - is that IE8 opens up to 6 concurrent connections per host compared to only 2 in IE7.

That leads to the question of Does VSTS support IE8? Will it really open the 6 connections per host?

Well luckly the answer to both questions are YES ...

• VSTS 2008 SP1 has the IE8 Option in the Browser Mix
• By testing IE8 in the load test, it worked :)
  It opened 6 concurrent connections per host.
  The test was created by having a load test with one web test in it, and one concurrent user, once ran against IE7 and another run against IE8.