Posts

I posted yesterday about problem creating a new team project if you had missing templates on your Sharepoint server. This problem could of course be avoided if you had installed the TFS Sharepoint Extensions onto your Sharepoint server as your are meant to. However, as I have discovered it is not that easy to do if your chosen Sharepoint system has network load balanced front ends. The problem is that Sharepoint will replicate your MSFAGILE30.STP template between the various servers, but it will not move other TFS artefacts such as the TFSREDIRECT.ASPX in the 12 hive or setting to point to the reporting service instance in the registry. To add these other items you need to install the extensions an then run the TFSConfigwss.exe tool to edit the registry. The problem is the Extensions MSI will not complete if it detects the STP already in place (which as I said will that have been replicated by Sharepoint). The only solution I found was to cheat a bit: ...

Historically we have used the eScrum process template for our TFS team projects. However, with a view to the TFS 2010 future we have decided to moved back to the MSF Agile template. We used eScrum to provide an easy to use web based project dashboard; we now think that we can achieve the same or better in TFS 2010 using Excel’s enhanced links to TFS and Excel Services in Sharepoint. ...

I have been having some binding problems when trying to use Ivonna 2.0.0 against a version of Typemock Isolator other than the 5.3.0 build it was built to run against. This is a know issue, if your version of Ivonna and Typemock don’t match then you have to use .Net Binding redirection to get around the problem. So to track down the exact problem I used the Fusion logger shipped with the .NET SDK (via fuslogvw.exe). This in itself has been an interesting experience. A few points are worth noting: ...

I have been looking at the various install and upgrade stories for the TFS 2010 Beta. I have to say they are very nice compared to the older TFS versions. You now have a SharePoint like model where you install the product then use a separate configuration tool to upgrade or setup the features required. There are plenty of places to verify your setting as you go along to greatly reducing the potential mistakes. ...

Ok a bit sweeping but I think there is truth in this, if you have to resort to a mocking framework (such as Typemock the one I use) I think it is vital to ask ‘why am I using this tool?’ I think there are three possible answers: I have to mock some back box that is huge and messy that if I don’t mock it will mean any isolated testing is impossible e.g. SharePoint I have to mock a complex object, I could write it all by hand, but it is quicker to use an auto-mocking framework. Why do loads of typing when a tool can generate it for me? (the same argument as to why using Refactoring tools are good, they are faster than me typing and make less mistakes) My own code is badly designed and the only way to test it is to use a mocking framework to swap out functional units via ‘magic’ at runtime. If the bit of code I am testing fails into either of the first two categories it is OK, but if it is in third I know must seriously consider some refactoring. Ok this is not always possible for technical or budgetary reasons, but I should at least consider it. Actually you could consider category 1 as a special case of category 3, a better testable design may be possible, but it is out of your control. ...

DD-SW in Taunton seems to go well, a big thank you to Guy and the rest of the Bristol .NET user group for all their work getting this event up and running. Also it was nice to see new faces, it is certainly a good idea to get the DDD family events out to places beyond Reading, spreading the good works of the community across the country. Thank you to those who attended my session on Scrum, I hope you all found it useful. You can find a virtually identical set the slides on the Black Marble web site and the actual stack I used will be up on the DD-SW site soon. ...

It is Developer Day South West this weekend where I will be speaking on Scrum. I may also do a lunch time grok talk on SharePoint and Typemock Isolator as I did at Developer Day Scotland. I think there are still spaces at this event, so if you can make your way down to Taunton on Saturday I think it will be well worth the trip.

Since moving to Windows 7 I have encrypted all my USB pen drives and external USB disk drives with Bitlocker to go. This has been working great for me, I have noticed no performance problems and it give nice piece of mind. The only irritation is when you plug the encrypted drive into an XP or Vista PC you can’t read it, but this is meant to be being addressed. However, I have seen one issue, this is that there seems to be a timeout if the bitlockered to go device is not accessed for a while (well over an hour is my guess, I have not timed it) it relocks itself and the password has to be re-entered. I can’t find any setting anywhere to control this timeout. I suppose the workaround is to set the bitlockered device to always automatically unlock on my PC, but I do like the security of having to enter the key manually. ...

When you setup a dual or multi server TFS installation you need to specify the location of the OLAP Analysis service instance that will be used for the reporting warehouse. As with much of the TFS installation and configuration process there is a test button to confirm your setting will work, these are always worth pressing. If there is a problem you could get a TF255048 error, as the text says this hints the server cannot be found or you have no rights to access it, which may well be the case. ...

TFS 2010 provides far more options for the configuration of your server than the previous versions. You now can easily make use of any existing server resources you have such as SharePoint farms or Enterprise SQL installations. Today I was looking at one of these ‘less standard’ setups using some of our test lab equipment (hence the somewhat strange mix of 32bit and 64bit hardware) and hit a problem with the TFS beta 1 release configuration tool. ...