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Yesterday we had the first drop of the VS2008 SP1 Beta, well there is also one for TFS2008. As with the main VS2008 service pack there are loads of fixes and some new features. Support for Windows Server 2008. Support for SQL Server Codename Katmai CTP6. The Add to Source Control dialogs have been improved to be easier to use and more scalable. Drag & Drop from Windows Explorer to add to Source Control. Support for Version control operations on files not in bound solutions. Right-click access to set Working Folder/Cloak of folders from within Source Control Explorer. Check in date/time column in Source Control Explorer. Editable path field for the Source Control Explorer. Email work items and queries to someone. A new API to download files to a stream. Links to Team System Web Access pages from notifications. Improvements to the number of projects per server. Performance and scale improvements. Improvements to the VSS converter to make it much more robust. Support for creating Team Projects from the command line. Given my experiences with the VS2008 Beta I think I will be waiting for the real release before I put this near our main systems. As with any system critical beta only play with them in a sandbox! ...

14 May UPDATE - Due t illness the speaker cannot make it , so this session is being rescheduled to next month. Check the XP Club site for what is on in its place Remember tomorrow is monthly meeting of the Yorkshire Extreme Programming Club at the Victoria Hotel in Leeds. The session is by Chris Mills a developer relations manager for development for the Opera Browser.

Thanks to everyone who attended my session in Glasgow yesterday, I hope you found it useful. The slides will appear on the DDS site at some point but you can find them now on the Black Marble site. There is also a web cast of a virtual identical presentation on the Extreme Programming Club site. The noticeable difference at this event from DDD in Reading was what was going on at lunch time. The grok talks seemed far better attended than at TVP, also there was interesting Alt.Net Open Spaces style session where we had a general chat on tools and libraries which I attended. ...

Since updating to TFS 2008 we have lost our Sprint Burndown chart in eScrum, not a major problem as we use the cumulative flow in its place. However, I have eventually got round to fixing it. It turns out the problem is down to the the way the dates for the start and end of the Sprint are converted to measure names for the main MDX query. There were both regional date format issues (mm/dd/yy as opposed to dd/mm/yy) and the fact that the MDX query was very particular over leading zeros for the end date of the range e.g. 14/4/2008 did not work but 14/04/2008 did (but this was not the case for the start date!) ...

If you are using the TFS API within a WebApp with impersonation there is a good chance you will see the error below when you run the web site on IIS System.Security.SecurityException: Requested registry access is not allowed. at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowSecurityException(ExceptionResource resource) at Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey.OpenSubKey(String name, Boolean writable) at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.RegisteredServers.OpenCurrentUser(Boolean writable, Boolean shouldCreate) at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.RegisteredServers.GetUriForServer(String serverName) at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.RegisteredServers.GetServerKeyForServer(String serverName, String subKey, Boolean writable, Boolean shouldCreate) If you google for this forums tells you to add read access for the impersonated user to ...

I have just adding some Performance Counters to instrument some code and had a few issues that are worth knowing about. I created two categories of counters using the following code: //Create a category with a single counter PerformanceCounterCategory.Create( “categoryName”, “categoryDescription”, PerformanceCounterCategoryType.SingleInstance, “counterName”, “counterDescription”); //Create a category with more than one counter System.Diagnostics.CounterCreationDataCollection counterCollection System.Diagnostics.CounterCreationDataCollection(); counterCollection.Add(new System.Diagnostics.CounterCreationData( “Name1, “Description1”, PerformanceCounterType.NumberOfItems64)); counterCollection.Add(new System.Diagnostics.CounterCreationData( “Name2, “Description2”, PerformanceCounterType.NumberOfItems64)); // Create the category and pass the collection to it. System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounterCategory.Create( “multicategoryName”, “multicategoryDescription”, PerformanceCounterCategoryType.SingleInstance, counterCollection); ...

Saw an excellent play last night, Hapgood at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. For those who have no heard if it, it is a Tom Stoppard play about spies and physics set in the late 80s. I know of two plays that take their theme from quantum uncertainly, this one and Copenhagen, both nights out I have really enjoyed. They are plays that keep you guessing all the way as to what is really the truth (if such a thing can ever be known). ...

The lack of 64Bit TFS API DLLs is becoming a real pain for me. We have committed to a 64Bit server architecture for all our IIS and hence MOSS servers; both of these seem unable to WOW64 the 32bit TFS DLLs (though Cassini can!) so I cannot load any web front ends that use TFS such as eScrum or anything home grown on my main servers. My only option is to run 32it servers as well for the primary systems. This is not too bad for IIS/ASP.NET bits, but it is not recommended to have a mixed 32/64bit frontend for MOSS. ...

I have just uploaded the first release of my BlogWriter for Smart Devices which allows you to post new messages to blog servers that uses the MetaBlog API. My aim was to provide a LiveWriter like application for devices like my HTC PDA. In the zip file you will find these instructions and a .CAB file. The installation process is as follows: Make sure you Smart Device has .NET Compact Framework 3.5 installed Copy the the CAB file to your smart device On the smart device double click on the CAB – you will get a message about unknown publisher, say OK. The EXE and the CAB are digitally signed but Black Marble is not a known publisher (we don’t have Mobile2Market certificate which is the only type that the installer can check publishers against). Answer the questions as to where you want to install the application. Once the program has been installed there should be a icon on program menu for Blog Writer, click it to run You see a splash screen, this should disappear after a short while and leave an empty page (this is because the blog server has not been configured yet) ...

I went to very interesting IET meeting last night entitled ‘Enigma & Friends’ given by John Alexander. He is a private collector of encryption machines; the bulk of his collection is currently house in the Block-B exhibit at Bletchley Park and is open to the public. The difference between going to the museum and seeing his presentation is threefold. Firstly the you get his extensive knowledge of the subject, but I think even more interestingly hear of the adventures it takes to obtain what must be remembered were (or still are) top secret machines. And finally you get a chance to handle the machines, probably something I will not get the chance to do again. ...