Can you mock out .NET extension methods with Typemock? – the answer is yes

In Kevin Jones’ session at today’s DDD South West on ‘Testing ASP.NET MVC Applications’ the question was asked it it was possible to mock out .NET extension methods using any mocking frameworks. Kevin said did not think it could be done with Rhino Mocks, but thought it might be possible with Typemock. Given my experience with Typemock I could see no reason why you would not be able to fake an extension method with Typemock, though I had never had need to do it....

June 5, 2010 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Today’s DDD South West

Thanks to everyone who turned up for my session at DDD South West, and to the organisers for putting the event on so well. As my session was basically a 1 hour demo of the testing tools in VS2010 there are no slides for me to upload, but if you have any questions ping me an email. I would say that for a good overview of the subject have a look at the book ‘Professional Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2010: with Team Foundation Server 2010’

June 5, 2010 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

TF50609 error when creating a new team project in TFS 2010

After upgrading a TFS 2010 RC server (which was previously upgraded from Beta1 to Beta2) to RTM I hit a problem when trying to create a new team project. The error I saw was Event Description: TF30162: Task “GroupCreation1” from Group “Groups” failed Exception Type: Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.PcwException Exception Message: TF50609: Unable to retrieve information for action ADMINISTER_TEST_ENVIRONMENTS, it does not exist. A quick search shows this is a known problem with TFS 2010 Beta 1 to Beta 2 upgrades, strange it did not show itself on our servers until we when to RTM....

June 4, 2010 · 2 min · Richard Fennell

TF261007 error message when attaching a collection

Whist moving Team Project Collections (TPC) from our old TFS2010 Beta/RC server to new production hardware I got a TF261007, exactly as detailed in Marcel de Vries post. However, I was in the better position than he was as I still had full access to my original server, so I thought I could go back, re-attached the TPC on the old server, run the command tfsconfig lab /delete /collectionName:MyCollection /External...

June 3, 2010 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Speaking at the West Yorkshire BCS meeting on Agile Methods

After my comments on the QDD session at a past BCS meeting I have been asked to return and speak at the West Yorkshire BCS meeting on the 30th of June to give an overview about Agile methods. This will be very much a management overview for people who are unaware of Agile methods, hence I will touch on XP, Scrum, Crystal Clear and Kanban and try to compare and contrast....

May 29, 2010 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Great book on Kanban

I won’t bother to repeat what Gojko has said on David J, Anderson’s book on Kanban, other than to say I agree wholeheartedly. I too have been looking for a good introduction book on Kanban as applied to software development (so Kanban as opposed to kanban, not the capital K). This is exactly what with book does. OK I know that this information is out there on the web (http://www.limitedwipsociety.org/); but there times, especially for introducing potentially non technical people to development methodologies, where you want to point people at an easily accessible introduction they can dip into....

May 29, 2010 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Next Agile Yorkshire meeting is on the 8th of June on Agile BI Testing

June’s Agile Yorkshire meeting is on the experiences of the BI development team at Skipton Building Society on bringing automated testing to data warehousing using Fitnesse and dbFit. For more details check out the Agile Yorkshire site

May 26, 2010 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Setting the display value in databound combo boxes on Access 2010 web forms

When you drop a combo box on a Access 2010 web form and databind to a query or table with a value column and display column (e.g. the query select id, description from table1) you don’t get what you would expect. It shows just the value e.g. a set of integers in the combo. This is not the case if you are using a standard Access client form. the wizard that gets run sort it all out for you, and if it does not, you just set the ‘Bound Column’ property to sort it out....

May 21, 2010 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

More on my Vodafone 403 errors – an explanation at least

The next chapter of the ongoing saga. I had the 403 errors again today when using my phone as a modem to test out firewall. As I was in the office I had time to call Vodafone support. As expect I had to speak to a succession of people: Person 1 – call centre advisor, passed me straight onto ‘support’ Person 2 – support advisor but seem lost when I spoke about web protocols, I think it was more ‘making a phone ring’ support Person 3 – 2nd line support, success, as soon as I explained my problem they said ‘yes that happens’....

May 21, 2010 · 2 min · Richard Fennell

Agile Yorkshire moves to the 2nd Tuesday in the month

Don’t be a muppet like me and turn up for an Agile Yorkshire meeting on the 2nd Wednesday of the month out of habit. Due to the move to the great new location of the Old Broadcasting House the regular date has had to moved to the 2nd Tuesday. Bit of a pain for me as I struggle to make Tuesdays.

May 19, 2010 · 1 min · Richard Fennell