Uncategorised

With the advent of Silverlight we are going to see more and more web delivered applications. A good example of what we can expect is the Microsoft HEROES happen {here} virtual launch site. If you did not make it to the event it is well worth a look with all the slides and videos of the sessions. This site does makes heavy use of multimedia and it is maybe just me but I find it hard to find things, it look great but I don’t like having to guess where the menu might be. In general I want information fast not see a intro video; but this could just be because I am a developer and not a designer. I think this is especially true of sites you go back to again and again. It strikes me that for sites like this search become the key if you are ever to find relevant material. ...

I see there has been a release of the VSTS Scrum Process Template for VS2008 on CodePlex, so adding a way to run Scrum projects with the current release of TFS without the fiddling required for eScrum. It looks good, but is missing for me the best part of eScrum, the web site that allows quick updating of the Scrum project without the need for Visual Studio. If you are going to be doing Scrum you don’t want to having to spend loads of time on the electronic scrum board administration. ...

Join the surreal world of Barry Dorrans on DNR - if you listen long enough you could even hear something about Cardspace.

I have been trying to install the Feb CTP of SQL 2008 on an Virtual PC, but kept getting the following error SQL Server Browser Install for feature ‘SQL_Browser_Redist_SqlBrowser_Cpu32’ failed with exception System.InvalidOperationException: This access control list is not in canonical form and therefore cannot be modified. Turns out the problem was that I had run SysInterals NewSID on the VPC as it was based on a diff disk off our standard W2K3 test install and I wanted it not to clash with other test installs. NewSID leaves the registry in a state that causes the SQL installer problems. To get round it you need to run ...

I will be speaking at the Irish Microsoft Technology Conference in early April on the Business Intelligence features in SQL 2008. I also just found out my Continuous Integration session at Developer Day Scotland has been successful in the vote, thanks to everyone who voted for it.

Ages ago I posted on using MSTest and CruiseControl .NET with VS2005. As I am presenting tomorrow to the Yorkshire Extreme Programming Club on CC.Net I thought it a good idea to revisit this subject with VS2008. Well basically nothing has changed, the old ccnet.config I detailed still works. However, I discovered that you no longer really need the block to delete the TestProject.TRX file as it seem the 2008 MSTest.EXE can overwrite an existing test results file. ...

I was recently working at a client’s site where they were using TFS 2008 in a dual server setup. When getting large numbers of files (e.g. a Get Latest for the whole solution of 20+ projects) they were intermittently see ‘Invalid file handle’ errors. However, if they selected a smaller set of files, or just retried it would often work. We could spot no major pattern other than volume of files. ...

What seems many months ago I ordered an HTC Cruise from Expansys. My old QTEK S100 was literally falling apart. The new phone was supposedly on 4 day delivery, well it took best part of 4 months to arrive (don’t you just hate online stock levels and delivery dates that are just wrong) but was the wait worth it? Well I have been using it for a couple of weeks and in general I would say yes it was worth the wait. As with any of these phone/PDA devices some features can be a compromised, they are never the best phones in the world, if you want a great phone with a long battery life get something like an old Nokia 6310 from eBay. That said, on first impressions the HTC Mobile 6 package with their Touch interface does seem a good all rounder. ...

Interesting to see that the samples of Silverlight controls have been shipped with associated MSTest projects. I think this is first for Microsoft. Now this is a great way to see the intention behind the way any bit of code was designed. A good test set is far more use than most documentation, as it truly matches the code features. If you are doing TDD then it cannot get stale.

In a change from the usual venue in Leeds, the next meeting of the Extreme Programming club will be at Black Marble’s office in Bradford. I will be giving a updated version of my DDD4 presentation on Cruise Control .NET. The fun starts a 7pm on Wednesday the 12th of March, it is free and open to all, see you there.