Microsoft is always good about releasing virtual PCs so that anyone looking to learn their technologies does not need to build servers and configue project.

TFS 2010 is not an exception to this rule and you can freely download and run TFS 2010 using their Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2010 and Team Foundation Server® 2010 RTM virtual machine for Windows Virtual PC

Microsoft came up with new UI when introduced next version of its OS. Windows 8 follows new concept based on Tiles. The main theme in Metro style apps is that they all are designed to be user friendly on any computing device: PC, Smartphone, Tables and other mobile devices.

Microsoft is investing a lot of money in trying to build a community of developers who can come up with wide array of apps for Windows 8 and be similar to Metro stile apps developed by Microsoft.

You can start developing Metro style apps by getting Metro style API reference material and looking at Microsoft's Metro style sample code

Moreover, Microsoft is willing to provide a platform for selling your Metro style apps to Microsoft Windows 8 ever growing community of users.

One of the advanced features in Visual Studio is linkedConfiguration. It is simple concept with some powerful results. It allows you to simplify management of your component assemblies by allowing your web apps or win apps to include assemblies in your config files from known locations instead of including them within each app effectively duplicating files.

linkConfiguration is used to not only specify references to your application DLLs but also to config files that may provide common configurations across your applications.

It supports href attributes such as "file://" for local files and UNC files on the network. You can include as many files as needed.

Example of linkedConfiguration config file can be of the following form:

<configuration>

   <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">

      <linkedConfiguration href="file://c:\Program Files\MySharedFiles\sharedConfig.xml"/>

   </assemblyBinding>

</configuration>

You can always find more information about linkedConfiguration on Microsoft site.

Visual Studio has AssemblyResolver since earlier versions. It is helpful feature when it comes to publishing DLLs that can be shared amongst different sites and apps.

This is one of the features of Modularity and can found as part of Visual Studio Microsoft.Practices.Composite.Modularity Namespace

TFS 2010 is much improv3d version over TFS 2005 and TFS 2008. It incorporates user feedback and provides rich user interface for managing projects. Let’s examine top ten benefits of utilizing TFS 2010 for your project management as well as source management needs.

1. TFS 2010 has more streamlined flow of data across your development, project management and business analysis team. This is achieved with the help of centralized project artifacts repository.
2. TFS 2010 provides real-time visibility into project progress with advanced reporting and dashboards. It gives you up to date status on each task in addition to project trending and overall health.
3. TFS 2010 lets you trace business requirements as they are broken into work items and into test cases. This traceability allows ensuring quality of your project.
4. TFS 2010 delivers agile methodology tools. It is possible to integrate any existing Agile methodology including SCRUM or Microsoft native Agile Methodology for Software development.
5. TSF 2010 allows you to manage project at portfolio levels so that Executive team can glean into project health in real-time. It is an important tool that is critical for proper funding and overall business benefits of any given project under development.
6. TFS 2010 has both enterprise and workgroup installs. You don’t need to perform comprehensive installation and configuration if you are planning to use it for smaller projects. This is beneficial from administration prospective as well as installation cost.
7. TFS 2010 provides powerful set of visualization tools that makes your job easier when it comes to branching and merging code. This was one of the requested features by the user community.
8. TFS 2010 prevents broken builds by enforcing check-ins with tested code only. It is not possible to commit any changes that will break code for other part of your project.
9. TFS 2010 boasts one of the sophisticated build automations there is. It is based on Window Workflow with such important features as build queuing, pooling scaling.
10. TFS 2010 is very scalable tool and it supports 64 bit servers and provides project collection isolation to make it robust and reliable platform.

We are working on series of sites dedicated to new technologies. You may have seen several of them on this blog. Today we are glad to introduce another site by our development team for HTML5 developers.

We believe that HTML5 will become web platform that will unite all front end developer under one umbrella of HTML5. As a result, we want to be part of this new wave of technologies affecting web development. We would like to invite all Microsoft developers to stand behind HTML5 and learn about it on HTML5 Tutorial website.

Microsoft has nice feature in their EntLib called Application Blocks. I wanted to share Loggin Application block table schema so that you can recreate it without installing EntLib on your computer.

Source: The Logging Application Block

CREATE TABLE [Category]( 
    [CategoryID] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, 
    [CategoryName] [nvarchar](64) NOT NULL, 
CONSTRAINT [PK_Categories] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED 
( 
    [CategoryID] ASC 
) ON [PRIMARY] 
) ON [PRIMARY] 

CREATE TABLE [CategoryLog]( 
    [CategoryLogID] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, 
    [CategoryID] [int] NOT NULL, 
    [LogID] [int] NOT NULL, 
CONSTRAINT [PK_CategoryLog] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED 
( 
    [CategoryLogID] ASC 
) ON [PRIMARY] 
) ON [PRIMARY] 

CREATE TABLE [Log]( 
    [LogID] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, 
    [EventID] [int] NULL, 
    [Priority] [int] NOT NULL, 
    [Severity] [nvarchar](32) NOT NULL, 
    [Title] [nvarchar](256) NOT NULL, 
    [Timestamp] [datetime] NOT NULL, 
    [MachineName] [nvarchar](32) NOT NULL, 
    [AppDomainName] [nvarchar](512) NOT NULL, 
    [ProcessID] [nvarchar](256) NOT NULL, 
    [ProcessName] [nvarchar](512) NOT NULL, 
    [ThreadName] [nvarchar](512) NULL, 
    [Win32ThreadId] [nvarchar](128) NULL, 
    [Message] [nvarchar](1500) NULL, 
    [FormattedMessage] [ntext] NULL, 
CONSTRAINT [PK_Log] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED 
( 
    [LogID] ASC 
) ON [PRIMARY] 
) ON [PRIMARY] TEXTIMAGE_ON [PRIMARY] 

CREATE PROCEDURE InsertCategoryLog 
    @CategoryID INT, 
    @LogID INT 
AS 
BEGIN 
    SET NOCOUNT ON; 

    DECLARE @CatLogID INT 
    SELECT @CatLogID FROM CategoryLog WHERE CategoryID=@CategoryID and LogID = @LogID 
    IF @CatLogID IS NULL 
    BEGIN 
        INSERT INTO CategoryLog (CategoryID, LogID) VALUES(@CategoryID, @LogID) 
        RETURN @@IDENTITY 
    END 
    ELSE RETURN @CatLogID 
END 

CREATE PROCEDURE [AddCategory] 
    -- Add the parameters for the function here 
    @CategoryName nvarchar(64), 
    @LogID int 
AS 
BEGIN 
    SET NOCOUNT ON; 
    DECLARE @CatID INT 
    SELECT @CatID = CategoryID FROM Category WHERE CategoryName = @CategoryName 
    IF @CatID IS NULL 
    BEGIN 
        INSERT INTO Category (CategoryName) VALUES(@CategoryName) 
        SELECT @CatID = @@IDENTITY 
    END 

    EXEC InsertCategoryLog @CatID, @LogID 

    RETURN @CatID 
END 

CREATE PROCEDURE ClearLogs 
AS 
BEGIN 
    SET NOCOUNT ON; 

    DELETE FROM CategoryLog 
    DELETE FROM [Log] 
    DELETE FROM Category 
END 

CREATE PROCEDURE [WriteLog] 
( 
    @EventID int, 
    @Priority int, 
    @Severity nvarchar(32), 
    @Title nvarchar(256), 
    @Timestamp datetime, 
    @MachineName nvarchar(32), 
    @AppDomainName nvarchar(512), 
    @ProcessID nvarchar(256), 
    @ProcessName nvarchar(512), 
    @ThreadName nvarchar(512), 
    @Win32ThreadId nvarchar(128), 
    @Message nvarchar(1500), 
    @FormattedMessage ntext, 
    @LogId int OUTPUT 
) 
AS 

    INSERT INTO [Log] ( 
        EventID, 
        Priority, 
        Severity, 
        Title, 
        [Timestamp], 
        MachineName, 
        AppDomainName, 
        ProcessID, 
        ProcessName, 
        ThreadName, 
        Win32ThreadId, 
        Message, 
        FormattedMessage 
    ) 
    VALUES ( 
        @EventID, 
        @Priority, 
        @Severity, 
        @Title, 
        @Timestamp, 
        @MachineName, 
        @AppDomainName, 
        @ProcessID, 
        @ProcessName, 
        @ThreadName, 
        @Win32ThreadId, 
        @Message, 
        @FormattedMessage) 

    SET @LogID = @@IDENTITY 
    RETURN @LogID 

ALTER TABLE [CategoryLog]  WITH CHECK ADD  CONSTRAINT [FK_CategoryLog_Category] FOREIGN KEY(    [CategoryID]) 
REFERENCES [Category] (    [CategoryID]) 
ALTER TABLE [CategoryLog]  WITH CHECK ADD  CONSTRAINT [FK_CategoryLog_Log] FOREIGN KEY(    [LogID]) 
REFERENCES [Log] (    [LogID])


 
					

We are busy this summer with the release of the new site geared towards WCF developers. Website is called WCF Tutorial and has information about WCF Development, configuration, hosting and troubleshooting.

We invite you to check this site and register for WCF forum participation.

We would like to announces the launch of our new website called IIS Tutor, designed with IIS admins and developers in mind. This website provides an array of useful information including IIS Tutorials, IIS related forums, IIS blogs and IIS related and handpicked websites.

We welcome you to visit this site and participate in its forums. We hope you find it as informative as Visual Studio Team System.

What is the difference between entity relationship data model and object relationship data model? In order to answer this question we need to consult two people Chen and Codd. They defined the difference in a very elegant way. Microsoft took these two models another level. First, it introduced SQL server and then it introduced ADO.NET Entity Data Model Designer Overview

As a result of this extensive work by Microsoft, we have one of the better frameworks to represent data. Microsoft came to a conclusion that one cannot exist without another and layered both approaches in the Entity Framework

Microsoft, as always, provided us with many code samples that we can learn the Entity Framework from. You can start with the Entity Framework by logging into Getting Started with Entity Framework site.

Also, you may use any of the data stores with the Entity Framework including Sybase

IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit helps in such tasks as Site Analysis, Robots exclusion detection, site maps creation and content relevancy. Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit performs automated analysis and reports on the important aspects of SEO.

There are several reasons you would want to run Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit on your site. First of all, it increases volume of users and quality of users visiting your site. Secondly, it helps to control what Search engines can and cannot index. Third, it tells Search engines to index content more or less often. \

Here is a list of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit features

• Sophisticated crawler – deep site crawling possible due to algorithms utilized
• Detailed summary reporting and custom report builder
• Detailed information for each URL is displayed
• Supports slice and dice capability of data
• Provides site maps analysis

Download Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit from Microsoft website

One quick post about starting your opwn project basd on existing code base. All you need to do in order to learn from code is to navigate to the following link : MSDN Code Samples Gallery

There you can find a lot of project about MVC 3.0 design patterns, Entity Framework Database First or Entity Framework Code First, sample application build with WCF and RIA, Web based application, mobile and desktop applications.

You can also explore an array of apps on Silverlight webstie at Silverlight Samples Community

It is an important task to create appropriate .NET application architecture before you start developing your .NET application. Choosing design patterns, appropriate approach to application security, scalability and ease of maintenance is very important at the beginning of the project.

Designing a multi-tiered and layered application is not an easy task. Architect need to choose general approach to building web based, mobile or desktop application following by selecting tiers and layers that final application will incorporate. Tiers are important for determining the infrastructure your application will need. Layers helps you with designing appropriate components and services for the application.

Microsoft provides us with the starting point in the form of the following diagram.

Microsoft also gives us informative guidance on how to artchitect and design our application called Application Architecture for .NET: Designing Applications and Services

SharePoint performance can be degraded over time or policies change for the user groups. Items can be orphaned and drivers can run out of space. These are all areas where constant supervision is required. It’s hard to perform this sort of check manually due to sheer amount of data available in the SharePoint. Microsoft makes it easy for SharePoint administrators and developer by introducing an application SharePoint Health Analyzer which is designed to track and report on various problems that occur within your SharePoint environment and helps remediate them with detailed steps and plans for resolution.

What can be done to check SharePoint with the help of SharePoint Health Analyzer?

• Check to see if web application that use Claims authentication require an update
• Check inconsistency of automatic update across farm servers
• Check logging mechanism and ensure that detailed and verbose is captured
• Check the SharePoint server farm account and ensure that it is only used for SharePoint farm.
• Check to see if all of the required servers are running and you don’t have services in the stop mode
• Check SharePoint Databases for fragmented indices
• Check for orphaned items in the SharePoint database
• Check if Outbound e-mail configuration is set properly
• Check on timer jobs
• Check if your SharePoint drives are running out of space
• Makes sure that paging file size > physical RAM
• Validate built-in accounts for application pool or service identities

Link to the tool http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee534957.aspx

Microsoft provides a comprehensive set of application blocks for the .NET programming. These blocks are combined into one library called Enterprise Library with its newer version 5.0 being available since October last year.

If this is first time you are trying to use Enterprise Library in your development, then you would want to check out Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0 Labs

Microsoft website has nice compilation of links to help you started with the Enterprise Library 5. We provide this list of resources on our site.

Downloads	Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0 Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0 Documentation
Release Notes	Release Notes
Hands-on Labs	Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0 Hands-on Labs Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0 Extensibility Hands-on Labs
Developer's Guide	EntLib 5.0 Developer's Guide in HTML at MSDN EntLib 5.0 Guide to Enterprise Library, C# programming EntLib 5.0 Guide to Enterprise Library, VB.NET programming Ent Lib 5.0 Source code samples
Class Library	MSDN Enterprise Library 5.0 Class Library
Support	Discussions for patterns & practices – Enterprise Library 5.0
Community	patterns & practices Enterprise Library Community Site
Community Extensions	Enterprise Library Contrib Extensions
Feedback & Issue Reporting	Issue Tracker
Videos	Enterprise Library 5.0 preview at the patterns & practices summit What's coming in EntLib 5.0 and a sneak peek into the new EntLib Developer Notes Unity features and futures
License	Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL)

It is not very difficult to generate .chm file based on the auto-generated XML using DocProject. See Ref #1 below... Visual Studio adds a type of project DocProject which you can use to generate .CHM file. DocProject uses both SandCastle and HTML Help Workshop to generate these help file and is realitvly easy to do...

Here is a list of steps you need to take in order to set up this prodcess.

1. Install HTML Help Workshop first 2. Install Sandcastle 3. Install DocProject 4. Open up Visual Studio 2008 and create a new project in the solution which your want to document. 5. EnableXML generation for the project you want to document. 6. Build DocProject

There are times when you need to change collation types of your SQL Server databases, tables, columns etc... You are in luck if you implemneted nvarchar, ntext and other fields to accept multiple charchater types.

However, it is a problem if you try to store into existing varchar a type of character that is not suitable for the current SQL Server Collation type. Arabic is on of the example. There may be others such as Danish, Russian, Polish etc...

In order to assign required collation to the SQL Server object all you need is to execute the following SQL Statments

• For Database: ALTER DATABASE myDatabase COLLATRE Cyrillic_General_CI_AI GO
• For Column: ALTER TABLE myTable ALTER COLUMN[myColmn] char(10) COLLATE Cyrillic_General_CI_AI NULL

Visual Studio Team system search engine is gaining in popularity within our user community. A lot of people say that it is useful addition to our site and we are glad to hear this feedback. We are very transparent about searches performed in our search engine. We display daily stats as to what information our website users were looking for and how often same keyword, related to Visual Studio development, was searched. We also compiled the list of often searched keywords on our site. Hope it will help you understand our community of users and encourage to use our search.

70-642 pass4sure 4shared free visual studio nunit visual studio technet visual studio ajax control toolkit visual studio 2010 git visual studio opengl visual studio 2010 uninstall visual studio 2008 boost visual studio 2010 ironpython visual studio openssl vim visual studio cast jquery visual studio 2010 php visual studio what is visual studio download visual studio 2010 kiln visual studio quantlib visual studio 2010 xna visual studio 2010 eclipse vs visual studio lightswitch visual studio resharper visual studio 2010 youtube visual studio 2010 EX0-101 ms visual studio svn visual studio zenburn visual studio

Topic of "Visual Studio Interview Questions" comes up fairly regular every time I talked to developers looking for a job. They are worried that VS 2005 is different from VS 2008 and VS 2010. In fact, questions that come up then and now are different.

You should expect to see the following questions in 2010 during your technical interview.

• What is Refactoring in Visual Studio 2010?
• What is Object Caching in Visual Studio 2010?
• Explain Performance Monitoring for Individual Applications in a Single Worker Process
• How to set Meta Tags in Visual Studio 2010?
• What is Browser Capabilities Providers?
• How to Extend ASP.NET Browser Capabilities Functionality
• Explain Routing in ASP.NET 4
• What are Project Template Changes in Visual Studio 2010?
• What is ASP.NET MVC?
• How to deploy Visual Studio 2010 Web Application?

If you feel there are more questions that can be added to this list please post your questions on one of our forums at http://forum.visualstudioteamsystem.com/details.aspx?postid=1070

You can find answers to these questions by reading Visual Studio 2010 White Paper by Microsoft

Developing for Windows Phone is becoming a big business for many software shops. Microsoft is feeding into this trend by providing Windows Phone 7 Tutorial online.

This site has many videos, pdfs files and word documents plus other reach media formats to make it easy to learn Windows Phone 7 development.

Moreover, Microsoft provides with free e-books that you can download direct from their site Programming Windows Phone 7

You can also register as Windows Phone 7 Developer and find help from developers like yourself or watch Windows Phone 7 videos on how to develop for Phone 7.

Visual Studio now is more complete with many nice features for any development process. The one that I like is Visual Studio UML capabilities.

There are many reasons why you would want to use Modeling in your software development process. For instance, modeling helps you understand and communicate ideas between users and programmers.

There are several types of diagrams that you can use while modeling in Visual Studio.
1. Use Case diagrams
2. Activity diagrams
3. Calss diagrams
4. Sequence diagrams

Microsoft did a good job by putting a quick online reference for Visual Studio UML capabilites with the array of practical examples.

SharePoint Development can be done in two different ways. SharePoint developer can use native to SharePoint designer tool or Visual Studio using either VB.NET or C#. Microsoft is advising to use Visual Studio for more advanced Development and there is a good reason to do SharePoint Development in Visual Studio.

First, there is a lot of information on how to use Visual Studio. Microsoft did a good job creating walkthroughs, code samples, training material and "How do I?" videos. All of this information is compiled into one document and presented on Microsoft website.

You can find out how to develop SharePoint solutions, create Events, Webparts, User Controls and package it all under one Visual Studio solution. This document is something that I reference in my every day coding life and can be found on Microsoft MSDN site for SharePoint development

Modern business applications are designed as forms with some kind of data storage behind. Forms are user interfaces used to manage data stored in the data storage. Web applications, Access Forms are some of the examples of such business apps. However, it requires knowledgeable programmer or power user to design such business applications. As a result, Microsoft introduced Visual Studio LightSwitch. This new development platform requires zero coding and application can be built using GUI.

The Visual Studio LightSwith makes it easy to design applications for web as well as desktop. You can switch between them using configuration values. This Visual Studio LightSwitch capability eliminates a need to have web and desktop developers. One developer can do the job with the help of the Visual Studio LightSwitch.

Microsoft implemented common business applications features to be part of Visual Studio LightSwitch. Some of the most common features are: data grids, search, export/import and other widely used features of any business application.

The Visual Studio LightSwitch has built in security with authorization and authentication configurable via built-in wizards. Another notable feature of the Visual Studio LightSwitch is custom data types such as money.

Development with the Visual Studio LightSwitch is not very difficult and resembles other Visual Studio based tools. The main advantage of the Visual Studio LightSwitch is that all the steps are simplified to the point when non-technical person is capable to design business applications.

The Visual Studio LightSwitch uses application database or any kind of external data source. SharePoint list is one of the options. Databinding and data relationships can be defined as well with the help of the Visual Studio LightSwitch. ClickOnce deployment model allows for silent updates to the Visual Studio LightSwitch business applications within your production environment.

Microsoft released Facebook .NET SDK which allows developers to use Silverlight and other apps to utilize Facebook data and capabilities. This is strategic step for Microsoft which is competing with google.com in the social networking space.

Microsoft has $250 million invested in Facebook and tight integration (Facebook .NET SDK) with the facebook.com services is a natural progression of their relationship.

You can download Facebook .NET SDK from Microsoft site. You can also find Facebook SDK Overview there.

TFS Hosting in today's world is all about cloud. There is no need to maintain costly servers and pay admins to maintain them. Just use online hosting option for the TFS. Microsoft opened up free TFS hosting online at TFSPreview.com. Registration is easy with any microsoft.com account and set up is similar to any regular TFS that you may have done in the past.

Visual Studio 2010 has been released at the beginning of this year and there are several good online tutorials available. We reviewed several resources dedicated to new Visual Studio 2010 development platform and found these tutorials to contain good amount of information.

Visual Studio 2010 WCF Tutorial
Quick reference guide to the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). This tutorial is designed to help with the implementation of WCF service and client applications.

Visual Studio 2010 Sample code
Sample code is one of the ways to learn how to develop using new development tool. You can find detailed implementation of the Dynamic Data as well as Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework.

Visual Studio 2010 Upgrade Tutorials
Organizations which are trying to upgrade from their current technology to Visual Studio 2010 meet a lot of challenges. This is comprehensive list of tutorials on how to perform such an upgrade.

Finally, find the comprehensive Microsot compilation of all their assets that help in learning Visual Studio 2010

Team Foundation Server Power Tools has several enhancements in newer release of the TFS 2010. You can find set of new tools within Team Foundation Server Power Tools installation below.

Alerts Explorer - provides GUI for automated alerts which are set up with TFS. Alerts are based on check-in/out, work item changes and build statuses.

Team Foundation Server Backups – used to back up TFS databases including config database, project database, SharePoint DB and SQL DB used in conjunction with TFS.

Process Editor – GUI for editing TFS process templates as well as reviewing the config values assigned to all fields assigned to TFS Project.

Windows PowerShell Cmdlets for Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server - Windows PowerShell interface for enhanced scripting. .

Work Item Templates – visual tool that helps users to edit default work item templates .

Windows Shell Extensions – integrates Windows Explorer with file dialogs .

Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 Best Practices Analyzer – verifies deployments of TFS, takes snapshot of the TFS configuration, obtains usage data.

Team Explorer Enhancements – helps in finding files under version control as well as labels and folder .

Team Foundation Power Tool (TFPT.EXE) Tool – command line tool that works with version control, work item, and projects.

Custom Check-in Policy Pack – addition to standard check in policy tool.

Team Members An add-in to Team Explorer – helps manage users as subteams which use commonly shared IM, email and sharing queries and link.

I started to play around with Windows Azure 3.0 past couple of days ago, so you may expect to see more posts about it in the coming days. Microsoft is generous enough to give out bare-bone, out of the box version of the Azure platform which you can set up online within 10 min. So, check it out at their site Azure Cloud

I always recommended Test-Driven development for any kind of software development project. It does not matter how large or small it is. Test-Driven development will always guarantee that you will end up with quality software application without too much time spend during final release and testing.

I recommend several important areas that you need to cover during your test driven development

• Implement and Run Automated Tests
• Set up code analysis in your TFSBuild.proj File
• Fail the Build Upon Test Failure
• Test Manager helps to create a Test List
• Run Code Analysis on Each Build

In addition, I would recommend to set up work Items to track eny changes that caused team build failure. Finally, I propose to use the following set up in your TFSBuild.proj:

There are several important reasons why its good idea to implement thorough Check-in policies for your TFS Team Project. I would like to outline several approaches that you me employ for it.

Use code analysis and testing processes during your check-in. This will ensure that code being added to your repository is error free and tested. For instance, you can use testing policies which are provided with the default configuration of TFS. These policies will help you stop any code check-in if tests fail. In addition, you can improve code quality of your application by running code analysis policy which is also part of TFS. Code analysis is mostly important to ensure maintainability, portability and reliability of your code.

Check-in policy helps you to enforce coding standards. Guidelines set by your company can be cross-checked and code that is not compliant with it can be stopped from entering your source control which in turn will help keep your repository clean of any bad coding practices.

You can enforce a code analysis by right-clicking your TFS explorer and point to Project Settings following by a click on Source control and then Check-in Policy Tab.

I was working with the TFS to TFS migration on my recent project. I followed few steps for the migration as advised by Microsoft and was able to migrate everything with the exception of the TFS Team Build.

We have several project builds hosted within TFS. They are SharePoint, SQL Database project and ASP.NET. I was surprised to see my project builds fail because all the settings that we have in our Team Build XML config files are the same as for TFS 2010.

We tried to contact Microsoft with the issue and got directed their support site where Mike Sexton suggested to edit actual .sln files with the information relevant to the current set up. We fixed all of the broken project references and were able to resolve all of our TFS Team Build issues.

You will also need to install the hotfix for the upgrade here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB2135068

Microsoft officialy launched TFS 2010 this year. It was a long road towards this launch.

Microsoft just announced a launch of its Office suit of apps as a cloud version. Entire list of MS Office apps will be available on Microsoft cloud and users don’t need to install any of the office software on their computers. They will be able to use SharePoint, Office word via browser as long as they have subscription to the cloud. This new service is called Office 365 and will be available to all US and Canada based clients first with the potential roll-out throughout the world soon.

Microsoft release of web based office application called Office 365 makes it easier for Microsoft to compete against Google Docs and other Google web based products. It is very good development for Microsoft.

There is a lot of material on-line on SharePoint 2010 site provisioning. We have several blog posts about SharePoint site provisioning as well. However, there is little said about Best Practices for SharePoint Site Provisioning. As a result, we came up with the list of items that are very important for the process of privisioning your sites in SharePoint.

• Have a well-defined, documented SharePoint site provisioning process
• Aware that site provisioning is not a simple coding exercise
• Memory leaks are real deal breaker. Watch out for those leaks
• Don’t forget the SharePoint security model and utalize best practices for provisioning users into the site
• Leverage code in the SharePoint community - often you'll find good quality code base online.
• Custom templates in SharePoint are different from native templates that come with the standard install

There can be more points to talk about but this list gives you a starting point while building your own list of Best Practices while provisioning SharePoint sites.

I have been looking for a way to generate Help File for my programs. Thankfuly, I was able dsicovered several resources that provided me with very good information about tools and products that do just that.

So there are commercial tools such as RoboHelp from Adobe and free authoring tools such as NDoc, Sundcastle and others. I try to list references to these tools in my post and will welcome any other suggestions

Sandcastle
SandcastleGUI
NDoc - not supported as of now...

Detailed list of tools available for users presented by William Brewer can be found on this site TopHat Help Files

Microsoft has another tool that lets you build Help File without using Visual Studio which is called HTML Help

This is free Microsoft Tool. Read online help to figure out how to use it from reading this resource by going here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms524239(v=VS.85).aspx

SDK Documentation is here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms670169(VS.85).aspx

Download for this tool is located here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=00535334-c8a6-452f-9aa0-d597d16580cc

Finally, I was able to find very nice intro to Microsoft Help File on their Office products page and invite you to read all about Help Files by Microsoft

MS Access has several limitations that may prevent you from using it in the enterprise environment. It is hard to scale, it has limitation in DB size and tool sets. As a result, you may need to convert existing Access DB into SQL Server DB. There are many reasons why this is a good idea. On the reasons is that Microsoft makes it easy for us to convert DB from Access to SQL Server via Upsizing Wizard.

The Upsizing Wizard preserves database schema as well as data. It transfers indexes, default settings of the database such as FK/PK, attribute defaults.

The Upsizing Wizard can be downloaded from the Microsoft MSDN site at the following link: Download Upsizing Wizard

You can also look at this resource Access to SQL Server Migration

Database Modeling is not an easy task. It requires good analytical skills and a lot of hours spent on defining entities and attributes and creating relationships. However, database modelers spent little time on following standards for defining database schema elements.

There are many databases that are created without following solid naming convention making it hard to developers to use database and for DBAs administer. Database naming convention became even more critical in last decade with the proliferation of reporting. End Users now access database via reporting tools and good schema definition is now more critical due this and other facts.

There are few known examples of Database Naming Convention which may be useful. Microsoft has one for its Consulting Services
1. Database Naming Convention by Microsoft Consulting Services
2. DevCampus Database Naming Conventions
3. DB Object Naming Convention

Short list of Database Naming Convention Rules are:
Prefix -> Object
vw -> View
usp -> User-defined stored procedure
fn -> User-defined FUNCTION
trg -> Trigger

Steven Bates Naming Convention is another good approach to naming your Database Objects

Silverlight is going mainstream with new version being released every year and each version bring new features that are useful if you are developing in Silverlight.

We compiled a list of Silverlight programming resources that will let you start developing in Silverlight as well as enhance your knowledge.

First thing first, you need to download and install Silverlight on your computer first.

After you succeeded in installation of Silverlight, which should not take too much time, it is time to view insightful videos of Silverlight

I personally spent few hours watching all the videos and then moved in into doing Silverlight hands of labs readily available on one of the Microsoft sites.

We are expanding scope of technologies that we are going to cover on our website. Silverlight is becoming very popular development environment and we are members of ever expanding Silverlight community...

Check out our profile on Silverlight site.

We are happy to inform our reader that new SharePoint Tutorial section was added on our Tutorial section of the site.

We are planning to release more useful information about SharePoint on our website. We used Blog on our website for the most part when we tried to bring SharePoint related information and with the popularity of the SharePoint we introduce this new section.

Here is the link to Download SharePoint 2010

I tried it already and you just need to make your computer is configure and have proper OS to run SharePoint 2010

Hardware Reqs

1. 64-bit, four-core, 2.5 GHz minimum per core processor
2. 4 GB RAM
3. 8 GB RAM for farm
4. 80 GB Hard Disk

Double up every Req for your production environment.

SharePoint 2010 was introduced on March 3rd of 2010 and it has more collaboration features than any other prior version.

I like to see new feature called Site Modeling which is designed to provide a template based infra. for the the custom website deployment. It has reach user interface allowing users to customize and format SharePoint 2010 website.

Master Pages as well as more advance customization is required by SharePoint 2008 but not so with 2010. Microsoft did a good job enhancing webstie customization in their new version of the SharePoint 2010 server.

Silverlight Web Part is another nice addition that allows to integrate Silverlight application within SharePoint 2010 in a more intuitive way. It was somewhat a challange to use Silverlight in 2008 and I am glad they released this web part.

Please find the list of the SharePoint 2010 collaboration features

• SharePoint 2010 Document collaboration via document libraries
• Wikis and enhanced blogs
• RSS support with capabilities of displaying ATOM feeds
• Discussion boards and Messaging
• Project task management and Project Management Office Tools
• Contacts, calendars, and tasks all integreated under one umbrela of the SharePoint 2010
• E-mail storing, retrival and management
• Better interworkings with Microsoft Office 2010
• Offline support using SharePoint Workspace 2010

You may look at the full list of features at this website SharePoint 2010 by Microsoft

You need to use download Manager to Install the Visual Studio 2010 and copy paste the following files

1. You can select all four files at the same time. http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/5/c/85c7cca1-7d25-4c9b-85fc-5e837a393a0b/WS08_RTM_x86_EnterpriseVHD.exe

http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/C/0/9C036510-3218-4258-8B03-67DC1D6A497C/SQLFULL_ENU.iso

http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/B/7/1B71259E-9D37-4EB7-BC8A-1B53DF7C7D86/VS2010B2TFS_3PartsTotal.part1.exe

http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/B/7/1B71259E-9D37-4EB7-BC8A-1B53DF7C7D86/VS2010B2TFS_3PartsTotal.part2.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/B/7/1B71259E-9D37-4EB7-BC8A-1B53DF7C7D86/VS2010B2TFS_3PartsTotal.part3.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/A/1/FA1DAEA6-B719-461D-96B0-31C9C63680C8/VS2010B2Ult_4PartsTotal.part1.exe

http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/A/1/FA1DAEA6-B719-461D-96B0-31C9C63680C8/VS2010B2Ult_4PartsTotal.part2.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/A/1/FA1DAEA6-B719-461D-96B0-31C9C63680C8/VS2010B2Ult_4PartsTotal.part3.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/A/1/FA1DAEA6-B719-461D-96B0-31C9C63680C8/VS2010B2Ult_4PartsTotal.part4.rar

2. Launch the user interface for Free Download Manager (either from the Start Menu or via the system tray icon if FDM is already running).

3. Click File -> Import -> Import List of URLs from Clipboard.

4. When prompted for a download group, accept the default ("Other") and click OK.

Teamprise did a good job at helping to integrate different programming development environments with the TFS and by acquiring it Microsoft improves chances of TFS to be used more widely.

There are many teams working together on the same project utilizing different programming languages such as Java and C#. Java can be used for Web Services and C# for WinForms etc... and there was always a question of how to manage these two different teams using two different languages and with the Teamprise in the Microsoft.

Microsoft will do a better job integrating the Teamprise with the TFS and hopefully it will lead to wider adaptation of the TFS.

You can find out more information about this acquisition online via reading Official Press Release

Newer version of the Microsoft's Visual Studio called Visual Studio 2010 brings a new list of features not available in prior versions of Visual Studio. We compiled short list of these features for your reference. You can always read more about these features on Microsoft MSDN site dedicated to Visual Studio 2010

• You can use the Navigate To feature to search for a symbol or file in the source code.
• You can search for keywords that are contained in a symbol by using Camel casing and underscore characters to divide the symbol into keywords.
• Generate From Usage supports programming styles such as test-driven development.
• Use suggestion mode for situations where classes and members are used before they are defined.
• Calls to and from a selected method, property, or constructor.
• Implementations of an interface member.
• Overrides of a virtual or abstract member.
• Text insertion: Type into a box selection to insert the new text on every selected line.
• Paste: Paste the contents of one box selection into another.
• Zero-length boxes: Make a vertical selection zero characters wide to create a multi-line insertion point for new or copied text.
• Tool windows can now move freely between docking at the edges of the IDE, floating outside the IDE, or filling part or all of the document frame. They remain in a dockable state at all times.

Microsoft does a good job of collecting and publishing the SharePoint Technical Articles code and detailed explanation on how to develop, extend and modify SharePoint API. Here is a brief list of the technical articles that Micorosoft published recently about SharePoint API and development and you should use it in your development process.

• Approaches to Creating Master Pages and Page Layouts in SharePoint Server 2007
• Best Practices: Writing SQL Syntax Queries for Relevant Results in Enterprise Search
• Capitalizing On the Social Network Capabilities of SharePoint Server 2007 User Profiles
• Configuring and Deploying Anonymous Publishing Sites for SharePoint Server 2007
• Creating a Custom Feature in SharePoint Server 2007
• Creating a Custom User Site Provisioning Solution with SharePoint Server 2007 (Part 1 of 2)
• Creating a Custom User Site Provisioning Solution with SharePoint Server 2007 (Part 2 of 2)
• Creating a Database Connection by Using the Business Data Catalog Definition Editor
• Creating a Web Service Connection by Using the Business Data Catalog Definition Editor
• Creating an Enterprise Search Crawl Log Viewer for SharePoint Server 2007
• Customizing and Branding Web Content Management-Enabled SharePoint Sites (Part 1 of 3)
• Customizing and Branding Web Content Management-Enabled SharePoint Sites (Part 2 of 3)
• Customizing and Branding Web Content Management-Enabled SharePoint Sites (Part 3 of 3)
• Data-Type Handling with Excel Services User-Defined Functions
• Delivering Modular SharePoint Workflow Functionality (Part 1 of 2)
• Delivering Modular SharePoint Workflow Functionality (Part 2 of 2)
• Deploying and Optimizing a SharePoint Web Part That Calls Excel Web Services
• Deploying Information Management Policy Using Feature Activation in SharePoint Server 2007
• Developer Introduction to Workflows for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007
• Developing Sequential Workflows for SharePoint Server 2007 Using Visual Studio 2008
• Developing SharePoint 2007 Sequential and State Machine Workflows with Visual Studio 2008
• Developing User-Defined Functions for Excel 2007 and Excel Services
• Developing Workflow Solutions with SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows Workflow Foundation
• Editing Business Data Using Business Data Catalog Actions and InfoPath Forms Services
• Evaluating and Customizing Search Relevance in SharePoint Server 2007
• Excel Services Technical Overview
• Extending the Excel Services Programmability Framework
• Finding Developer Help for SharePoint Products and Technologies
• Forms Authentication in SharePoint Products and Technologies (Part 1): Introduction
• Forms Authentication in SharePoint Products and Technologies (Part 2): Membership and Role Provider Samples
• Forms Authentication in SharePoint Products and Technologies (Part 3): Forms Authentication vs. Windows Authentication
• Helper Classes for the SharePoint Server 2007 Search Query Web Service Built Using the Microsoft .NET Framework
• How to Create a SharePoint Server 2007 Custom Master Page and Page Layouts for a Web Content Management Site
• How to Create a Silverlight Web Part in ASP.NET for Use in SharePoint Server 2007
• How to Optimize a SharePoint Server 2007 Web Content Management Site for Performance
• How to Optimize SharePoint Server 2007 Web Content Management Sites for Search Engines
• Identity and Access Strategies for SharePoint Products and Technologies (Part 1): Membership and Provider Architecture
• Identity and Access Strategies for SharePoint Products and Technologies (Part 2): Membership and Role Provider Assignment
• Implementing a Brand in a SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Site
• Integrating External Document Repositories with SharePoint Server 2007
• Integrating Siebel CRM with Office SharePoint Server 2007
• Integrating SharePoint Server 2007 with Community Server Membership Databases
• Introduction to SharePoint Products and Technologies for the Professional .NET Developer
• Item-Level Auditing with SharePoint Server 2007
• Performing Incremental Crawling with the Business Data Catalog in SharePoint Server 2007
• Prescriptive Guidance for SharePoint Server 2007 Web Content Management Sites
• Searching Sites Protected by Forms Authentication with Enterprise Search in SharePoint Server 2007
• SharePoint Server 2007 for MCMS 2002 Developers
• Solution and Authored Artifact Development Models for SharePoint Products and Technologies
• Team-Based Development in SharePoint Server 2007
• Ten Tips for Using SharePoint Server 2007 with Excel Services
• Understanding Field Controls and Web Parts in SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Sites
• Understanding the Report Center and Dashboards in SharePoint Server 2007
• Upgrading an MCMS 2002 Application to SharePoint Server 2007 (Part 1 of 2)
• Upgrading an MCMS 2002 Application to SharePoint Server 2007 (Part 2 of 2)
• Upgrading SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Customizations to SharePoint Server 2007 (Part 1 of 2)
• Upgrading SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Customizations to SharePoint Server 2007 (Part 2 of 2)
• Using Enterprise Search Property Filters in SharePoint Server 2007
• Using Excel Web Services in a SharePoint Web Part
• Using Team Foundation Server to Develop Custom SharePoint Products and Technologies Applications

URL to access each of these articles is published on main Micorosoft MSDN SharePoint site. I purposly did not link each indvidual article due to changing nature of the MSND site and link updates that Microsoft does time to time.

One way to check for the SharePoint site existance is to pass site name to a method that wil return true or false based on the end result. Otherwise, you may run into run time errors when trying to add a file to the SharePoint site that does not exist.

private static bool CheckSPSite(string siteName) 
{
            using (SPSite site = new SPSite(siteName)) 
            { 
                using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb()) 
                {                     
                    if (!web.Exists) 
                    { 
                        return false; 
                    } 
                    else
                    { 
                        return true; 
                    } 
                } 
            } 
        }

I would recommend creating util Library where you can store all your helper methods and re-use in other projects.

I was looking around for the simple way of getting unique values from SharePoint list without affecting performance too much. I have seen several ways of doing it. For example, people say that you can get all the items and then check if item exists in the array or some other collection. Another example, you can load your data into DataTable and then select unique values using DataTable method but I disciovered one very simple method for selecting Distinct Values in SharePoint called GetDistinctFieldValues. Please see snippet of code below on how to use it

SPWeb web = new SPSite("http://site").OpenWeb();
SPList objList = web.Lists["List Name"];
SPField field = objList.Fields.GetField("Field Name"); 

object[,] values;
uint numberValues = objList.GetDistinctFieldValues(field, out values); 
       

for (int i = 0; i < numberValues; i++)
    comboBox1.Items.Add(values.GetValue(0, i).ToString()); 

There are many ways to provision your SharePoint site. First, you can write totaly custom made script and provision it with SharePoint admin commands. Second, you can use third party tools to provision sites. Finally, you can provision with the SharePoint workflows. This is the site provisioning method that I would prefer and I would also recommend for other who is tasked with the site provisioning.

Here is starting point that I used: Site Provisioning Workflow with Custom SharePoint Designer Activity

We published next batch of Microsoft exam reviews which will help you in your preparations for these exams.

• Exam 70-272
• Exam 70-284
• Exam 70-290
• Exam 70-291
• Exam 70-292
• Exam 70-293
• Exam 70-294
• Exam 70-297
• Exam 70-298
• Exam 70-299
• Exam 70-300
• Exam 70-305
• Exam 70-306
• Exam 70-315
• Exam 70-316
• Exam 70-320
• Exam 70-350
• Exam 70-351
• Exam 70-400
• Exam 70-431
• Exam 70-433
• Exam 70-445
• Exam 70-446
• Exam 70-500
• Exam 70-504
• Exam 70-510
• Exam 70-529
• Exam 70-536
• Exam 70-541
• Exam 70-542
• Exam 70-548
• Exam 70-553
• Exam 70-554
• Exam 70-556
• Exam 70-557
• Exam 70-561
• Exam 70-564
• Exam 70-567
• Exam 70-568
• Exam 70-571
• Exam 70-601
• Exam 70-632
• Exam 70-633
• Exam 70-634
• Exam 70-638
• Exam 70-640
• Exam 70-642
• Exam 70-643
• Exam 70-647
• Exam 70-720