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This is a mirror of Richard Hundhausen's (aka The DBAgilist) blog "Tales from the Doghouse."
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The newly formed Boise SQL
Server User Group kicks off its first meeting with Kalen
Delaney on June 25, 2008.
I'm happy to see a Microsoft SQL Server user group in Boise. It will fit nicely with
the other development and SharePoint groups in town.
For more information, contact Cindy
Gross of Microsoft.
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It's generally known that if you want to run any tests, code analysis, or database
project build/deployment that you need to install one or more Team Edition of VSTS
on your build server. What's not so well known are the licensing ramifications around
these scenarios.
Fortunately Jeff Beehler,
Team System Chief of Staff, has posted
on this subject.
To summarize:
If the users creating the builds are licensed users of the edition in question
(or Team Suite), that license extends to Team Foundation Build and you don't need
to purchase an additional license. One way to think about it is: the people that are
using the Team editions need to be properly licensed which in turn ensures the that
the build machines are covered as well. Users who merely queue (execute) and review
the automated builds are only required to have a Team Foundation Server CAL.
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Back home now, and I have a moment to get the photos downloaded from my camera and
uploaded to my blog. Next time I'll take my SD card reader with me.
As you can see, registration was quite busy. I heard that there were 4000 people there,
but didn't count them myself. The long lines delayed the keynote by about an hour:
Douglas McDowell and I snuck into the press area. Well, he was officially press (SQL
Server Magazine), but I wasn't - still I took more notes than most of the other pressies
there.
The main screen was huge, and 3D. We estimated about 80' wide and 20' tall. When no
slides were on the screen, there was a spinning 3D Earth enclosed in curley brackets.
Hey, what about VB?
After the keynote, there was a short walk to the LA convention center, where the breakout
sessions, chalk-talks, exhibitor area, etc. Fortunately, we had these interpretive
dancers along the way to keep us from getting lost.
The line to lunch was too long, so we ducked inside to check out the exhibitor area.
I was there (where it says "You Are Here")
Attendees attending one of Doug
Seven's chalk talks on Team System.
Doug was all about the writing
quality code and the 3 C's in his talk (Code Coverage, Code Analysis, and the
new Code
Metrics)
After I turned in my evaluation form, I picked up the attendee bag, which had
lots of goodies, including a hard-bound, coffee-table style book called "Heroes Happen
Here" which contains IT heroes from all around the world, photographed by Carolyn
Jones. And yes, I got my book signed!
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In this, my first post of (hopefully) several today, I'm sitting in the keynote session
(next to Douglas
McDowell), listening to Tom
Brokaw warm up the audience. What a nice surprise. It definitely stopped all the
geeks in their tracks, to listen to his wise words, gathered from years of experience
in all matters mankind.
I loved his opening line "I'm not here to write code, or wire this room". He did,
however, wax poetic on the future of technology, the spirit and energy of the types
of people who will drive it, and how we must handle it to get their safely."
Some of his quotes during the keynote (some paraphrasing):
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"The test or our place in this world is not yet complete. We don't want to become
Easter Island or the Mayan civilization. The use of this technology is not just a
virtual experience. If we develop capacity and leave out common sense, what then is
the reward to each of us, collectively or individually? If speed overruns reason,
what else gets trampled?"
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"We will not solve climate change by hitting backspace. It will do us little good
to wire the world if we short circuit our consciousness, our souls and if we don't
use this technology to advance mankind."
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"When I left Nightly News I said that I'm not only going to spend my time at suites
in the four seasons ... but to spend time in the trenches to meet people who make
a difference"
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"One day I woke up in Pakistan in a packing container with Americans who had been
there for six months, trying to assess medical and health needs. When they hiked out,
they put their hands on the keyboard and distilled what they had learned ... and in
so doing, made a big impression ... of those of us in the West who have so much, while
they (people in Pakistan) have so little."
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"This technology takes a guiding hand, an imaginative approach, and a hope ..."
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"We have the opportunity to become the next, greatest generation."
Steve
Ballmer came on stage next to thank the many platinum sponsors, and discuss how
"Dynamic IT" can help manage complexity and achieve agility (especially in the realm
software development)
I heard the term "Agile" about 10 times in the span of 3 minutes. More to come ...
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Time flies. It's been a year since Dr. Gray, a Microsoft research fellow and Turing
Award-winner, went missing while
sailing off San Francisco. A year ago, at Boise Code Camp 2.0, I hosted a session
on finding Jim
Gray, using Amazon's Mechanical Turk.
Now, a year after Dr. Gray went missing, the Association
of Computing Machinery (the organization that holds the Turing Awards), the IEEE
Computer Society and the University of California-Berkeley have joined to announce
a tribute to Gray, planned for May 31 at the UC Berkeley campus. Jim Gray attended
UC Berkeley from 1961 to 1969 and earned the school's very first Ph.D. in computer
science. Fittingly enough, the tribute will also feature technical sessions for registered
participants.
You can find more information about the tribute here:
![]() 
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I know. I know. This doesn't sound like a very interesting post, but it saved me time,
and hopefully it can save you some too.
When you install Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft creates a "Visual Studio 2008 Command
Prompt" shortcut, under that program group.
I like to take this shortcut and drop it on my Quick Launch toolbar:
The problem is that when you install the Team Foundation Server Power Tools (or other
new command line utilities) you need to put them in the path.
Well, if you look at the file the shortcut calls, it's vcvarsall.bat, but don't
bother editing that file because it calls vcvars32.bat, but don't bother editing
that file, because it calls vsvars32.bat. If you go ahead and edit that file,
you can find where the PATH is getting set, and add the Power Tools path to it:
@set PATH=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE;C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Visual Studio 9.0\VC\BIN;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools;C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5;C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727;C:\Program
Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\VCPackages;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team
Foundation Server 2008 Power Tools;%PATH%
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I've been so involved with the VSTS RTM yesterday, that I almost didn't notice this
one.
Click here to
download the latest SQL Server 2008 Community Technology Preview (CTP) and try out
the latest features of SQL Server 2008.
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It seems that the US Tech-Ed is following Europe's lead, by breaking up the one large
conference into two: one for developers and one for IT professionals.
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June 3-6, 2008 - Developers (developers, solution architects, designers, and
testers)
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June 10-13, 2008 - IT Professionals
Both events will have a similar format with the past Tech·Eds, but will focus on a
single audience instead of a mixed audience, which was the case with the previous
Tech·Ed model.
Visit the main Tech-Ed
site for more information, including some FAQs.
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I just came across this download at
Microsoft. It provides an introduction to the concepts and step by step instructions
for creating and customizing TFS reports.
The zip file contains instructional PDF documents as well as several sample reports.
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Way to go Microsoft, and SQL Server 2005!
For the first time in the report’s history, Microsoft is positioned in the Leader
quadrant in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse DBMS. The analysts say that
SQL Server 2005 is expected to grow in the data warehouse space and Microsoft’s vision
for SQL Server 2008 makes clear the company’s intent to become a major presence in
the data warehouse market.
Read more about this great announcement here. 
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Thanks to the Team System Rangers (an elite squad of TFS experts inside Microsoft)
for putting together this document, which serves as a single point of entry into the
world of TFS Operations as well as Microsoft's recommended operational best practices.
So, start learning/mastering TFS operations by clicking here.
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Microsoft has released a new version of VSTS Web Access Power tool. This
release is a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of what will ultimately be the 2008
version of the VSTS Web Access Power Tool.
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Built against the TFS 2008 object model - In previous versions
of Web Access you had to install Team Explorer 2005 on any machine you were installing
Web Access on. With this version, you will now be installing Team Explorer 2008
instead. In some future version, Microsoft hopes to remove the requirement
to install any version of Team Explorer.
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Custom control support - added support for web based work item custom
controls and have included a folder of documentation and samples on how to create
them.
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Build queuing - added UI for the new TFS 2008 feature
of build queuing. You can start new queued builds and view the build queue (in
addition to the preexisting abilities - like viewing build details).
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Localization support - added support for localizing the web
interface. Microsoft will also be localizing text for the final 2008 Power
Tool release.
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Bug fixes & Performance improvements - Microsoft has received
a number of reports and done more testing on the current version of the
Power Tool, and has fixed everything thus far.
This release (and the final 2008 release) can be used with either a TFS 2005 or a
TFS 2008 server. In either case, you will need to install a TFS 2008 Team Explorer
on the machine you install Web Access on. Since TFS 2005 did not support build
queuing, that functionality will not be available when this and future versions of
Web Access are used with a 2005 server.
You can download it here and
read more about it at Brian
Harry's blog posting. 
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Call it a code generator, software factory, or just a clever script. If you can write
code that writes code - you win, even if just a small victory for humans in this contest we
call software development.
For example, I've been working on an ASP.NET application which contains many data
entry screens. You know the kind: very simple, table-format with a label and
a textbox of a certain width, that may or may not require some validation.
In other words, a whole lot of markup like this:
<tr>
<td class="EditLabel">Number</td>
<td class="Edit">
<asp:TextBox ID="txtNumber" runat="Server"
Width="200px" MaxLength="20"></asp:TextBox>
</td>
</tr>
Now, if you have to type the above more than once or twice, you will go insane (been
there, gone there). More importantly, you will probably introduce a bug or two.
So, I opened up SQL Server 2005 Management Studio and wrote the following T-SQL code:
USE SomeDB
GO
DECLARE @Table varchar(128)
DECLARE @Column varchar(128)
DECLARE @Width varchar(10)
DECLARE @Length int
DECLARE @Type int
SET @Table = 'Employer' -- Pass this as a parameter
DECLARE ColumnCursor CURSOR FOR
SELECT C.Name, C.Max_Length, C.User_Type_ID
FROM Sys.Columns C
INNER JOIN Sys.Tables T ON C.Object_ID = T.Object_ID
WHERE T.Name = @Table
ORDER BY Column_ID
OPEN ColumnCursor
FETCH NEXT FROM ColumnCursor INTO @Column, @Length, @Type
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
IF @Type <> 36 -- No GUIDs
BEGIN
IF @Length < 0 SET @Length = 100
IF @Length < 10
SET @Width = '50px'
ELSE IF @Length < 20
SET @Width = '100px'
ELSE IF @Length < 50
SET @Width = '200px'
ELSE IF @Length < 100
SET @Width = '300px'
ELSE
SET @Width = '400px'
PRINT '<tr>'
PRINT ' <td class="EditLabel">'
+ @Column + '</td>'
PRINT ' <td class="Edit">'
PRINT ' <asp:TextBox
ID="txt' + @Column + '" runat="Server" Width="' + @Width + '" MaxLength="' + CONVERT(varchar(10),@Length)
+ '"></asp:TextBox>'
PRINT ' </td>'
PRINT '</tr>'
END
FETCH NEXT FROM ColumnCursor INTO @Column, @Length,
@Type
END
CLOSE ColumnCursor
DEALLOCATE ColumnCursor
You get the picture. Feel free to customize this code to introduce additional formatting,
a slick UI, or other business rules to the mix.
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Microsoft's Patterns
& Practices group recently released the final version of the “Team Development
with Team Foundation Server” Guide. This guide has been in beta for the last couple
of months.
It shows you how to get the most out of Team Foundation Server to help improve
the effectiveness of your team-based software development. Whether you are already
using Team Foundation Server or adopting from scratch, you’ll find guidance and insights
you can tailor for your specific scenarios. It's a collaborative effort between patterns
& practices, Team System team members, and industry experts.
Some quick facts:
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496 – Total number of pages
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18 – Total number of chapters in this guide
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11392 – Total number of downloads of the Beta version of this guide
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8 – Number of attempts to get the Adobe build to work to generate the guide in .pdf
format
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60 – Number of external and MSFT contributors and reviewers
Download the guide from CodePlex. 
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Yesterday, Microsoft released a
tool to migrate from IBM ClearCase to
TFS.
Find more information on TFS migration topics, keep an eye on this blog.
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