PDC’08 is here and Azure Service Platform was announced.
You may also be interested to know that the CTP’s (Community Technology Preview) of the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 are now available for download!
I’m really interested in Workflow Foundation 4.0, "Oslo" and "Dublin". I’ll blog my thoughts about them later. Azure seems like a nice way to get started with hosted services, too.
1 Comment | 
.NET, Azure, Cloud, Microsoft, VisualStudio | 
Permalink
Posted by jemm
In the last post I hinted that the Visual Studio 2008 SP1 RTM would be available today.
It is required by the SQL Server 2008 when you want to install it on computers with Visual Studio 2008. Be sure to install the VS2008 SP1 before installing SQL Server 2008 on the same machine.
Of course, besides SQL Server 2008 support, Visual Studio 2008 SP1 includes lot’s of other exciting features like ADO.NET Data Services, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, Entity Framework (loved by many, hated by even more;) ) and much more.
You can read about the new SP1 features from here. Oh, and the SP1 for the TFS 2008 is also available 
)
Here are the links to the downloads:
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (exe)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=fbee1648-7106-44a7-9649-6d9f6d58056e&DisplayLang=en
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (iso, stand-alone, 831MB)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=27673c47-b3b5-4c67-bd99-84e525b5ce61&DisplayLang=en
Team Foundation Server 2008 Service Pack 1 (exe)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9e40a5b6-da41-43a2-a06d-3cee196bfe3d&DisplayLang=en
Here are other related downloads (Remote Debugger etc):
Search From Microsoft Download Center
Credits for notifying about the update goes to johnrummel, thx
Updates:
SQL Server Express Edition is also available! (thx, wisemx)
Guy Burnstein has also a nice list of downloads in his blog.
Leave a Comment » | .NET, ADO.NET, ASP.NET, EntityFramework, Microsoft, Silverlight, Software, SqlServer, Update, VisualStudio | Permalink
Posted by jemm
I was reading Derik Whittakers post about Keeping your tests up to date and it gave me an idea: make a test that fails if the tests are not reviewed.
Let’s say tests should be reviewed every week. When there are huge amount of tests, it will get hard to track when they were last time reviewed.
In this idea the review date is updated among the tests after each review and if the date is not updated because of a missing review, it’ll show up in the test results:
Here is a code of the review test (MSTest):
[TestMethod]
public void SecurityTestReview()
{
//Last time of review
DateTime lastReview = new DateTime(2008, 5, 20);
//Policy says that tests should be reviewed every week
int expected = 7;
//Days since last review
int actual = new TimeSpan(DateTime.Today.Subtract(lastReview).Ticks).Days;
Assert.IsTrue(expected > actual, "The security tests should be reviewed.");
}
After the reported "bug", reviewer/developer/tester goes through the tests and manually marks current date to the lastReview date. Each test class could have one of these review tests in the beginning or in the end of the test class.
Of course, it is up to the integrity of the reviewer to actually go through all the tests and not just update the review date, but so is writing good quality tests in the first place. This solution can’t guard the testers, but it can help them and managers to keep track when tests might get outdated.
Being relative new to unit tests I’m not sure if this is a new or even a good idea, but I think it could help maintaining the quality of the tests. What do you think?
2 Comments | .NET, C#, SDLC, Testing, Tips, VisualStudio | Permalink
Posted by jemm
Last year I blogged about Microsoft SOA initiative “Oslo” and the first mentions of .NET Framework 4.0. Today I decided to try to find more information about what the future in the Microsoft development world will hold.
As the information has been quite minimal, I decided to find out what kind of job postings Microsoft has listed at the moment as they reveal something of what they are planning at the Redmond. As it turns out, there are lot’s of interesting things coming in the future versions of .NET Framework, Visual Studio, SQL Server and SharePoint.
It should be noted that the information in this post is based mostly on combination of several job listings and speculations and it shouldn’t be taken as a definite road map or truth. Projects can be combined, canceled and delayed. I’ll link to the original job posting sources, but I’m not sure how long the links will work.
This job post reveals how there will be several SKUs of the .NET Framework:
You would work with the .NET Framework teams in proactively identifying/consolidating redundant feature areas and in driving the core framework technologies. One of your immediate roles will be in helping us factor the .NET Framework to be more flexible, by building the right set of runtime features, such that we can ship multiple .NET Framework SKUs in an agile manner. For example, we must reach the right layering and componentization goals to ship a nimble form factor, such as the .NET SilverLight Framework (for web client) and the .NET Compact Framework (for embedded devices), then build it up to the .NET Client Framework (for rich clients) and ultimately to the full .NET desktop client (for client/server). You would establish framework life cycle, with a particular emphasis on removing obsolete features, so that we can advance the platform futuristically. You would also closely work with Visual Studio architecture team in enabling a flexible multi-framework-targeting experience.
These days .NET Framework distributable is quite large so this was also bit expected to happen at some point. I recall reading from Scott Guthrie’s blog about this earlier. It should also be mentioned that VS2008 SP1 will bring “.NET Framework Client Profile” as mentioned in ScottGu’s post.
Apparently some sort of media server product for Silverlight is in the works:
Do you want to help drive the technical strategy around Web and Media technologies that will shape the internet? Do you love deep, pragmatic, and focused engineering challenges where you control the schedule? Have you ever wanted to drive a small, start-up engineering team building a code base from scratch?
The .NET Developer Platform team is looking for a Group Manager to build Microsoft’s new media server product. This team will deliver the server-side media infrastructure and services required to stream rich media on the Web and work hand-in-hand with Silverlight running on the client. We are looking for a Group Manager who can lead a small team of 10-15 engineers to build this code base from scratch, as an integrated part of the new Web and Media platform.
Now this is getting more interesting. It remains to be seen, if this will be a free add-on for IIS or a commercial product.
Moving on to the SharePoint:
Would you like to be part of the newly formed team whose charter is to develop a v1 infrastructure and tools for SharePoint platform? Would you like to invent, design, and influence a wide range of RAD developer tools for the fastest growing server product in Microsoft’s history? Would you like to work on a team that is in the early stages of execution, designing a new revolutionary set of tools? If so, the Developer Division Business Applications team is the place for you.
Our mission is to empower professional, departmental, and end user developers to create a complete range of business solutions and customizations on the SharePoint. We are part of the Visual Studio family. One of our vNext deliverables includes a rich tool set to support Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) that enable developers to fully utilize Visual Studio and the .NET Framework as a development platform.
The last paragraph is the interesting part. Anyone who has developed custom solutions on MOSS 2007 knows that it can be a nightmare. While it has a good collection of components and services, the development and deployment experience could be a lot better. I personally prefer plain ASP.NET projects as the development life-cycle is much more enjoyable and more risk-free. Hopefully these tools will make the SharePoint vNext development much more enjoyable.
This is also very interesting as it seems to unify ASP.NET, AJAX and Silverlight development:
Are you interested in delivering a cutting-edge technology that will revolutionize Microsoft’s developer platform? Are you looking for the opportunity to help drive several of the key value propositions of the next release of Visual Studio and the .NET Framework? The UI Framework and Services team – part of the .NET Developer Platform group, and owners of ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, and Windows Forms – is kicking off a new project that will be at the heart of the developer experience for building Rich Internet Applications on Microsoft’s .NET Client platform. The goal of the project is to deliver a dramatically productive and simple experience that enables RIA developers – a key developer market – to easily build rich and powerful data-driven applications on .NET. The project will build on the huge customer excitement in Silverlight and WPF, and the success of ASP.NET, to deliver an unparalleled client developer story. The key value propositions we will deliver on are:
- A complete RIA platform
- An application model that vastly simplifies LOB application development
- Greatly simplify N-Tier app development
- Seamlessly take your RIA out of the browser
To assist us in this project, we are looking for a strong and experienced SDE to help drive our Application Model and Services team. This team’s challenge will be to deliver an application model that makes it dramatically simple for developers to build a rich, occasionally connected, n-tier application. Team deliverables will include a new deployment model that can seamlessly take .NET-based Rich Internet Applications from the browser to the Windows desktop, a framework library that makes it incredibly easy to deliver rich occasionally connected user experiences, and a set of application building blocks like authentication and personalization that reduce the time to build rich application functionality, and integrate Rich Internet Applications with Windows, IE, and Office.
And another related post excerpt:
To assist us with these efforts, we are looking for a strong and experienced SDE to help drive our UI and UI Framework team. Building UI from data is at the heart of virtually every LOB application, and the team will deliver a set of rich Silverlight based controls, including a data grid, that enable new data experiences. The team will also deliver a programming model experience that makes it incredibly easy to build rich data-driven UI and visualizations. Building on innovative technologies such as Silverlight, LINQ and WPF, this team’s work will allow developers to very easily build a fully functional UI application out of data. Using the UI Framework, developers will be able to then easily customize and enrich the application by adding functionality such as navigation, editing, and validation.
This isn’t a big secret, but it was news to me:
Our goal this year is to get Ruby on Rails working in IronRuby. You will be expected to work on the compiler, Ruby libraries, and performance improvements. We also want to provide IronRuby support in the Visual Studio IDE. This includes editing features (color-coding of source code, intellisense, etc), debugging features (breakpoints, data tool tips), ensuring a Ruby look-and-feel (interactive console, etc), and integration into the Visual Studio project system.
Major changes are coming to Visual Studio (some day):
Over the next few years we plan to modernize and/or re-architect various areas of the [Visual Studio] platform where we see the greatest potential opportunities for improving the developer experience exist. These include creating a new User Interface that takes advantage of the latest in UI tools, techniques, and hardware; a robust extensibility model that helps 3rd parties extend and enhance the VS environment to improve developer productivity; an editor that is both modern and extensible and greatly improves developer code understanding; a build system that can scale to projects as large as building the Windows Operating System; and an automation model that makes it easy to automate the development environment and allow for tasks like nightly builds to be automated.
Another posting reveals that WPF is one of the “latest UI techniques”:
Major initiatives for this team for the next release of VS include:
* Work with the Shell UI team to migrate portions of the VS Shell to WPF
I have just adopted Team Foundation Server 2008 and other Team System features so I’m very excited to see what’s happening on this area. Here are some finds:
If you use Visual Studio or any other popular IDE to write code in C#, C++, VB, Java, etc. then these services are a familiar part of your development lifestyle. If you develop for any of the major SQL platforms, then the available development tools leave you relatively out in the cold. In certain respects, database development tools are fully three decades behind the curve!
Come work for the team that is changing this with a market-shifting database development project system within Visual Studio. The mission for the team is no less than to bring tooling-support for database developers to par with that of traditional languages such as C# and C++, for the complete application lifecycle. This is a challenging charter, in a fundamentally unique problem-space. In one team you will find a broad spectrum of software development challenges from designer and user interface work, to the nuts and bolts of language parsing and cutting-edge code-modeling.
Interesting and I have no idea what it could be in practice. 
Testing will also get more tools in the VSTS:
In the Rosario release of VSTST we have the ambitious goal of fundamentally changing the relationship between Development and QA by providing tools and workflow that make testers first class citizens in our customers’ development process. To do this, we will deliver world class Test Case Management, Test Authoring, Automation Tools and Frameworks, as well as game changing integrations within Visual Studio Team Suite.
These days I do integration projects and distributed programming is part of my daily life. That’s why I’m increasingly looking into WCF, WF and BizTalk as they could be part of our integration product. After reading these posts it seems that something interesting (that is, Oslo) is on the way:
Join the Connected Framework (CFx) team and help us create the programming model central to Microsoft’s next generation of the distributed application framework. The team has recently delivered first versions of WCF (aka Indigo) and Windows Workflow, which are receiving significant customer acceptance. WCF is THE Web Services stack for Microsoft, and Windows Workflow is THE foremost declarative, process model framework. Now is a great time to join the team as we are starting to work on the next major release that consolidates and enhances these two powerful yet simple and elegant development frameworks into a single unified platform aiming for 10x productivity increase in distributed applications development.
For the last few years, we have been on a mission to make the usage of transactions simple, fast and ubiquitous. We have made tremendous progress so far. The Systems Transactions namespace in .NET 2.0 made transactions far easier to use, with dramatic improvements in performance. We have extended the reach of transactions all the way from web services to the kernel. We authored and implemented the WS-Atomic Transactions standard. In Vista, we integrated our transactions stack with the transacted file system and registry! In Oslo, we are planning to add distributed compensation support by adding long-running transactions support to the connected framework runtime! But all of this is just the beginning. In our upcoming releases we will continue to extend our reach, from atomic transactions to long-running activities with compensation to generic agreement protocols! We will continue to make it easier to write reliable and consistent distributed applications. Most importantly, we will continue to ship regularly to get our work into the hands of customers.
Do you have a passion for building state-of-the-art graphics software? Would you like to influence the direction of a key technology used across multiple Microsoft products?
We are seeking a Lead Software Development Engineer to drive the architecture, design, and implementation of rich data visualization components – including charts, gauges, maps, and calendars – that will be included in upcoming releases of SQL Server, Visual Studio, and Office. In this highly visible leadership role, you will be responsible for managing a high performance team of software developers using the latest Microsoft technologies, including C#, ASP.NET, AJAX, Silverlight, and WPF.
Rich data visualization capabilities are quickly becoming a requirement for modern business applications. The SQL Server Reporting Services team is on the cutting edge of this technology, creating a set of powerful and interactive data visualization components for application developers, IT professionals, and end users. We are a growing team that is passionate about creating the most comprehensive database reporting, data visualization, and notifications platform in the industry. We have an expanding customer base that has ever-increasing demands for more capabilities, and we are continuing to extend our product reach, evolve the feature set, and deliver new customer innovations.
Those data visualization controls will be welcomed.
XML tools for SQL Server/Visual Studio will be enhanced. Interesting point is that WPF and Silverlight will be part of it:
Help build the XML Editor, XSLT Debugger and XML Editing platform for developers. The Data Programmability (DP) Tools product team is a new and growing product unit that is looking for a talented and motivated developer. We want you to help define and build state of the art tools that are distributed as part of Visual Studio and SQL Server and are used by millions of developers world-wide – hobbyists and enterprise developers alike. We value and encourage innovation and excellence in graphical tool design, usability, infrastructure, and execution. SQL Server is investing in tools. If you want to make a difference and work with state of the art technologies such as WPF, Silverlight, MEF/MAF, and help define tools standards for developers, then we would like to talk with you.
This posting gives many interesting details about SQL Server’s future:
SQL Server is embarking on an ambitious effort to rejuvenate the T-SQL language and to embrace all the programming models in the data platform – relational, spatial, full text, xml and entities. This involves all aspects of the SQL programming surface from designing procedural extensions to the language, to improving the cursor model, to enhanced metadata discovery, to application packaging, to building a new compiler for T-SQL, to building extensibility into SQL Server. And this is just a sampling of the problems for which you will need to design and help build good solutions. In addition, this effort will require you to work on and influence Microsoft’s Data Platform Strategy.
As you can see, many interesting tools and technologies are on their way in the next few years. My research method was very random and the job postings don’t reveal much, but I’m sure that we’ll get more information in the coming months.
However, the pattern already shows that many coming features build on existing components and aim to unify the development experience by combining them in many ways.
It seems that there will be much more graphical designers, DSLs and other modern ways of generating applications. This will split the opinions as many developers prefer to code in the traditional way, but I’m sure there will be something for everybody – I probably found just a few interesting bits out of many!
From my view point the most interesting finds were:
Do you have any rumors to share?
18 Comments | .NET, ADO.NET, Architecture, BizTalk, C#, CLR, Databases, IIS, LINQ, Microsoft, Rumors, SharePoint, Silverlight, SqlServer, VisualStudio, WPF | Permalink
Posted by jemm
Extension methods help making many routine codes much cleaner and simpler. In this post I’ll show how I use extension methods with classes that implement IDataReader such as SqlDataReader. I’ll also throw in some examples how to convert fields to enums etc tips for usual needs.
While LINQ is now the coolest kid in the block, the oldskool data readers are still the most efficient way for most cases and every now and then I still use them.
When you loop through the data reader, you have to convert each column into right type. For example:
SqlDataReader reader;
reader = sqlCommand.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior.SingleRow);
reader.Read();
product.ProductID = Convert.ToInt32(reader["ProductID"]);
Typically I moved the conversion to some helper tools class to encapsulate and unify the conversion:
public static class Tools
{
public static int GetInt(IDataReader reader, string column)
{
if (reader[column] != DBNull.Value)
{
return Convert.ToInt32(reader[column]);
}
else
return 0;
}
With that helper method the code would look something like this:
product.ProductID = Tools.GetInt(reader, “ProductID”);
product.ProductName = Tools.GetString(reader, “ProductName”);
product.UnitPrice = Tools.GetDouble(reader, “UnitPrice”);
product.Discontinued = Tools.GetBool(reader, “Discontinued”);
This looks better and if I need to change the rules I can do it in one location. Still, there is a bit nicer way after the extension methods came with .NET 3.5.
I won’t go through the basic examples about what the extension methods are, as there already is plenty of those examples in the web. Without further ado, here are some of my extension methods for the IDataReader:
public static class DataReaderExtensions
{
public static int ToInt(this IDataReader reader, string column)
{
if (reader[column] != DBNull.Value)
{
return Convert.ToInt32(reader[column]);
}
else
return 0;
}
public static Guid ToGuid(this IDataReader reader, string column)
{
if (reader[column] != DBNull.Value)
{
return new Guid(reader[column].ToString());
}
else
return Guid.Empty;
}
public static DateTime ToDateTime(this IDataReader reader, string column)
{
if (reader[column] != DBNull.Value)
{
return Convert.ToDateTime(reader[column]);
}
else
return DateTime.MinValue;
}
//This converts an integer column to the given enum (T)
public static T ToEnum<T>(this IDataReader reader, string column)
{
if (!typeof(T).IsEnum)
{
throw new ArgumentException(typeof(T).ToString() + ” is not an Enum”);
}
return (T)Enum.ToObject(typeof(T), reader.ToInt(column));
}
I put only some examples to get the idea through, but with similar pattern you can easily add support to all the types you need.
After that I can convert the columns with less code:
//product.ProductID = Tools.GetInt(reader, “ProductID”);
//product.ProductName = Tools.GetString(reader, “ProductName”);
//product.UnitPrice = Tools.GetDouble(reader, “UnitPrice”);
//product.Discontinued = Tools.GetBool(reader, “Discontinued”);
product.ProductID = reader.ToInt(“ProductID”);
product.ProductName = reader.ToString(“ProductName”);
product.UnitPrice = reader.ToDouble(“UnitPrice”);
product.Discontinued = reader.ToBoolean(“Discontinued”);
The difference might not seem that big, but when typing that routinely line after line, you’ll notice the difference. It is also easier to read.
Earlier I showed the code of ToEnum<T> -extension method that converts an integer (usually primary/foreign key in a table) to an enum.
Let’s say I have Product -type and Category-enum like this:
public class Product
{
public int ProductID { get; set; }
public string ProductName { get; set; }
public double UnitPrice { get; set; }
public bool Discontinued { get; set; }
public Category Category { get; set; }
}
public enum Category
{
Beverage = 1,
Condiments = 2
}
I can convert the foreign key in the Products -table into Category -enum with the extension method, if the ID’s of the primary key match in the Categories -table:
product.Category = reader.ToEnum<Category>(“CategoryID”);
Here is signature of one extension method:
public static int ToInt(this IDataReader reader, string column)
First comes the type you want to extend (IDataReader) and after that one extra parameter, if needed (column name in this case).
For the type parameter, I have chosen IDataReader. I used to have SqlDataReader, but then I realized that these extension methods would work with any data reader, as long as it implements the IDataReader. This made them more reusable, though I rarely use other than SqlDataReader.
Here I made sure that the extension methods work with native .NET readers that implement the IDataReader:
public static void Test()
{
int pid;
SqlDataReader sqlReader;
pid = sqlReader.ToInt(“ProductID”);
OleDbDataReader oleDBReader;
pid = oleDBReader.ToInt(“ProductID”);
OdbcDataReader odbcDataReader;
pid = odbcDataReader.ToInt(“ProductID”);
DbDataReader dbDataReader;
pid = dbDataReader.ToInt(“ProductID”);
OracleDataReader oracleReader;
pid = oracleReader.ToInt(“ProductID”);
}
The blue arrows and the tooltip in the intellisense menu reveal that those are just extension methods, if you are afraid that somebody gets confused:
Extension methods help to make the .NET Framework more usable to your needs. Downside is that you’ll easily get dependent on them, but just add them to your common tools -class that you can attach to your own projects and they’ll tag along.
In projects related to work they may require some team-wide agreement, but the same applies to all the other helper classes, too.
4 Comments | .NET, ADO.NET, Architecture, C#, CLR, Databases, SqlServer, VisualStudio | Permalink
Posted by jemm
You may get the following error in Visual Studio 2008 when trying to compile a test project:
Unable to set TestContext property for the class x. System.ArgumentException: Object of type ‘Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestTypes.Unit.UnitTestAdapterContext’ cannot be converted to type ‘Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting.TestContext’
This just happened to me and the reason was a reference that pointed to the old assembly of the Visual Studio 2005. The project was just migrated to the new version, but the old reference had remained.
To fix this, follow these steps:
I found the answer to this trivial error from the MSDN Forums.
Leave a Comment » | .NET, Testing, VisualStudio | Permalink
Posted by jemm
The latest CTP of the Expression Blend 2 is now available for download.
This version brings Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 RTM -compatibility and makes development of Silverlight 1.1 2.0 applications again possible.
Be sure to download the Alpha Tools for the Visual Studio 2008 (RTM), too.
Here is the readme with known issues.
[Via troubleshoot.wordpress.com, Finnish only]
Leave a Comment » | Blend, Silverlight, Software, Tools, VisualStudio, WPF | Permalink
Posted by jemm
Earlier I posted about the tools for the beta 2 version of the Visual Studio 2008.
Silverlight 1.1. Tools Alpha for the Visual Studio 2008 RTM/final are now available at the Microsoft Downloads.
Source: Scott Guthries post.
1 Comment | Silverlight, Software, Tools, VisualStudio | Permalink
Posted by jemm
While checking out some of my I RSS feeds this morning, I found this useful add-in for the Visual Studio: Copy Source as HTML. The post by Guy Burnstein contains links to the original 2005-version and the update he made for the 2008-version of the Visual Studio.
This really helps my blogging as lately I have avoided pasting code samples since formatting is too much trouble.
Granted, there are similar tools already, like the add-in for the Windows Live Writer, but it has never worked well for me as there is no control for font size, indentation etc. In addition, the fixed-layout of this WordPress.com -template isn’t friendly for wide lines.
Here is a capture of the optional dialog that gives great control for the resulting HTML and CSS:
And here is an actual sample from the add-in with above settings:
25 public string Description
26 {
27 get { return _description; }
28 set { _description = value; }
29 }
1 Comment | Blogs, Tools, VisualStudio | Permalink
Posted by jemm
At work most are used to develop with the full version of the Visual Studio, but if you don’t have that at home, Express -versions are very good alternatives. It is nice to know about these tools, even if you don’t need them personally.
Be sure to check out Dan Fernandez’s excellent post about his Top 15 -list of new features in the Express editions!
I’m glad there are free alternative versions available for those who can’t or don’t want to buy the commercial versions. They are very powerful feature-wise and there shouldn’t be any excuses why not to start developing on the Microsoft-platform as all the necessary tools are available for everybody
One could argue that it has been possible to start Windows/.NET development for free since the .NET 1.0 as all the compilers and the Framework itself have always been free. But to be fair: once you get spoiled by Visual Studio and IntelliSense, Notepad and command-line compiler -combo really doesn’t cut it 
My only gripe is that there are no integrated unit testing tools (Visual Studio 2008 Professional and up have those, by the way, not just the Team Editions), but you can always download NUnit, xUnit.net or MBunit. Still, I think unit testing tools are these days as important part of the development tools as, say, debugger.
Leave a Comment » | .NET, Express, Tools, VisualStudio | Permalink
Posted by jemm
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