Black Marble

What I Saw at AWS Summit London 2026

Daniel Bulman — Tue, 12 May 2026 22:34:54 +0100

AWS Summit London 2026

AWS Summit London 2026 was a compact, fast-moving event with practical sessions. The theme was “Innovate at Scale,” and the show was heavy on AI, sustainability, and hybrid cloud.

Opening Keynote

Main focus: resilience, scale, and customer-driven innovation.
Graviton4 expansion: broader regional availability and better performance for ML workloads.
Sustainability: AWS data centers now targeting carbon neutrality by 2030.

AI and Machine Learning

Amazon Q: emphasis on responsible AI, bias mitigation, and explainability.
AI track: practical sessions on using foundations models and edge AI in real projects.

Serverless and Containers

AWS Lambda: advanced patterns, event-driven architectures, and AWS Step Functions integration.
Lambda Power Tuning: announced to optimize memory and concurrency automatically.

Security and Compliance

Zero trust: core theme for identity and access.
AWS IAM + Verified Permissions: presented as the foundation for modern security models.
AWS Security Hub AI: previewed as a way to turn threat intelligence into actionable recommendations.

Cloud for Good: AWS projects using satellite data and global infrastructure for climate and disaster response.
AWS Ground Station: showcased as a tool for environmental monitoring and analysis.

Final Thoughts

AWS remains focused on practical innovation: sessions were about applying cloud services, not just vision.
AI is becoming mainstream: the message was to start using it now.
Security is mandatory: zero trust and automation are core expectations.
Sustainability is a real part of the conversation: AWS is leaning into it with aggressive targets.

AWS Summit London 2026 felt like a useful check-in on what’s next for the cloud. The event was dense, technical, and grounded in the kind of tooling that developers can apply immediately.

Unit Testing Bicep Logic with BicepConsoleTTK

Andrew Wilson — Sat, 09 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space

In most Infrastructure as Code teams, Bicep quality checks start to look mature as soon as linting and deployment validation are in place. In practice, there is still a blind spot: logic-level testing of exported functions, types, and variables.

Most teams validate by deploying to a subscription and checking outcomes afterwards. That is useful, but it is also slow and expensive when what you actually want to verify is pure logic. A shared Bicep library changes, everything still compiles, and then a downstream module fails later in a deployment pipeline because a naming function or constructor behaviour subtly changed. That is exactly the type of issue we normally catch early in application development with unit tests.

Azure App Registrations | Display Name Guidance

Andrew Wilson — Fri, 01 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space

I recently had to troubleshoot an issue where two App Registrations in the same tenant had the same display name.

Azure allows this. Operationally, it hurts.

When names are duplicated, diagnosis gets slower and riskier because engineers cannot trust what they see first in the portal.

Why It Matters

Display names are not unique identifiers. They are labels.

That creates avoidable failure modes:

Wrong app selected during incident response
Secrets/certificates updated on the wrong registration
Permission checks performed against the wrong object
Longer time to restore service because every step needs extra ID validation

What Is Actually Unique

Display name: not unique
Application (client) ID: unique
Object ID: unique
Service principal object ID: unique per tenant instance

Humans start with names; Azure enforces uniqueness with IDs. Good naming closes that gap.

Azure Key Vault | Access Policies Removed On Deployment

Andrew Wilson — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

⚠️ NOTE

Microsoft guidance is clear that Azure RBAC should be used for data plane authorization moving forward, instead of legacy access policies

Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC) vs. access policies (legacy)

Provide access to Key Vault keys, certificates, and secrets with Azure role-based access control

Problem Space

When multiple applications share a single Azure Key Vault, access policy management can become an unexpected source of deployment risk → and the root cause is easy to miss.

Bicep Tips and Tricks | #10 | Authoring Practices

Andrew Wilson — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space

As Bicep adoption grows, so does the complexity of the environments and teams using it. Without clear authoring practices, Bicep codebases can quickly become inconsistent, hard to maintain, and error-prone. In this post I wanted to share some practical authoring practices and anti-patterns to help you and your team write better Bicep code.

Why Define and Stick to Your Authoring Practices

Defining and following authoring practices ensures:

Consistency across your codebase and team
Easier onboarding for new contributors
Fewer errors and less technical debt
Improved maintainability and clarity

Below are some key practices and common anti-patterns to consider.

Duplicated IP addresses give strange error when deploying Hyper-V environments

Richard Fennell — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Background

I have posted in the past on how we manage Azure DevOps Pipeline Agents with Packer and Lability. Whilst deploying a new agent I hit a interesting problem, the issue was completely a ‘UTS’ (user too stupid) error, but the way it was surfaced was I think interesting.

The Problem

My script built and deployed a new Hyper-V VM, setting up the OS, adding disks and installing the Azure DevOps Pipeline agent. However, the agent did not get registered with Azure DevOps. On checking, I could see that the new VM had a configured network adaptor, but no network connection

Fixing Ribble CGR-Ale (Mahle X35 based) ebike with intermittent power

Richard Fennell — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Background

My post-op chemotherapy treatment for my adrenal cancer meant I was struggling to get any fitness, so in 2019 I bought a Ribble CGR-ALe ebike based around the Mahle X35 system. It was in fact pre-ordered prior to the bike’s initial release by Ribble.

This bike served me well, getting me out and about before any fitness returned. Since getting fit again, it has also proved useful for my 20KM each-way commute. Allowing me to avoid the traffic jams but still get to work without getting too hot and sweaty.

Migrating Azure WebApps from Docker Compose to Sidecar

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Background

We have a few non-critical systems running as single instance Docker containers hosted on Azure WebApps. On these systems we have started to see the warning

Your app is configured with Docker Compose, which is set to retire on March 31, 2027. For multi-container support, please update your app to support sidecar containers.

So, best to get ahead of the game I looked into how to update them, factoring in that ours are all BICEP defined and deployed with Azure DevOps Pipelines

Creating a Notebook Service in Fabric

Lewis Spencer — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:33:00 +0100

lewiswrites http://lewispen.github.io/posts/fabric-notebook-service/ -

Fabric Notebook Service

In Fabric, you can write Python using Notebooks in pipelines to retrieve data from external systems where they may be too complex or not supported by any of the available connectors in a dataflow. For example, you can use a notebook to recursively call a paginated endpoint until there is no data left. You can do something similar using the activities within a pipeline as well but I have found notebooks to be more adaptable and extensible. Deciding which to use can ultimately depend upon who will be consuming and maintaining the Fabric instance.

Why has my BizTalk CI/CD build just stopped working?

Richard Fennell — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Problem

I recently had a customer who’s Azure DevOps Pipelines BizTalk 2020 build had suddenly started to fail. They said they had not altered their BizTalk solution, or their build process.

The Analysis

Turns out the issue was that the operating system on the VM that hosts their self-hosted Azure DevOps agent had had a update. This update it seems had updated the version of MSBUILD shipped with Windows. Making it the newest version, newer than the one shipped with Visual Studio 2019.

PostSharp assembly error upgrading Delinea Secret Server

Richard Fennell — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 01:00:00 +0000

The Problem

Today I was upgrading our self hosted Delinea Secret Server from 11.9.x to 12.0.x. These upgrades are usually an easy process, all achieved within the Secret Server web UI, but not today.

The upgrade proceeded as normal, downloading the new package, updating the DB schema and updating the binaries, but then it stopped. It did not move onto the next step.

The Analysis

I remoted onto our Windows server hosting our Secret Server instance and via Internet Information Service Manager launched the Secret Server instance via the URL http://localhost. This showed the error

Another new problem when generating build agents using Packer

Richard Fennell — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Problem

I have been using Packer to generate our Azure DevOps Build agent disk images for a while now. The advantage of this process is that our Azure DevOps self-hosted agents have the same installed software, and hence capabilities, as the Microsoft hosted ones. So it is trival to move a build pipeline from self-host agents to either Microsoft hosted agents or Managed DevOps Pools.

However, the generation process for these agent VM images has been the gift that keeps giving and has generated a few blog posts …

Options for Migrating DevOps Toolsets

Richard Fennell — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Whilst presenting on ‘Migrating DevOps Toolsets’ at DDDNorth 2026 last weekend, I mentioned a blog post & flowchart I had created a few years ago to guide people through their options when migrating from what was then called TFS (Azure DevOps Server) to what was then called VSTS (Azure DevOps Services)

When I got home, I thought that this old post & flowchart were worth bringing up to date. So, I also took the chance to make them a little more generic, making them more useful as a guide for a wider range of DevOps toolset migrations, not just Azure DevOps.

Unexpected 'task is dependent on a Node version that is end-of-life' warning with Azure DevOps Pipelines

Richard Fennell — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Background

I have been doing the regular maintenance in our Azure DevOps Pipelines of updating the versions of tasks. This usually means you perform one of the following actions

Just increment the major version number in the YAML e.g task: MyTask@1 to task: MyTask@2 when there is a newer version of a task available.
If the task is out of support and abandoned, swap to a different task, one that is still being supported, that does the same action.
Fork the out of date task, and perform the updates to bring it back into support.
Swap to a PowerShell/Bash script that wrappers a CLI tool to do the same action - increasingly my go to solution.

It is a shame the first option is often not possible, but don’t get me, or other MVPs on the long running subject of abandoned insecure Azure DevOps extensions

Caught out again by the cache in a build pipeline

Richard Fennell — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I have posted in the past about the issues a misconfigured cache can have in Azure DevOps Pipelines, or GitHub Actions. Well it caught me out again today, wasting a few hours of my time.

Today, I had a failing integration test in a CI/CD pipeline, but all the tests passed locally. The failing test was looking for a certain number of rows returned from a API with known seed test data. I had revised the seed data and my test, but in my CI/CD pipeline my test was failing as it was still looking for the old number of rows.

MSTest | Controlling Parallelism of Test Runs

Andrew Wilson — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

I have been writing integration tests using MSTest recently and have encountered the need to control the level of parallelism required. MSTest, by default, runs your tests in parallel to maximise performance and reduce overall test execution time. This is great for independent unit tests, but it can quickly become a problem when you’re writing integration tests that access shared resources like databases, APIs, or cloud services. I recently encountered this issue when my integration test suite started failing randomly due to parallel tests competing for the same data or creating conflicting test data. The solution? Learning to control MSTest’s parallelism settings.

Azure Logic Apps Standard | Send Custom Events to Application Insights

Andrew Wilson — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

When building integration workflows with Azure Logic Apps Standard, there’s often a need to track custom business events that sit between pure technical telemetry and business process monitoring. Recently, while authoring a Logic App Standard workflow, I needed to track the total number of items processed along with a breakdown of successful versus failed processing attempts.

While Logic Apps provides excellent run history and built-in diagnostics, custom events allow you to capture specific business actions and metrics that align with your reporting requirements. In this post, I’ll show you how to send custom events directly to Azure Application Insights using the ingestion endpoint from the Application Insights connection string.

Cannot create a new Azure DevOps Agent Pool on an Azure DevOps Server

Richard Fennell — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 01:00:00 +0000

The Issue

I recently had an issue trying to add a new Azure DevOps Pipeline Agent Pool to an existing Azure DevOps 2022 Server via the Team Project Collection Settings UI.

When tried to add the agent pool I got the error

Access denied needs Manage permissions to perform this action. For more information, contact the Azure DevOps Server administrator

The problem was that I was the Azure DevOps Server administrator

Issues parsing xUnit Test Coverage data into SonarQube

Richard Fennell — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

I have been chasing what it turned out to be a non-existent fault when trying to ingest test code coverage data into our SonarQube instance.

I saw my ‘problem’ in a .NET 8.0 solution with XUnit v3 based unit tests, this solution was being built using this Azure DevOps Pipelines YAML

 - task: SonarQubePrepare@7
 inputs:
 SonarQube: "SonarQube"
 scannerMode: "dotnet"
 jdkversion: "JAVA_HOME_17_X64"
 projectKey: "${{ parameters.sonarQubeProjectKey }}"
 projectName: "${{ parameters.sonarQubeProjectName }}"
 projectVersion: "$(GitVersion_Major).$(GitVersion_Minor)"
 extraProperties: |
 # Additional properties that will be passed to the scanner,
 # Put one key=value per line, example:
 sonar.cpd.exclusions=**/AssemblyInfo.cs,**/*.g.cs
 # Ingest the test results and coverage data
 sonar.cs.vscoveragexml.reportsPaths=$(Agent.TempDirectory)/**/*.coveragexml
 sonar.cs.vstest.reportsPaths=$(Agent.TempDirectory)/**/*.trx

 - task: DotNetCoreCLI@2
 displayName: ".NET Build"
 inputs:
 command: "build"
 arguments: >
 --configuration ${{ parameters.buildConfiguration }}
 --no-restore
 projects: "$(Build.SourcesDirectory)/src/MySolution.sln"

 - task: DotNetCoreCLI@2
 displayName: ".NET Test"
 inputs:
 command: "test"
 projects: "$(Build.SourcesDirectory)/src/MySolution.sln"
 arguments: >
 --configuration ${{ parameters.buildConfiguration }}
 --collect "Code coverage"
 --no-restore
 --no-build

 - task: SonarQubeAnalyze@7
 displayName: 'Complete the SonarQube analysis'
 inputs:
 jdkversion: "JAVA_HOME_17_X64"

 - task: SonarQubePublish@7
 displayName: 'Publish Quality Gate Result'
 inputs:
 pollingTimeoutSec: "300"

At the start of the SonarQubeAnalyze@7 task log I could see that the .coverage file was found and converted into a .coveragexml file. However, there were multiple ‘The device is not ready’ errors when parsing this file later in the process.

What in the SQL? An in depth discussion of SQL vs NOSQL Implementations

Daniel Bulman — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 12:20:03 +0000

Introduction

Databases are rarely glamorous. They do not have sleek animations and nobody has ever bragged about getting to nth normal form on their table at a dinner party. And yet, in modern systems, databases decide whether your platform scales or collapses.

This post is a guided ramble— err I mean an opinionated, comparison of SQL and NoSQL. We will cover what they are, how they think, where they shine, where they suck, and why the correct answer is almost never “just pick one and hope”.

Updating powerBI connections after a SQL migration

Richard Fennell — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

I have some long standing PowerBI reports that I use for summarizing project data. They use a variety of data sources, including Azure hosted SQL instances. I recently moved the Azure hosted SQL databases to a new instance as part of a major tidy up of my Azure resources. This of course caused my reports to break.

I thought swapping the SQL connection details in PowerBI would be easy, and I guess it was, but it took me too long to work out how.

Five Web Frameworks in Ten Minutes

Daniel Bulman — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 22:04:08 +0000

React

React is not technically a framework—it’s a JavaScript library—but at this point arguing that distinction is kind of pointless. Created by Meta, React focuses on building user interfaces using reusable components. You describe what the UI should look like, and React handles how it updates, thanks to its declarative approach.

Under the hood, React uses a Virtual DOM to efficiently update only what changes, which keeps interfaces fast and responsive. Its real superpower, however, is its ecosystem. Tools like Next.js and Vite bolt on everything from routing to performance optimisation, making React endlessly adaptable.

Building a Github Action for Cloudflare Project Deployment

Daniel Bulman — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 08:48:25 +0000

During recent development for the oyster language by @HeckingGoose I was asked to assist with building a github action to deploy a Jekyll static pages site to a cloudflare project this was to allow for documentation to be referenced both within the linter for the language and in general.

Then after some initial investigation i discovered the beauty of the Cloudflare wrangler action which allows for the easy deployment of any specified set of files to a cloudflare project directly in a github action.

Updating a project's SonarQube and OWASP Dependency Checker Plugin Configuration

Richard Fennell — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

We have used SonarQube and the OWASP Dependency Checker Plugin for many years to perform analysis and vulnerability checking within our Azure DevOps Pipelines.

Recently, whilst picking up an old project for a new phase of development, I came across a couple of problems due to changes in both tools since the project CI/CD pipelines were last run.

The OWASP Dependency Checker vulnerabilities were not appearing in SonarQube as issues
The OWASP Dependency Checker HTML report could not (always) be loaded in SonarQube

The issues were just down to changes in both tools over time. It just goes to show that you can’t just setup a CI/CD system and expect it work forever, changes are always being introduced in cloud based tools.

Azure Function Apps | OkObjectResult Returns Empty JSON After Moving to .NET 9 Isolated Worker Runtime

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Problem

I recently upgraded an Azure Function from .NET 8 to .NET 9, and at the same time migrated from the in-process worker to the isolated worker model. After the upgrade, my function that returned OkObjectResult started returning an empty JSON object {} instead of the expected data.

[Function("MyFunction")]
public IActionResult Run([HttpTrigger(AuthorizationLevel.Function, "post")] HttpRequest req)
{
 var data = new MyResponse { Name = "Test", Value = 123 };
 return new OkObjectResult(data); // Returns {} instead of expected JSON
}

Why This Happens

There are two key changes that caused this issue:

Grey Matter Podcast 'Secure by design: The DevSecOps mindset'

Richard Fennell — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Another podcast I recently recorded with our friends at Grey Matter has just been published Secure by design: The DevSecOps mindset

For the original version of this post see Richard Fennell's personal blog at Grey Matter Podcast 'Secure by design: The DevSecOps mindset'

Interesting side effect with the Azure DevOps cache if misconfigured

Richard Fennell — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I recently came across an interesting side effect with the Azure DevOps cache task if its settings are not correctly configured. One that caused me to get somewhat confused before I realised what had occurred.

The Problem

I had a working pipeline that as part of its build process ran the OWASP Dependency Checker task. This can be slow to run as it has to download the current vulnerability database. To try to speed my builds I have been using the cache task to cache the current pipeline run’s downloaded vulnerability database, so on the next run the vast majority of the database is already downloaded.

Getting a Surface Hub v1 Working with a Replacement PC

Richard Fennell — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Updated 30-Oct-2025 Added more details on Screen Refresh Rate and Teams Room App

The Problem

We have owned a Surface Hub v1 for a number of years, and it has served us well. However, with Microsoft ending support for Windows 10 it was in danger of becoming a large piece of sculpture in the office. This is not just because we did not want to run a Windows 10 device when security patches were not available, but that the embedded version of Teams would not even load.

Changing mySql SSL Certificates when running SnipeIT in Azure

Richard Fennell — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

I have previously posted about settings up Snipe IT on Azure using a Docker container running in an Azure WebApp with a MySQL DB.

I recently had to revisit my setup as the site was failing to load with a DB connection failure. The issue was that the SSL certificate chain used by Microsoft for their hosted MySQL service had changed and my settings needed to be updated

The Solution

In te Azure Portal find your MySQL instance and select the networking blade, click the ‘Download SSL Certificate’ link, you are taken to learn.microsoft.com . Download the DigiCert Global Root G2 certificate and the Microsoft RSA Root Certificate Authority 2017 certificate
You need to combine these certificates i.e. put the base64 coded versions of each in a single text file.

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
(Content from DigiCertGlobalRootCA.crt.pem)
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
(Content from DigiCertGlobalRootG2.crt.pem)
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
(Content from MicrosoftRSARootCertificateAuthority2017.crt.pem)
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

SO, I downloaded the DigiCertGlobalRootCA.crt.pem file I was using previously from my Snipe IT’s Azure File Storage and opened it in a text editor (the first block)
I then appended the contents of DigiCertGlobalRootG2.crt.pem to this file (the second block)
Before I could do the same with the Microsoft RSA Root Certificate Authority 2017.crt file I had to import the .CRT file onto my local Windows machine, then export it is a Base64 encoded file. Once this was done, this too could be add to the DigiCertGlobalRootCA.crt.pem file (the third block)
Once all the edits were made I save the edited file and uploaded it into the Azure Storage to overwrite the old version. This avoid the need to edit any other configuration settings that referenced the certificate file name.

Once this was done my Snipe IT instance loaded as expected.

Bicep Tips and Tricks | #9 | Prevent a Nasty Refactor with Function Namespaces

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space

There have been few times where I have landed into this particular predicament whereby either by my own doing or through the use of another’s code base, a deep nested or thoroughly utilised (parameter/variable/or other defined item) has been created with the same name as a Bicep function. As by Murphy’s law, its only once you have reached this point of no return that you realise that your items name conflicts.

Bicep Tips and Tricks | #8 | Agnostic Templates Through Config Files

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

Building on our previous exploration of Typed Variables, today we’re diving into one of my favorite patterns for creating maintainable and reusable Bicep templates: the Shared Variable File Pattern. This approach transforms your templates from being tightly coupled to specific configurations into truly agnostic, environment-ready solutions.

The beauty of this pattern lies in its simplicity - by extracting configuration data into external JSON or YAML files, you can create templates that adapt without modification. When combined with typed variables, this approach becomes even more powerful, providing compile-time validation and enhanced developer experience.

Another confusing Azure DevOps Pipelines YAML error message using StringList parameters

Richard Fennell — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

The recent addition to Azure DevOps of the StringList parameter type can be really useful to dynamically create parallel stages or jobs in an Azure DevOps YAML pipeline.

A StringList parameter can be used to present a list of values to the user queuing a pipeline run, thus allowing the selection of one or more values that can be accessed using a YAML expression loop.

This can be combined with YAML templates, where the StringList is passed into a template as an Object. Noting that you can’t use the StringList type for a parameter type in the template definition. However, this is not a problem as there is a dynamic conversion from StringList to Object e.g.

Bicep Tips and Tricks | #7 | From Static to Dynamic Config

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

One of my core goals when writing IaC templates is ensuring reusability of common components, resources, and in this case, configuration. More often than not, I see configuration that is broadly common between resources (except for one or two properties) being duplicated throughout templates. This duplication means that changing a single property value requires updates across the entire codebase—a change that’s not trivial to manage unless you’re well-versed with the codebase and understand all areas where the configuration is implemented.

Finally I have working SONOFF SNZB-02P sensors with Home Assistant

Richard Fennell — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A while ago I posted about starting to use Home Assistant. This has been working well for monitoring our SolarEdge PV and Battery system, controlling if we should charge the battery with cheap overnight power if there has not been enough sun to fully charge the battery.

Bitten by the Home Assistant bug, I decided I wanted to add more sensors to the systems, so bought some cheap Zigbee equipment from AliExpress

Bicep Tips and Tricks | #6 | Typed Variables

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

In late May this year, an exciting but semi overlooked feature was released, and I absolutely love it - Typed Variables!

Prior to this release, variable types were inferred through the value, which is fine for most statically defined content within a template, but there are cases that I will go through in this post where typing your variables really does make a big difference.

Why Use Typed Variables

Before I get going, let me walk through why you should consider using typed variables:

Your out of support DevOps tooling is hurting you

Richard Fennell — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Note that this is a repost of my LinkedIn article of the same name

The changing face of DevOps

Over the years the style of DevOps consultancy I have done has changed, along with its name. Changing from the simple ‘source control’, to SDLC, then ALM to now DevOps.

Back in the days of Team Foundation Server (TFS), I used to do a lot of on-premise installs and upgrades. Getting our customers up and running, and helping them improve their adoption of the tools.

Bicep Tips and Tricks | #5 | From Documentation to Deployment-Time Validation: Conditional Parameter Requirements

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

In Bicep templates, we sometimes encounter scenarios where certain parameters should be mandatory based on the value of another parameter. For example, when deploying to production environments, you might require additional configuration parameters that are optional for development environments.

One of the common ways in which I have seen this handled is through documentation, which can lead to deployment failures and inconsistent configurations across environments. This post explores how to implement fail-fast validation using Bicep’s built-in capabilities to enforce these conditional requirements at deployment time.

Recent Grey Matter Events

Richard Fennell — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I have recently done a couple of streamable events with our friends at Grey Matter. Both are now available to enjoy on demand:

If these sort of subjects are on interest, why not come to an in person event?

I am speaking, as may other great speakers including my colleague Andrew Wilson, at Grey Matter’s Tech Summit in London on the 24th of September, and best news of all it is free.

Bicep Tips and Tricks | #4 | Shared Variables

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

This week is a simple one, but works wonders in maintainability and consistency.

There are often cases where you will need to define static values that don’t change frequently, if at all, and more importantly, you seem to be setting these up frequently for multiple templates. Here are some examples that I have seen:

Multi-Environment Deployments

Different environments (dev, staging, prod) that share common configuration but need environment-specific values:

Why can't I see my Lenovo Thunderbolt 3 Dock?

Richard Fennell — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Problem

I recently rebuild my trusty Lenovo X1 Carbon laptop. As you usually find, a fresh install of Windows 11 meant a leap in performance.

All was good for a couple of weeks, until I started to get problems. It still was working to supply power and the HDMI connection to my external monitor worked, but the USB devices could not be seen.

I also checked with the Lenovo Dock Manager and it could now no longer see the dock.

Bicep Tips and Tricks | #3 | Naming Convention and Functions

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

One of my bugbears is seeing either a complete lack of naming conventions or manual naming mechanisms that introduce human error through mistakes and misunderstandings. Naming conventions are incredibly important, but equally critical is how they’re implemented and maintained. Let’s explore a better approach.

What is a Naming Convention and Why Do We Need One?

A naming convention is a set of rules for naming Resource Groups and Resources (among other Azure components). These rules define the structure and composition of names, ensuring clarity, consistency, and compliance with Azure naming requirements such as length limits, valid characters, and scope uniqueness.

Creating a GitHub App based Azure DevOps Pipelines Service Connection

Richard Fennell — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Problem

The GitHub ‘Azure Pipelines’ App enables some really interesting ‘better together’ scenarios mixing the usage of Azure DevOps Pipelines for CI/CD processes while your source is stored on GitHub. It is particularly useful if an enterprise is migrating towards GitHub Enterprise over a period of time, maybe using GitHub Enterprise Importer (GEI) to do the migration.

I was recently working on such a migration for a client that involved numerous Azure DevOps organisations. In the past someone had setup the GitHub ‘Azure Pipelines’ App on their GitHub organisation and got it working with one of their Azure DevOps organisation.

Bicep Tips and Tricks | #2 | Centralize Core Parameters with Types, Constructors, and Imports

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

When building IaC templates we strive to enable them to be environment agnostic, configurable even. One of the mechanisms that we do this is through lots of “Core Parameters” that disseminate the fundamental details of our deployment and resources. The number of core parameters is often variable but the verdict is always true, three or more usually does the trick. These Core Parameters are passed into the main deployment template and any other sub deployment template (Module) too. These may include but are not limited to:

Bicep Tips and Tricks | #1 | Template Versioning and Applying to Azure Resource Tags

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The first of many

For those who know me well, starting a bicep tips and tricks series would not be a surprise to them. The moment the Bicep language was introduced, I knew I would be completely obsessed. I love writing bicep templates and even more the clever refinement to make them reusable, configurable, manageable, readable… I really enjoy sharing my experiences with Bicep, so here it begins on the wider front. From one Bicep nerd to another, I hope you find these tips useful, happy templating!

My Experience Presenting at LeedsSharp

Lewis Spencer — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 08:22:00 +0100

lewiswrites http://lewispen.github.io/posts/leeds-sharp-2025/ -

Run Up 2025

I had attended Leeds Sharp a few times prior to any sort of involvement with the group and had some really interesting chats with people of all different professional levels. It’s a well run, engaging environment full of Microsoft MVP’s, people in consultancy, startups, healthcare and even tech adjacent businesses. So if you want to network and receive a free top-class presentation I’d highly recommend it!

Automating web.config Environment Transforms in Azure DevOps Pipelines for App Services

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Background

Modernising legacy applications is always a journey, and recently I tackled moving an existing WCF web service into Azure App Service. If you’ve worked with WCF, you’ll know the web.config file is the nerve centre, handling everything from parameters to connection strings.

But here’s the catch, this service needs to run in multiple environments (Development, Test, and Production) each with its own unique settings. That means multiple config files:

A GitHub Actions equivalent to Azure DevOps Pipelines $(rev:r) revisions

Richard Fennell — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

In Azure DevOps Pipelines there is a feature to dynamically configure the build number e.g. at the top of a YAML build add the following to get a version in the form 1.2.25123.1

name: $(major).$(minor).$(year:YY)$(dayofyear).$(rev:r)

Major & Minor are user created and managed variables
Year, Dayofyear and Rev are built in Azure DevOps pre-defined variables. The first two are obviously based on the current date, the rev is the number of times a pipeline has been run on the current date.

The problem is that there is no equivalent feature to name in GitHub Actions as build names/numbers are not really a thing in Actions.

Problems migrating Non-English Azure DevOps Servers to Azure DevOps Services and how to solve them

Richard Fennell — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 00:00:01 +0000

Introduction

Over the years, I have been involved in numerous migrations of TFS/Azure DevOps Server from on-premises servers to the cloud hosted Azure DevOps Services using the Microsoft Azure DevOps Data Migration Tool. As long as you carefully followed the instructions, the process was relatively straightforward.

I was recently involved in a cloud migration of a set of non-English Azure DevOps Servers i.e. the Azure DevOps Servers had been installed in French not English. Migrating these servers to Azure DevOps Services proved a challenge.

What I Saw at Integrate

Daniel Bulman — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 11:19:45 +0100

Codeful Workflows

Integrate 2025 was a whirlwind of innovation and insights, and I’m excited to share some of the highlights that caught my attention. Here’s a breakdown of what I saw and learned:

Agentic Loops and Multi-Agent Hand-Offs

Agentic Loops: A big push on workflows that leverage AI to create self-sustaining, codeful processes.
Multi-Agent Hand-Offs: Two exciting features are on the horizon:
- State Machine-Based Hand-Offs (Coming Soon)
- Nested Hand-Offs (Coming Soon)

Microsoft Fabric and Real-Time Data

A plethora of sessions showcased Microsoft Fabric, emphasizing real-time data access and manipulation.

A Quick Over-Vue to Vue

Daniel Bulman — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 01:14:17 +0100

What is Vue?

Vue is a progressive JavaScript framework for building user interfaces, first released in 2014. Vue is designed to be incrementally adoptable, meaning you can use as much or as little of it as you need, from enhancing a single page to even more.

The Need for Vue

Modern web development often requires dynamic, interactive interfaces. Before frameworks like Vue, developers relied on vanilla JavaScript or jQuery, which could quickly become unwieldy as applications grew. Vue addresses these challenges by providing a reactive data-binding system, component-based architecture, and a declarative approach to UI development, making code more maintainable and scalable.

How to Set Up Manual Approval for Azure App Service Slot Swaps in Azure DevOps Pipelines

Andrew Wilson — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

Deploying updates to production environments demands both speed and control. Azure App Service deployment slots, combined with Azure DevOps pipelines, offer a powerful way to manage releases, enabling teams to validate changes in a live-like environment before they go public. However, ensuring that only reviewed and approved changes reach your users is critical for maintaining reliability and compliance.

Azure App Service Slots unlock powerful advantages:

Site Review. Preview and test your site before it goes live, ensuring everything works as expected.
Warmed-up Instances. Swap with confidence. Your instances are pre-warmed, so there’s no downtime, seamless traffic redirection, and zero dropped requests.
Instant Rollback. If something goes wrong after a swap, simply swap back to restore your last known good version in seconds.

Best of all, deployment slots come at no extra cost. Check the Azure App Service limits to see how many slots your App Service Tier supports.

Using GitHub Copilot to write an Azure DevOps Test Plan Export Tool

Richard Fennell — Wed, 28 May 2025 00:00:01 +0000

Introduction

I got asked today by a client if there was a way to automate the exporting Azure DevOps Test Plans to Excel files. They knew they could do it manually via the Azure DevOps UI, but had a lot of Test Plans to export and wanted to automate the process.

The Options

I considered a few options:

TCM CLI - This is a command line tool that can be used to interact with Azure DevOps Test Plans. It can be used to import or clone Test Plans, but not to export them.
AZ DEVOPS CLI - This is a command line tool that can be used to interact with Azure DevOps. Unfortunately, it does not have any commands to export Test Plans.
Azure DevOps REST API - This is a powerful API that can be used to interact with Azure DevOps, but the documentation makes no mention of a call to export Test Plans.

But…..

Agent Loop | Azure Logic Apps Just Got Smarter

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 21 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft Announcement

Microsoft has just introduced something quite revolutionary into the world of integration: Agent Loop, a new capability in Azure Logic Apps that lets you build AI-powered agents directly into your workflows. On the surface, it might seem like another incremental feature. But dig a little deeper, and the implications are huge!

Let’s break it down.

What Is Agent Loop?

Agent Loop is Microsoft’s way of embedding advanced AI decision-making into Logic Apps workflows. Think of it like adding a smart co-pilot into your integration flows, an agent that can retain context, reason over time, and take meaningful actions. It uses an LLM like Azure OpenAI under the hood, paired with a memory store that persists throughout the workflow, allowing the agent to understand, adapt, and make decisions across multiple steps.

Presenting at Black Marble event GitHub Copilot how to harness the power of AI for Developers'

Richard Fennell — Wed, 21 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

There has been much talk at the Microsoft Build conference of the new agentic world, where you get AI agents to perform tasks on your behalf. This could be in your Enterprise applications, but also in the DevOps process that you use to create these new AI aware applications.

This can all seem a bit ‘in the future’, but it is a future that is arriving rapidly, and one that will make for a seismic change in what it means to be in a development team.

The Requirements Ambiguity Paradox

Andrew Wilson — Fri, 16 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Requirements Ambiguity Paradox

With the context of software requirements, I regularly encounter an understood but often ignored scenario: the less detailed the initial requirements, the more expansive the client’s expectations become as the project progresses. It’s a phenomenon I refer to as the Requirements Ambiguity Paradox.

Imagine initiating a project with a brief requirements document, aiming for agility and speed. At first glance, this seems efficient.

However, this brevity often leads to divergent interpretations:

Experiences Migrating CI/CD solutions with GitHub Copilot

Richard Fennell — Fri, 09 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

I have recently been swapping some Azure DevOps Pipelines to GitHub Actions as part of a large GitHub Enterprise migration. The primary tool I have been using for this is GitHub Copilot in the new Agent Mode

Frankly, Copilot is like magic, it is amazing how close it gets to a valid solution. I say this after suffering years of undelivered marketing promises of no-code “we won’t need developers in the future”.

Automating Semantic Versioning in Azure DevOps CI/CD Pipelines with GitVersion

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 07 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

Versioning is the unsung hero of software development—often overlooked but absolutely essential. Imagine trying to manage a project without a clear way to track changes, communicate updates, or ensure compatibility. Chaos, right? That’s where versioning steps in, providing structure and clarity.

In this post, I’ll share how I streamline versioning in my projects by combining the power of Semantic Versioning (SemVer) with GitVersion, an automation tool that eliminates the manual effort of version management. Whether you’re just beginning your journey or tackling the complexities of feature-rich projects, this post will show you how to automate semantic versioning in Azure DevOps for consistency, traceability, and peace of mind.

Bicep | Existing Resource Dependencies

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Background

The Bicep existing keyword is a powerful capability that allows us to reference a resource that wasn’t deployed as part of the current Bicep file.

One of the typical use cases that I often see is where a resource is deployed as part of a module called by the parent template, the resource that was deployed as part of the module is then required later in the parent template and therefore an existing resource definition is used. As part of the template configuration there would be an explicit dependency between the existing resource definition and the module reference.

You need to wait longer when restarting Logic Apps

Richard Fennell — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 00:00:01 +0000

I have been doing some work one a Logic Apps that routes its traffic out via a vNet and accesses its underlying Storage Account via private endpoints. ‘Nothing that special in that configuration’ I hear you saying, but I did manage to confuse myself whilst testing.

After changing my configuration of the vNet, I restarted the Logic App to make sure everything was working as expected on startup.

The Logic App appeared to start within a few seconds, the Overview pane in the Azure Portal showing the correct values.

Why cannot I see my Logic App action output?

Richard Fennell — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 00:00:01 +0000

The Problem

I recently was debugging an Execute PowerShell Code Logic App action, so wanted to see it’s output. However, when I reviewed the run history, the output for my code action was empty.

The Cause (and Solution)

The problem turned out to be that the Logic App’s Inbound traffic configuration. You can replicate this issue easily

Create a new Logic App Workflow, use any trigger and then add an Execute PowerShell Code action, you don’t need to edit the default code sample.
Save the new Action and then run it.
Review the run history and you’ll see that the output as expected.
Next, change the Logic App’s ‘Inbound traffic configuration > Public Network Access’ to ‘Disabled’ and run the Logic App again, and the output now cannot be seen, as shown above.

You are actually warned about this in the Azure Portal the first time you view a run history the settings that block it

Parsing CSV files in Azure Logic Apps

Richard Fennell — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 00:00:01 +0000

The Problem

I recently had the need in an Azure Logic App to read a CSV file from an Azure Storage account, parse the file, and then process the data row by row.

Unfortunately, there is no built-in action in Logic Apps to parse CSV files.

So as to avoid having to write an Azure function, or use a number of slow, low level Logic App actions, I decided to use the PowershellCode action to parse the CSV file quickly inline with the rest of the Logic App.

How to Fix RSS Feed Location for GitHub Pages

Lewis Spencer — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 17:54:00 +0100

lewiswrites http://lewispen.github.io/posts/fixing-rss-feed-location/ -

When using GitHub Pages to host your blog, you might encounter an issue where the RSS feed is not located where you expect it to be. This can be particularly problematic if you want your blog to be syndicated and need the RSS feed to be in a specific location. In this post, I’ll walk you through how I resolved this issue for my blog.

The Problem

I was using GitHub Pages to host my blog at https://lewispen.github.io/lewiswrites. However, the RSS feed was being looked for at https://lewispen.github.io/rss.xsl, whereas my RSS file was actually located at https://lewispen.github.io/lewiswrites/rss.xsl. This discrepancy was causing issues with syndication.

Logic App | Access Key Revocation and Regeneration

Andrew Wilson — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

In previous articles I have subtly referenced risks and best practices regarding HTTP triggered workflows and their use of Access Keys for security, such as:

Some Potential Risks:
- If a Key is leaked, it can be used by anyone who obtains it to call your Logic App Workflow.
- If a Key has expired or been invalidated then services, applications, and or users who have not been provided a new key will cease to be able to invoke your workflow.
Some Access Key Best Practices to mitigate risks:

I know I am late to the game with Home Assistant....

Richard Fennell — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 00:00:01 +0000

Since moving house a couple of years ago, I have gained an ever increasing set of apps on my phone to manage various things, such the Solaredge PV and battery system we installed and our Octopus Energy account, to name but two.

In the past, I had avoided IOT and the ‘Intelligent Home’ as I did not want to get to the point where ‘I can’t do the washing up, the Internet is down’. However, I recently got sent an Octopus Mini which meant for the first time I could get real time information from their API, so no longer needing to wait until my Smart Meter got around to transferring data to them, which could be up to 48 hours later.

What are my options authenticating the az devops CLI?

Richard Fennell — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Edited: 4th Feb 2025 to add detail on Azure DevOps Pipelines Service Connection

Introduction

When automating administration tasks via scripts in Azure DevOps in the past I would have commonly used the Azure DevOps REST API. However, today I tend to favour the Azure DevOps CLI. The reason for this is that the CLI wrappers the REST API in such a way that it is easier to use and more consistent.

Passing Azure DevOps WI field names in PowerShell to Az DevOps CLI as variables

Richard Fennell — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 00:00:01 +0000

The Issue

The Azure DevOps CLI command az boards work-item update can take a list of fields as a set if value pairs e.g.

az boards work-item update --id 123 --fields Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.Effort=10

However, if you try to replace the field name with a variable in PowerShell like this

$fieldname = "Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.Effort"
az boards work-item update --id 123 --fields $fieldname=10

you will get an error like this

The –fields argument should consist of space separated “field=value” pairs.

The Solution

The solution is simple, and the same one required if you wish to pass multiple fields into the command, you need to wrapper the set of key value pairs for the fields in quotes e.g.

Building a GitHub Action for React App Deployment

Daniel Bulman — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 09:51:38 +0000

Issue:

During the creation of a basic react app, the result of a build of this app must be displayed as a static web application hosted in GitHub pages.

Solution:

Configuring a GitHub action (YAML) in order to build the react app and then clone the build over to the GitHub pages deployment branch.

Below is the resulting YAML pipeline for this:

name: Deploy gh-page Branch
permissions:
 contents: write
# Run workflow on every push to the master branch
on:
 push:
 branches: [ main ]

jobs:
 deploy-to-github-pages:
 # use ubuntu-latest image to run steps on
 runs-on: ubuntu-latest
 steps:
 # uses GitHub's checkout action to checkout code form the master branch
 - uses: actions/checkout@v4

 # sets up node
 - name: Setup node
 uses: actions/setup-node@v4

 # Installs required npm packages
 - name: Installs required npm dependencies
 run: npm install

 # Generate npm build
 - name: Generates npm build
 run: npm run build

 # Commit to gh-pages branch
 - name: Commit wwwroot to GitHub Pages
 uses: JamesIves/github-pages-deploy-action@v4
 with:
 BRANCH: gh-pages
 FOLDER: build

For the original version of this post see Daniel Bulman's personal blog at Building a GitHub Action for React App Deployment

GraphQL the Basics

Daniel Bulman — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 09:50:37 +0000

What is GraphQL?

GraphQL is an open-source data query language developed by Facebook in 2012, which was then released as an open-source project in 2015. Unlike traditional RESTful APIs, which require specific endpoints for data retrieval, GraphQL adopts a different approach. Instead of fetching entire resources, GraphQL allows clients to request the specific data they require from requested objects.

The Need for GraphQL

Facebook struggled with performance issues in its mobile application during the early 2010s. The sheer volume of data being requested, including every user, post, comment, and article on a users feed led to slow loading times, high data consumption, and excessive battery drain on client devices.

Signing files in GitHub Actions

Richard Fennell — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 00:00:01 +0000

Background

I recently wrote about the changes I had had to make to our Azure DevOps pipelines to address the changes required when code signing with a new DigiCert certificate due to new private key storage requirements for Code Signing certificates

Today I had to do the same for a GitHub Actions pipeline. The process is very similar, but there are a few differences in the syntax and the way the secrets are stored.

Re-authenticating Microsoft Authenticator after swapping your phone

Richard Fennell — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This one of those posts that is more a note to self as I keep forgetting how to do this, but I hope it helps others.

Background

I use Microsoft’s Authenticator to provide MFA on a number of accounts. I recently swapped my Android phone and had to, after restoring a backup, re-authenticate some accounts on the new device.

This was a simple process for most accounts, just a case of validating the code generated by the new device, but I had a problem with the entries where my Black Marble Entra ID account was a guest in other company’s Entra ID directories.

Logic App | Try-Catch Pattern, Nested Scopes, And Compensating Transaction Pattern

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Try-Catch Pattern

Following the idea of defensive programming or as I like to call it for Logic Apps (being low code): defensive processing, it is considered good practice to wrap your workflows in a try-catch pattern to handle the unexpected. The pattern makes use of a mixture of Run After conditions and the Scope block.

Run After Conditions | used to define the execution order based on the state of the previous action or scope
Scope Block | provides the ability to group a series of actions. If any action within the scope fails, the whole scope will fail (unless handled via other means)

By placing your actions within a “try” scope with the assumption that each action will run after the success of the previous, if there is an action failure, the scope will fail also.

Key Vault Reference | Logic and Function Apps using User-Assigned Managed Identity

Andrew Wilson — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

Prior to the Christmas break I was involved in writing some integrations that used a mixture of Logic Apps Standard and Function Apps. It was agreed as part of the architecture that user-assigned identities would be the best fit. As part of the implementation, I observed that the differences in configuration setup between system-assigned and user-assigned wasn’t widely understood. This article aims to show a brief run through of both.

Why am I getting no private key is available error when I try to digitally sign files in my Azure DevOps Pipeline?

Richard Fennell — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Background

It is becoming increasingly important to sign files digitally to ensure that they have not been tampered with, to secure the software supply chain. This is something we have done for a good while as a step in our Azure DevOps pipelines. However, recent(ish) changes in the way certificates are issued has meant we have had to revise our approach.

The Problem

We used to use a .PFX file, stored as an Azure DevOps secure file, that contained the public and private keys and was accessed using a password, to sign our files.

Inject a step into Web Deploy

Richard Fennell — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I really like Web Deploy, it is a powerful tool for injecting parameters whilst deploying web applications to both Azure or an on-premise IIS Server.

Every project is different, and sometimes you need to be able to inject a step into the Web Deploy package creation process to complete some extra step. This can be done by adding a target to the .csproj project file.

The following example shows how you could sign the assemblies before the Web Deploy package is created.

Easy Auth | Standard Logic App with Azure API Management

Andrew Wilson — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

The recent work that I have been doing with Standard Logic Apps and linking them as backends to Azure API Management has relied on the use of the Logic App Workflow SAS key for security. This is a valid authentication approach, but there are risks that you need to be aware of as well as best practices that you need to be abiding by. Such as:

Some Potential Risks:

Easy Auth | Function App with Azure API Management

Andrew Wilson — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

The recent work that I have been doing with Function Apps and linking them as backends to Azure API Management has relied on the use of the Function Apps Function SAS key for security. This is a valid authentication approach, but there are risks that you need to be aware of as well as best practices that you need to be abiding by. Such as:

Some Potential Risks:

ProjectFileIndexer exceptions in SonarQube

Richard Fennell — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

We are running our SonarQube instance as an Azure hosted Docker container.

Over the past few weeks we have been seeing intermittent occurrences of the ProjectFileIndexer exception during the SonarQube analysis step in our Azure DevOps pipelines.

##[error]java.lang.IllegalStateException: Unable to load component class org.sonar.scanner.scan.filesystem.ProjectFileIndexer

When I looked closer at the exception stack, I could see at the bottom there was always a timeout error when trying to access the project.protobuf file from SonarQube.

Why is my SnipeIT instance suddenly slow?

Richard Fennell — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Background

As I have blogged previously, we run a SnipeIT instance to manage our IT assets, hosted in Azure using Docker.

This has been working well for us for the past year, but recently we have noticed that the system has become very slow to respond.

Looking on the Azure portal, we can see that around the 15th of October the web app’s response times have gone from milliseconds to 10s of seconds

Rik Hepworth is no longer with Black Marble

Rik Hepworth — Sat, 26 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Rik Hepworth is no longer with Black Marble. Their personal blog can now be found at https://rikhepworth.com

Using Azure Service Connection names that are stored in variables group in Azure DevOps Pipeline

Richard Fennell — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Background

If you are using staged deployment in Azure DevOps, you will probably have multiple Azure Service Connections. So, it makes sense that you might want to use a Service Connection name that is stored in a variable group as a parameter to a templated YAML pipeline.

# the build pipeline
stages:
 - stage: UAT
 jobs:
 - deployment: ARM_Provisioning
 timeoutInMinutes: 0
 environment: 'Staging'
 variables:
 - group: UAT
 pool:
 vmImage: 'windows-latest'
 strategy:
 runOnce:
 deploy:
 steps:
 - template: YAMLTemplates\ProvisionUsingARM.yml
 parameters:
 AzureResourceGroup: $(AzureResourceGroup)
 AzureServiceConnection: $(AzureServiceConnection)
 - stage: PROD
 jobs:
 - deployment: ARM_Provisioning
 timeoutInMinutes: 0
 environment: 'Staging'
 variables:
 - group: PROD
 pool:
 vmImage: 'windows-latest'
 strategy:
 runOnce:
 deploy:
 steps:
 - template: YAMLTemplates\ProvisionUsingARM.yml
 parameters:
 AzureResourceGroup: $(AzureResourceGroup)
 AzureServiceConnection: $(AzureServiceConnection)

With a template YAMLTemplates\ProvisionUsingARM.yml that uses the AzureServiceConnection variable

Editing multiple files in the Azure DevOps UI and committing them in a single commit

Richard Fennell — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

One of the most useful, and it seems relatively unknown, features in the GitHub web UI is the ability to edit multiple files in the UI and commit them in a single commit. This is done by loading VS Code in the browser when in the code view by pressing . (the full stop)

The reason I find this so useful is that it allows me to make a series of small related changes to a project without having to clone the repository or using a CodeSpace, very useful when editing the related YAML files of reusable workflows in GitHub Actions.

App Failing to Load the second time on Windows 10

Lewis Spencer — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 16:10:46 +0100

lewiswrites http://lewispen.github.io/posts/app-failing-to-load-on-windows-10/ -

Background

We have a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) application that relies heavily on numerous custom-built libraries for various functionalities such as storage access and other operations.

Initially, this UWP application was designed to be compatible with both Windows 8 and Windows 10. However, we have since updated it to support the more recent versions of Windows, specifically Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Despite these updates, some of the custom libraries still contain legacy code that ensures compatibility with Windows 8. This legacy code in many cases may not be necessary anymore and could potentially be optimized or removed.

Azure API Management | Function App Backend

Andrew Wilson — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

Following on from a previous set of posts from earlier this year where I detailed how to securely implement Logic App Standard backends in Azure API Management, there has been questions on how this would be achieved in a similar manner with Azure Function Apps.

To read-up on how this was achieved with Standard Logic Apps have a look at the following:

At a high level comparison with Azure Logic Apps, Azure Functions are a developer-centric serverless compute offering allowing authors to write code in languages such as C#, Java, Javascript, Python, and PowerShell. Azure Functions are best suited for stateless computation and application specific tasks.

Generating Visual Studio SQL Database Projects from the command line

Richard Fennell — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is is one of those posts I write so I remember how to do something in the future.

Background

I recently had a need to generate many Visual Studio SQL Database Projects from existing databases. Being a good ’lazy developer’ I wanted to do this from the command line so I could automate the process, but it took me far to long to work out how

The Manual Way

If you only have one database to import you can do this manually by using the Import option in Visual Studio for an individual SQL Database Project.

Showing Bicep Linting Issues as Errors and Warnings in Azure DevOps Pipelines

Richard Fennell — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Previously Rik Hepworth has posted on ‘Importing bicep lint output as test results in Azure DevOps pipelines’. In his post he showed how you could move from using the ARM-TTK to validate ARM templates to using the built inBicep Linter.

Rik’s solution involved taking the Bicep Lint output and converting it via the .SARIF format to JUnit so that it could be published to an Azure DevOps pipeline run as a set of test results.

How to run your own maintenance job on Azure DevOps pipelines (Revisited now using Workload Identity federation)

Richard Fennell — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Last year I posted on how to create your own Azure DevOps maintenance jobs. This solution has been working well for me, until the Azure DevOps Service connection’s Entra ID Service Principle secret expired.

So, I thought it well worth revisiting the creation of this maintenance job but this time using Workload Identity federation to authenticate, and hence never again have to worry about the secret expiring.

Updated Setup Process

Note: This is a modification to the creation of the service connection, but the core the maintenance job setup remains the same as in my original post

Speaking | Azure Security Do's and Don'ts: A Developer's Checklist for Secure Azure Applications

Andrew Wilson — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I recently had the privilege to be hosted on the Azure on Air podcast by the Turbo360 team. I had a great conversation with Lex discussing the importance of a “security first” mindset in the world of Azure solutions, and how this mindset should be carried out as a priority in every stage from Requirements Gathering, Design, Development, and Release.

During our time together we discussed topics such as:

Problem running Playwright UX tests on hosted Github Actions Runners

Richard Fennell — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

Whilst refreshing an end-to-end devops demo, one I use for both Azure DevOps and GitHub, I hit a problem. The new Playwright UX Tests, that were replacing old Selenium ones, were failing on the GitHub hosted runner.

The strange thing was the same tests worked perfectly on:

My local development machine
The Azure DevOps hosted runner
And strangest of all, a GitHub self hosted runner

The Solution

Adding some logging to the tests showed the actual issue was that on the GitHub hosted runner the code to count the rows in an HTML table was always returning 0.

Powershell token replacement failing for MSDeploy in GitHub Action

Richard Fennell — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

I have been recently refreshing a GitHub end-to-end demo I use for talks and workshops that I had not looked at for a while. It shows how legacy code bases can be deployed with GitHub Actions and Azure App Services. The demo uses MSDeploy to deploy a ASP.NET web application to Azure App Services. The MSDeploy package is created as part of the GitHub Action workflow.

The workflow uses a PowerShell script to do the deployment using the following:

Fixes for issues moving from on-premise Azure DevOps agents to Azure Managed DevOps Pool agents

Richard Fennell — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 01:00:00 +0000

Background

Our on premise build agents, though using the same image as the Microsoft hosted agents (generated using Packer, as I have previously posted about), have some extra setup done by Lability as they are deployed to a Hyper-V host.

Most of this is specific to the needs of running on Hyper-V e.g. setting up networking, creating a 2nd disk to act as a working store for the build agent, and of course installing the Azure DevOps agent itself.

A first look at using Azure Managed DevOps Pools

Richard Fennell — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Background

We have for many years based our Azure DevOps build and release pipelines on on-premise agents. This was done to provide a means to scale up each agent using ‘bigger & faster’ local VMs then the Microsoft Hosted agents provided, and to utilise spare Hyper-V hosts we had after moving services such as SharePoint to Office 365.

To provide consistency of build agent experience to our developers, we decided we wished to use the same VM images on our on-premise agents as used by the Microsoft’s hosted agent pools. I have blogged previously on the process of creating these images with Packer and deploying them to Hyper-V with Lability. This is a process we still follow every couple of months to keep the images reasonably up to date.

Watch out that Azure DevOps Server 2022.2 drops support for SQL2017

Richard Fennell — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Azure DevOps Server 2022.2 has recently been released. Unexpectedly this minor 2022.2 release includes a change in supported versions of SQL, SQL2017 support has been dropped. So, if someone attempted an upgrade from 2022.1 to 2022.2 they will get the error

“TF255146: The SQL Server instance you specified (nnnnn) is version ‘SQL Server 2017 RTM’, which is not supported by this version of Azure DevOps Server. For more information about supported versions of SQL Server, visit https://www.visualstudio.com/docs/setup-admin/requirements "

webpack | Build Time Environment Variables With Azure DevOps Yaml CI/CD

Andrew Wilson — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space

One of my recent projects has involved the use of a static module bundler called webpack to bundle a typescript site so I can serve static content from a Static Web App in Azure.

For a while now the site content has not deviated between environments [ dev / test / prod ] and therefore we have simply built and bundled the site for deployment.

Recent changes however have required that there be some deviation between environments, at which point the question raised, at what point should this deviation be set or retrieved?

Yet more Azure DevOps pipeline variable expansion strangeness

Richard Fennell — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

Yesterday I posted about converting ARM output variables to Azure DevOps pipeline variables

Whilst using the pattern I discussed we hit an interesting problem. On my test pipeline I had the following YAML and it was working as expected.

- task: PowerShell@2
 displayName: Obtain Azure Deployment outputs
 inputs:
 targetType: 'inline'
 script: |
 if (![string]::IsNullOrEmpty( $env:deploymentOutputs )) {
 $DeploymentOutputs = convertfrom-json $env:deploymentOutputs

 $DeploymentOutputs.PSObject.Properties | ForEach-Object {
 $keyname = $_.Name
 $value = $_.Value.value
 Write-Host "The value of [$keyName] is [$value]"
 Write-Host "##vso[task.setvariable variable=$keyname]$value"
 }
 }

However, on the first production project I tried this on, the script ran but did not create the expected variables. The issue was that the variable $env:deploymentOutputs was empty, even though the ARM deployment had completed successfully and the outputs were available in the pipeline debug logs.

Getting parameters out of ARM/BICEP Deployments

Richard Fennell — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

Historically, we have used Kees Schollaart’s ARM Outputs Azure DevOps task to convert the output from an ARM template deployment into a variable that can be used in a subsequent Azure DevOps pipeline task, using the general form

- task: AzureResourceManagerTemplateDeployment@3
 displayName: Deploy the main template
 inputs:
 deploymentScope: 'Resource Group'
 azureResourceManagerConnection: 'ARMConnEndpoint'
 subscriptionId: '$(SubscriptionId)'
 action: 'Create Or Update Resource Group'
 resourceGroupName: '$(ResourceGroup)'
 location: '$(AzureRegion)'
 templateLocation: 'Linked artifact'
 csmFile: '$(Pipeline.Workspace)/ARMtemplates/azuredeploy.json'
 overrideParameters: >-
 -staticSitelocation "westeurope"
 -projectName "$(projectName)"
 -env "$(environment)"
 deploymentMode: 'Incremental'

- task: ARM Outputs@6
 displayName: Obtain outputs from the deployment of the Main Deploy
 name: 'MainDeployOutput'
 inputs:
 ConnectedServiceNameSelector: 'ConnectedServiceNameARM'
 ConnectedServiceNameARM: 'ARMConnEndpoint'
 resourceGroupName: '$(ResourceGroup)'
 whenLastDeploymentIsFailed: 'fail'

This process has been working well until we upgraded our service connections to workload identity federation. As soon as we did this the ARM Outputs@6 task started failing with the error message

More on when Azure DevOps variables are available in pipeline runs

Richard Fennell — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

I have previously blogged a good deal on Azure DevOps variable evaluation, see here and here, but the saga continues…

When variables exist

Today I realised, something I guess should have been obvious, that when you manually queue a run, pre-defined variables such as $(Build.SourceBranchName) are not available until the pipeline is compiled and starts running. This is because though there is a value in UI branch combo but this value is not in $(Build.SourceBranchName) until the pipeline starts running.

Checking out Git submodules when Azure DevOps Protected Access to repos is enabled

Richard Fennell — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

Whilst working on an Azure DevOps YAML pipeline for a solution that used Git Submodules we hit a problem with the checkout of the repo and submodule using the YAML

jobs:
 - job: 'Build'
 steps:
 - checkout: self
 submodules: true

It got the main Git repo, but failed with the following error

git submodule sync
git --config-env=http.https://myorg@dev.azure.com.extraheader=env_var_http.https://myorg@dev.azure.com.extraheader submodule update --init --force
Submodule 'Library' (https://myorg@dev.azure.com/myorg/myproject/_git/Library) registered for path 'Library'
Cloning into 'D:/a/1/s/Library'...
remote: TF401019: The Git repository with name or identifier Library does not exist or you do not have permissions for the operation you are attempting.

The Analysis

The issue is that the build agent access token was scoped to only the repo containing the YAML pipeline and not the submodule repo, even though they are in the same Azure DevOps Team Project.

So my Azure DevOps TF30063 error was down to DNS again

Richard Fennell — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

I recently upgraded a clients Azure DevOps server from 2019 to 2022. This required a new application tier VM due to the change in supported versions of Windows Server between the two versions.

Unfortunately, the client’s developers had always accessed the old Azure DevOps Server using the VMs FQDN, as opposed to a DNS managed alias. Hence, given they wanted to minimise change, the plan was to create a DNS Alias so they could continue to use the same URLs and TFVC workspaces mappings.

Azure Role Based Access Control (RBAC) | Removing Orphaned Role Assignments

Andrew Wilson — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space

Deploying solutions into Azure that rely on Role Based Access often involve us creating IaC automation for the assignment of roles, such as:

A services access to Key Vault
A services access to a Key Vault specific secret
A services access to a storage account
A services access to a Service Bus Queue or Topic

In many of these instances we may wish to leverage the source resource identity (System Assigned Managed Identity) for the assigned access.

Where has the staging URL PR comment generated by my GitHub Actions workflow gone?

Richard Fennell — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

Last week I noticed that the staging URL that is normally output as a comment was missing from new GitHub PRs. Previously, this URL was added automatically by the Azure/static-web-apps-deploy GitHub Action for PRs in our Hugo based websites.

After a bit of digging, I noticed a warning message in the logs of the Action that said:

…
Done Zipping App Artifacts
Uploading build artifacts.
Finished Upload. Polling on deployment.
Status: InProgress. Time: 0.178533(s)
Status: Succeeded. Time: 15.3731517(s)
Deployment Complete :)
Visit your site at: https://white-glacier-0d2380f03-300.westeurope.2.azurestaticapps.net Unexectedly failed to add GitHub comment.
Thanks for using Azure Static Web Apps!
Exiting

Don't call your Azure DevOps YAML Deployment stage 'deployment' - strange things happen

Richard Fennell — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Just a little reminder, probably to my future self, to not call your Azure DevOps YAML Deployment stage ‘deployment’.

If you forget you can expect to waste plenty of time, like we did last week, with environment agents not picking up queued jobs with no diagnostic logging messages to give you a clue as to what is going on.

This issue has been reported on StackOverflow where it was pointed out that the official documentation used ‘deployment’ as the stage name. The good news is that at least the documentation is now fixed, but there is still the chance you can make this naming mistake all on your own.

It's the SonarQube Elasticsearch indexes again

Richard Fennell — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Background

I just upgraded our Azure/Docker container hosted SonarQube instance from 10.5.1 to 10.6.0. This was partly due to our usual upgrade process, we try to upgrade within a week or so of a new release, but also to address a specific Java issue we started to see when using the SonarQube@6 Azure DevOps tasks.

The error was the SonarQube analysis completed successfully, but the clean up process failed with this JVM error.

Passing dynamically sized object parameters to Azure DevOps Pipeline templates

Richard Fennell — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Problem

I have an Azure DevOps YAML template that does some deployment actions using PowerShell. This template is used multiple locations. The problem is that the PowerShell step within the template needs a variable number of environment variables, set from values stored in an Azure DevOps variable Group. The number of variables is not fixed because they depend on the underlying commands the PowerShell script is triggering to do the deployment.

Why are my Azure DevOps Pipeline cache hits missing

Richard Fennell — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I have blogged in the past about Caching NVD Vulnerability Dependency data on hosted Azure DevOps Pipeline agents. Using the cache is a great way to speed up slow builds.

However, today I was surprised to find I was getting cache misses on my pipeline, even though I was sure the cache should have been hit.

There are rules over how the cache is used:

The cache is specific to a pipeline definition, so there is no sharing of the cache between pipeline definitions
The cache is only created if the pipeline is successful (running the post run tasks)
The cache only lasts 7 days
but what I had not realised was the cache is also specific to the branch in a not so obvious way.

My pipeline was triggered off a PR, so the cache was being created on the ‘branch’ PR #123. This was working as expected, all runs of the PR triggered build used the cache after the initial run. However, if I manually triggered pipeline run of the same branch as the PR was using, there was a cache miss.

Still time to register for the Global DevOps Experience

Richard Fennell — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

There is still time to register for the free Global DevOps Experience which is being run on the 15th of June at many venues around the world, including Black Marble’s offices.

The Global DevOps Experience is a day full of learning and fun, as we immerse you in the world of DevOps and AI. You will learn about the latest trends and technologies, and work in a team to solve challenging exercises based around a realistic business scenario.

Azure API Management | Enable Tracing for an API

Andrew Wilson — Sun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Background

For a while now I have made good use of the Trace functionality in the API Management (APIM) Test Client. If you haven’t, I would highly advise having a look. The Trace functionality allows us to unveil (debug) the complexity and inner workings of our reverse proxy APIs (their routing / hierarchical policies / alternate backends / caching / etc.). With the Portal this is fairly trivial to do, you simply:

Azure DevOps pipeline jobs failing to start

Richard Fennell — Wed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

Whilst migrating some Azure DevOps classic pipelines to templated multi-stage YAML, I hit a problem that a job running on a self-hosted agent would not start.

The YAML stage, which required approval, would be queued and approved, but the agent would just sit there with the message Starting job but would never start. The strange thing was even though the job was not started, the pipeline instantly showed as failed with no error message.

Failing client connections with SQL OPENJSON Incorrect Syntax error after upgrading Identity Server 6 to 7

Richard Fennell — Wed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

Whilst updating a client’s Duende Identity Server from versions 6 to 7, we experienced a problem. We followed the upgrade steps and all was working fine against our development instance i.e. the Identity Server Db was upgraded to the current schema and we could login from our test MVC web client without issues.

The problem occured when we started to test using our UAT (a production replica) DB. On loading the Identity Server, it did the expected EF migrations and appeared to start, but when a client tried to connect we got an exception in the Identity Server logs in the form

Bicep | Prevent a Nasty Refactor with Function Namespaces

Andrew Wilson — Mon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space

Configuring diagnostic settings for Azure services using bicep

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re hosting your application infrastructure in Azure and consolidate the diagnostic and audit information from your services into Log Analytics or elsewhere, it’s pretty easy to do using Bicep. It’s not very well documented, however, which is the reason for this post.

For the original version of this post see Rik Hepworth's personal blog at Configuring diagnostic settings for Azure services using bicep

Deploying an Azure Container App Environment within a virtual network using bicep

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When working on a project recently I needed to deploy a Container App Environment within a virtual network in Azure. Thanks to the joys of internet search, I started off reading the wrong bits of the official documention and got incredibly confused, and much of the community content about this uses out of date schemas and code. This article is so I don’t need to go through that again, and hopefully it will help others, too.

Using bicep to define Service Bus scaling rules for Azure Container Apps

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I recently needed to set KEDA scaling rules on an Azure Container app that used the number of messages in a Service Bus queue. There’s plenty of info out there on the internet about scaling rules, but not when it comes to Service Bus, so I’m writing up what I learned here.

For the original version of this post see Rik Hepworth's personal blog at Using bicep to define Service Bus scaling rules for Azure Container Apps

Fix for SonarQube recoverable indexing failures error

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

Within one of our Azure DevOps builds we today started to see the following error when running the SonarQube analysis step:

##[error][SQ] Task failed with status FAILED, Error message: Unrecoverable indexing failures: 1 errors among 1 requests. Check Elasticsearch logs for further details.

Nothing obvious pointed to why this should have started to occur, the SonarQube logs showed nothing more than a longer version of the same message.

Announcing a Global DevOps Experience venue at Black Marble

Richard Fennell — Mon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Background

In past years, pre Covid, Black Marble hosted a venue for the Global DevOps Bootcamp, a community run in person hackathon event.

After a short hiatus, I am pleased to be able to say this event has a successor, the Global DevOps Experience which is being run on the 15th of June at many venues around the world, including Black Marble’s offices.

What will be involved?

Azure API Management | Unintentional Removal of Request Forwarding to Backend

Andrew Wilson — Fri, 03 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space

I have recently been working on an API scoped policy within API Management, the policy ideally should not be impacted by any policies defined higher up in the hierarchy.

For reference, this means that any policies defined at the Product, Workspace, or Global level will not be inherited at the API scope for the given API Definition. See diagram below:

Ideally this means that my API traffic will start at my non-hierarchical policy definition, conduct any policy processing prior to being sent off to the backend, and then sent back to the calling outbound system.

Building Reporting Service .RPTProj files in Visual Studio 2022 from the command line

Richard Fennell — Fri, 03 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

We have a number of projects that use the old style SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) .RPTProj project format. These projects are not supported in Visual Studio 2022 out of the box, but there is an extension in the Marketplace that adds the functionality back so you can build them in the IDE.

However, we want to build our RDL files as part of our CI process, and this is where we hit a problem. When we attempt a build with MSBuild it fails with an error about missing .NET 4.0 SDK/Targeting Pack.

Azure API Management | Governing Product Visibility and Access via Groups

Andrew Wilson — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

In API Management, users and groups are a core aspect of the Developer Portal and are used to manage the visibility and access to respective products and their APIs.

One of the common questions that I often get asked is, “how do I appropriately govern the groups effectively so that I can ensure that the correct groups and users have access to the appropriate resources and those who don’t… well don’t?”.

Creating an undo PowerShell Script for batch updates of Azure DevOps Work Items

Richard Fennell — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Problem

One of my client’s recently had a problem that a large number of Azure DevOps work items had been updated via Excel in error.

They asked if there was a means to undo these edits. Unfortunately, a feature Azure DevOps does not provide.

Solution

So, I wrote a PowerShell script to do it. The script…

Gets a list of work items edited today by a specific user, the one who did the problematic bulk update, using a Work Item Query
Get the last update of each work item and check it was made by the user who did the bulk edit, incase someone manually fixed the problematic update already.
For a limited list of fields, revert the change to the value prior to the last update
Save the updated work item, or if the -whatif flag is set just validate the update against the Azure DevOps instance

For my client, the script worked well enough, reverting over 1000 work items in about 5 minutes. The few work items it could not revert were fixed manually.

Microsoft.Web/Connections | Access Policies

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space

I have recently been adding email alerting to some Logic App Standard workflows as part of the error handling flow. In doing so I made use of an existing Office 365 Outlook Connector in the Azure Subscription; the connector is not built in for Standard Logic Apps but is rather part of the Managed Api Connections.

Managed Api Connectors require more than just the connection details to be detailed in the Logic Apps connections.json configuration as shown below:

Personal Access Tokens (PATs) are not your friends

Richard Fennell — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Background

Programmatic connection to Azure DevOps cannot be done with your Active Directory credentials. This is because this involves a dialog being shown, and these days usually an MFA check too.

Historically, the solution to this problem was to enable Alternate Credentials, which could be passed as username and password, without the dialog being shown. However, the use of these has been deprecated since 2020, and they have been completely removed since Jan 2024.

It is really time to get off Azure DevOps TFVC source control

Richard Fennell — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A History Lesson

Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) has been around since 2005, since the first release of Team Foundation Server (TFS) in 2005. In 2013, over 10 years ago, Microsoft added Git support to TFS (later renamed as Azure DevOps), Git had already been around for 8 years at that point.

10 years is a long time in the software industry, I always think of 'IT years' like 'dog years' i.e. 7 to 1, so over 70 years has passed, a lifetime. Over this period Git has become the de facto standard for source control. So if you are still using TFVC as your source control system you really need to ask yourself why?

Don't forget to commit your configuration file

Richard Fennell — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It is a major effort, often unfortunately ignored, keeping the dependencies in an open source project up to date. This was highlighted in Jesse Houwing's post on the state of the Azure DevOps Marketplace.

Since reading this I have made much more of an effort to keep my Azure DevOps Extensions up to date. Dependabot generated PRs have been a great help in this regard. Creating PRs for vulnerabilities and out of date dependencies.

Parsing error with Azure Bicep files in SonarQube

Richard Fennell — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

We saw an issue with our SonarQube 10.3 Developer Edition (that is running as a Docker image hosted in Azure) when it was doing the analysis of a project that included Azure Bicep files.

The Azure DevOps pipeline that triggered the SonarQube analysis was not failing, but within the SonarQube analysis step an error was reported in the task log

1INFO: Sensor IaC AzureResourceManager Sensor is restricted to changed files only
2INFO: 1 source file to be analyzed
3##[error]ERROR: Cannot parse 'AzureServices/QueryPack.bicep:89:1'

The Solution

Turns out the problem was related to parsing Bicep files for App Insights Query packs.

GitHub Events not being triggered for auto-merged Dependabot PRs

Richard Fennell — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Background

I have an Azure Static Website that is built from a GitHub hosted repo using the default Action Workflow automation created by Azure when setting up the static site.

A really nice feature of this configuration is that when a PR is created in GitHub a test static website environment site is built in Azure to review the changes. When the PR is closed the test environment site is deleted.

AI and the internet junkyard

Lewis Spencer — Sun, 10 Mar 2024 12:29:11 +0100

lewiswrites http://lewispen.github.io/posts/ai-and-the-internet-junkyard/ -

The ability to discern false content and critically analyze information on the internet is a skill that is increasingly required. Most of us in the tech field use the internet daily for best practice implementations and personal development. Unfortunately, with the advent of AI, it has become much more difficult to discern what content is genuinely helpful. But who is actually at fault here?

The go-to answer is that the fault lies with the company that created the AI. While this may be inherently true, it’s not the whole story…

Developing myself in the Azure Integration space

Lewis Spencer — Sat, 24 Feb 2024 10:34:11 +0100

lewiswrites http://lewispen.github.io/posts/azure-integration-progress/ -

Azure Integration Motivation

More recently I’ve been looking into azure integration and have been wanting to advance in the field. I enjoy all the real world uses of these products and have been taking on whatever becomes available at work. I’m looking forward to getting more hands on experience.

So far I’ve found that I really enjoy working with function apps and bicep templates, and less so with cosmos db but I do understand its place.

About Rik

Rik Hepworth — Sat, 17 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

About Rik Hepworth

As CEO and co-founder of Zure in the UK, Rik helps organisations large and small use Cloud better. Whether that is a new adoption where governance and management are key, or an application modernisation project where technology choice and team knowledge are important factors in success.

Through his public speaking and community involvement, Rik is a recipient of the Microsoft MVP Programme award for his work with Azure. He is also proud to be a member of the Microsoft Regional Director Programme. As an event organiser, speaker and lapsed blogger, Rik is keen to share his knowledge with the community, and encourage and support others as they do the same.

Accessing a local Hyper-V environment from the Android emulator

Rik Hepworth — Sat, 17 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Not every project can host services in the cloud. If you have a local environment running on virtual machines, connecting to that from the Android emulator running on the same host can be tricky. This post details the solution I use and the tools needed to enable it.

For the original version of this post see Rik Hepworth's personal blog at Accessing a local Hyper-V environment from the Android emulator

Site fails to render when updating Hugo version

Richard Fennell — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

This site was built using Hugo, a static site generator. I recently tried to do a long overdue update the version of Hugo from 0.108 to the current 0.122 version.

I had not expected any problems, but found that the site failed to render, but with no error message all I saw was

1hugo.exe server --logLevel info
2Start building sites …
3hugo v0.122.0-b9a03bd59d5f71a529acb3e33f995e0ef332b3aa+extended windows/amd64 BuildDate=2024-01-26T15:54:24Z VendorInfo=gohugoio
4
5INFO copy static: syncing static files to \
6INFO build: running step "process" duration "97.3263ms"
7INFO build: running step "assemble" duration "335.1476ms"

I normally would have expected to see a INFO build: running step "render" line or an error, but got nothing, irrespective of the log level I set.

Getting a BadGateway error when trying to create Azure DevOps Work items using Power Automated

Richard Fennell — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I was recently trying to create an Azure DevOps work item when an email is received using the Power Automate 'Create an Azure DevOps work item when email arrives with 'Bug' in subject' template.

The flow created without issue, and all the drop downs were correctly populated with O365 and Azure DevOps values as expected.

However, when the flow ran, on receiving an email to the correct inbox, it failed with a BadGateway error.

Bicep | User Defined Types

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space

Over the years of developing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with either ARM templates or Bicep (since it was released in 2020), I have made it my best practice where possible to use well-defined base type parameters (Strings | Integers | Booleans) so that the templates are usable and maintainable by collaborators apart from myself. This usually equated to where possible avoiding the use of Object and Array parameters, although in many cases the use of these types was inevitable given the complexity of the infrastructure and resources being deployed.

Importing bicep lint output as test results in Azure DevOps pipelines

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Bicep is a great improvement over ARM Templates but doesn’t remove the need to validate our code at build time. I could continue to use the ARM-TTK and validate the generated template, but bicep has it’s own built in rules. Getting build errors in a way that can provide meaningful information in my CI/CD tooling is an interesting challenge.

For the original version of this post see Rik Hepworth's personal blog at Importing bicep lint output as test results in Azure DevOps pipelines

I can't get git.exe installed on my corporate PC

Richard Fennell — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Issue

Many development tools rely on the fact that git.exe is installed to perform source control operations e.g. VSCode. However, a common problem I have seen is that security settings on many corporate Windows devices do not allow the installation of git CLI using an MSI file by the user. VSCode is an approved application, or installed as a user application as opposed to a system one, so is available but limited by it's lack of source control features.

Azure API Management | Logic App (Standard) Backend Using a Swagger Definition

Andrew Wilson — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

After setting up a Logic App (Standard) Backend in Azure API Management (APIM) in my last post, I wanted to try and see if I could create a Swagger definition from a Standard Logic App which could then be used to simplify the API authoring process in APIM. This post shows my methods of doing so.

If you haven’t already I would recommend reading my previous post as this one will be working off of the building blocks of the last.

Azure API Management | Logic App (Standard) Backend

Andrew Wilson — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

Updated [31/01/2024]: See New Post showing methods of linking a Logic App Standard as a Backend to APIM through a Swagger Definition.

I have recently been reviewing the method in which a Logic App (Standard) workflow would be setup as an API in API Management. My aim is to overcome and simplify the limitation whereby directly importing a Logic App (Standard) workflow is not available, only in consumption.

Change in Edge/Chromium profile settings broke my Azure Entra ID SSO

Richard Fennell — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Background

I have recently hit a problem whilst developing some training material on Single Sign on (SSO) in GitHub Enterprise. This training is to be delivered in a training instance of GHE that is configured to use a training instance of Azure Entra ID as the SAML identity provider.

To make my life easier, so I am not logging in and out of my work and test Azure Entra ID directories, I have been using profiles in my Chromium based Edge browser. This means I have two copies of Edge running, one for my 'real' work directory and the other for the training directory.

Caching NVD Vulnerability Dependency data on hosted Azure DevOps Pipeline agents

Richard Fennell — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Background

On some projects we use Jeremy Long's DependencyCheck tool, via the Azure DevOps task, to scan our code for known vulnerabilities. This tool uses the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) to get its data. This data is downloaded on demand from the NVD site but the DependencyCheck tool.

Since the recent API changes on the NVD site, as supported by DependencyCheck 9.0.x, the downloading of the current vulnerability data has slowed from about 3 minutes to around 15 minutes, even with a valid NVD API Key. So effectively slowing all our pipeline builds by 15 minutes, a very significant change if the rest of the build only takes a few seconds!

Windows Terminal | Azure Customisation for PowerShell

Andrew Wilson — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

If you haven’t already, placing a customisation on your command prompt for PowerShell is a great way to gain extra context in given activities. For example, if you would like to have a comprehensive overview of your Git status summary information, then posh-git is for you.

Be Careful: Adding customisations will bring latency to start-up

One customisation that I came across that I really like is the cloud-native-azure theme using Oh My Posh. The theme gives context to the following:

Azure RBAC Key Vault | Role Assignment for Specific Secret

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Background

Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC) provides fine grained control over access to Azure resources. Azure RBAC is founded on top of the Azure Resource Manager which allows us to provide access authorisation at differing scope levels ranging from the Management Group through to individual resources.

With RBAC enabled key vaults we can manage access to the resource and data stored in the vault. We can also manage access for individual keys, secrets, and certificates.

Azure API Management | Unintentional Pass through of Subscription Key Header

Andrew Wilson — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space

There is a potential unintentional side effect when you add a APIM subscription key as a header to an inbound request. The header is not stripped from the request prior to being sent to the configured backend service. Rather it is retained.

If you manage the backing service and are not concerned with the disclosure of the subscription key, then no problem. However, being overly permissive of this information may make your API more vulnerable to security threats and disallows a separation of concerns.

Desired State Configuration | Project DSC

Andrew Wilson — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space

I have often found myself with a peeked interest into any method that will simplify both the on-boarding and return to a given project.

Why the interest you may ask…

Well, in most cases when working on a given project (Greenfield or Brownfield), one member of the team will scout ahead to make sure all the engineering tasks are complete. This often allows the development team to work in parallel without stepping on each others toes or be reclined to a halt due to engineering tasks that can only be conducted by a smaller subset of the team. These tasks often include:

New problem when generating build agents using Packer

Richard Fennell — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Problem

I have been using Packer to generate our Azure DevOps Build agent VHD images for a while now, but when I came to regenerate them this time I hit a problem.

As I have documented previously, our process is that we update our fork of the Microsoft repository and then merge the newest changes into our long lived branch that contains our customisations. I then use Packer to generate a new generalised VHD which has all the same features as the Microsoft hosted agents. I then use this VHD to create our new Hyper-V based self hosted Azure DevOps agent VMs using Lability.

Practical DevOps in the Enterprise - Event & Whitepaper

Richard Fennell — Sun, 08 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In advance of my upcoming Black Marble Webinar on the 18th October entitled 'Practical DevOps in the Enterprise', I have written a whitepaper of the same name.

You can find the whitepaper on LinkedIn and register for this, and other free Black Marble webinars and in-person events, via the Black Marble website.

SonarQube Docker Container will not start

Richard Fennell — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Problem

We run our SonarQube instance in a Docker container hosted in an Azure Web App Service. Today, with no notice, it failed. We did the obvious, just tried to restart it and the startup process failed.

Looking at the Azure Web App's Log Stream we could see the following error repeated on each restart attempt

 12023-09-27T15:30:00.797Z INFO - Starting multi-container app..
 22023-09-27T15:30:01.024Z INFO - Pulling image: sonarqube:10.1-developer
 32023-09-27T15:30:02.100Z INFO - 10.1-developer Pulling from library/sonarqube
 42023-09-27T15:30:02.291Z INFO - Digest: sha256:45e7cf02e037b00028d20556a91111f8ae8ae2b2803e516cb0665dd605a6d8b2
 52023-09-27T15:30:02.292Z INFO - Status: Image is up to date for sonarqube:10.1-developer
 62023-09-27T15:30:02.326Z INFO - Pull Image successful, Time taken: 0 Minutes and 1 Seconds
 72023-09-27T15:30:02.344Z INFO - Starting container for site
 82023-09-27T15:30:02.346Z INFO - docker run -d -p 8289:9000 --name bmsonarqubeprodwebsite_sonarqube_0_ec31111b -e WEBSITES_ENABLE_APP_SERVICE_STORAGE=false -e WEBSITE_SITE_NAME=bmsonarqubeprodwebsite -e WEBSITE_AUTH_ENABLED=False -e WEBSITE_ROLE_INSTANCE_ID=0 -e WEBSITE_HOSTNAME=bmsonarqubeprodwebsite.azurewebsites.net -e WEBSITE_INSTANCE_ID=6d27706a6b4eb56feec6ef57ab9b360923c5761cabb3fb52eb6fc5f4cdfbace3 -e WEBSITE_USE_DIAGNOSTIC_SERVER=False sonarqube:10.1-developer -Dsonar.search.javaAdditionalOpts=-Dnode.store.allow_mmap=false
 92023-09-27T15:30:02.347Z INFO - Logging is not enabled for this container.
10Please use https://aka.ms/linux-diagnostics to enable logging to see container logs here.
112023-09-27T15:31:09 No new trace in the past 1 min(s).
122023-09-27T15:32:09 No new trace in the past 2 min(s).
132023-09-27T15:33:09 No new trace in the past 3 min(s).
142023-09-27T15:33:52.465Z ERROR - multi-container unit was not started successfully

The Solution

Something in the back of my mind, from when we ran an on-premises SonarQube instance, made me think of a corrupt ElasticSearch index.

Setting Azure DevOps Agent Pool Descriptions via the Azure DevOps API

Richard Fennell — Thu, 24 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Issue

If you are using Azure Scale Set based Azure DevOps Agent Pools (VMSS) to provide dynamically scalable agent pools, unlike with self hosted agent pools, there is no capabilities tab for the individual agents.

My understanding is that this UX design choice was made as the capabilities of all the agents in a VMSS pool are identical, as they are the same disk image, so why show the same data multiple times.

Setting up Snipe IT on Azure using Docker

Richard Fennell — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Background

I have recently been looking at getting Snipe-IT running on Azure using a Docker container. Though the documentation for this project is good, the detail for the Azure setup is a little lacking. So I thought I would document the steps and Rik Hepworth took to get it working.

Notes:

This is a simple configuration to get it working, it can obviously get a lot more complex with the setup of VNETs etc.

This post documents the manual process, best practice and the next step will be to get it all automated with BICEP/ARM template - For an example of this see this GiST

Create an Azure MySQL PaaS instance

Open the Azure Portal
Create a new 'Azure Database for MySQL flexible server' in a new resource group
- Provide a name for the instance
- Set your region
- Workload Type - for this test I use the lowest 'for development or hobby projects'
- Set the MySQL username and password
- For networking pick 'allow public access' and 'allow public access for any Azure service'
You can add your Client IP address to the firewall rules if you want to be able to connect to the DB from your local machine, but this is not essential. I had enabled this to do some testing with a locally hosted Docker instance.

SonarCloud Azure DevOps PR Analysis fails with a 404 error

Richard Fennell — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Problem

Recently had an issue on a project that had been paused for a few months.

When we restarted the project we found that the SonarCloud PR analysis, running via an Azure DevOps YAML pipeline, was failing with a 404 error. The strange thing was that the same pipeline running analysis of the main trunk or the branch the PR related to worked without error.

The Solution

The issue was fixed by regenerating the SonarCloud PAT that was registered in the Azure DevOps project's Service Connection.

Solving Differing Android Versions When Importing Package Targetting Higher Android Version

Lewis Spencer — Fri, 21 Jul 2023 12:47:00 +0100

lewiswrites http://lewispen.github.io/posts/android-jdk-issue/ -

Differing package versions within solution

When adding/updating a package in your solution that contains a higher target version of android than a project that is referencing that package you may get the following error:

Java SDK 11.0 or above is required when using $(TargetFrameworkVersion) v12.0. Note: the Android Designer is incompatible with Java SDK 11.0: https://aka.ms/vs2019-and-jdk-11 then point the JDK folder at later version.

To fix this, you must download the relevant version of the Android JDK. In my instance it was JDK 11.

Fix for metadata generation failed exit code: 2147450750 loading wrong version of DLLs when building Azure Functions

Richard Fennell — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Problem

Recently an Azure DevOps Pipeline for a .NET 6 based Azure Functions started to fail on some of our self-hosted build agents with the error

1##[error]C:\Users\Administrator\.nuget\packages\microsoft.azure.webjobs.script.extensionsmetadatagenerator\4.0.1\build\Microsoft.Azure.WebJobs.Script.ExtensionsMetadataGenerator.targets(37,5): Error : Metadata generation failed. Exit code: '-2147450750' Error: 'Failed to load the dll from [C:\hostedtoolcache\windows\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App\3.1.32\hostpolicy.dll], HRESULT: 0x800700C1An error occurred while loading required library hostpolicy.dll from [C:\hostedtoolcache\windows\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App\3.1.32]'

The pipeline it self was simple, just repeating the steps a developer would use locally

Update on sending social media posts from Hugo based static site

Richard Fennell — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Around a year ago I posted on 'Social Media Posts after Migrating from WordPress to Hugo Static Pages'. Recently I have found that the Twitter functionality in my Logic App was failing.

Turns out this was due to the changes in the Twitter Free API, with them moving from V1 to V2 which requires OAuth authentication as opposed to a Bearer token.

In essence the core of the problem is that the built-in Logic Apps Twitter Connector only supports the V1 Twitter API. So the only option was to create my own custom solution.

How to run your own maintenance job on Azure DevOps pipelines

Richard Fennell — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Updated: 19 Jul 2023 - Revised the post to use Az CLI Task as opposed to a PowerShell Task

Updated: 29 Aug 2024 - Revised the PowerShell as original version was not working. Also see follow up post on using Workload Identity federation

Background

Azure DevOps Pipelines have a built in mechanism to run maintenance jobs on a schedule. This is great for cleaning out old temporary data, but what if you want to run your own maintenance job?

BizTalk | Replacing Strong Name Keys

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 28 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Background

Strong Names provide .NET Framework assemblies with unique identities. When the .NET Framework loads a strong-named assembly for a referring assembly, it verifies the strong name signature. If the strong name signature of the assembly cannot be verified, the .NET Framework will not load the assembly.

!Do not rely on strong names for security. They provide a unique identity only!

Alternatively in our case, BizTalk assemblies are loaded into the Global Assembly Cache (GAC). In this case, instead of the .NET Framework verifying the assembly identity each time it requires loading, the assembly identity is verified once when installed into the GAC.

My Experience at Integrate 2023

Lewis Spencer — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 17:14:11 +0100

lewiswrites http://lewispen.github.io/posts/integrate-2023/ -

Integrate 2023

I recently had the pleasure of going to Integrate 2023, a 3-day event with lot’s of great speakers in the Microsoft Integration space. I learnt a lot about Azure Integration Services that will help me with my long-term development. But I also wanted to keep track of and share some of my short term goals.

This field is not my forte but the calibre of speaker at the conference has definitely inspired me to learn more!

My Experience at Integrate 2023

Lewis Spencer — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 17:14:11 +0100

Integrate 2023 I recently had the pleasure of going to Integrate 2023, a 3-day event with lot’s of great speakers in the Microsoft Integration space. I learnt a lot about Azure Integration Services that will help me with my long-term development. But I also wanted to keep track of and share some of my short term goals. This field is not my forte but the calibre of speaker at the conference has definitely inspired me to learn more!

Bit rot is killing my pipelines

Richard Fennell — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In a modern hybrid cloud world we have to accept constant change as the norm. You can't just build something and forget about it. You have to keep it up to date as newer tools/libraries appear. This is to at least address security issues, even if you don't want to adopt the new features.

So I am expecting a degree of maintenance work on my Azure DevOps pipelines. However, this is becoming more awkward as many of the tasks used by Azure Pipelines, even ones from Microsoft, are themselves not being maintained.

BizTalk | Deploying and Reading Secure SSO Settings

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Background

One of the fundamental parts to BizTalk for both configuration and integration applications is Enterprise Single Sign On, or as we will continue to reference as SSO from now on.

SSO outside the bounds of BizTalk is an available service that is used to store and transmit encrypted user credentials. However, due to the nature of the service it is fairly generic, this has meant that many middleware applications and custom adapters have been designed to leverage SSO to securely store and transmit secure settings.

Bicep | Deployment Scope Hopping

Andrew Wilson — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Background

An Azure Tenant is hierarchically structured with the following make up:

Tenant
One or more Management Groups
One or more Subscriptions
One or more Resource groups
One or more Resources

Deployment Scopes {Tenant, Management Group, Subscription, Resource Group} allow us to deploy respective types of resources at each level.

A Scope is dictated by two attributes, the selected scope level, and the identifier of the item at that scope level. For example, if I am to deploy at the Subscription Scope, I need to both Identify that I am doing a Subscription Deployment, and I need to provide the identifier of the Subscription. Resource Groups are the lowest in the list of Scope Levels.

Moving my Azure DevOps Pipeline generated social posts to Azure Logic Apps

Richard Fennell — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I posted a while ago about how I had automated the generation of social media posts for my static Hugo based website using Azure Logic Apps.

The other place I auto-generate social media posts is from releases via my project's Azure DevOps Pipeline builds. These use a YAML Pipeline Template that calls a Marketplace task to post to Twitter and a PowerShell task to Invoke-WebRequest to post to Mastodon.

Recently the Twitter task started to fail, and given the recent changes to the Twitter API with the move to the V2 API, I decided a new solution was required.

A more secure alternative to PAT tokens for accessing Azure DevOps Programmatically

Richard Fennell — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Background

When working with Azure DevOps, you may need to access the REST API if you wish to perform scripted tasks such as creating work items, or generating reports. Historically, you had to use a Personal Access Token (PAT) to do this.

If you look in my repo of useful Azure DevOps PowerShell scripts you will find all the scripts make use of a function that creates an authenticated WebClient object using a passed in PAT token.

Bicep | Conditional Iterative Deployment

Andrew Wilson — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Background

I have recently been looking at creating multiple of the same resource using Bicep. There is however a condition where I would wish for the set of resources not to be deployed. The following stages show my work through of this particular problem (using a storage account resource as an example):

Conditional Deployment

Conditional Deployment is used where you may or may not wish to deploy a given resource depending on the outcome of a given condition (if statement).

Downloading NuGet packages with 'System.Net.WebClient' from an Azure DevOps Artifact feed

Richard Fennell — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Background

We use Lability to build Windows Server images for our test labs. Lability makes use of Desired State Configuration (DSC) to build the VM images. Part of this process is for Lability to download DSC modules, as ZIP files, from a NuGet feed such as PowerShell Gallery to inject into the created VM image.

Historically, we have stored our own private DSC modules on an internally hosted NuGet server. However, we wanted to move these modules to a private Azure DevOps Artifacts feed. The problem was that Lability does not support downloading of DSC modules from Azure DevOps Artifact feeds, whether they are public or private, because of the way the package URLs are constructed.

Bicep Template | Shared Variable File Pattern

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Background

I have recently been playing around with some of the Bicep functions when I came across a pattern by Microsoft called the Shared Variable File Pattern.

This nifty pattern describes a method in which you can extract what would either be commonly used or complex configuration values away from your Bicep Template. Using the pattern will allow you to retain easy to read and manageable Bicep templates where you have modelled large variable configurations and or configuration values that are used repeatedly across your templates (prevents multiple copies of the value that would need to be maintained).

Pinning specific Azure DevOps task versions

Richard Fennell — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I make every effort keep all my Azure DevOps Pipeline extensions reliable as I know they are used by many people, but mistakes happen.

Yesterday I released an updated version of my ReleaseNotes task that introduced a bug if the pipeline produced no artifacts. I am pleased to say I have fixed the bug, and addressed this gap in my test coverage.

However, this did mean for about 12 hours if you are using this task in a pipeline that did not produce artifacts, maybe one that just deployed consumed artifacts from other pipelines, you had a failing pipeline.

Getting x86 .NET 3.x tests running on the latest Azure Devops hosted agents

Richard Fennell — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Background

At Black Marble we have our own private build agents, but they are built using the same Packer process as the Microsoft hosted ones. I recently rebuilt our agents to match the latest version of the hosted agents, and I ran into an issue with some .NET 3.1 based x86 MSTests. The tests were failing with the following error:

1A total of 34 test files matched the specified pattern.
2##[error]Testhost process exited with error: A fatal error occurred. The required library hostfxr.dll could not be found.
3##[error]If this is a self-contained application, that library should exist in [E:\Agent\_work\1\s\src\Ux.Common.UnitTests\bin\x86\Release\netcoreapp3.1\].
4##[error]If this is a framework-dependent application, install the runtime in the global location [C:\Program Files (x86)\dotnet] or use the DOTNET_ROOT(x86) environment variable to specify the runtime location or register the runtime location in [HKLM\SOFTWARE\dotnet\Setup\InstalledVersions\x86\InstallLocation].

When I checked the folder C:\Program Files (x86)\dotnet it was not there, .NET 3.1 x86 was no longer present on the agent.

Getting "cannot find path" error using Install-Package

Richard Fennell — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Background

I was recently trying to use PowerShelGet Install-Package to install a module from an Azure DevOps Artifacts hosted PowerShell Gallery using the following script

1# For authentication use a PAT as the password, UID can be anything
2$PATcreds = Get-Credential
3Register-PSRepository -Name BM -SourceLocation 'https://pkgs.dev.azure.com/<org>/_packaging/PowerShell/nuget/v2' -PublishLocation 'https://pkgs.dev.azure.com/<org>/_packaging/PowerShell/nuget/v2' -InstallationPolicy Trusted
4Install-Package BlackMarble.Package -Source BM -Credential $PATcreds

The script did not work I was getting the error

Install-Package : Cannot find the path 'C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\Temp\936930114\BlackMarble.Package\BlackMarble.Package.0.3.79\BlackMarble.Package.psd1' because it does not exist.

You could see a download progress bar that suggested the download had occurred, but no module was installed.

Automating Deployment of Azure Consumption Logic Apps | Bicep and ARM

Andrew Wilson — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Azure Logic Apps

Azure Logic Apps is an Azure Integration Service (AIS) that provides you the ability to create and run automated workflows with little to no code. Consumption Logic Apps are developed using the visual designer within the Azure Portal.

If you are new to developing Azure Logic Apps, there is great Microsoft Learning material to get you started:

What are Azure Logic Apps | https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/logic-apps/logic-apps-overview
Introduction to Azure Logic Apps | https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/modules/intro-to-logic-apps/
Quickstart: Create an integration workflow | https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/logic-apps/quickstart-create-first-logic-app-workflow

Problem Space

Once you have created your workflow in the Logic App designer, your next question may be:

Fluent UI | React | Controlled multi-select Dropdown - Selected Keys

Andrew Wilson — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space

I ran into a problem the other day working with the Fluent UI React component Controlled Multi-select Dropdown. As context, here is my redacted code and explanation:


import { Dropdown, IDropdownOption } from 'office-ui-fabric-react'; // office-ui-fabric-react@7.204.0

export interface State {
 itemList: IDropdownOption[];
 selectedItems: string[];
}

export default class DropDownExample extends React.Component<any, State> {
 constructor(context) {
 super(context);
 this.state = {
 itemList: [{ key: 'None', text: 'None' }],
 selectedItems: []
 }
 this.GetItems();
 this.LoadPreselection();
 }

 private async GetItems(){
 // ... load items into itemList
 }

 private async LoadPreselection(){
 // ... load pre-selected items into selectedItems
 }

 public onItemChange = (event: React.FormEvent<HTMLDivElement>, item: IDropdownOption): void => {

 if (item) {
 let tempItemsArray = selectedKeys;
 const index = tempItemsArray.indexOf(item.key, 0); // Obtain item index if exists - returns -1 if it does not

 if (index > -1) {
 tempItemsArray.splice(index, 1); // If the item exists, remove the item from the existing array through the splice function
 } else {
 tempItemsArray.push(item.key); // If the item does not exist, add the item to the existing array
 }

 setSelectedKeys(tempItemsArray); // Update State
 }

 }

 render() {
 return (

 ...

 <Dropdown
 placeholder="[Select Item]"
 disabled={this.state.itemList.length === 0}
 label='Items'
 id='items'
 responsiveMode={1}
 multiSelect
 options={this.state.itemList}
 selectedKeys={this.state.selectedItems}
 onChange={this.onItemChange.bind(this)}
 />

 ...

 );
 }
}

I had a list of items that I wanted to load into the Multi-select control from an API call. After obtaining the list of items, I wanted to preload any previously selected items.

What happens when you link an Azure DevOps Variable Group to an Azure Key Vault?

Richard Fennell — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Background

It is a really useful feature that you can expose Key Vault stored secrets as Azure DevOps pipeline variables via a variable group, but what happens when you do this? And what can you do if you try to expose too many variables?

I was recently working on a system where there was an increasing number of Key Vault secrets that were being exposed as variables via a variable group. This was working fine, until I started getting warnings in the following form on Windows based Azure DevOps agents:

Handling return values from Azure Functions in Hugo static website

Richard Fennell — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Background

I am using an Azure Function as backend for processing forms submissions from a Hugo static website, to process a simple contact form.

I wanted to add reCAPTCHA support, as the site was generating too many spam emails. I also wanted to show a different confirmation pages depending on whether the reCAPTCHA check passed or failed

There a good few posts about using an Azure Function as backend for a static web site form. But what I could not find was how to handle the return value from the Azure Function.

Could not find assembly deploying a dotnet 6 console app

Richard Fennell — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Problem

After deploying a dotnet 6 console app to a production server, I got the following error:

Exception: [Could not load file or assembly 'System.Data.Odbc, Version=6.0.0.1, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=cc7b13ffcd2ddd51'. The system cannot find the file specified.]

The strange thing was the same EXE, built on a Microsoft hosted Azure DevOps build agent, was working on the test server and was deployed using the same Azure DevOps Pipeline to both systems.

Book Review - Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

Richard Fennell — Wed, 11 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Late last year at (DDDNorth](https://twitter.com/dddnorth) my session had the title 'Why don't people seem to be able to diagnose problems these days?'. Between anecdotes, a key theme was tha people too often don't make sensible diagnostic steps. A problem caused, in my opinion, by the fact they have not been exposed to the fundamentals of how a computer works, due to the way computing is taught today, as opposed to how it was taught in my youth in the 80s

Azure DevOps Pipeline | Git Shallow Fetch

Andrew Wilson — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space

I have been recently working on building a new Yaml pipeline in Azure DevOps and wished to use the GitVersion Task, however, upon running the pipeline the task failed with the following error:

ERROR [../../.. ..:..:..:..] An unexpected error occurred:
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

After some digging and a conversation with one of my colleagues, it turns out there has been a change on Azure DevOps pipelines. By default now when a pipeline is created, the ‘Get Sources’ Shallow fetch setting is enabled and set to a depth of 1.

Duplicate Test DLLs with vstest.console.exe causes failures

Richard Fennell — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Problem

I recently did our regular update of our Azure DevOps Private build agents. It is rare we see problems when we do this, but this time one of our very regularly run builds started to fail when running unit tests.

We had not changed the project source code, all the test ran locally in Visual Studio. We had not change the build pipeline YAML

1 - task: VSTest@2
2 displayName: 'Unit Tests - Services'
3 inputs:
4 testAssemblyVer2: |
5 **\*.unittests.dll
6 !**\obj\**
7 searchFolder: '$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)/src

And from the pipeline logs, we could see that the CLI command being generated by the VSTest@2 task was also unchanged, finding 39 DLLs that matched the filter.

Bicep | File Reference in a Git Repository Containing Spaces

Andrew Wilson — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space

I recently started working on a Git Repository (not of my own creation) that had a repository name containing spaces.

As a helping hand when a repository is created with spaces in the name, the spaces are replaced with %20 when cloned … Unless otherwise specified, however, this would then need to be specified whenever another user/pipeline clones the repo. See the git command below:

git clone https://.../.../my%20repo myrepo

My best practice answer would be, don’t create repositories with names containing spaces, but this one already did.

Azure Storage Account | Deletion and Reuse

Andrew Wilson — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space

When it comes to creating Azure Storage Accounts, the name has some very important rules that need to be kept in mind. These rules will not only be important in the creation of the resource, but will be critical in deletion and reuse.

The rules are as follows:

Storage account names must be between 3 and 24 characters in length and may contain numbers and lowercase letters only.
Your storage account name must be unique within Azure. No two storage accounts can have the same name.

Azure API Management | Product Required Subscription Behaviours

Andrew Wilson — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Background | Functional Workings of APIM Subscriptions

Subscriptions are a nice and easy method of securing your APIs in APIM, however as I bumped into a small detail around their use the other day, I thought it wise to note it down.

Azure API Management Subscriptions operate at three scope levels:

All APIs
- Applies to any API that requires a Subscription.
- As this will allow access to ANY api, use this with caution.
Specific APIs
- These subscriptions are linked to specific APIs, and their keys can only be used by those APIs.
- An API with a Specific subscription, as mentioned above, can be called with a generic All APIs Subscription Key.
Products
- Products are independent of APIs and therefore have their own ‘Subscription Required’ setting and behaviours. See Problem Space below.

Problem Space

As mentioned above, because Products are independent of APIs, their subscriptions operate slightly differently and can cause some ill effects if unknown.

Azure API Management | Subscription Contract Names

Andrew Wilson — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space

Subscriptions are a nice and easy method of securing your APIs in APIM, however as I bumped into a small detail around their use the other day, I thought it wise to note it down.

When a Subscription Key is required on an API, as an invoker I will need to provide either a Header or a Parameter to my request which will contain the Subscription Key.

By default:

GitHub agent Node version stops Hugo site build

Richard Fennell — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Problem

I have blogged previously about moving various web sites over to become Hugo Static Sites.

Recently one of my site's, one using the tailwindscss module, GitHub Build and Deployment Workflow started failing with the following error:

 1Start building sites …
 2hugo v0.108.0-a0d64a46e36dd2f503bfd5ba1a5807b900df231d+extended linux/amd64 BuildDate=2022-12-06T13:37:56Z VendorInfo=gohugoio
 3Error: Error building site: POSTCSS: failed to transform "css/style.css" (text/css): node:internal/errors:478
 4 ErrorCaptureStackTrace(err);
 5 ^
 6
 7SystemError [ERR_SYSTEM_ERROR]: A system error occurred: uv_os_homedir returned ENOENT (no such file or directory)
 8 at Object.<anonymous> (/opt/nodejs/16.18.0/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/clean-stack/index.js:6:61)
 9 at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1155:14)
10 at Object.Module._extensions..js (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1209:10)
11 at Module.load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1033:32)
12 at Function.Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:868:12)
13 at Module.require (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1057:19)
14 at require (node:internal/modules/cjs/helpers:103:18)
15 at Object.<anonymous> (/opt/nodejs/16.18.0/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/aggregate-error/index.js:3:20)
16 at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1155:14)
17 at Object.Module._extensions..js (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1209:10) {
18 code: 'ERR_SYSTEM_ERROR',
19 info: {
20 errno: -2,
21 code: 'ENOENT',
22 message: 'no such file or directory',
23 syscall: 'uv_os_homedir'
24 },
25 errno: [Getter/Setter],
26 syscall: [Getter/Setter]
27}
28Total in 1653 ms

Solution

The problem it turned out was that the default version of Node used by the GitHub Actions runner had changed from Node 14 to Node 16.

Updating my Azure DevOps Pipeline Task to Use the Node16 Runner

Richard Fennell — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Background

It is easy to create an Open Source Project and leave it to gather technical debt as the libraries it depends upon are updated.

I have tried to keep on top of updating all my Azure DevOps Pipeline Extensions, and I have to say Dependabot has certainly helped, but I have not been as diligent as I might have been.

So, as a Christmas project, I took the chance to start to do a major update of all my extensions. To make sure they used the newer Node16 execution runner (as per the document update process) and to update all the NPM packages used.

You need a license to touch that (revised 18 years on)

Richard Fennell — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

“You need a license to touch that!”. The case for licensing of individuals within the software engineering profession.

Background

Back in 2004 I completed my BSc Degree in Computer Science at Bradford University; only 20 years after I started. My year in industry got out of hand!

One module I did involved me writing a paper on a legal area concerning computing. I chose to discuss licensing of engineers.

Whilst at the DDDNorth community conference last weekend (Dec 2022) I got chatting on aspects of staff development, problem solving and training with a fellow MVP Matteo Emili and I mentioned this paper I had written. We both thought it might be interesting to revisit it and see if it still held true, best part of 20 years on.

Bicep File Template | VS Code Snippet

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space:

After developing native ARM templates for a year or two within a set structure, I have found myself applying the same structure to my Bicep templates using comments. This structure however is not setup by default, and in actuality, the sequencing of your bicep components doesn’t really matter as long as your dependencies are there.

Of course we typically follow the standard pattern as shown below, but the larger the template the harder it is to see the breaks between.

Fixing my Logitech Spotlight Presentation Remote that would not switch on

Richard Fennell — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Problem

I am getting back out in front of audiences again as opposed to doing Teams/Zoom events. So I dug out my trusty Logitech Spotlight presentation remote from the bag where it had been sitting for well over a year. However, there was a problem, it would not pair with my re-built Windows 11 PC. It could not even switch on.

A quick search showed I was not alone in having this problem, the Logitech forums showed a lot of angry people. The summary was, if left alone for a few months a Spotlight goes so flat it cannot be charged, and Logitech don't have a fix, or seem to care. There were a lot of comments about very expensive paper weights.

Using Azure DevOps Migration Tools Again

Richard Fennell — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I have recently been working with a client who needed to move Azure DevOps Work Items between Team Projects on different Azure DevOps instances. The only realistic choice was to use the free open source Azure DevOps Migration Tools.

I have used these tools before, but it was a while ago, and as it is under active development, I had to relearn a few things. It is fair to say that the learning curve for this tool is steep, but as the documentation does not hide this

GitVersion task fails on a cloned Azure DevOps YAML Pipeline

Richard Fennell — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Problem

I recently had a strange problem. I had an existing Azure DevOps YAML Pipeline that used the checkout task to do a deep Git fetch of a repo and it's submodules. The reason for the deep fetch was that later in the pipeline we ran GitVersion and this needs the whole repo to be able to calculate the version.

 1- checkout: self
 2 persistCredentials: true
 3 submodules: true
 4
 5- task: gitversion/setup@0
 6 displayName: 'Get current version of GitVersion'
 7 inputs:
 8 versionSpec: '5.x'
 9
10- task: gitversion/execute@0
11 displayName: 'Run GitVersion to generate SEMVER'
12 inputs:
13 useConfigFile: true
14 configFilePath: '$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)/GitVersion.yml'

On this original pipeline this was all working as expected.

Migrating our "Living the Dream" DevOps demo to GitHub Enterprise

Richard Fennell — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

At Black Marble, we have had a long standing Azure DevOps Team Project that we used for end-to-end demos of the principles of DevOps called Living the Dream. This used a legacy codebase, the old Microsoft Fabrikam demo, and showed that can be deployed using modern tools.

As I had no similar demo for GitHub Enterprise, I thought it would be interesting to see how the migration process taking my Azure DevOps implementation over to GitHub would go. This is a good learning exercise as it is the type of problem that many of our enterprise clients will need to do if changing DevOps platform. My key aim was to do the minimum to get the CI/CD process moved from Azure Pipelines to GitHub Action

Ignite 2022 Azure DevOps & GitHub Announcements - GitHub Advanced Security comes to Azure DevOps

Richard Fennell — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Today at Microsoft's Ignite Conference there have been some very interesting announcements related to Azure DevOps and GitHub.

In the recent past, I have seen confusion from our clients as to what is Microsoft's recommended DevOps solution, given they have both Azure DevOps and GitHub.

It is true that Microsoft have said, and continue to say, that GitHub is the 'north star' the long term destination for all users. However, that does not help clients today. Many of mine ask 'but I am using Azure DevOps, but all Microsoft seem to talk about is GitHub, is Azure DevOps dead?'.

SonarCloud PR branch analysis when the main/trunk branch has not been analysed

Richard Fennell — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

SonarCloud (and it's on premise equivalent SonarQube) understand the concept of Git branching and PRs (in various platforms, in my case Azure DevOps was the important one). This means you can block the completion of a PR if the new code in the branch/PR does not meet the SonarCloud Quality Gate. A great way to stop the addition of technical debt.

However, I recently found a problem when starting to use SonarCloud in an older codebase. You cannot do SonarCloud analysis of a child branch before the main/trunk has been analysed.

Showing OWASP Dependency Check results in SonarCloud

Richard Fennell — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The OWASP Dependency Checker can be used to check for known vulnerabilities in a variety of eco-systems. This tool produces a HTML based report, but I wanted to expose the issues in SonarCloud. The problem is that SonarCloud does not allow ingestion of OWASP Dependency Checker vulnerabilities out the box.

However, there is the option to ingest Generic Issue Data. To make use of this I just needed to change my XML results file to a JSON format

Azure API Management | API Mocking

Andrew Wilson — Sun, 18 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space:

I have been recently looking into setting up some APIs within API Management. I do not currently have any backing services to hook the API’s to and I would like to decouple development of the front end systems from the backend. Thankfully Azure API Management has provided the ability to create mocks for your API’s. In this post I will be walking through API mocking and how to achieve this within Bicep Templates for deployment.

Azure API Management | Purge Soft-Deleted Instance

Andrew Wilson — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space:

Around June 2020 a change was made to Azure API Management whereby any deletion of the instance via the Azure portal, Azure PowerShell, Azure CLI, and REST API version 2020-06-01-preview or later will result in the instance being soft-deleted.

This is to allow for recoverability of a recently deleted API Management instance, and therefore protecting against accidental deletion of the instance.

The problem with this is that not all the Azure Resource Management tooling currently supports the management of soft deleted API Management Instances. Currently the only management tooling that supports this feature are the REST API and Azure CLI. You cannot at this point in time list, show, or purge a soft deleted instance in the Management Portal or Azure PowerShell.

Clearing the AssignedTo field on an Azure DevOps Work items with the AZ CLI

Richard Fennell — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In the past I have written most of my Azure DevOps scripts calling the Azure DevOps REST API from PowerShell. This has worked, but did involve a lot of JSON payload handling.

A better option these days is to look at the AZ CLI and specifically the azure-devops extension, as this does much of the heavy lifting for you.

This does not mean that everything is plain sailing though. Today I hit a problem that took me a while to solve.

Azure Logic App | Parallel Terminates & Action State Checking

Andrew Wilson — Sun, 04 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space:

I have recently encountered an interesting problem space with Azure logic app action run after logic. I ran into the problem whilst creating a logic app that will perform actions in parallel. The bulk of the actions are performed in scopes. If an action fails within the first set of scopes, the scope status is Failed. If the first scope fails, then the second scope full of actions are executed (this based on run after logic). The problem with this is that I still need the logic app to terminate as Failed so that an alert will be fired off.

Book Review "Accelerate DevOps with GitHub" by Michael Kaufmann

Richard Fennell — Sun, 04 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The contents of this book is not at all what I was expecting from the title ‘Accelerate DevOps with GitHub’. Usually books that aim to provide up to date walkthroughs for a specific current tools tend to not place them within the large tapestry of the ecosystem. This is not the case with this book from Michael Kaufmann.

Each section is delivered in broadly three parts, which I found really effective

Azure Role Assignment

Andrew Wilson — Fri, 02 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Problem Space:

I recently came into some issues with assigning Azure roles through a Bicep template and pipeline deployment. I was looking to assign ‘Storage Blob Data Reader’ to a service principal, and refine their access to only the container of the storage account. The three main issues that I ran into were:

What are Role Assignment Conditions and how can I use them in my template?
I am trying to assign a built in role, what is the roleDefinitionId that I should be using?
I am trying to assign the role to a service principal user, what id should I be referencing in the template?

For reference, the Bicep template for role assignment¹ that I am using is shown below:

Calling Application Insights API using Powershell

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 14:00:00 +0000

If you have an application, instrumenting it with something like Application Insights to emit useful data is something I cannot espouse the benefits of enough. As a service, however, Application Insights can offer other benefits, such as Availability Tests to tell you if the application is accessible to your users.

The default approach to availability tests is to create cloud-based probes that regularly call your application from different regions of the globe to make sure it responds and assess how long those responses take. But what if your application is on premises, and is not accessible from the outside world (or is in the cloud, but secured from general access)?

Configuring BizTalk 2020 Application Insights telemetry behind a firewall

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 14:00:00 +0000

BizTalk 2020 allows you to connect it to an Application Insights instance, where it will send tracking data as customEvents so you see what's going on. However, getting it working in an environment where security is important and the network team want to open the fewest paths through the firewall as possible is an exercise in patience. This blog post is as much aide memoire for me as an information post for you.

Why has my HP printer become a DVD? A fix for HP USB Printers not being detected on Windows 10/11

Richard Fennell — Sat, 30 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Today I made the fateful mistake of offering to try to fix a family members home printer. Family IT, and especially printers, the bane of all IT Professionals.

The Problem

The system in question was a 10 year old setup made up of a Dell Optiplex desktop currently running Windows 10 and an HP M1132 LaserJet multifunction printer. This had all been working until a couple of weeks ago when the PC failed to detect the printer. The printer was uninstalled, assuming that would fix the problem, but the Add Printer tools could not even find the printer.

Why has my MVC site stopped working?

Richard Fennell — Thu, 28 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I am currently upgrading a .NET Core 3.1(LTS) MVC website to run on .NET 6, stepping it through intermediate .NET versions to make sure some EF Migrations were done correctly.

Everything upgraded without any major issue until the final step to .NET 6. As soon as I did this my MVC pages failed to render, but no error was reported

After much fiddling the solution to the problem was pointed out to me by one of my colleagues. The way MVC is shipped with .NET (Core) has changed from being a NuGet package to being part of the framework. This happened a good while ago, but become a blocking issue with .NET Core.

Cannot retrieve Umbraco node

Richard Fennell — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We recently hit a problem when we tried to edit a page on anold Umbraco 7 instance. When we tried to edit a page in the Umbraco web UI we got the error 'failed to retrieve data for content id 1119'

Now this page had been created a long time ago by a user who had since left the company, and this was the root cause. It seems there is an issue with Umbraco and deleted users. To avoid this problem, it is actually recommended you disable old Umbraco user accounts as opposed to deleting them.

Social Media Posts after Migrating from WordPress to Hugo Static Pages

Richard Fennell — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I posted recently on my experience moving to Hugo from WordPress. One feature lost in the move were the Wordpress plugins used to automatically post to Twitter and LinkedIn when a new blog post was created. I always found this very useful, so looked or a way to replicate this functionality for static pages.

The solution I ended up with was Azure Logic Apps.

I created a Logic App with a scheduled triggered that checked my blogs's RSS feed every 30 minutes. If it found the RSS feed had been updated, I then created a bitly link for the new post's URL, then posts to Email (as a test), Twitter and LinkedIn.

Migrating from WordPress to Hugo Static Pages

Richard Fennell — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Background

Over the years, the Black Marble blog server has been hosted on many platforms. It's previous incarnation was WordPress, running as a network of sites with an aggregated feed. Of late we had found this slow to serve the first page (due to website start-up time) and there was the constant need to keep the instance patched.

The time had come for a new solutions, and we picked Hugo Static Pages.

Don't skimp on resources for GHES for demo instances

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 Jun 2022 09:53:27 +0000

I wanted to have a look at some GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) upgrade scenarios so decided to create a quick GHES install on my local test Hyper-V instance. Due to me skimping on resources, and making a typo, creating this instance was much harder than it should have been.

The first issue was I gave it a tiny data disk, this was down to me making a typo in my GB to Bytes conversion when specifying the size. Interestingly, the GHES setup does not initially complain but sits on the 'reloading system services' stage until it times out. If you check the /setup/config.log you see many Nomad related 500 errors. A reboot of the VM showed the real problem, the log then showed plenty of out-of-disk space messages.

Fix for can't add second outlook.com account to Outlook Desktop - requires non-existent PIN

Richard Fennell — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 14:14:13 +0000

I was recently trying to set up a copy of the Outlook desktop app with two outlook.com email accounts and hit a strange issue.

I was able to add the first one without any problems, but when I tried to add the second one I got an error message asking for PIN, and most importantly on the same dialog showing the second outlook.com email address.

This is confusing as I know of no way to set a PIN on an outlook.com account.

Adding Job Summary support to my GitHub Release Notes Action

Richard Fennell — Thu, 19 May 2022 11:03:13 +0000

A recent addition to GitHub Actions is the ability to create a custom job summary. Using a simple echo command in a script you can write to the job summary

1steps:   - name: Adding markdown
2  run: echo '### Hello world! :rocket:' >> $GITHUB\_STEP\_SUMMARY

Now, this got me thinking. I have a well-used custom release notes extension for Azure DevOps. It has a GitHub Action equivalent, but it does not seem to get as much usage. Would adding support for custom Job Summaries make it more useful?

Fix for cannot 'TypeError: Cannot read property' when Dependabot submits a PR to upgrade a Jest Module

Richard Fennell — Thu, 19 May 2022 07:43:58 +0000

GitHub's Dependabot is a great tool to help keep your dependencies up to date, and most of the time the PR it generates just merges without a problem. However, sometimes there are issues with other related dependencies.

This was the case with a recent PR to update jest-circus to 28.x. The PR failed with the error

TypeError: Cannot read property 'enableGlobally' of undefined at jestAdapter (node_modules/jest-circus/build/legacy-code-todo-rewrite/jestAdapter.js:39:25) at TestScheduler.scheduleTests (node_modules/@jest/core/build/TestScheduler.js:333:13) at runJest (node_modules/@jest/core/build/runJest.js:404:19) at _run10000 (node_modules/@jest/core/build/cli/index.js:320:7) at runCLI (node_modules/@jest/core/build/cli/index.js:173:3)

On-Demand video available for May's 'Microsoft and GitHub DevOps Forum: DevSecOps'

Richard Fennell — Tue, 17 May 2022 08:52:50 +0000

Did you miss the 'Microsoft and GitHub DevOps Forum: DevSecOps' event I presented at earlier in May?
Well worry not, the on-demand stream is now available - here

More examples of using custom variables in Azure DevOps multi-stage YML

Richard Fennell — Thu, 05 May 2022 08:54:21 +0000

I have blogged in the past ( here , here and here) about the complexities and possible areas of confusion with different types of Azure DevOps pipeline variables.

Well here is another example of how to use variables and what can trip you up.

The key in this example is the scope of a variable, whether it is available outside a job and the syntax to access it

Variables local to the Job

So, if you create your variable as shown below

Updating the Azure Application client_secret used by Packer

Richard Fennell — Tue, 03 May 2022 10:18:53 +0000

As I have posted about previously, we create our Azure DevOps build agent images using the same Packer definitions as used by Microsoft. This time when I ran my Packer command to build an updated VHD I got the error

Build 'vhd' errored after 135 milliseconds 708 microseconds: adal: Refresh request failed. Status Code = '401'. Response body: {"error":"invalid_client","error_description":"AADSTS7000222: The provided client secret keys for app '6425416f-aa94-4c20-8395-XXXXXXX' are expired. Visit the Azure portal to create new keys for your app: https://aka.ms/NewClientSecret, or consider using certificate credentials for added security: https://aka.ms/certCreds.rnTrace ID: 65a200cf-8423-4d52-af07-67bf26225200rnCorrelation ID: 0f86de87-33fa-443b-8186-4de3894972e1rnTimestamp: 2022-05-03 08:36:50Z","error_codes":[7000222],"timestamp":"2022-05-03 08:36:50Z","trace_id":"65a200cf-8423-4d52-af07-67bf26225200","correlation_id":"0f86de87-33fa-443b-8186-4de3894972e1","error_uri":"https://login.microsoftonline.com/error?code=7000222"} Endpoint https://login.microsoftonline.com/545a7a95-3c4d-4e88-9890-baa86d5fdacb/oauth2/token==> Builds finished but no artifacts were created.

Speaking at the rescheduled Microsoft and GitHub DevOps Forum on the 4th of May

Richard Fennell — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 12:14:05 +0000

I'm speaking at the resheduled Microsoft and GitHub DevOps Forum on the 4th of March.

To Register: https://mktoevents.com/Microsoft+Event/333304/157-GQE-382?wt.mc_id=AID3045587_QSG_EML_586670

Fix for Azure DevOps deployment to an environment stuck in "Job is pending" state

Richard Fennell — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 12:06:53 +0000

Issue

I had an Azure DevOps YAML based pipeline that had been working but was now getting stuck with the message "Job is pending..." when trying to start a stage in which there is a deployment to an environment.

Looking at the logs and Azure DevOps UI it was not obvious what the issue was.

Solution

Turns out it was due to environment checks and approvals. There was a branch policy on the environment. This was set to only allow use of Azure DevOps Templates on a given branch. The edit that had been done to the YAML meant it was trying to extend a template in a branch that was not in the approved list.

Speaking at the Microsoft and GitHub DevOps Forum on the 10th of March

Richard Fennell — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 11:40:37 +0000

Update: This event has been rescheduled for the 4th May. The new registration link is here

I'm speaking at the Microsoft and GitHub DevOps Forum on the 10th of March.

To register - https://mktoevents.com/Microsoft+Event/325749/157-GQE-382

A workaround for not being able to access custom variables via stagedependencies if they are set in deployment jobs in Azure DevOps Pipelines

Richard Fennell — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:37:19 +0000

I have blogged in the past ( here and here) about the complexities and possible areas of confusion with different types of Azure DevOps pipeline variables. I have also seen issues raised over how to access custom variables across jobs and stages. Safe to say, this is an area where it is really easy to get it wrong and end up with a null value.

I have recently come across another edge case to add to the list of gotchas.

The importance of blogging - or how to do your future self a favour

Richard Fennell — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 10:34:33 +0000

Yesterday, yet again, I was thankful for my past self taking time to blog about a technical solution I had found.

I had an error when trying to digitally sign a package. On searching on the error code I came across my own blog post with the solution. This was, as usual, one I had no recollection of writing.

I find this happens all the time. It is a little disturbing when you search for an issue and the only reference is to a post you made and have forgotten, so you are the defacto expert, nobody knows anymore on the subject, but better than having no solution.

Using Azure DevOps Stage Dependency Variables with Conditional Stage and Job Execution

Richard Fennell — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 13:16:46 +0000

I have been doing some work with Azure DevOps multi-stage YAML pipelines using stage dependency variables and conditions. They can get confusing quickly, you need one syntax in one place and another elsewhere.

So, here are a few things I have learnt...

What are stage dependency variables?

Stage Dependencies are the way you define which stage follows another in a multi-stage YAML pipeline. This is as opposed to just relying on the order they appear in the YAML file, the default order. Hence, they are critical to creating complex pipelines.

Setting Azure DevOps 'All Repositories' Policies via the CLI

Richard Fennell — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 12:49:03 +0000

The Azure DevOps CLI provides plenty of commands to update Team Projects, but it does not cover all things you might want to set. A good example is setting branch policies. For a given repo you can set the policies using the Azure Repo command eg:

1az repos policy approver-count update --project <projectname> --blocking true --enabled true --branch main --repository-id <guid> --minimum-approver-count w --reset-on-source-push true --creator-vote-counts false --allow-downvotes false

However, you hit a problem if you wish to set the 'All Repositories' policies for a Team Project. The issue is that the above command requires a specific --project parameter.

How to fix Azure Pipeline YAML parsing errors seen after renaming the default Git branch

Richard Fennell — Wed, 03 Nov 2021 09:25:15 +0000

If in Azure DevOps you rename your Git Repo's default branch, say from 'master' to 'main', you will probably see an error in the form 'Encountered error(s) while parsing pipeline YAML: Could not get the latest source version for repository BlackMarble.NET.App hosted on Azure Repos using ref refs/heads/master.' when you try to manually queue a pipeline run.

You could well think, as I did, 'all I need to do is update the YAML build files with a find and replace for master to main', but this does not fix the problem.

New features for my Azure DevOps Release Notes Extension

Richard Fennell — Sat, 30 Oct 2021 15:42:22 +0000

Over the past couple of weeks, I have shipped three user-requested features for my Azure DevOps Release Notes Extension

Generate multiple documents in a single run

You can now specify multiple templates and output files. This allows a single instance of the task to generate multiple release note documents with different formats/content.

This is useful when the generation of the dataset is slow, but you need a variety of document formats for different consumers.

The case of the self-cancelling Azure DevOps pipeline

Richard Fennell — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 20:12:28 +0000

The Issue

Today I came across a strange issue with a reasonably old multi-stage YAML pipeline, it appeared to be cancelling itself.

The Build stage ran OK, but the Release stage kept being shown as cancelled with a strange error. The strangest thing was it did not happen all the time. I guess this is the reason the problem had not been picked up sooner.

If I looked at the logs for the Release stage, I saw that the main job, and meant to be the only job, had completed successfully. But I had gained an extra unexpected job that was being cancelled in 90+% of my runs.

Automating adding issues to Beta GitHub Projects using GitHub Actions

Richard Fennell — Fri, 15 Oct 2021 20:42:58 +0000

The new GitHub Issues Beta is a big step forward in project management over what was previously possible with the old 'simple' form of Issues. The Beta adds many great features such as:

Project Boards/Lists
Actionable Tasks
Custom Fields including Iterations
Automation

However, one thing that is not available out the box is a means to automatically add newly created issues to a project.

Looking at the automations available within a project you might initially think that there is a workflow to do this job, but no.

Making SonarQube Quality Checks a required PR check on Azure DevOps

Richard Fennell — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 12:28:30 +0000

This is another of those posts to remind me in the future. I searched the documentation for this answer for ages and found nothing, eventually getting the solution by asking on the SonarQube Forum

When you link SonarQube into an Azure DevOps pipeline that is used from branch protection the success, or failure, of the PR branch analysis is shown as an optional PR Check

The question was 'how to do I make it a required check?'. Turns out the answer is to add an extra Azure DevOps branch policey status check for the 'SonarQube/quality gate'

My cancer story – thus far

Richard Fennell — Mon, 23 Aug 2021 21:00:36 +0000

This is a somewhat different post to my usual technical ones…

In December 2017 I had major surgery. This was to remove an adrenal cortical carcinoma (ACC) that had grown on one of my adrenal glands and then up my inferior vena cava (IVC) into my heart.

Early on I decided, though not hiding the fact I was ill, to not live every detail on social media. So, it is only now that I am back to a reasonable level of health and with some distance that I feel I can write about my experiences. I hope they might give people some hope that there can be a good outcome when there is a cancer diagnosis.

But what if I can't use GitHub Codespaces? Welcome to github.dev

Richard Fennell — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 09:21:23 +0000

Yesterday GitHub released Codespaces as a commercial offering. A new feature I have been using during its beta phase.

Codespaces provides a means for developers to easily edit GitHub hosted repos in Visual Studio Code on a high-performance VM.

No longer does the new developer on the team have to spend ages getting their local device setup 'just right'. They can, in a couple of clicks, provision a Codespace that is preconfigured for the exact needs of the project i.e the correct VM performance, the right VS Code extensions and the debug environment configured. All billed on a pay as you go basis and accessible from any client.

How I dealt with a strange problem with PSRepositories and dotnet NuGet sources

Richard Fennell — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 15:03:17 +0000

Background

We regularly re-build our Azure DevOps private agents using Packer and Lability, as I have posted about before.

Since the latest re-build, we have seen all sorts of problems. All related to pulling packages and tools from NuGet based repositories. Problems we have never seen with any previous generation of our agents.

The Issue

The issue turned out to be related to registering a private PowerShell repository.

1$RegisterSplat = @{
2Name = 'PrivateRepo'
3SourceLocation = 'https://psgallery.mydomain.co.uk/nuget/PowerShell'
4PublishLocation = 'https://psgallery.mydomain.co.uk/nuget/PowerShell'
5InstallationPolicy = 'Trusted'
6}
7
8Register-PSRepository @RegisterSplat

Running this command caused the default dotnet NuGet repository to be unregistered i.e. the command dotnet nuget list source was expected to return

Porting my Visual Studio Parameters.xml Generator tool to Visual Studio 2022 Preview

Richard Fennell — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 11:08:10 +0000

As I am sure you are all aware the preview of Visual Studio 2022 has just dropped, so it is time for me to update my Parameter.xml Generator Tool to support this new version of Visual Studio.

But what does my extension do?

As the Marketplace description says...

A tool to generate parameters.xml files for MSdeploy from the existing web.config file or from an app.config file for use with your own bespoke configuration transformation system.

Automating the creation of Team Projects in Azure DevOps

Richard Fennell — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 16:28:03 +0000

Creating a new project in Azure DevOps with your desired process template is straightforward. However, it is only the start of the job for most administrators. They will commonly want to set up other configuration settings such as branch protection rules, default pipelines etc. before giving the team access to the project. All this administration can be very time consuming and of course prone to human error.

To make this process easier, quicker and more consistent I have developed a process to automated all of this work. It uses a mixture of the following:

Getting the approver for release to an environment within an Azure DevOps Multi-Stage YAML pipeline

Richard Fennell — Sat, 15 May 2021 14:53:50 +0000

I recently had the need to get the email address of the approver of a deployment to an environment from within a multi-stage YAML pipeline. Turns out it was not as easy as I might have hoped given the available documented APIs.

Background

My YAML pipeline included a manual approval to allow deployment to a given environment. Within the stage protected by the approval, I needed the approver's details, specifically their email address.

Loading drivers for cross-browser testing with Selenium

Richard Fennell — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 13:32:03 +0000

Another post so I don't forget how I fixed a problem....

I have been making sure some Selenium UX tests that were originally written against Chrome also work with other browsers. I have had a few problems, the browser under test failing to load or Selenium not being able to find elements.

Turns out the solution is to just use the custom driver start-up options, the default constructors don't seem to work for browsers other theran Chrome and Firefox.

A first look at the beta of GitHub Issue Forms

Richard Fennell — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 11:16:26 +0000

Update 10 May 2021 - Remember that GitHub Issue Forms are in early beta, you need to keep an eye on the regular new releases as they come out. For example, my GitHub Forms stopped showing last week. This was due to me using now deprecate lines in the YAML definition files. Once I edited the files to update to support YAML they all leap back into life

GitHub Issues are core to tracking work in GitHub. Their flexibility is their biggest advantage and disadvantage. As a maintainer of a projects, I always need specific information when an issue is raised. Whether it be a bug, or feature request.

Tidying up local branches with a Git Alias and a PowerShell Script

Richard Fennell — Tue, 16 Mar 2021 12:20:57 +0000

It is easy to get your local branches in Git out of sync with the upstream repository, leaving old dead branches locally that you can't remember creating. You can use the prune option on your Git Fetch command to remove the remote branch references, but that command does nothing to remove local branches.

A good while ago, I wrote a small PowerShell script to wrapper the running of the Git Fetch and then based on the deletions remove any matching local branches. Then finally returning me to my trunk branch.

Added Manual Test Plan support to my Azure DevOps Cross-Platform Release notes Task

Richard Fennell — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 09:58:27 +0000

I have just release 3.46.4 of my Azure DevOps Cross-Platform release Notes task which adds support for generating release notes based on the results of Azure DevOps Test Plans.

There has been support in the task for automated tests, run as part of the build or release process, for a while. However, until this release, there was no way to generate release notes based on manual tests.

Manual Test results are now made available to the templating engine using two new objects:

Fixing my SQLite Error 5: 'database is locked' error in Entity Framework

Richard Fennell — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 17:21:15 +0000

I have spent too long today trying to track down an intermittent “SQLite Error 5: 'database is locked'” error in .Net Core Entity Framework.

I have read plenty of documentation and even tried swapping to use SQL Server, as opposed to SQLite, but this just resulted in the error ‘There is already an open DataReader associated with this Connection which must be closed first.’.

So everything pointed to it being a mistake I had made.

What to do when moving your Azure DevOps organisation from one region to another is delayed.

Richard Fennell — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 10:09:17 +0000

There are good reasons why you might wish to move an existing Azure DevOps organisation from one region to another. The most common ones are probably:

A new Azure DevOps region has become available since you created your organisation that is a 'better home' for your projects.
New or changing national regulations require your source stored in a specific location.
You want your repositories as close to your workers as possible, to reduce network latency.

One of these reasons meant I recently had to move an Azure DevOps organisation, so followed the documented process. This requires you to

Porting my Release Notes Azure DevOps Pipelines Extension to GitHub Actions

Richard Fennell — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 14:29:14 +0000

One of my most popular Azure DevOps Extensions is my Release Notes Pipeline task. This allows the creation of release notes using information obtained from the Azure DevOps API and formatted using a Handlebars Template.

Given the popularity of GitHub Actions, I got to wondering whether porting this extension was viable?

Well the release of my new Generate Release Notes with a Handlebars Template action shows that it was.

The basic concept of this new action is the same as for the older task, get information on the pipeline/workflow run using the API and then format it using a Handlebars template. However, the information that can be returned is different. But this stands to reason as GitHub is not Azure DevOps. This is especially true when you consider the differences between the simplicity of GitHub Issues and the complexity, and variability of format, of Azure DevOps Work Items

Business Process Automation and Integration in the Cloud

Robert Hogg — Wed, 30 Dec 2020 20:35:10 +0000

Organisations are facing increased, and unprecedented, pressure from the market to transform digitally, and as a result, they need to think how they can become more attractive in their specific market space. The most common area to concentrate on is becoming more efficient, and this can be thought of in discrete parts: streamlining internal, often complex, business processes, making the organisation easier to work with for suppliers or customers, having better cross business views on information, improving service delivery, or saving on manual processing. All these efficiencies are brought to bear by automation, whether this is person to system data sharing, system to system, business to business; the same principles apply but different techniques may be used.

My DDD2020 Session - How can I automatically create Azure DevOps Release Notes and how can I publish them

Richard Fennell — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 09:30:08 +0000

Really please to say that my DDD2020 session is now available to stream.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xaV3dFoQdV8

Thanks to the organisers and sponsors that allowed this event to ahead this year in this difficult year.

Running UWP Unit Tests as part of an Azure DevOps Pipeline

Richard Fennell — Tue, 08 Dec 2020 09:36:03 +0000

I was reminded recently of the hoops you have to jump through to run UWP unit tests within an Azure DevOps automated build.

The key steps you need to remember are as follows

Desktop Interaction

The build agent should not be running as a service it must be able to interact with the desktop.

If you did not set this mode during configuration this post from Donovan Brown shows how to swap the agent over without a complete reconfiguration.

Out of Memory running SonarQube Analysis on a large projects

Richard Fennell — Tue, 01 Dec 2020 16:14:00 +0000

Whilst adding SonarQube analysis to a large project I started getting memory errors during the analysis phase. The solution was to up the memory available to the SonarQube Scanner on the my build agent, not the memory on the SonarQube server as I had first thought. This is done with an environment variable as per the documentation, but how best to do this within our Azure DevOps build systems?

The easiest way to set the environment variable `SONAR_SCANNER_OPTS` on every build agent is to just set it via a Azure Pipeline variable. This works because the build agent makes all pipeline variables available as environment variables at runtime.

Sponsoring DDD 2020

Robert Hogg — Tue, 01 Dec 2020 09:58:29 +0000

A few weeks back, I wrote about how we aren't asking for sponsors for our online Developer Day, as there aren't any significant costs to cover. Instead, we were directing people towards making a donation to The National Museum of Computing, an organisation which does great things for our industry, but has been finding this year challenging. And many thanks to those of you who have already donated.

However, some organisations, who usually sponsor DDD, have been in touch about still sponsoring DDD in some way, as they want to show their support.

Getting confused over Azure DevOps Pipeline variable evaluation

Richard Fennell — Fri, 27 Nov 2020 15:50:49 +0000

Introduction

The use of variables is important in Azure DevOps pipelines, especially when using YML templates. They allow a single pipeline to be used for multiple branches/configurations etc.

The most common form of variables you see is are the predefined built in variables e.g. $(Build.BuildNumber) and your own custom ones e.g. $(var). Usually the value of these variables are set before/as the build is run, as an input condition.

But this is not the only way variables can be used. As noted in the documentation there are different ways to access a variable...

Positively Impacting your Organisation with Collaborative Working

Robert Hogg — Sun, 22 Nov 2020 20:18:31 +0000

Collaboration has been and will continue to be one of the important business advantages that the Cloud can deliver to an organisation. Collaboration can be thought of as not just connecting people to one another and improving their day to day working practices, but also enabling and encouraging collaboration between people and data.

Black Marble can support your move to the cloud for collaboration services between people and data. We can help your organisation realise the full potential of people to people collaboration using services such as SharePoint and, in particular for this white paper, Microsoft Teams. Our approach will help you identify how Microsoft’s collaboration solutions can improve your ways of working, whilst helping you visualise your end goal.

How to export Azure DevOps Classic Builds and Release to YAML

Richard Fennell — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 12:03:45 +0000

This is another one of those posts so I can remember where some useful information is....

If you are migrating your Azure DevOps Classic Builds and Release to Multi-Stage YAML then an import step is to export all the exiting build, task groups and release as YAML files.

You can do this by hand within the Pipeline UI, with a lot of cut and pasting, but much easier is to use the excellent Yamlizr - Azure DevOps Classic-to-YAML Pipelines CLI from Alex Vincent. A single CLI command exports everything with a Team project into a neat folder structure of template base YAML.

Successful Software Delivery with DevOps

Robert Hogg — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 01:03:59 +0000

With DevOps best practices and Microsoft’s DevOps tooling, Black Marble can deliver agile planning, source code control, package management, build, testing and release automation to continuously integrate, test, deliver and monitor your application.

It is crucial to not only have the right people in place for your cloud adoption journey, but also to use the right processes and the right tools. A typical DevOps approach consists of cross-functional teams provisioning their own infrastructure, with high degrees of automation using templates, codified rules for security controls and cloud-native architecture.

Delivering AI in Policing

Robert Hogg — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 00:52:54 +0000

Over the last few years, I've spent a great deal of time working with police forces in the UK, and regularly have conversations with them about AI, and the potential impact on policing. More and more police forces are looking at AI in order to take advantage of the services available to drive insights from existing data, to produce the next generation of artificial intelligent applications. AI can be thought of as the pinnacle of data comprehension, analysis and insight, as a destination and a focused target for police forces to maintain their responsibility for huge amount of personal data which they hold. It needs quality and connected data and relies on solid governance and best practices to achieve reliable and good quality outcomes.

Delivering an Enterprise Cloud Operating Model

Robert Hogg — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 11:16:07 +0000

There have been some major paradigm shifts in the history of computing with some of the most notable being marked, not only by changes in technology, but by changes in staffing that technology. When the computing standard for mainframe shifted to client/server, the staff model moved from computer operator to system administrator.

The same is true with a move to the cloud.

The cloud fundamentally changes how businesses procure and use technology resources. Traditionally, having had ownership and responsibility of all aspects of technology from infrastructure to software with the cloud, this allows businesses to provision and to consume resources only as needed. Moving to the cloud can bring increased business, agility, and significant costs benefits.

Time to Give Something Back

Robert Hogg — Sat, 07 Nov 2020 23:08:00 +0000

Due to the unusual circumstances of 2020, the 15th Developer!Developer!Developer! Day will take place virtually. That means no catering or venue costs to meet, costs that are usually met via sponsorship, as we keep the cost of entry free. And I'll be covering any incidental costs incurred.

However, we are still looking for support and sponsors, with the aim of using the funds to support TNMOC (The National Museum of Computing) - it's a tough time for TNMOC right now, and they do such great work preserving our industry's heritage, we wanted to make sure we put something back. So if your organisation would normally sponsor DDD, please consider making a donation, it would be deeply appreciated. Or if you are a member of our community who wants to support the museum, please do so here: TNMOC.

The Return of Developer!Developer!Developer! for 2020!

Robert Hogg — Sat, 07 Nov 2020 16:45:15 +0000

DDD Logo

We had planned to run a DDD in October, but due to illness, this didn't happen (we are all well now, phew!). With Christmas so close, hadn't expected to have time to run a DDD, but with the world being as it is, we wanted to do something to bring some cheer to the Dev and IT community.

Therefore we are running DDD (virtually) on 12th December! We are still formalising the details, but wanted to get the message out there, and looking forward to all the submissions!

Back to blogging...

Robert Hogg — Sat, 07 Nov 2020 16:25:38 +0000

I have been wanting to return to this blog for some time, but a combination of things kept me busy. Not least of which, was a period of illness for me at the beginning of Spring, and for family at the start of September. All good now, and glad to be OK!

Plus, I've been keeping myself busy producing articles over on LinkedIn, as well writing a series of White Papers (6 down, more to come!), but I'll blog more about those over the next few days.

Getting my ThinkPad Active Pen working with my Lenovo X1 Carbon Extreme

Richard Fennell — Fri, 06 Nov 2020 15:38:02 +0000

I have had a ThinkPad Active Pen (model SD60G957200) ever since I got my Lenovo X1 Carbon Extreme.

The pen, when it works, has worked well. However, the problem has been that whether the pen and PC detected each other seemed very hit and miss.

Today I found the root cause. It was not drivers or dodgy Bluetooth as I had thought, but a weak spring inside the pen. It was not so weak that the battery rattled, but weak enough that the electrical circuit was not being closed reliably on the battery.

Black Marble BiteSize MVP Interview

Richard Fennell — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 09:40:23 +0000

https://www.youtube.com/embed/hU8gSpuPS-4

Using GitVersion when your default branch is not called 'master'

Richard Fennell — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 12:53:46 +0000

The Black Live Matter movement has engendered many conversations, hopefully starting changes for the good. Often these changes involve the use of language. One such change has been the move to stop using the name master and switching to the name main for the trunk/default branch in Git repos. This change is moving apace driven by tools such as GitHub and Azure DevOps .

I have recently had need, for the first time since swapping my default branch name in new repos to main, to use Semantic Version and the GitVersion tool.

How do handle PRs for Azure DevOps YAML Pipelines if the YAML templates are in a different repo?

Richard Fennell — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 12:11:24 +0000

Azure DevOps YAML base pipelines allow the pipeline definitions to be treated like any other code. So you make changes in a branch and PR them into the main/trunk when they are approved.

This works well if all the YAML files are in the same repo, but not so well if you are using YAML templates and the templated YAML is stored in a different repo. This is because an Azure DevOps PR is limited to a single repo. So testing a change to a YAML template in a different repo needs a bit of thought.

How can I automatically create Azure DevOps Release Notes and how can I publish them?

Richard Fennell — Tue, 15 Sep 2020 14:28:50 +0000

A question I am often asked when consulting on Azure DevOps is ‘how can I automatically create release notes and how can I publish them?’.

Well it is for just this requirement that I have written a set of Azure DevOps Pipeline Tasks

Release Note Generator - to generate release notes. I strongly recommend this Cross-platform Node-based version. I plan to deprecate my older PowerShell version in the not too distant future as it uses ‘homegrown logic’, as opposed to standard Azure DevOps API calls, to get associated items.
Wiki Updater - to upload a page tot a WIKI.
WIKI PDF Generator - to convert a generated page, or whole WIKI, to PDF format.

So lets deal with these tools in turn

Fix For: ‘The pipeline is not valid error: Unable to resolve latest version’ on an Azure DevOps YAML pipeline

Richard Fennell — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 15:54:52 +0000

The Issue

I have an Azure DevOps multi-stage YAML pipeline that started giving the error `The pipeline is not valid error: Unable to resolve latest version for pipeline templates: this could be due to inaccessible pipeline or no version is available` and failing instantly.

The Solution

This is not the most helpful message, but after some digging I found the problem.

The pipeline used another pipeline as a resources

Exporting Release Notes and WIKIs as PDFs using a new Azure DevOps Extension that wrappers AzureDevOps.WikiPDFExport

Richard Fennell — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 10:17:12 +0000

A common question I get when people are using my Release Notes task for Azure DevOps is whether it is possible to get the release notes as a PDF. In the past, the answer was that I did not know of any easy way. However, I have recently come across a command line tool by Max Melcher called AzureDevOps.WikiPDFExport that allows you to export a whole WIKI (or a single file) as a PDF. Its basic usage is

Using the Post Build Cleanup Task from the Marketplace in YAML based Azure DevOps Pipelines

Richard Fennell — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 14:58:39 +0000

Disks filling up on our private Azure DevOps agents is a constant battle. We have maintenance jobs setup on the agent pools, to clean out old build working folders nightly, but these don’t run often enough. We need a clean out more than once a day due to the number and size of our builds. To address this, with UI based builds, we successfully used the Post Build Cleanup Extension. However since we have moved many of our builds to YAML we found it not working so well. Turned out the problem was due to the way got source code. The Post Build Cleanup task is intelligent, it does not just delete folders on demand. It check to see what the Get Source ‘Clean’ setting was when the repo was cloned and bases what it deletes on this value e.g. nothing, source, or everything. This behaviour is not that obvious. In a UI based builds it is easy to check this setting. You are always in the UI when editing the build. However, in YAML it is easy to forget the setting, as it is one of those few values that cannot be set in YAML. To make the post build cleanup task actually delete folders in a YAML pipeline you need to

Zwift and the joys of home networking

Richard Fennell — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 09:10:55 +0000

During the Covid 19 lock down I have been doing plenty of Zwift'ing. However, I have started having problems getting the Zwift Companion App working reliably, when it used to work.

Basically, Zwift itself was fine, though very slow to save when exiting, but the companion app could not seem to detect that I was actively Zwift'ing, but it's other functions were OK.

After much fiddling I found the issue was the network connection from my PC up to Zwift and nothing to do with the phone app. But in case it is of any use to others here are the steps I took to

Bringing Stage based release notes in Multi-Stage YAML to my Cross Platform Release Notes Exension

Richard Fennell — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 13:21:12 +0000

I have just released Version 3.1.7 of my Azure DevOps Pipeline XplatGenerateReleaseNotes Extension.

This new version allows you to build release notes within a Multi-Stage YAML build since the last successful release to the current (or named) stage in the pipeline as opposed to just last fully successful build.

This gives more feature parity with the older UI based Releases functionality.

To enable this new feature you need to set the checkStage: true flag and potentially the overrideStageName: AnotherStage if you wish the comparison to compare against a stage other than the current one.

Timeout Errors 'Extracting Schema' when running SQLPackage for a Migration to Azure DevOps Services

Richard Fennell — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 09:39:25 +0000

The Problem

Whilst doing a migration from an on-premised TFS to Azure DevOps Services for a client I had a strange issue with SQLPackage.exe.

I had previously completed the dry run of the migration without any issues and started the live migration with a fully defined process and timings for a each stage.

When I came to export the detached Team Project Collection DB I ran the same command as I had for the dry run

Getting started with Aggregator CLI for Azure DevOps Work Item Roll-up

Richard Fennell — Fri, 12 Jun 2020 17:23:40 +0000

Updated 30/Sep/21 to reflect changes in the Aggregator CLI setup process Updated 27/Mar/22 to fix broken links

Background

Back in the day I wrote a tool, TFS Alerts DSL, to do Work Item roll-up for TFS. Overtime I updated this to support VSTS (as Azure DevOps was then called), it’s final version is still available in the Azure DevOps Marketplace as the Azure DevOps Service Hooks DSL. So when I recently had a need for Work Item roll-up I did consider using my own tool, just for a short while. However, I quickly realised a much better option was to use the Aggregator CLI.

How to do local template development for my Cross platform Release notes task

Richard Fennell — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 14:01:01 +0000

The testing cycle for Release Notes Templates can be slow, requiring a build and release cycle. To try to speed this process for users I have created a local test harness that allows the same calls to be made from a development machine as would be made within a build or release.

However, running this is not as simple was you might expect so please read the instruction before proceeding.

Setup and Build

Clone the repo contain the Azure DevOps Extension.

New feature for Cross Platform Release notes - get parent and child work items

Richard Fennell — Sat, 06 Jun 2020 17:44:02 +0000

I have added another new feature to my Cross Platform release note generator. Now, when using Handlebars based templates you can optionally get the parent or child work items for any work item associated with build/release

To enable the feature, as it is off by default, you need to set the getParentsAndChildren: true parameter for the task, either in YAML or in the handlebars section of the configuration.

This will add an extra array that the template can access relatedWorkItems. This contains all the work items associated with the build/release plus their direct parents and children. This can then be accessed in the template

And another new feature for my Cross Platform Release Notes Azure DevOps Task - commit/changeset file details

Richard Fennell — Wed, 20 May 2020 20:15:47 +0000

The addition of Handlebars based templating for my Cross Platform Release Notes Task has certainly made it much easier to release new features. The legacy templating model it seem is what had been holding development back.

In the past month or so I have added support for generating release notes based on PRs and Tests. I am now happy to say I have just added support for the actual files associated with a commit or changeset.

Another feature for my Cross Platform Release Notes Azure DevOps Extension–access to test results

Richard Fennell — Mon, 18 May 2020 13:20:16 +0000

Over the weekend I got another new feature for my Cross Platform Release Notes Azure DevOps Extension working. The test results associated with build artefacts or releases are now exposed to Handlebars based templates.

The new objects you can access are:

In builds
tests – all the test run as part of current build
In releases
tests – all the test run as part of any current build artefacts or previous to the running of the release notes task within a release environment

Running SonarQube for a .NET Core project in Azure DevOps YAML multi-stage pipelines

Richard Fennell — Mon, 11 May 2020 10:31:25 +0000

We have been looking migrating some of our common .NET Core libraries into new NuGet packages and have taken the chance to change our build process to use Azure DevOps Multi-stage Pipelines. Whilst doing this I hit a problem getting SonarQube analysis working, the documentation I found was a little confusing.

The Problem

As part of the YAML pipeline re-design we were moving away from building Visual Studio SLN solution files, and swapping to .NET Core command line for the build and testing of .CSproj files. Historically we had used the SonarQube Build Tasks that can be found in the Azure DevOps Marketplace to control SonarQube Analysis. However, if we used these tasks in the new YAML pipeline we quickly found that the SonarQube analysis failed saying it could find no projects ##[error]No analysable projects were found. SonarQube analysis will not be performed. Check the build summary report for details. So I next swapped to using use the SonarScanner for .NET Core, assuming the issue was down to not using .NET Core commands. This gave YAML as follows,``` - task: DotNetCoreCLI@2 displayName: 'Install Sonarscanner' inputs: command: 'custom' custom: 'tool' arguments: 'install --global dotnet-sonarscanner --version 4.9.0

Announcing the deprecation of my Azure DevOps Pester Extension as it has been migrated to the Pester Project and republished under a new ID

Richard Fennell — Sun, 03 May 2020 13:14:05 +0000

Back in early 2016 I wrote an Azure DevOps Extension to wrapper Pester, the Powershell unit testing tool. Over the years I updated it, and then passed the support of it over to someone who knows much more about Powershell and Pester than I Chris Gardner who continued to develop it.

With the advent of cross-platform Powershell Core we realized that the current extension implementation had a fundamental limitation. Azure DevOps Tasks can only be executed by the agent using the Windows version of Powershell or Node. There is no option for execution by Powershell Core, and probably never will be. As Pester is now supported by Powershell Core this was a serious limitation.

Fix for ‘System.BadImageFormatException’ when running x64 based tests inside a Azure DevOps Release

Richard Fennell — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 10:05:35 +0000

This is one of those blog posts I write to remind my future self how I fixed a problem.

The Problem

I have a release that installs VSTest and runs some integration tests that target .NET 4.6 x64. All these tests worked fine in Visual Studio. However, I got the following errors for all tests when they were run in a release

 12020-04-23T09:30:38.7544708Z vstest.console.exe "C:agent\_workr1aPaymentServicesdroptestartifactsPaymentService.IntegrationTests.dll"
 2
 32020-04-23T09:30:38.7545688Z /Settings:"C:agent\_work\_tempuxykzf03ik2.tmp.runsettings"
 4
 52020-04-23T09:30:38.7545808Z /Logger:"trx"
 6
 72020-04-23T09:30:38.7545937Z /TestAdapterPath:"C:agent\_workr1aPaymentServicesdroptestartifacts"
 8
 92020-04-23T09:30:39.2634578Z Starting test execution, please wait...
10
112020-04-23T09:30:39.4783658Z A total of 1 test files matched the specified pattern.
12
132020-04-23T09:30:40.8660112Z   X Can\_Get\_MIDs \[521ms\]
14
152020-04-23T09:30:40.8684249Z   Error Message:
16
172020-04-23T09:30:40.8684441Z    Test method PaymentServices.IntegrationTests.ControllerMIDTests.Can\_Get\_MIDs threw exception:
18
192020-04-23T09:30:40.8684574Z System.BadImageFormatException: Could not load file or assembly 'PaymentServices, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format.
20
212020-04-23T09:30:40.8684766Z   Stack Trace:
22
232020-04-23T09:30:40.8684881Z       at PaymentServices.IntegrationTests.ControllerMIDTests.Can\_Get\_MIDs()
24
25…
26
272020-04-23T09:30:40.9038788Z Results File: C:agent\_work\_tempTestResultssvc-devops\_SVRHQAPP027\_2020-04-23\_10\_30\_40.trx
28
292020-04-23T09:30:40.9080344Z Total tests: 22
30
312020-04-23T09:30:40.9082348Z      Failed: 22
32
332020-04-23T09:30:40.9134858Z ##\[error\]Test Run Failed.

Solution

I needed to tell vstest.console.exe to run x64 as opposed to it’s default of x32. This can be done with a command line override –platform:x64

I decided to create a video of my blog post on Multistage YAML pipelines

Richard Fennell — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 11:42:48 +0000

I decided to create a video of my blog post ‘Swapping my Azure DevOps Pipeline Extensions release process to use Multistage YAML pipelines’.

[iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WMQ0G9eXczE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture"]

The video up on YouTube

And more enriching the data available in my Azure DevOps Pipelines Cross Platform Release Notes Task

Richard Fennell — Tue, 21 Apr 2020 16:42:46 +0000

I have today released another enrichment to the dataset available in my Cross Platform Release Notes Azure Pipeline Task. It now returns an extra array of data that links work items and commits to build artifacts.

So your reporting objects are:

Array Objects

workItems – the array of all work item associated with the release
commits – the array of all commits associated with the release
pullRequests - the array of all PRs referenced by the commits in the release

Further enriching the data available in my Azure DevOps Pipelines Cross Platform Release Notes Task

Richard Fennell — Wed, 15 Apr 2020 16:01:57 +0000

I recently post about Enriching the data available in my Azure DevOps Pipelines Cross Platform Release Notes Task by adding Pull Request information. Well, that first release was fairly limited only working for PR validation builds, so I have made more improvements and shipped a newer version.

The task now will, as well as checking for PR build trigger, try to associate the commits associated with a build/release pipeline to any completed PRs in the repo. This is done using the Last Merge Commit ID, and from my tests seems to work for the various types of PR e.g. squash, merge, rebased and semi-linear.

Swapping my Azure DevOps Pipeline Extensions release process to use Multistage YAML pipelines

Richard Fennell — Tue, 07 Apr 2020 10:55:34 +0000

In the past I have documented the build and release process I use for my Azure DevOps Pipeline Extensions and also detailed how I have started to move the build phases to YAML.

Well now I consider that multistage YAML pipelines are mature enough to allow me to do my whole release pipeline in YAML, hence this post.

My pipeline performs a number of stages, you can find a sample pipeline here. Note that I have made every effort to extract variables into variable groups to aid reuse of the pipeline definition. I have added documentation as to where variable are stored and what they are used for.

My Azure DevOps Pipeline is not triggering on a GitHub Pull request - fixed

Richard Fennell — Tue, 07 Apr 2020 09:41:06 +0000

I have recently hit a problem that some of my Azure DevOps YAML pipelines, that I use to build my Azure DevOps Pipeline Extensions, are not triggering on a new PR being created on GitHub.

I did not get to the bottom of why this is happening, but I found a fix.

Check and of make a note of any UI declared variables in your Azure DevOps YAML Pipeline that is not triggering
Delete the pipeline
Re-add the pipeline, linking to the YAML file hosted on GitHub. You might be asked to re-authorise the link between Azure DevOps Pipelines and GitHub.
Re-enter any variables that are declared via the Pipelines UI and save the changes

Your pipeline should start to be triggered again

Enriching the data available in my Azure DevOps Pipelines Cross Platform Release Notes Task

Richard Fennell — Sat, 04 Apr 2020 12:06:01 +0000

A common request for my Generate Release Notes Tasks is to enrich the data available beyond basic build, work item and commit/changeset details. I have resisted these requests as it felt like a never ending journey to start. However, I have now relented and added the option to see any pull request information available.

This feature is limited, you obviously have to be using artifacts that linked to a Git repo, and also the Git repo have to on an Azure DevOps hosted repository. This won’t meet everyone’s needs but it is a start.

Experiences setting up Azure Active Directory single sign-on (SSO) integration with GitHub Enterprise

Richard Fennell — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 16:29:34 +0000

Background

GitHub is a great system for individuals and OSS communities for both public and private project. However, corporate customers commonly want more control over their system than the standard GitHub offering. It is for this reason GitHub offers GitHub Enterprise.

For most corporates, the essential feature that GitHub Enterprise offers is the use Single Sign On (SSO) i.e. allowing users to login to GitHub using their corporate directory accounts.

I wanted to see how easy this was to setup when you are using Azure Active Directory (AAD).

A major new feature for my Cross-platform Release Notes Azure DevOps Pipelines Extension–Handlebars Templating Support

Richard Fennell — Wed, 11 Mar 2020 11:48:39 +0000

I recently got a very interesting PR for my Cross-platform Release Notes Azure DevOps Pipelines Extension from Kenneth Scott. He had added a new templating engine to the task, Handlebars.

Previous to this PR the templating in the task was done with a line by line evaluation of a template that used my own mark-up. This method worked but has limitations, mostly due to the line by line evaluation model. With the Kenneth’s PR the option was added to write your templates in Handlebars, or stay with my previous templating engine.

Where did all my test results go?

Richard Fennell — Thu, 05 Mar 2020 13:57:27 +0000

Problem

I recently tripped myself up whist adding SonarQube analysis to a rather complex Azure DevOps build.

The build has two VsTest steps, both were using the same folder for their test result files. When the first VsTest task ran it created the expected .TRX and .COVERAGE files and then published its results to Azure DevOps, but when the second VsTest task ran it over wrote this folder, deleting the files already present, before it generated and published it results.

You need to pass a GitHub PAT to create Azure DevOps Agent Images using Packer

Richard Fennell — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 11:52:03 +0000

I wrote recently about Creating Hyper-V hosted Azure DevOps Private Agents based on the same VM images as used by Microsoft for their Hosted Agent.

As discussed in that post, using this model you will recreate your build agent VMs on a regular basis, as opposed to patching them. When I came to do this recently I found that the Packer image generation was failing with errors related to accessing packages.

Registration is open for the Global DevOps Bootcamp 2020 @ Black Marble

Richard Fennell — Sat, 01 Feb 2020 14:54:10 +0000

I am really pleased to say that we at Black Marble are again hosting a venue for this year’s edition of the Global DevOps Bootcamp on Saturday May 30th 2020.

For those who have not been to a previous GDBC event at Black Marble, or any of the other 70+ venues across the work, what can you expect on the day?

A video keynote from an Industry Leader in the DevOps field
A local keynote developing the topics of the bootcamp
The remainder of the day is made up of team based hands on exercises.

Lat years content can be seen here, this years will be all new.

Visual Studio Online is back and it is an editor this time!

Richard Fennell — Fri, 17 Jan 2020 10:07:17 +0000

Visual Studio Online is back. Unlike the previous usage of this name, which was an incarnation of what is now Azure DevOps Services, this is actually an editor for code. Just like you might expect it to be!

The new VSO, which is currently in preview, is a service running in Azure that allows you to in effect run Visual Studio Code on a Linux VM.

Once you have signed into VSO with an MSA and it has created the required Resource Group and VSO Plan in your Azure subscription, you create one or more ‘environments’ that defines the size of the VM to use and which GitHub hosted repo the environment will edit.

A technique for porting PowerShell based Azure DevOps Extensions to Node so they can be run cross-platform without a complete re-write

Richard Fennell — Sat, 28 Dec 2019 16:11:29 +0000

Background

I've written a good few extensions for Azure DevOps Services. Most of the early ones I wrote were written in PowerShell, but of late I have tended to use Typescript (targeting Node.JS) for the added cross-platform support.

This has led me to consider if it was worth the effort to convert all my legacy extensions to support cross-platform usage?

This is of course assuming the tasks the extension contains are useful on a non-Window platform. There is no point porting a Windows only tool away from PowerShell.

Creating Hyper-V hosted Azure DevOps Private Agents based on the same VM images as used by Microsoft for their Hosted Agents

Richard Fennell — Sat, 21 Dec 2019 15:36:00 +0000

Introduction

There are times when you need to run Private Azure DevOps agents as opposed to using one of the hosted ones provided by Microsoft. This could be for a variety of reasons, including needing to access resources inside your corporate network or needing to have a special hardware specification or set of software installed on the agent.

If using such private agents, you really need to have an easy way to provision them. This is so that all your agents are standardised and easily re-creatable. Firstly you don’t want build agents with software on them you can’t remember installing or patching. This is just another form of the “works on one developer’s machine but not another” problem. Also if you have the means to replace the agents very regularly and reliably you can avoid the need to patch them; you can just replace them with newer VMs created off latest patched base Operating System images and software releases.

A fix for Lability ‘Datafile not found’ error

Richard Fennell — Sat, 07 Dec 2019 15:36:05 +0000

Issue

I have been busy automating the provision of our private Azure DevOps Agents using Packer and Lability; a more details blog post is on the way. All has been going OK on my test rig, but when came to run the automation pipeline on our main build HyperV host I got an error

> Get-VmcConfigurationData : Datafile EnvironmentsBuildAgent-VS2017BuildAgent-VS2017.psd1 NOT FOUND. Exiting

But the file was there!

I check the default Lability paths, but all these looked OK, and none pointed to my environment location on C: anyway

Major enhancements to my Azure DevOps Cross Platform Release Notes Extension

Richard Fennell — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 10:16:19 +0000

Over the past few days I have published two major enhancements to my Azure DevOps Cross Platform Release Notes Extension.

Added Support for Builds

Prior to version 2.17.x this extension could only be used in Releases. This was because it used Release specific calls provided in the Microsoft API to work out the work items and changesets/commits associated with the Release. This is unlike my older PowerShell based Release Notes Extension which was initially developed for Builds and only later enhanced to work in Releases, but achieved this using my own logic to iterate across Builds associated with Releases to work out the associations. With the advent of YAML multistage Pipelines the difference between a Build and a Release is blurring, so I thought it high time to add Build support to my Cross Platform Release Notes Extension. Which it now does.

Cannot queue a new build on Azure DevOps Server 2019.1 due to the way a SQL cluster was setup

Richard Fennell — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 19:24:13 +0000

I have recently been doing a TFS 2015 to Azure DevOps Server 2019.1 upgrade for a client. The first for a while, I have been working with Azure DevOps Service mostly of late. Anyway I saw an issue I had never seen before with any version of TFS, and I could find no information on the Internet.

The Problem

The error occurred when I tried to queue a new build after the upgrade, the build instantly failed with the error

Release of my video on 'Introduction to GitHub Actions'

Richard Fennell — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 11:45:26 +0000

I recently posted on my initial experiences with GitHub Actions. I had hoped to deliver a session on this subject a DDD 14 in Reading , I even got so far as to propose a session.

However, life happened and I found I could not make it to the event. So I decided to do the next best thing and recorded a video of the session. I event went as far as to try to get the 'DDD event feel' by recording in front of a 'live audience' at Black Marble's offices.

A first look at GitHub Action - converting my Azure DevOps tasks to GitHub Actions

Richard Fennell — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 21:17:48 +0000

Introduction

GitHub Actions open up an interesting new way to provide CI/CD automation for your GitHub projects, other than the historic options of Jenkins, Bamboo, Team City, Azure DevOps Pipelines etc. No longer do you have to leave the realm of GitHub to create a powerful CI/CD process or provision a separate system.

For people familiar with Azure DevOps YAML based Pipelines you will notice some common concepts in GitHub Actions. However, GitHub Action’s YAML syntax is different and Actions are not Tasks.You can’t just re-use your old Azure DevOps tasks.

Strange issue with multiple calls to the same REST WebClient in PowerShell

Richard Fennell — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 11:56:05 +0000

Hit a strange problem today trying to do a simple Work Item update via the Azure DevOps REST API.

To do a WI update you need to call the REST API

Using the verb PATCH
With the Header “Content-Type” set to “application/json-patch+json”
Include in the Body the current WI update revision (to make sure you are updating the current version)

So the first step is to get the current WI values to find the current revision.

Authentication loops swapping organisations in Azure DevOps

Richard Fennell — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 11:04:36 +0000

I have recently been getting a problem swapping between different organisations in Azure DevOps. It happens when I swap between Black Mable ones and customer ones, where each is back by different Azure Active Directory (AAD) but I am using the same credentials; because I am either a member of that AAD or a guest.

The problem is I get into an authentication loop. It happens to be in Chrome, but you might find the same problem in other browsers.

You can’t use Azure DevOps Pipeline Gates to check services behind a firewall

Richard Fennell — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 19:55:52 +0000

I have recently be working on a release pipeline that deploys to a server behind a corporate firewall. This is done using an Azure DevOps private build agent and works fine.

As the service is a basic REST service and takes a bit of time to start-up I though a gate was a perfect way to pause the release pipeline until service was ready for the automated tests.

However, I hit a problem, the gates always failed as the internal server could not be resolved.

Review of 'Azure DevOps Server 2019 Cookbook' - well worth getting

Richard Fennell — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 08:07:22 +0000

It always amazes me that people find time to write tech books whilst having a full time job. So given the effort I know it will have been, it is great to see an update to Tarun Arora and Utkarsh Sigihalli's book 'Azure DevOps Server 2019 Cookbook'. I do like their format of ‘recipes’ that walk through common requirements. I find it particularly interesting that for virtually each recipes there is an associated Azure DevOps Extension that enhances the experience. It speaks well of the research the authors have done and the richness and variety of the 3rd party extensions in the Azure DevOps Marketplaces I think because of this format there is something in this book for everyone, whether new to Azure DevOps Server 2019 or someone who has been around the product since the days of TFS 2005. In my opinion, it is well worth having a copy on your shelf, whether physical or virtual

Azure DevOps Repos branch build policies not triggering when expected in PRs - Solved

Richard Fennell — Thu, 23 May 2019 15:01:36 +0000

I recently hit a problem with builds triggered by branch policies in Azure DevOps Repos. With the help of Microsoft I found out the problem and I thought it worth writing up uncase others hit the issue.

Setup

Folders

Assume you have a Git repo with source for the UI, backend Services and common code in sub folders

/ [root]
     UI
     Services
     Common

Branch Policies

On the Master branch there are a policies of running

Regex issues in Node

Richard Fennell — Thu, 23 May 2019 13:13:17 +0000

I have been trying to use Regex to select a block of an XML based .NET Core CSPROJ file, and yes before you say know I could use XPATH, but why am not is another story.

I was trying to use the Regex

1content.match(/<PropertyGroup>((.|n)\*)</PropertyGroup>/gmi)

The strange thing was this selection string worked in online Regex testers and in online Javascript IDEs, but failed inside my Node based Azure DevOps Pipeline extension.

A fix for Error: SignerSign() failed." (-2146958839/0x80080209) with SignTool.exe

Richard Fennell — Tue, 30 Apr 2019 15:56:21 +0000

I have spent too long recently trying to sign a UWP .MSIXBUNDLE generated from an Azure DevOps build using the SignTool.exe and our code signing certificate. I kept getting the error

1Done Adding Additional Store
2Error information: "Error: SignerSign() failed." (-2146958839/0x80080209)

From past experience, SignTool errors are usually due to the publisher details in the XML manifest files (in this case unpack the bundle with MakeAppx.exe and look in AppxMetadataAppxBundleManifest.xml, and also check the manifest in the bundled .MSIX files) does not match the subject details for the PFX file being used for signing.

Migrating a GUI based build to YAML in Azure DevOps Pipelines

Richard Fennell — Fri, 26 Apr 2019 14:02:57 +0000

Introduction

I use Azure DevOps Pipelines for the build and release of my Azure DevOps Pipeline extensions, I previously detailed my process here .

For a good few months now YAML builds have been available. These provide the key advantage that the build is defined in a YAML text file that is stored with your product’s source code, thus allowing you to more easily track build changes. Also bulk editing becomes easier as a simple text editor can be used.

DDD North is Go

Robert Hogg — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 21:42:39 +0000

I am super happy to announce that DDD North 2019 is Go.

Apologies for the slight false start but DDD North 2019 will be hosted in the fair city of Hull at the University of Hull on the 2nd of March

Submissions for sessions is open now on the DDDNorth site http://www.dddnorth.co.uk/

Please submit a session and build an amazing developer day

A task for documenting your Azure DevOps Pipeline extensions for YAML usage

Richard Fennell — Tue, 18 Dec 2018 22:13:32 +0000

I have posted in the past a quick script to generate some markdown documentation for the YAML usage of Azure DevOps Pipeline extensions. Well I decided that having this script as a task itself would be a good idea, so a wrote it, and please to say have just release it to the marketplace

The YAML Documenter task scans an extension’s vss-extension.json and task.json files to find the details it needs to build the markdown documentation on the YAML usage. It can also, optionally, copy the extension’s readme.md as the extensions primary documentation.

Programmatically adding User Capabilities to Azure DevOps Agents

Richard Fennell — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 14:56:58 +0000

I am automating the process by which we keep our build agent up to date. The basic process is to use a fork of the standard Microsoft Azure DevOps Pipeline agent that has the additional code included we need, notably Biztalk. Once I have the Packer created VM up and running, I need to install the agent. This is well document, just run _.config.cmd –help _for details. However, there is no option to add user capabilities to the agent. I know I could set them via environment variables, but I don’t want the same user capabilities on each agent on a VM (we use multiple agents on a single VM). There was no documented Azure DevOps API I could find to add capabilities, but a bit of hacking around with Chrome Dev tools and Postman got me a solution, which I have provided a

Azure Pipeline YAML support on VSCode

Richard Fennell — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 12:45:48 +0000

A major problem when moving from the graphic editing of Azure Pipeline builds to YAML has been the difficulty in knowing the options available, and of course making typos.

Microsoft have just released a VSCode extension to help address this problem – it is called Azure Pipelines

I have yet to give it a really good workout, but first impressions are good.

It does not remove the need for good documentation of task options, there is a need for my script to generate YAML documentation from a task.json file, but anything extra to ease editing helps.

Keeping Azure DevOps organisations inherited process templates in sync

Richard Fennell — Thu, 29 Nov 2018 17:27:00 +0000

The problem

If you are like me for historic reasons you have multiple Azure DevOps organisations (instances) backed by the same Azure Active Directory (AAD). In my case for example: one was created when Azure DevOps was first released as TFSPreview.com and another is from our migration from on-prem TFS using the DB Migration Tools method; and I have others. I make active use of all of these for different purposes, though one is primary with the majority of work done on it, and so I want to make sure the inherited process templates are the same on each of them. Using the primary organisation as the master customisation. Note I have already converted all my old on-premises XML process models to inherited process templates. There is no out the box way to do keep processes in syncs, but it is possible using a few tools. The main one is the Microsoft Process Migrator for Node on GitHub.

DPI problems after upgrading from Camtasia 8 to 2018

Richard Fennell — Mon, 26 Nov 2018 14:18:06 +0000

This is another of those posts I do so I don’t forget how I fixed something.

I have a requirement to record videos for a client in 720p resolution. As I use as SurfaceBook with a High-Res screen I have found the best way to do this is set my Windows screen resolution to 1280x720 and do all my recording at this as native resolution. Any attempt to record smaller portions of a screen or scale video in production have lead to quality problems, especially as remote desktops within remote desktops are required.

Just released a new Azure Pipelines Extension to update Git based WIKIs

Richard Fennell — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 10:18:18 +0000

I have just release a new Azure DevOps Pipelines extension to update a page in a Git based WIKI.

It has been tested again

Azure DevOps WIKI – running as the build agent (so the same Team Project)
Azure DevOps WIKI – using provided credentials (so any Team Project)
GitHub – using provided credentials

It takes a string (markdown) input and writes it to a new page, or updates it if it already exists. It is designed to be used with my Generate Release Notes Extension, but you will no doubt find other uses

DDD North is Coming

Robert Hogg — Tue, 06 Nov 2018 10:51:26 +0000

I am super happy to announce that DDD North is set to appear on February the 9th in the Sunny Northern City of Hull

The Amazing people at Hull University have arranged the venue and we will be shortly announcing call for sessions and dates for ticket availability.

We had hoped to have DDD this side of Christmas but with such a great opportunity available we felt we could wait a bit

Azure DevOps Services & Server Alerts DSL - an alternative to TFS Aggregator?

Richard Fennell — Tue, 30 Oct 2018 21:10:59 +0000

Whilst listening to a recent Radio TFS it was mentioned that TFS Aggregator uses the C# SOAP based Azure DevOps APIs; hence needed a major re-write as these APIs are being deprecated.

Did you know that there was a REST API alternative to TFS Aggregator?

My Azure DevOps Services & Server Alerts DSL is out there, and has been for a while, but I don’t think used by many people. It aims to do the same as TFS Aggregator, but is based around Python scripting.

YAML documentation for my Azure Pipeline Tasks (and how I generated it)

Richard Fennell — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 16:42:27 +0000

There is a general move in Azure DevOps Pipelines to using YAML, as opposed to the designer, to define your pipelines. This is particularly enforced when using them via the new GitHub Marketplace Azure Pipelines method where YAML appears to be the only option.

This has shown up a hole in my Pipeline Tasks documentation, I had nothing on YAML!

So I have added a YAML usage page for each set of tasks in each of my extensions e.g the file utilities tasks.

Microsoft post root cause analysis on recent Azure DevOps Issues

Richard Fennell — Wed, 17 Oct 2018 10:34:32 +0000

Azure DevOps has had some serious issue over the past couple of weeks with availability here in Europe.

A really good open and detailed root cause analysis has just been posted by the Azure DevOps team at Microsoft. It also covers the mitigations they are putting place to make sure this same issues do not occur again.

We all have to remember that the cloud is not magic. Cloud service providers will have problems like any on-premise services; but trying to hide them does nothing to build confidence. So I for one applaud posts like this. I just wish all cloud service providers were as open when problem occur.

Using Paths in PR Triggers on an Azure DevOps Pipelines Builds

Richard Fennell — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 19:49:08 +0000

When I started creating OSS extensions for Azure DevOps Pipelines (starting on TFSPreview, then VSO, then VSTS and now named Azure DevOps) I made the mistake of putting all my extensions in a single GitHub repo. I thought this would make life easier, I was wrong, it should have been a repo per extension.

I have considered splitting the GitHub repo, but as a number of people have forked it, over 100 at the last count, I did not want to start a chain of chaos for loads of people.

Registration open for free Black Marble events on modern process adoption using the cloud

Richard Fennell — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 16:41:50 +0000

Registration for the new season of Black Marble events have just been opened. If you can make it to Yorkshire why not come to an event (or two)

Azure DevOps: So VSTS has Changed - 24 Oct 2018
Next Generation Business Productivity with Office 365 and Teams - 25 Oct 2018
Moving your Development Process to the Cloud with Azure DevOps - 14 Nov 2018
Modernising Enterprise Information Architecture - 21 Nov 2018
Next Generation Business Productivity with Office 365 and Teams - 05 Dec 2018
Architecture Forum in the North – 11 - 12 Dec 2018
Moving your Development Process to the Cloud with Azure DevOps -16 Jan 2019

If you are stuck in the grim south, why not look out for us at Future Decoded in London at the end of the month

Deploying the ASDK for effective development use

Rik Hepworth — Sat, 22 Sep 2018 14:41:45 +0000

Microsoft Azure Stack is a truly unique beast in terms of the capabilities it can bring to an organisation, and the efficiencies it can bring to a project that spans Public Cloud and on-premises infrastructure through it’s consistency with public Azure.

We’ve been using Stack in anger for a customer project for a year now and have learned several things about development and testing, and how to configure the ASDK to be an effective tool to support the project. This post will summarise those learnings and how I deploy the ASDK so you may mirror our approach for your own projects.

TFS 2018 Update 3 Released

Richard Fennell — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 13:15:07 +0000

Whilst I was off work last week TFS 2018 Update 3 was released. As stated in the 2018.3 release notes this is the final bug fix update release of TFS 2018.

The next major release of TFS will not be named TFS 2019 as you might have expected, but will use the new name of Azure DevOps Server. You can see the features planned for this next release in the Azure DevOps Features Timeline

Postmortem published by the Microsoft VSTS Team on last week's Azure outage

Richard Fennell — Tue, 11 Sep 2018 07:40:58 +0000

The Azure DevOps (VSTS) team have published the promised postmortem on the outage on the 4th of September. It gives good detail on what actually happened to the South Central Azure Datacenter and how it effected VSTS (as it was then called). More interestingly it provides a discussion of mitigations they plan to put in place to stop a single datacentre failure having such a serious effect in the future. Great openness as always from the team

VSTS becomes Azure DevOps

Richard Fennell — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 15:49:11 +0000

Today Microsoft made a big announcement, VSTS is now Azure DevOps. The big change is they have split VSTS into 5 services you can use together or independently, including Azure Pipelines for CI/CD - free for open source and available in the GitHub CI marketplace. An important thing to note is that IT IS NOT JUST FOR AZURE. Don't be afraid of the name. There a wide range of connectors to other cloud providers such as AWS and Google Cloud, as will as many other DevOps tools Learn more at have a look at the official post

Videos do not play in VSTS WIKI via relative links - workaround

Richard Fennell — Fri, 31 Aug 2018 12:01:54 +0000

The Problem

The documentation for the VSTS WIKI suggests you can embed a video in a VSTS WIKI using the markdown/HTML```

Problem is that this does not seem to work, the MP4 just does not appear, you get an empty video player. However, if you swap to a full URL it does work e.g.

1
2### The Workaround
3
4The workaround is to either place the MP4 file in some URL accessible location e.g. some Azure web space (not really addressing the problem), or more usefully use the [VSTS API to get the file](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/vsts/git/items/get?view=vsts-rest-4.1) out the repo that backs the WIKI. The format of the HTML tag becomes```
5<video src="https://vstsinstance.visualstudio.com/MyTeamProject/\_apis/git/repositories/MyTeamProject.wiki/Items?path=\_media%2Fvstswiki\_high.mp4 width=400" controls>
6</video>
7```This will get the current version of the file on default branch, you can add extra parameters to to specify versions and branches if required as per the [API documentation](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/vsts/git/?view=vsts-rest-4.1). So not a perfect solution as you have to think about branches and versions, they are not handled automatically, but at least it does work

Configure Server 2016 ADFS and WAP with custom ports using Powershell

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 24 Aug 2018 10:59:11 +0000

A pull request for Chris Gardner's WebApplicationProxyDSC is now inbound after a frustrating week of trying to automate the configuration of ADFS and WAP on a Server 2016 lab. With Server 2016, the PowerShell commands to configure the ADFS and WAP servers include switches to specify a non-default port. I need to do this because the servers are behind a NetNat on a server hosting several labs, so port 443 is not available to me and I must use a different port. This should be simple: Specify the SSLPort switch on the Install-ADFSFarm command and the HttpsPort on the Install-WebApplicationProxy command. However, when I do that, the WAP configuration fails with an error that it cannot read the FederationMetadata from the proxy. I tried all manner of things to diagnose why this was failing and in the end, the fix is a crazy hack that should not work! The proxy installation, despite accepting the custom port parameter, does not build the URLs correctly for the ADFS service, so is still trying to call port 443. You can set these URLs on a configured WAP service using the Set-WebApplicationProxyConfiguration command. However, when you run this command with no configured proxy, it fails. Or so you think... On the ADFS Server:

Registering an agent with VSTS and getting the message "Agent pool not found"

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 20:58:06 +0000

When you want to register a build agent with VSTS, you use the VSTS instance’s URL and a user’s Personal Access Token (PAT). Whilst doing this today I connected to the VSTS instance OK but got the error "Agent pool not found".when I was asked to pick the agent pool to add the new agent to.

As the user who’s PAT I was using was a Build Administrator I was a bit confused, but then I remembered to check their user access level. It was set to Stakeholder, once this was changed to Basic I was able to register the agent without use.

Experiences migrating TFS XML Team Project Templates to Inherited Team Project Templates

Richard Fennell — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 20:20:30 +0000

You have always been able to customise your Team Projects in TFS, by editing a host of XML files, but it was not a pleasant experience. In VSTS a far more pleasant to use web based inherited customisation model was added, much to, I think, most administrators relief.

If you used the TFS DB migration service you ended up with a VSTS instance full of the the XML style team projects, and you were stuck there, with no way to change these to the new inherited mode, that is until now as Microsoft have released to preview a conversion tool.

Hello sign in does not work on my first generation Surface Book after a rebuild - fixed

Richard Fennell — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 16:13:11 +0000

I have just rebuilt my first generation Surface Book from our company standard Windows image. These images are used by all our staff all the time without issue (on Surface and Lenovo devices), so I was not expecting any problems.

I used to rebuild my PC every 6 months or so, but got out the habit when I moved to a model I could not swap the hard drive out of as backup during the process (using a new disk for new install). I got around this by using Disk2VHD, not quite as good as I can’t just swap the disk back in, but I won’t have lost any stray files, even though I always aim to keep data in OneDrive, Source Control or SharePoint, so it should not been an issue anyway.

Getting Remote Desktop Manager 2.7 working sanely with mixed high DPI screens

Richard Fennell — Fri, 08 Jun 2018 10:00:52 +0000

Updated 3 July 2018 - A colleague, Andy Davidson, suggested mRemoteNG as an alternative tool to this address this issue. mRemoteNG also has the advantage that it support most major remoting technologies not just RDP, so I am giving that a try for a while. This is one of those post I do mostly for myself so I don’t forget how I did something, it is all based on answers on SuperUser.Com, I can claim no credit I have a SurfaceBook (first generation) and when I am in the office it is linked to an external monitor, with a different lower DPI, via a dock. If I use Remote Desktop (MSTSC) as built into Windows 10, I can drag sessions between the two monitors and the DPI shift is handled OK. However, if I use my preferred tool Remote Desktop Manager 2.7 (as it allow me to store all my commonly used RDP settings) I am in DPI hell. I either get huge fonts or microscopic ones. This is bad whether working on the single high DPI laptop screen work with an external screen. As the SuperUser.Com post states the answer is to change the compatibility settings for the manager by right clicking on the file "C:Program Files (x86)MicrosoftRemote Desktop Connection ManagerRDCMan.exe", selecting compatibility, change high DPI settings, and unchecking high DPI setting override Once this was done, I have readable resolutions on all screens. Why did I not do a better search months ago?

A workaround for the error ‘TF14061: The workspace ws_1_18;Project Collection Build Service does not exist’ when mapping a TFVC workspace

Richard Fennell — Wed, 30 May 2018 12:17:30 +0000

Whilst writing some training material for VSTS I hit a problem creating a TFVC workspace. I was using VS2017, linking a TFVC Repo to a local folder. I was connecting to the VSTS instance using an MSA.

In Team Explorer, when I came to do a ‘Map & Get’ to map the source locations I got a ‘TF14061: The workspace ws_1_18;Project Collection Build Service does not exist’ error

Still a few spaces left at the Yorkshire Global DevOps BootCamp Venue hosted at Black Marble

Richard Fennell — Fri, 25 May 2018 14:54:08 +0000

There are still a few spaces left at the Yorkshire Global DevOps BootCamp Venue hosted at Black Marble Come and learn about all things cool in DevOps, including

Video keynote by Microsoft
Local keynote: Breaking down the Monolith
Hackathon/HandsOn DevOps challenges. The hands-on part with be based on a common application where we try to solve as many challenges as possible, including ideas like
- How to containerize an existing application
- How to add telemetry (app insights) to the application and gather hypothesis information
- How to use telemetry to monitor availability
- How to use feature toggles to move application into production without disrupting end users
- How to use release gates
- How to make DB schema changes
- Use Blue Green Deployments

And there is free lunch too! To register click here

Where do I put my testing effort?

Richard Fennell — Thu, 17 May 2018 20:28:40 +0000

In the past I have blog on the subject of using advanced unit test mocking tools to ‘mock the unmockable’. It is an interesting question to revisit; how important today are units tests where this form of complex mocking is required?

Of late I have certainly seen a bit of a move towards using more functional style tests; still using unit test frameworks, but relying on APIs as access points with real backend systems such as DBs and WebServices being deployed as test environments.

Making sure when you use VSTS build numbers to version Android Packages they can be uploaded to the Google Play Store

Richard Fennell — Sat, 12 May 2018 15:13:38 +0000

Background

I have a VSTS build extension that can apply a VSTS generated build number to Android APK packages. This takes a VSTS build number and generates, and applies, the Version Name (a string) and Version Code (an integer) to the APK file manifest.

The default parameters mean that the behaviour of this task is to assume (using a regular expression) the VSTS build number has at least three fields major.minor.patch e.g. 1.2.3, and uses the 1.2 as the Version Name and the 3 as the Version Code.

Extending the DDD 13 Deadline to 16 May!

Robert Hogg — Tue, 08 May 2018 19:57:44 +0000

So as there has been some issues with submission, and because we are still keen to drive some Designer sessions to DDD 13, we have decided to extend the submission deadline for 1 week, to the 16th May. Please take this opportunity to get some great content in there, so we can build the best DDD we can. Submit here: http://developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/Sessions

DDD Submission Issues

Robert Hogg — Sun, 29 Apr 2018 19:28:21 +0000

Some people have reported issues submitting sessions for DDD. if you do have a problem, please tweet us a message and we will get in touch

DDD is coming up fast: things you might want to know

Robert Hogg — Sun, 29 Apr 2018 19:25:29 +0000

DDD is winging its way to Reading in June, We already have some great sessions submitted but it would be great to get even more. If you have something to say we would love to hear it.

Also we are still looking for designer orientated sessions.

If you are a new speaker let us know and we are trying to get some speaker mentoring and presentation training organised before the event to help you shine on the day.

Major new release of my VSTS Cross Platform Extension to build Release Notes

Richard Fennell — Fri, 27 Apr 2018 13:18:31 +0000

Today I have released a major new release, V2, of my VSTS Cross Platform Extension to build release notes. This new version is all down to the efforts of Greg Pakes who has completely re-written the task to use newer VSTS APIs.

A minor issue is that this re-write has introduced a couple of breaking changes, as detailed below and on the project wiki

oAuth script access has to be enabled on the agent running the task

Backing up your TFVC and Git Source from VSTS

Richard Fennell — Fri, 20 Apr 2018 12:49:08 +0000

The Issue

Azure is a highly resilient service, and VSTS has excellent SLAs. However, a question that is often asked is ‘How do I backup my VSTS instance?’. The simple answer is you don’t. Microsoft handle keeping the instance up, patched and serviceable. Hence, there is no built in means for you to get a local copy of all your source code, work items or CI/CD definitions. Though there have been requests for such a service. This can be an issue for some organisations, particularly for source control, where there can be a need to have a way to keep a private copy of source code for escrow, DR or similar purposes.

Opps, I made that test VSTS extension public by mistake, what do I do now?

Richard Fennell — Sat, 14 Apr 2018 13:50:55 +0000

I recently, whilst changing a CI/CD release pipeline, updated what was previously a private version of a VSTS extension in the VSTS Marketplace with a version of the VSIX package set to be public.

Note, in my CI/CD process I have a private and public version of each extension (set of tasks), the former is used for functional testing within the CD process, the latter is the one everyone can see.

So, this meant I had two public versions of the same extension, confusing.

Fix for 2755 and 1632 ‘The Temp folder is on a drive that is full or is inaccessible’ errors

Richard Fennell — Wed, 21 Mar 2018 17:01:00 +0000

Whilst trying to install an MSI package we kept getting the errors 2755 and 1632 ‘The Temp folder is on a drive that is full or is inaccessible’.

After much fiddling we found the problem was that the %systemroot%installer folder was missing. Once this was manually re-added the MSIs installed without a problem. The actual TEMP folder setting was a red herring

Using VSTS Gates to help improve my deployment pipeline of VSTS Extensions to the Visual Studio Marketplace

Richard Fennell — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 11:30:43 +0000

My existing VSTS CI/CD process has a problem that the deployment of a VSTS extension, from the moment it is uploaded to when it’s tasks are available to a build agent, is not instantiation. The process can potentially take a few minutes to roll out. The problem this delay causes is a perfect candidate for using VSTS Release Gates; using the gate to make sure the expected version of a task is available to an agent before running the next stage of the CD pipeline e.g waiting after deploying a private build of an extension before trying to run functional tests. The problem is how to achieve this with the current VSTS gate options?

Fixing a ‘git-lfs filter-process: gif-lfs: command not found’ error in Visual Studio 2017

Richard Fennell — Fri, 09 Mar 2018 12:02:17 +0000

I am currently looking at the best way to migrate a large legacy codebase from TFVC to Git. There are a number of ways I could do this, as I have posted about before. Obviously, I have ruled out anything that tries to migrate history as ‘that way hell lies’; if people need to see history they will be able to look at the archived TFVC instance. TFVC and Git are just too different in the way they work to make history migrations worth the effort in my opinion.

DDD is now live for Session Submission!

Robert Hogg — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 09:40:26 +0000

I am delighted to announce the DDD site is now live for session submissions! Get in early to make sure you don't forget. Always a great opportunity to get in front of an enthusiastic crowd. Please do submit, and we would welcome first-timers. The audience is friendly, and so many speakers, that are now on the international circuit got their start at a DDD event. We hope to be able to do something more to support first-time speakers, so let us know if you fall into that category. Once again DDD is free for all to attend, thanks to some great sponsors – if you would like to be sponsor DDD, please email ddd@blackmarble.com. Every bit of sponsorship helps make this a great event.

Building private VSTS build agents using the Microsoft Packer based agent image creation model

Richard Fennell — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 18:48:32 +0000

Background

Having automated builds is essential to any good development process. Irrespective of the build engine in use, VSTS, Jenkins etc. you need to have a means to create the VMs that are running the builds.

You can of course do this by hand, but in many ways you are just extending the old ‘it works on my PC – the developer can build it only on their own PC’ problem i.e. it is hard to be sure what version of tools are in use. This is made worse by the fact it is too tempting for someone to remote onto the build VM to update some SDK or tool without anyone else’s knowledge.

Yorkshire Venue for the Global DevOps BootCamp 2018

Richard Fennell — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 18:15:15 +0000

I am really pleased that we at Black Marble are again the first UK location announcing that we are hosting an event on June 16th as part of the 2018 Global DevOps BootCamp. As the event’s site says…

“The Global DevOps Bootcamp takes place once a year on venues all over the world. The more people joining in, the better it gets! The Global DevOps Bootcamp is a free one-day event hosted by local passionate DevOps communities around the globe and centrally organized by Xpirit & Solidify and sponsored by Microsoft. This event is all about DevOps on the Microsoft Stack. It shows the latest DevOps trends and insights in modern technologies. It is an amazing combination between getting your hands dirty and sharing experience and knowledge in VSTS, Azure, DevOps with other community members.”

New release of my Generate Parameters.xml tools to add support for app.config files

Richard Fennell — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 09:39:12 +0000

I recently released an updated version of my Generate Parameters.XML tool for Visual Studio. This release adds support for generating parameters.xml files from app.config files as well as web.config files Why you might ask why add support for app.config files when the parameters.xml model is only part of WebDeploy? Well, at Black Marble we like the model of updating a single file using a tokenised set of parameters from within our DevOps CI/CD pipelines. It makes it easy to take release variables and write them, at deploy time, into a parameters.xml file to be injected into a machine’s configuration. We wanted to extend this to configuring services and the like where for example a DLL based service is configured with a mycode.dll.config file The injection process of the parameters.xml into a web.config file is automatically done as part of the WebDeploy process (or a VSTS extension wrapping WebDeploy), but if you want to use a similar model for app.config files then you need some PowerShell. For example, if we have the app.config

Smarter Cities Summit

Robert Hogg — Mon, 05 Feb 2018 01:30:12 +0000

I am delighted to be joining SixPivot, our amazing Australian partner, in taking part in the Safer Cities Summit in Brisbane this week. We are launching tuServ, our award-winning policing solution at the event, into the Australian market, as the first step to taken it global!

I'll be joined by Faith Rees, SixPivot's CEO, and I am so excited to share with the Australian public sector the transformation that tuServ makes possible inside an organisation.

Versioning your ARM templates within a VSTS CI/CD pipeline with Semantic Versioning

Richard Fennell — Sat, 03 Feb 2018 15:23:59 +0000

I wrote a post recently Versioning your ARM templates within a VSTS CI/CD pipeline. I realised since writing it that it does not address the issue of if you wish to version your ARM Templates using Semantic Versioning. My JSON versioning task I used did not support the option of not extracting a numeric version number e.g. 1.2.3.4 from a VSTS build number. To address this limitation I have modified my Version JSON file task to address. This change to my task allows it to be used with the GitVersion VSTS task to manage the semantic versioning. For more details on GitVersion see the project documentation. Hence, I my now able to generate a version number using GitVersion and pass this in to the versioning task directly using a build variable.

What I wish I had known when I started developing Lability DevTest Lab Environments

Richard Fennell — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 12:33:16 +0000

At Black Marble we have been migrating our DevTest labs to from on-premises TFS Lab Management to a mixture of on-premise and Azure hosted Lability defined Labs as discussed by Rik Hepworth on his blog. I have only been tangentially involved in this effort until recently, consuming the labs but not creating the definitions.

So this post is one of those I do where I don’t want to forget things I learnt the hard way, or to put it another way asking Rik or Chris after watching a 2 hour environment deploy fail for the Xth time.

DDD (South) is back again

Robert Hogg — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 14:30:47 +0000

After last year’s successful DDD, it will be in Reading for its thirteenth outing, on Saturday, 23th of June.

Once again DDD is free for all to attend, thanks to some great sponsors – if you would like to be sponsor DDD, please email ddd@blackmarble.com.

As ever I would love to see new speakers and new topics in the DDD line up, so please submit a session, this year for new speakers we will be trying to get support before the event to ensure they are super successful.

Versioning your ARM templates within a VSTS CI/CD pipeline

Richard Fennell — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 14:55:17 +0000

Updated 3 Feb 2018 - Also see Versioning your ARM templates within a VSTS CI/CD pipeline with Semantic Versioning Azure Resource Templates (ARM) allow your DevOps infrastructure deployments to be treated as ‘content as code’. So infrastructure definitions can be stored in source control. As with any code it is really useful to know which version you have out in production. Now a CI/CD process and its usage logs can help here, but just having a version string stored somewhere accessible on the production systems is always useful. In an ARM Template this can be achieved using the ‘content version’ field in the template (see documentation for more detail on this file). The question becomes how best to update this field with a version number? The solution I used was a VSTS JSON Versioning Task I had already created to update the template’s .JSON definition file. I popped this task at the start of my ARM templates CI build process and it set the value prior to the storage of the template as a build artifact used within the CD pipeline

Creating test data for my Generate Release Notes Extension for use in CI/CD process

Richard Fennell — Fri, 19 Jan 2018 20:13:38 +0000

As part of the continued improvement to my CI/CD process I needed to provide a means so that whenever I test my Generate Release Notes Task, within it’s CI/CD process, new commits and work item associations are made. This is required because the task only picks up new commits and work items since the last successful running of a given build. So if the last release of the task extension was successful then the next set of tests have no associations to go in the release notes, not exactly exercising all the code paths! In the past I added this test data by hand, a new manual commit to the repo prior to a release; but why have a dog and bark yourself? Better to automate the process. This can done using a PowerShell file, run inline or stored in the builds source repo and run within a VSTS build. The code is shown below, you can pass in the required parameters, but I set sensible default for my purposes

How I fixed my problem that my VSTS Build Extension was too big to upload to the Marketplace

Richard Fennell — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 14:48:33 +0000

Whist adding a couple of new tasks to my VSTS Manifest Versioning Extension I hit the problem that VSIX package became too big to upload to the Marketplace. The error I saw in my CI/CD VSTS pipeline was``` ##vso[task.logissue type=error;]error: Failed Request: Bad Request(400) - The extension package size '23255292 bytes' exceeds the maximum package size '20971520 bytes'

 1
 21. They get a list of files
 32. Extract a version number from the build number
 43. Then apply this to one or more files in a product/task specific manner
 5
 6there has been some cut and paste coding. This means that I have NPM modules in the tasks **package.json** file that were not needed for a given task. I could manually address this but there is an NPM module to help, DepCheck. First install the [DepCheck](https://www.npmjs.com/package/depcheck) module```
 7npm install depcheck –g
 8```then run **depcheck** from the command line whist within your task’s folder. This returns a list of modules listed in the **package.json** that are not referenced in the code files. These can then be removed from the **package.json.**  e.g. I saw```
 9Unused dependencies
10\* @types/node
11\* @types/q
12\* Buffer
13\* fs
14\* request
15\* tsd
16Unused devDependencies
17\* @types/chai
18\* @types/mocha
19\* @types/node
20\* mocha-junit-reporter
21\* ts-loader
22\* ts-node
23\* typings
24```The important ones to focus on are the first block (non-development references), as these are the ones that are packaged with the production code in the VSIX; I was already pruning the **node\_module** folder of development dependencies prior to creating the VSIX to remove devDependancies using the command```
25npm prune –production
26```I did find some of the listed modules strange, as I knew they really were needed and a quick test of removing them did show the code failed if they were missing. These are what [depchecks documentation calls false alerts](https://www.npmjs.com/package/depcheck). I found I could remove the **@type/xxx** and **tsd** references, which were the big ones, that are only needed in development when working in TypeScript. Once these were removed for all four of my NodeJS based tasks my VSIX dropped in size from 22Mb to 7Mb. So problem solved.

Added a new JSON version task to my VSTS Version Extension

Richard Fennell — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 11:04:21 +0000

In response to requests on the VSTS Marketplace I have added a pair of tasks to added/edit entries in a .JSON format files.

The first is for adding a version to a file like a package.json file e.g.

1{
2"name": "myapp",
3"version": "1.0.0",
4"license": "MIT"
5}

The second is designed for angular environment.ts file e.g.

1export const environment = {
2production: true,
3version: '1.0.0.0'
4};

But I bet people find other uses, they always do.

You can find the extension in the marketplace, you need 1.31.x or later to see the new versioner tasks

Announcing a new VSTS Extension for Starting and Stopping Azure DevTest Labs VMs

Richard Fennell — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 12:13:05 +0000

Background

I have recently been posting on using Azure to host private VSTS build/release agents to avoid agent queue deadlocking issues with more complex release pipelines. One of the areas discussed is reducing cost of running a private agent in Azure by only running the private agent within a limited time range, when you guess it might be needed. I have done this using DevTest Labs Auto Start and Auto Stop features. This works, but is it not better to only start the agent VM when it is actually really needed, not when you guess it might be? I need this private agent only when working on my VSTS extensions, not something I do everyday. Why waste CPU cycles that are never used?

Creating a VSTS build agent on an Azure DevLabs Windows Server VM with no GUI - Using Artifacts

Richard Fennell — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 20:34:10 +0000

In my last post I discussed creating a private VSTS build agent within an Azure DevTest Lab on a VM with no GUI. It was pointed out to me today, by Rik Hepworth, that I had overlooked an obvious alternative way to get the VSTS agent onto the VM i.e. not having to use a series of commands at an RDP connected command prompt. The alternative I missed is to use a DevTest Lab Artifact; in fact there is such an artifact available within the standard set in DevTest Labs. You just provide a few parameters and you are good to go. Well you should be good to go, but there is an issue. The PowerShell used to extract the downloaded Build Agent ZIP file does not work on a non-UI based Windows VM. The basic issue here is discussed in this post by my fellow ALM MVP Ricci Gian Maria. Luckily the fix is simple; I just used the same code to do the extraction of the ZIP file that I used in my previous post. I have submitted this fix as a Pull Request to the DevTest Lab Team so hopefully the standard repository will have the fix soon and you won’t need to do a fork to create a private artifacts repo as I have. Update 1st December 2017 The Pull Request to the DevTest Lab Team with the fixed code has been accepted and the fix is now in the master branch of the public artifact repo, so automatically available to all

Creating a VSTS build agent on an Azure DevLabs Windows Server VM with no GUI

Richard Fennell — Thu, 23 Nov 2017 12:38:48 +0000

Updates

28th Nov 2017: Also see this second post Creating a VSTS build agent on an Azure DevLabs Windows Server VM with no GUI - Using Artifacts
30th Nov 2017: Also see associated post Announcing a new VSTS Extension for Starting and Stopping Azure DevTest Labs VMs

As I posted recently I have been trying to add more functional tests to the VSTS based release CI/CD pipeline for my VSTS Extensions, and as I noted depending on how you want to run your tests e.g. trigger sub-builds, you can end up with scheduling deadlocks where a single build agent is scheduling the release and trying to run a new build. The answer is to use a second build agent in a different agent pool e.g. if the release is running on the Hosted build agent use a private build agent for the sub-build, or of course just pay for more hosted build instances. The problem with a private build agent is where to run it. As my extensions are a personal project I don’t have a corporate Hyper-V server to run any extra private agents on, as I would have for an company projects. My MVP MSDN Azure benefits are the obvious answer, but I want any agents to be cheap to run, so I don’t burn through all my MSDN credits for a single build agent. To this end I created a Windows Server 2016 VM in DevLabs (I prefer to create my VMs in DevLabs as it makes it easier tidying up of my Azure account) using an A0 sizing VM. This is tiny so cheap; I don’t intend to ever do a build on this agent, just schedule releases, so need to install few if any tools, so the size should not be an issue. To further reduce costs I used the auto start and stop features on the VM so it is only running during the hours I might be working. So I get an admittedly slow and limited private build agent but for less that $10 a month. As the VM is small it makes sense to not run a GUI. This means when you RDP to the new VM you just get a command prompt. So how do you get the agent onto the VM and setup? You can’t just open a browser to VSTS or cut and paste a file via RDP, and I wanted to avoid the complexity of having to open up PowerShell remoting on the VM. The process I used was as follows:

Future of Reporting on VSTS with VSTS Analytics

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 Nov 2017 10:25:38 +0000

Reporting has always been important for software development, simply put the ability to know what has been done, and what remains to be done. For many teams the out the box reporting within TFS/VSTS dashboards has been enough e.g. sprint burndowns and kanban charts etc. Also TFS has always had SQL Reporting Services (SSRS) to provide rich reporting on a whole host of areas; though in my experience few clients use the out the box reports or customise their own reports. The lack of SSRS based reporting on VSTS has been a blocking limitation for some clients, preventing their move to VSTS. Also irrespective of peoples past use of custom reports, most people would like an easier way, than SSRS, to produce custom reports and charts. So enter VSTS Analytics Microsoft’s new free reporting option for VSTS that provide a host of reporting options for dashboards, Power BI and OData. For a great introduction have a look at Gregg Boer’s Channel9 video Visual Studio Team Services Reporting: Dashboards, Power BI, and OData

Major update to my CI/CD process for VSTS extensions

Richard Fennell — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 12:51:36 +0000

As time passes I have found there is a need for more cross platform VSTS extensions as there is more uptake of VSTS beyond it’s historic Microsoft platform based roots.

Historically most of my extensions have been Powershell based. Now this is not a fundamental problem for cross platform usage. this is due to the availability of Powershell Core. However, Typescript and Node.JS is a better fit I think in many cases. This has caused me to revise the way I structure my repo and build my VSTS extensions to provide a consistent understandable process. My old Gulp based process for Typescript was too complex and inconsistent between tasks, it even confused me! My process revisions have been documented in my vNextBuild Github’s WIKI, so I don’t propose too repeat the bulk of the content here.

Moving BM-Bloggers from BlogEngine.NET to WordPress

Richard Fennell — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 10:52:28 +0000

BlogEngine.Net has served us well as a blogging platform for a good few years. However, it is no longer under active support, so it is time to move on, too much risk of future security issues to ignore the lack of support. After a bit of thought we decided on WordPress as a replacement. OK this has had its own history of problems, but it has an active community and is well supported and in the Azure Marketplace.

Restarting VS Code fixed NPM INSTALL intermittent EPERM issues

Richard Fennell — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 15:07:02 +0000

Whilst doing some NPM build work for VSTS Extensions I kept getting intermittent EPERM errors about renaming Windows files during NPM install (as discussed on GitHub)l. When you get this it completely blocks any development.

As the Github issue discusses there are many possible reasons for this issue, and many proposed potential solutions. However the only one that worked for me was to restart VS Code; as this appeared to be locking the node_modules folder somehow. This was even though I could delete it via Windows Explorer without any problems.

Duplicate project GUID blocking SonarQube analysis of Windows 10 Universal Projects

Richard Fennell — Fri, 09 Jun 2017 16:17:52 +0000

I have working on getting a Windows 10 Universal application analysed with SonarQube 6.x as part of a VSTS build. The problem has been that when the VSTS task to complete the SonarQube analysis ran I kept getting an error in the form

1WARNING: Duplicate project GUID: "8ace107e-8e3c-4a1b-9920-e76eb1db5e53". Check that the project is only being built for a single platform/configuration and that that the project guid is unique. The project will not be analyzed by SonarQube. Project file: E:Build1\_work58sBlackMarble.Victory.Common.Module.csproj
2
3… plus loads more similar lines.
4The exclude flag has been set so the project will not be analyzed by SonarQube. Project file: E:Build1\_work58sBlackMarble.Victory.Ux.Common.csproj
5… plus loads more similar lines.
6
7WARNING: Duplicate project GUID: "1e7b2f4e-6de2-40ab-bff9-a0c63db47ca2". Check that the project is only being built for a single platform/configuration and that that the project guid is unique. The project will not be analyzed by SonarQube. 2017-06-09T15:50:41.9993583Z ##\[error\]No analysable projects were found but some duplicate project IDs were found. Possible cause: you are building multiple configurations (e.g. DEBUG|x86 and RELEASE|x64) at the same time, which is not supported by the SonarQube integration. Please build and analyse each configuration individually. 
8Generation of the sonar-properties file failed. Unable to complete SonarQube analysis.

Turns out the issue was that even though my CI build was only set to create an x86|Debug build the act of creating the .APPX package was causing both x64 and ARM builds to be build too, this was too much for SonarQube as it though I had a multiplatform build..

Book your free place at a Global DevOps Bootcamp venue for the 17th June 2017 event

Richard Fennell — Thu, 11 May 2017 19:33:02 +0000

Are you enthused by the all news at Build 2017?

Do you want to find out more about VSTS, DevOps and Continuous Delivery?

Well why not take the chance to join us on June 17th at Black Marble, or one of the over 25 other venues around the world for the first Global DevOps Bootcamp?

The Global DevOps Bootcamp is a free one-day event hosted by local passionate DevOps communities around the globe. Find your local venue on the Global DevOps Bootcamp website or search for Global DevOps Bootcamp on EventBrite

Options migrating TFS to VSTS

Richard Fennell — Wed, 10 May 2017 14:11:00 +0000

I did an event yesterday on using the TFS Database Import Service to do migrations from on premises TFS to VSTS. During the presentation I discussed some of the other migration options available. Not everyone needs a high fidelity migration, bring everything over. Some teams may want to just bring over their current source or just a subset of their source. Maybe they are making a major change in work practices and want to start anew on VSTS. To try to give an idea of the options I have produced this flow chart to help with the choices

o7 is back in Store

Robert Hogg — Mon, 08 May 2017 12:50:01 +0000

Several years ago, for the launch of Windows Phone 7, we built a game based on work we did on helping teaching AI with .NET.

o7 was born. A great game, and now it is back in glorious UWP for Windows 10.

Try it out and let us know what you think.

Get it here.

Regional Director

Robert Hogg — Mon, 08 May 2017 12:48:48 +0000

Once again I am so very proud to announce I have been selected to continue as a Regional Director for Microsoft for another two years.

The Regional Directors are a truly extraordinary set of individuals and I am humbled every time I’m in their company. Not only for their extraordinary depth of knowledge and level of technical skills, but also for a passion as deep as mine for helping and supporting the community of developers across the world.

DDD is Back for the 12th Time

Robert Hogg — Mon, 08 May 2017 12:48:30 +0000

After last year’s successful reboot, DDD is back in Reading for its twelfth outing, on Saturday, 10th of June.

Again DDD is free for all to attend, thanks to some great sponsors – and if you would like to be considered, please email ddd@blackmarble.com.

Our aim is to make DDD accessible to all, making it free is key to this but also leaves us limited budget for the nice to haves but we will always try.

Policing and HoloLens

Robert Hogg — Mon, 08 May 2017 12:47:03 +0000

Recently we had a great day demonstrating the great innovations we have made with HoloLens for the Police to a room full of jaded but ultimately enthusiastic, technology journalists.

It was great to see their responses to the solutions we have put together, and heartening to read some of the things they had to say.

Alice Bonasio (Tech Trends) produced this great piece on how MR CSI isn’t SciFi anymore! It was great to see how she could see the potential in what we had produced, “With tuServ you can effectively have a fully functional portable Command and Control Centre.”

Back Again and HoloLens

Robert Hogg — Mon, 08 May 2017 12:46:10 +0000

I have been a bit quiet on the blogging front for a while as I have been deep in planning for community events and steeped in the joys of HoloLens.

The results, two more DDD community events on the way (Reading and the North), and Black Marble has been made one of Microsoft’s HoloLens Agency Readiness Partners. So few companies have achieved this, it’s great recognition for all the hard work we have put in, and I’m looking forward to what we can achieve.

Debugging Typescript in Visual Studio Code

Richard Fennell — Thu, 04 May 2017 19:34:24 +0000

This is one of those posts I do as a reminder to myself. I have struggled to get debugging working in VSCode for Typescript files. If I set breakpoints in the underlying generated JavaScript they worked, but did not work if they were set in the Typescript source file. There are loads of walkthroughs and answers on Stackoverflow, but all with that vital little bit (for me) missing. So this is what I needed to do for my usage scenario…

Two new tasks in my Manifest Version VSTS Extension

Richard Fennell — Tue, 02 May 2017 16:04:21 +0000

I have just released a new version of my VSTS Manifest Version Extension (1.5.22). This adds two new tasks to the set of versioning tasks in the extension. The complete set now is

VersionAssemblies - sets the version in the assemblyinfo.cs or .vb (used pre build)
VersionDotNetCoreAssemblies - sets the version in the *.csproj (used pre build) - cross platform
VersionAPPX - sets the version in the Package.appxmanifest (used pre build)
VersionVSIX - sets the version in the source.extension.vsixmanifest (used pre build)
VersionDacpac - sets the version in a SQL DACPAC (used post build)
VersionNuspec - sets the version in a Nuget Nuspec file (used pre packing)
VersionSharePoint - sets the version in a SharePoint 2013/2016/O365 Add-In
VersionWix - sets the version in a Wix Project

As with all the other tasks, these new tasks aim to find files recursively to update with a version number extracted from the build number

401.1 Permission error with on-premises TFS when accessing the API with a PAT

Richard Fennell — Sat, 29 Apr 2017 15:27:53 +0000

Background

If you are creating VSTS build extensions you will need to get the build or release’s PAT token if you wish to call the VSTS REST API.

This is done using a call like this (Node)

1import tl = require('vsts-task-lib/task');
2
3var auth = tl.getEndpointAuthorization('SYSTEMVSSCONNECTION', false);
4
5if (auth.scheme === 'OAuth') {
6
7var token = auth.parameters\['AccessToken'\];

or (PowerShell)

1$vssEndPoint = Get-ServiceEndPoint -Name "SystemVssConnection" -Context $distributedTaskContext
2
3$personalAccessToken = $vssEndpoint.Authorization.Parameters.AccessToken

You pop the resultant PAT into the headers of your REST web request and you are away and running.

Rik and my ‘Living the Dream - real world DevOps’ session available on YouTube

Richard Fennell — Fri, 28 Apr 2017 10:18:00 +0000

Rik Hepworth and myself have been doing our ‘Living the Dream – Real world DevOps with VSTS and ARM’ at a good few events over the past few months.

We now, at last, have a recording of a version of it up on Black Marble YouTube Channel’s DevOps Playlist

Enjoy….

Still spaces available for the Leeds venue of the Global DevOps Bootcamp

Richard Fennell — Tue, 25 Apr 2017 11:59:55 +0000

There are still spaces available at the Black Marble hosted venue for the Global DevOps Bootcamp on the 17th of June

If you are interested register here

Presenting at an event in Leeds - Making it easy to migrate your ALM process to the Cloud

Richard Fennell — Tue, 25 Apr 2017 11:54:46 +0000

Do you find your TFS server gets forgotten?

It is not owned by the IT department and the Development team don’t have the time to support it fully, it never gets patched or upgrades?
Or maybe you are adopting a cloud first strategy for all you systems?

Well maybe it is time to consider moving your on-premises TFS instance to VSTS?

On the 9th of May at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Leeds I will be presenting at a Black Marble /Microsoft event where we will be looking at Microsoft’s new high fidelity VSTS database import tools that can be used to move a TFS instance to VSTS.

On RadioTFS again

Richard Fennell — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 07:12:18 +0000

Rik and myself had a great time fun last night chatting all things ALM and DevOps with Greg Duncan on RadioTFS show 136. I was amazed it was a year since I was last on.

The Podcast is now up at http://radiotfs.com/Show/136 , why not have a listen

New Cross Platform version of my Generate Release Notes VSTS Extension

Richard Fennell — Wed, 12 Apr 2017 17:17:06 +0000

My Generate Release Notes VSTS extension has been my most popular by a long way. I have enhanced it, with the help of others via pull requests, but there have been two repeating common questions that have not been resolved

Is it cross platform?
Why does it show different work items and commit associations to the VSTS Release Status UI?

Well the answer to the first is that the core of the logic for the extension came from a PowerShell script we used internally, so PowerShell was the obvious first platform, especially as though my PowerShell skills are not great, my Node was weaker!

VSTS Build Task Development - Now that is a misleading error message !

Richard Fennell — Sun, 02 Apr 2017 15:00:43 +0000

I have been working on a new Node.JS based VSTS Build Extension, so loads of Node learning going on as it is a language I have not done much with in the past. I expect to get caught out in places, but I have just wasted a good few hours on this one!

I am working in VS Code using Typescript to generate my Node based task. Whilst hacking around I have been just running the script in the VS Code debugger, getting the logic right before packaging it up and testing within a VSTS Build extension.

Migrating projects from CodePlex to GitHub due to CodePlex shutting down at the end of year

Richard Fennell — Sun, 02 Apr 2017 09:26:43 +0000

It has just been announced by Microsoft that it’s Open Source service CodePlex is shutting down before the end of the year. The reality is that the Microsoft focused Open Source community, and Microsoft itself, have moved to GitHub a good while ago.

I think I, like most developers, have moved any active Open Source projects to GitHub a good while ago, but I still had legacy ones on CodePlex.

Microsoft have provided a nicely documented process to move the key assets of projects, whether TFVC or Git based, to GitHub. This process worked for me. However, I will suggest a could of changes/additions

Leeds venue for the Global DevOps Bootcamp

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 13:02:17 +0000

I m really pleased to say that we at Black Marble are hosting a Yorkshire venue for the upcoming Global DevOps Bootcamp, to quote the main bootcamp site…

“Global DevOps Bootcamp is a global event that will be held on Saturday June 17th and is all about DevOps on the Microsoft Stack. Centrally organized by Xpirit and Solidify and offered to you by Black Marble. During this 1-day event we will join (Microsoft) DevOps communities all around the world to talk, learn and play with DevOps concepts.

Speaking at VS2017 launch event in Dublin on the 30th

Richard Fennell — Sat, 11 Mar 2017 17:08:57 +0000

I am speaking “Any Developer, Any App, Any Platform” a Visual Studio 2017 Launch Event at Microsoft’s offices in Dublin on the 30th of this month.

A bit of a departure for me I will be speaking on Xamarin, makes a change

To register see the event site

Setting Enroll Permissions on ADCS Certificate Template using DSC

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 19:08:38 +0000

As part of the work I have been doing around generating and managing lab environments using Lability and DSC, one of the things I needed to do was change the permissions on a certificate template within a DSC configuration. Previously, when deploying to Azure, I used the PSPKI PowerShell modules within code executed by the Custom Script extension. I was very focused on sticking with DSC this time, which ruled out PSPKI. Whilst there is a DSC module available to configure Certificate Services itself, this does not extend to managing Certificate Templates. Nobody seemed to have done exactly this before. I used the following links as references in creating the code: Get Effective template permissions with PowerShell by Vadims Podans Duplicate AD Object Without Active Directory PS Tools Add Object Specific ACEs using Active Directory PowerShell Using Scripts to Manage Active Directory Security The script finds the WebServer template and grants the Enroll extended permission to the Domain Computers AD group. This allows me to use xCertificate in the DSC configuration of domain member servers to request new certificates using the WebServer template. Here is the code I include in my DSC configuration. $DomainCreds is a PSCredential object for the domain admin ( I create the AD domain in an earlier step using xActiveDirectory).

Define Once, Deploy Everywhere (Sort of...)

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 18:49:00 +0000

Using Lability, DSC and ARM to define and deploy multi-VM environments

Configuration as code crops up a lot in conversation these days. We are searching for that DevOps Nirvana of a single definition of our environment that we can deploy anywhere.

The solution adopted at Black Marble by myself and my colleagues is not quite that, but it comes close enough to satisfy our needs. This document details the technologies and techniques we adopted to achieve our goal, which sounds simple, right?

Speaking at the SharePoint Usergroup (Leeds) on Modern ALM & DevOps

Richard Fennell — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 17:05:00 +0000

Pleased to say I'm presenting on DevOps with VSTS at the SharePoint UG in Leeds on the 7th of March

To register have a look at the Usergroup's events site

You never know how people will use a tool

Richard Fennell — Tue, 07 Feb 2017 19:57:28 +0000

You never know how people will use a tool once it is out ‘in the wild’. I wrote my Generate Release Notes VSTS extension to generate markdown files, but people have attempted to use it in other ways.

I realised, via an issue raised on Github, that it can also be used, without any code changes, to generate other formats such as HTML. The only change required is to provide an HTML based template as opposed to markdown one.

How you can keep using Lab Management after a move to VSTS (after a fashion)

Richard Fennell — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 17:50:38 +0000

I have posted on previously how we used TFS Lab Management to provision our test and development environments. With our move to VSTS, where Lab Management does not exist, we needed to look again at how to provision these labs. There are a few options…

Move to the Cloud – aka stop using Lab Management

Arguably the best option is to move all your lab VMs up to the cloud. Microsoft even has the specific service to help with this Azure DevTest Labs. This service allows you to create single VMs or sets of VMs for more complex scenarios using of ARM templates.

I’m on @techstringy podcast talking on #DevOps

Richard Fennell — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 12:01:03 +0000

I recorded a podcast on DevOps with Paul Stringfellow @techstringy last weeks Black Marble event. It has just been published on his blog

New version of my Parameters.Xml Generator Visual Studio add-in now supports VS2017 too

Richard Fennell — Sun, 29 Jan 2017 22:39:58 +0000

I have just published Version 1.5 of my Parameters.Xml Generator Visual Studio add-in . After much fiddling this VSIX now supports VS2017 as well as VS2013 and VS2015.

The complexity was that VS2017 uses a new VSIX format, V3. You have to makes changes to the project that generates the VSIX and to the VSIX manifest too. The FAQ says you can do this within VS2015 my hand, but I had no luck getting it right. The recommended option, and the method I used, is to upgrade your solution to VS2017 (or the RC at the time of writing as the product has not RTM’d yet).

Can’t add users to a VSTS instance backed by an Azure Directory

Richard Fennell — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 21:00:59 +0000

I have a VSTS instance that is backed by an Azure Directory. This is a great way to help secure a VSTS instance, only users in the Azure Directory can be added to VSTS, not just any old MSA (LiveIDs). This is a directory that can be shared with any other Azure based services such as O365, and centrally managed and linked to an on-premises Active Directory.

When I tried to add a user to VSTS, one that was a valid user in the Azure Directory, their account did not appear in the available users drop down.

Creating Website Slots and SQL Elastic Pools using Azure Resource Templates

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 15:03:14 +0000

Recently I have been helping a number of organisations automate the deployment of their applications to Azure and came across a couple of scenarios that were not documented: Deploying an App Services web site with slots and SQL connection string settings, and the creation of a SQL Elastic Pool. Of those, the SQL Elastic Pool I found to be written up already by Vincent-Philipe Lauzon and all credit to him - my template draws on his excellent article.

Version 2.0.x of my Generate Release Notes VSTS Task has been released with release rollup support

Richard Fennell — Thu, 05 Jan 2017 13:02:00 +0000

I have just released a major update to my Generate Release Notes VSTS Build extension. This V2 update adds support to look back into past releases to find when there was a successful release to a given stage/environment and creates a rollup set of build artifacts, and hence commits/changesets and workitems, in the release notes.

This has been a long running request on GitHub for this extension which I am pleased to have been able to address.

A nice relaxing Christmas break (and by the way I migrated our on-premises TFS to VSTS as well)

Richard Fennell — Tue, 03 Jan 2017 20:12:15 +0000

Over the Christmas break I migrated our on premises TFS 2015 instance to VSTS. The reason for the migration was multi-fold:

We were blocked on moving to TFS 2017 as we could not easily upgrade our SQL cluster to SQL 2014
We wanted to be on the latest, greatest and newest features of VSTS/TFS
We wanted to get away from having to perform on-premises updates every few months

To do the migration we used the public preview of the TFS to VSTS Migrator.

My TFSAlertsDSL project has moved to GitHub and become VSTSServiceHookDsl

Richard Fennell — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 20:51:44 +0000

Introduction

A while ago I create the TFSAlertsDSL project to provide a means to script responses to TFS Alert SOAP messages using Python. The SOAP Alert technology has been overtaken by time with the move to Service Hooks.

So I have taken the time to move this project over to the newer technology, which is supported both on TFS 2015 (onwards) and VSTS. I also took the chance to move from CodePlex to GitHub and renamed the project to VSTSServiceHookDsl.

Transform tool for transferring TFS 2015.3 Release Templates to VSTS

Richard Fennell — Tue, 20 Dec 2016 21:58:10 +0000

If you are moving from on-premises TFS to VSTS you might hit the same problem I have just have. The structure of a VSTS releases is changing, there is now the concept of multiple ‘Deployment Steps’ in an environment. This means you can use a number of different agents for a single environment – a good thing.

The downside this that if you export a TFS2015.3 release process and try to import it to VSTS it will fail saying the JSON format is incorrect.

Deleting unwanted orphan XAML Build Controllers on a migrated VSTS instance

Richard Fennell — Tue, 20 Dec 2016 21:55:03 +0000

Whilst working with the VSTS Data Import Service I ended up migrating a TFS TPC up to VSTS that had an old XAML Build Controller defined. I did not need this XAML build controller, in fact I needed to remove it because it was using my free private build controller slot. Problem was I could not find a way to remove it via the VSTS (or Visual Studio Team Explorer) UI, and the VM that had been running the build controller was long gone.

Problem adding external AAD user to a directory backed VSTS instance

Richard Fennell — Wed, 30 Nov 2016 21:31:36 +0000

Background

I recently decided to change one of my VSTS instance to be directory backed. What this means is that in the past users logged in using LiveIDs (MSAs by their new name); once the VSTS instance was linked to an Azure Active Directory (AAD), via the Azure portal, they could login only if

they were using an account in the AAD
their MSA was listed as a guest in the AAD
they used a work ID in another AAD that is listed as a guest in my AAD

Thus giving me centralised user management.

You can now manage complex ARM based environments in Azure DevTest Labs

Richard Fennell — Tue, 29 Nov 2016 13:42:39 +0000

Azure DevTest Labs has been available for a while and I have found it a good way to make sure I control costs of VMs i.e. making sure they are shutdown outside office hours. However, in the past, have had a major limitation for me that they only allowed templates that contained a single VM. You could group these together but it was bit awkward.

Well at Connect() it was announced that there is now complex ARM template support. So you can now build multi-VM environment that simulate the environments you need to work on as a single unit.

There are now no excuses for not using Continuous Delivery from VSTS for Azure Web Apps

Richard Fennell — Wed, 23 Nov 2016 23:02:38 +0000

One type of feature I hate people demoing in any IDE, especially Visual Studio, is the ‘just click here to publish to live from the developers PC’. This is just not good practice, we want to encourage a good DevOps process with

Source Control
Automated build
Automated release with approvals

The problem is, this can all be a bit much for people, it takes work and knowledge, and that right click is just too tempting.

As announced at Connect() there is now a tool to fully migrate an on-premises TFS to VSTS

Richard Fennell — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 16:47:14 +0000

I am often asked asked ‘How can I move my TFS installation to VSTS?’

In the past the only real answer I had was the consultant’s answer ‘it depends’. There were options, but they all ended up losing fidelity i.e. that the history of past changes got removed or altered in some manner. For many companies the implication of such changes meant they stayed on-premises; with all the regular backups, updates and patch running the use of any on-premises service entails.

Changes to LiveID/MSA and what I have done about it to get around the new domain limitations

Richard Fennell — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 16:44:30 +0000

What are the changes in allowed email addresses in MSAs?

You may or may not have noticed that there has been a recent change in LiveID (or Microsoft Account MSA as they are now called). In the past you could create a MSA using an existing email address e.g. richard@mydomain.co.uk . This is no longer an option. If you try to create a new MSA with a non Microsoft (outlook.com/hotmal.com) email they are blocked saying ‘This email is part of a reserved domain. Please enter a different email address’.

Can’t login to OneDrive desktop application on Windows 10

Richard Fennell — Tue, 25 Oct 2016 09:47:56 +0000

Whilst I have been on holiday my PC has been switched off and in a laptop bag. This did not seem to stopped me getting problems when I tried to use it again…

Outlook could not sync to O365 – turns out there had been some changes in our hybrid Exchange infrastructure, I just need to restart/patch the PC on our company LAN to pick up all the new group policy settings etc.
Could not login to OneDrive getting a script error https://auth.gfx.ms/16.000.26657.00/DefaultLogin_Core.js

My video about DevOps with VSTS has been published on Channel9

Richard Fennell — Mon, 24 Oct 2016 16:44:00 +0000

I have been on holiday in Nepal for a couple of weeks; trekking to Annapurna Base Camp

Whilst I was ‘off the grid’ a video I made on using the tools within VSTS to build a DevOps pipeline got published on Channel9

Hope you find it useful

Note to myself: In the future I must make sure I have my eyes open for the landing screen. - Now fixed thanks to the CH9 curators

Devils with Arms and Cats - the new name for DevOps?

Richard Fennell — Sun, 02 Oct 2016 10:10:01 +0000

Great day at DDDNorth yesterday, hope everyone enjoyed it. Thanks to all the team who helped during the preparation and on the day.

The slides from Rik Hepworth and my presentation on ‘_Living the dream - Real world DevOps with Azure and VSTS’ are up at Github. _

We were a late stand in session to cover for a presenter who could not attend on the day. So I hope it was not too much of let down, that we were not the speaker on the agenda, covered a different subject and did not match the title the spell checker converted out session title too. Though ‘Devils with Arms and Cats’ is maybe a good term for DevOps?

My DevTest Labs video is up on Channel9

Richard Fennell — Thu, 29 Sep 2016 18:54:00 +0000

The video of my session at TechDays online is now available on Channel9, along with all the TechDay Online UK content

Enjoy…

Running Test Suites within a network Isolated Lab Management environment when using TFS vNext build and release tooling

Richard Fennell — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 19:17:18 +0000

Updated 27 Sep 2016: Added solutions to known issues

Background

As I have posted many times we make use of TFS Lab Management to provide network isolated dev/test environments. Going forward I see us moving to Azure Dev Labs and/or Azure Stack with ARM templates, but that isn’t going to help me today, especially when I have already made the investment in setting up a Lab Management environments and they are ready to use.

If I add a custom field to a VSTS work item type what is it’s name?

Richard Fennell — Fri, 23 Sep 2016 16:08:22 +0000

The process customisation options in VSTS are now fairly extensive. You can add fields, states and custom items, making VSTS is ‘very possible’ option for many more people.

As well as the obvious uses of this customisation such as storing more data or matching your required process, customisation can also aid in migrating work items into VSTS from other VSTS instances, or on-premises TFS.

Whether using TFS Integration (now with no support – beware) or Martin Hinshelwood’s vsts-data-bulk-editor (an active open source solution so probably a much better choice for most people) as mentioned in my past post you need to add a custom field on the target VSTS server to contain the original work item ID. Commonly called ReflectedWorkItemId

Typemock have released official VSTS build extension

Richard Fennell — Mon, 12 Sep 2016 21:17:35 +0000

Typemock have just released an official VSTS build extension to run Typemock Isolator based tests. Given there is now an official extension I have decided to deprecate mine, it is still available in the Marketplace but I would recommend using the official one

The new Typemock extension includes two tasks

SmartRunner Task

The SmartRunner is a unit test runner, that can run nunit and mstest based tests. It handles the deployment of Typemock Isolator. SmartRunner can run on both Shared and On Premises Agents

Fix for my Docker image create dates being 8 hours in the past

Richard Fennell — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 20:18:10 +0000

I have been having a look at Docker for Windows recently. I have been experiencing a problem that when I create a new image the created date/time (as shown with docker images) is 8 hours in the past.

Turns out the problem seems to be due to putting my Windows 10 laptop into sleep mode. So the process to see the problem is

Create a new Docker image – the create date is correct, the current time
Sleep the PC
Wake up the PC
Check the create date, it is now 8 hours off in the past

Now the create date is not an issue in itself, but the fact that the time within the Docker images is also off by 8 hours can be, especially when trying to connect to cloud based services. I needed to sort it out

I am speaking at Microsoft UK TechDays Online event on Azure DevTest Labs

Richard Fennell — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 09:06:48 +0000

The registration link for Microsoft UK TechDays Online is now live. This is a 5 day event live broadcast from the Microsoft Campus in Reading. You will be able to view the sessions live at https://channel9.msdn.com/

The themes for each day are:

Monday, 12 September: Explore the world of Data Platform and BOTs
Tuesday, 13 September: DevOps in practice
Wednesday, 14 September: A day at the Office!
Thursday, 15 September: The inside track on Azure and UK Datacenter
Friday, 16 September: Find out more about Artificial Intelligence

I am doing a session on the Thursday on Azure DevTest Labs.

Why have I got a ‘.NETCore50’ and a ‘netcore50’ folder in my nuget package?

Richard Fennell — Tue, 23 Aug 2016 14:23:57 +0000

I recently posted on how we were versioning our Nuget packages as part of a release pipeline. In test we noticed that the packages being produced by this process has an extra folder inside them.

We expected there to be a netcore50 folder, but not a .NETCore50 folder. Strangely if we build the package locally we only saw the expect netcore50 folder. The addition of this folder did not appear to be causing any problem, but I did want to find out why it had appeared and remove it as it was not needed.

Experiences versioning related sets of NuGet packages within a VSTS build

Richard Fennell — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 11:39:36 +0000

Background

We are currently packaging up a set of UX libraries as NuGet packages to go on our internal NuGet server. The assemblies that make up the core of this framework are all in a single Visual Studio solution, however it makes sense to distribute them as a set of NuGet packages as you might not need all the parts in a given project. Hence we have a package structure as follows…

Tidy up those VSTS release pipelines with meta-tasks

Richard Fennell — Fri, 12 Aug 2016 13:53:14 +0000

Do you have repeating blocks in your VSTS release pipelines?

I certainly do. A common one is to run a set of functional test, so I need to repeatedly …

Deploy some test files to a VM
Deploy a test agent to the VM – IMPORTANT I had not realised you can only run one test run against this deployed agent. You need to redeploy it for the next run
Run my tests
… and repeat for next test type/configuration/test plan/DLL etc.

In the past this lead to a lot of repeat tasks in my release pipeline, all very messy.

New version of my generate release notes task–now with authentication options

Richard Fennell — Thu, 11 Aug 2016 13:18:38 +0000

I have just released 1.4.7 of the release notes VSTS extension. This provides a new advanced options that allows you to switch the authentication model.

The default remains the same i.e. use a personal access token provided by the server, but you have the option to enable use of the 'defaultcredentials' (via the advanced properties). If this is done the account the build agent is running as is used. Hopefully this should fix the 401 issues some people have been seeing when using the task with on-prem TFS.

Windows 10 Anniversary (Build 1607) messed up my virtual NAT Switch – a fix

Richard Fennell — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 11:43:46 +0000

I use a virtual NAT Switch to allow my VMs to talk to the outside world. The way I do this is documented in this post, based on the work of Thomas Maurer. The upgrade to Windows 10 Anniversary messed this up, just seemed to loose the virtual network completely, VMs failed to start with invalid configurations and would not even start.

I had to recreate my NATSwitch using Thomas’s revised instructions, but I did have an problem. The final ‘New-NetNat’ command failed with a ‘The parameter is incorrect.’ error. I think the issue was that there was debris left from the old setup (seems Microsoft removed the NatSwitch interface type). I could find no way to remove the old NATSwitch as it did not appear in the list in PowerShell and there is no UI remove option. So I just ended up disabling it via the UI and this seemed to do the trick

Out with the Band in with the Garmin

Richard Fennell — Fri, 05 Aug 2016 10:02:59 +0000

I have been using the Microsoft Band (both version Band1 and Band2) since they came out, and been reasonably happy. However, a year or so on my issues with it have remained the same

Poor battery life, I can live with charging it each day, but even with GPS Power-saver mode on I can’t go for any exercise over about 4 hours (bit of an issue for longer bike rides)
It is not waterproof, so no swimming (and worried doing the washing up)

Also there seem to be some build issues with the robustness of the Band2. I had to get mine replaced due to it not accepting recharging and the forums seems to report people suffering problems with the wrist strap splitting. That said, the warrantee service seems excellent, no complaints there, mine was swapped without any issue in a couple of days

I’m on RadioTFS

Richard Fennell — Fri, 15 Jul 2016 13:54:37 +0000

The RadioTFS show that I was the guest on has just been published at http://radiotfs.com/Show/117.

If you don’t listen to RadioTFS why not? It is a regular podcast (as you can see with over 100 episodes) on all things TFS and VSTS. A great way to keep up what is new in the technology space.

Links to this and all my other recorded sessions can be found here

New Build Management VSTS tasks

Richard Fennell — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 11:19:46 +0000

Just published a new VSTS extension with a couple of tasks in it. The aim to to help formalise the end of a release process. The tasks

Allow you to set the retension ‘keep forever’ flag on a build (or all builds linked to a release)
Update increment a build variable e.g. all or part of a version number, in a build (or all builds linked to a release)

The first just replicates functionality I used to have in house for builds

Life gets better in Visual Studio Code for PowerShell

Richard Fennell — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 09:55:51 +0000

I have been using Visual Studio Code for PowerShell development, but got a bit behind on reading release notes. Today I just realised I can make my Integrated Terminal a Code a PowerShell instance.

In File > Preferences > user Settings (settings.json) enter the following

1// Place your settings in this file to overwrite the default settings
2{
3     // The path of the shell that the terminal uses on Windows.
4    "terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\windows\\system32\\WindowsPowerShell\\v1.0\\powershell.exe"
5}

Now my terminal is a PowerShell instance, and you can see it has loaded by profile so POSH Git is work as well

Gotcha’s when developing VSTS Build Extension

Richard Fennell — Tue, 05 Jul 2016 17:53:39 +0000

I recently posted on my development process for VSTS Extensions, it has been specifically PowerShell based build ones I have been working on. During this development I have come across a few more gotcha’s that I think are worth mentioning

32/64 bit

The VSTS build agent launches PowerShell 64bit (as does the PowerShell command line on dev PC), but VSCode launches it 32bit. Whilst working my StyleCop extension this caused me a problem as StyleCop it seems can only load dictionaries for spell checking based rules when in a 32bit shell. So my Pester tests for the extension worked in VSCode but failed at the command line and within a VSTS build

Running TSLint within SonarQube on a TFS build

Richard Fennell — Tue, 05 Jul 2016 12:47:55 +0000

I wanted to add some level of static analysis to our Typescript projects, TSLint being the obvious choice. To make sure it got run as part of our build release process I wanted to wire it into our SonarQube system, this meant using the community TSLintPlugin, which is still pre-release (0.6 preview at the time of writing).

I followed the installation process for plugin without any problems setting the TSLint path to match our build boxes

Scroll bars in MTM Lab Center had me foxed – User too stupid error

Richard Fennell — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 10:09:14 +0000

I thought I had a problem with our TFS Lab Manager setup, 80% of our environments had disappeared. I wondered if it was rights, was it just showing environments I owned? No it was not that.

Turns our the issue was a UX/Scrollbar issue.

I had MTM full screen in ‘Test Center’ mode, with a long list of test suites, so long a scroll bar was needed and I had scrolled to the bottom of the list

Using Visual Studio Code to develop VSTS Build Tasks with PowerShell and Pester tests

Richard Fennell — Tue, 21 Jun 2016 21:15:25 +0000

Background

I am finding myself writing a lot of PowerShell at present, mostly for VSTS build extensions. Here I hit a problem (or is it an opportunity for choice?) as to what development environment to use?

PowerShell ISE is the ‘best’ experience for debugging a script, but has no source control integration – and it is on all PCs
Visual Studio Code has good Git support, but you need to jump through some hoops to get debugging working.
Visual Studio PowerShell tools, are just too heavy weight, it is not even in the frame for me for this job.

So I have found myself getting the basic scripts working in the PowerShell ISE then moving to VS Code to package up the task/extensions as this means writing .JSON too – so awkward

Updated Reprint - Migrating a TFS TFVC team project to a Git team project

Richard Fennell — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 08:05:00 +0000

This is a copy of the guest post done on the Microsoft UK web site published on the 7th June 2016

This is a revised version of a post originally published in August 2014. In this revision I have updated version numbers and links for tools used and added a discussion of adapting the process to support VSTS.

The code for this post can be found in my GitHub Repo

In the past I've written on the theory behind migrating TFVC to Git with history. I've since used this process for real, as opposed to as a proof of concept, and this post documents my experiences. The requirement was to move an on-premises TFS 2013.2 Scrum Team Project using TFVC to another on premises TFS 2013.2 Scrum Team Project, but this time using Git.

Update guest post on migrating TFVC projects to Git

Richard Fennell — Tue, 07 Jun 2016 08:47:20 +0000

Microsoft asked my to revise my August 2014 article on ‘Migrating a TFS TFVC team project to a Git team project’, this revised version is now live on their web site.

The changes in the revision are updated links for tools, and information on how to use the technique with VSTS now some work item customisation is available.

Running WebTests as part of a VSTS VNext Release pipeline

Richard Fennell — Mon, 30 May 2016 21:08:24 +0000

Background

Most projects will have a range of tests

Unit tests (maybe using a mocking framework) running inside the build process
Integration/UX and load tests run as part of a release pipeline
and finally manual tests

In a recent project we were using WebTests to provide some integration tests (in addition to integration tests written using unit testing frameworks) as a means to test a REST/ODATA API, injecting data via the API, pausing while a backend Azure WebJob processed the injected data, then checking a second API to make sure the processed data was correctly presented. Basically mimicking user operations.

Easier management of DevTest VMs with Azure DevTest Labs

Richard Fennell — Fri, 27 May 2016 11:48:28 +0000

Struggling to manage those DevTest VM in Azure?
Finding it hard to standardise your VMs and get the right things installed?
Burning through your Azure credit too fast because you forgot to switch things off?

Well Azure DevTest Labs has just been released for general availability, might will just be the thing to help, have a look.

Building bridges - getting DevOps working through Devs and IT Pros talking and learning from each other

Richard Fennell — Wed, 25 May 2016 20:58:57 +0000

I was lucky enough to attended and be on a panel at yesterdays WinOps London conference, it was a different and very interesting view on DevOps for me. I spend most of my time consulting with test and development teams, with these teams it is very rare to come across a team not using source control and they commonly have some form of automated build too. This means any DevOps discussion usually come from the side of ‘how can I extend my build into deployment…’.

Migrating work items to VSTS with custom fields using TFS Integration Platform

Richard Fennell — Fri, 20 May 2016 13:41:52 +0000

If you wish to migrate work items from TFS to VSTS your options are limited. You can of course just pull over work items, without history, using Excel. If you have no work item customisation them OpsHub is an option, but if you have work item customisation then you are going to have to use TFS Integration Platform. And we all know what a lovely experience that is!

Note: TFS Integration Platform will cease to be supported by Microsoft at the end of May 2016, this does not mean the tool is going away, just that there will be no support via forums.

New version of my VSTS Generate Release Notes extension - now supports Builds and Release

Richard Fennell — Thu, 19 May 2016 22:21:31 +0000

I am pleased to announce that I have just made public on the VSTS marketplace a new version of my VSTS Generate Release Notes extension.

This new version now supports both VSTS/TFS vNext Builds and vNext Releases. The previous versions only supported the generation of release notes as part of a build.

The adding of support for release has meant I have had to rethink the internals of how the templates is process as well as the way templates are passed into the task and where results are stored

Putting a release process around my VSTS extension development

Richard Fennell — Fri, 06 May 2016 12:17:00 +0000

Updated: 5th Aug 2016 added notes in PublisherID

I have been developing a few VSTS/TFS build related extensions and have published a few in the VSTS marketplace. This has all been a somewhat manual process, a mixture of Gulp and PowerShell has helped a bit, but I decided it was time to try to do a more formal approach. To do this I have used Jesse Houwing’s VSTS Extension Tasks. Even with this set of tasks I am not sure what I have is ‘best practice’, but it does work. The doubt is due to the way the marketplace handles revisions and preview flags. What I have works for me, but ‘your mileage may differ’

Upgrading BlogEngine to 3.3

Richard Fennell — Sun, 01 May 2016 12:16:22 +0000

I have just completed the upgrade of our Blog Server to BlogEngine 3.3. This upgrade is a bit more complex than the usual upgrade as between 3.2 to 3.3 there is a change to Razor views for all the widgets. This means you need to remove all the old widgets you have and re-add them using the new razor equivalents.

As our blog is backed by SQL, this mean a SQL script to clear down the old widgets, then a manual add of the new versions on each blog we have on our server. One point to note, if using SQL you do need to get BlogEngine 3.3 from its GitHub repo (at the time of writing, I am sure this will change) as after the formal 3.3 release on CodePlex there is a fix for an issue that stopped the editing of widget properties.

Updates to my StyleCop task for VSTS/TFS 2015.2

Richard Fennell — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 20:46:00 +0000

Tracking the current version of StyleCop is a bit awkward. Last week I got an automated email from CodePlex saying 4.7.52.0 had been released . I thought this was the most up to date version, so upgraded my StyleCop command line wrapper and my VSTS StyleCop task from 4.7.47.0 to 4.7.52.0.

However, I was wrong about the current version. I had not realised that the StyleCop team had forked the code onto GitHub. GitHub is now the home of the Visual Studio 2015 and C# 6 development of StyleCop, while Codeplex remains the home of the legacy Visual Studio versions. I had only upgraded to a legacy patch version, not the current version.

How to build a connection string from other parameters within MSDeploy packages to avoid repeating yourself in Release Management variables

Richard Fennell — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 21:04:07 +0000

Whilst working with the new Release Management features in VSTS/TFS 2015.2 I found I needed to pass in configuration variables i.e. server name, Db name, UID and Password to create a SQL server via an Azure Resource Management Template release step and a connection string to the same SQL instance for a web site’s web.config, set using an MSDeploy release step using token replacement (as discussed in this post)

Now I could just create RM configuration variables for both the connection string and ARM settings,

Notes from the field: Using Hyper-V Nat Switch in Windows 10

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 08 Apr 2016 08:31:28 +0000

The new NAT virtual switch that can be created on Windows 10 for Hyper-V virtual machines is a wonderful thing if you're an on-the-go evangelist like myself. For more information on how to create one, see Thomas Maurer's post on the subject.

This post is not about creating a new NAT switch. It is, however, about _re_creating one and the pitfalls that occur, and how I now run my virtual environment with some hack PowerShell and a useful DHCP server utility.

In place upgrade times from TFS 2013 to 2015

Richard Fennell — Tue, 29 Mar 2016 17:58:54 +0000

There is no easy way to work out how long a TFS in place upgrade will take, there are just too many factors to make any calculation reasonable

Start and end TFS version
Quality/Speed of hardware
Volume of source code
Volume of work items
Volume of work item attachments
The list goes on….

The best option I have found to a graph various upgrades I have done and try to make an estimate based in the shape of the curve. I did this for 2010 > 2013 upgrades, and now I think I have enough data from upgrades of sizable TFS instances to do the same for 2013 to 2015.

Announcing release of my vNext build tasks as extensions in the VSTS/TFS Marketplace

Richard Fennell — Tue, 22 Mar 2016 18:40:30 +0000

In the past I have posted about the vNext TFS build tasks I have made available via my GitHub repo. Over the past few weeks I have been making an effort to repackage these as extensions in the new VSTS/TFS Marketplace, thus making them easier to consume in VSTS or using the new extensions support in TFS 2015.2

This it is an ongoing effort, but I pleased to announce the release of the first set of extension.

Happy 10th Birthday TFS

Richard Fennell — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 09:01:11 +0000

Did you know TFS was 10 years old this week? I have been working with TFS all that time, doesn’t time fly, and wow has the product changed from TFS 2005 to 2015/VSTS or what.

If you want to find out a bit more about the past 10 years try listening to the latest Radio TFS podcast with Brian Harry

Unblocking a stuck Lab Manager Environment (the hard way)

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 09:17:18 +0000

This is a post so I don’t forget how I fixed access to one of our environments yesterday, and hopefully it will be useful to some of you.

We have a good many pretty complex environments deployed to our lab hyper-V servers, controlled by Lab manager. Operations such as starting, stopping or repairing those environments can take a long, long time, but this time we had one that was quite definitely stuck. The lab view showed the many servers in the lab with green progress bars about halfway across but after many hours we saw no progress. The trouble is, at this point you can’t issue any other commands to the environment from within the Lab Manager console – it’s impossible to cancel the operation and regain access to the environment.

Net Writer: A great UWP blog editor

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 13 Mar 2016 13:37:06 +0000

I came across Net Writer some months ago, when it's creator, Ed Anderson blogged about how he'd taken the newly-released Open Live Writer code and used it in his just-started Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app for Windows 10. In January it only supported blogger accounts, which meant that I was unable to use it. However, I checked again this weekend and discovered that it now supports a wide range of blog software including BlogEngine.net that powers blogs.blackmarble.co.uk.

New books on VSTS/TFS ALM DevOps

Richard Fennell — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 19:13:23 +0000

It has been a while since I have mentioned any had new books on TFS/VSTS, and just like buses a couple come along together.

These two, one from Tarun Arora and the other from Mathias Olausson and Jakob Ehn are both nicely on trend for the big area of interest for many of the companies I am working with at present; best practice ‘cook book’ style guidance on how to best use the tools in an ALM process.

A vNext build task and PowerShell script to generate release notes as part of TFS vNext build.

Richard Fennell — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 12:03:00 +0000

Updated 22 Mar 2016: This task is now available as an extension in the VSTS marketplace

A common request I get from clients is how can I create a custom set of release notes for a build? The standard TFS build report often includes the information required (work items and changesets/commits associate with the build) but not in a format that is easy to redistribute. So I decided to create a set to tools to try to help.

My Resource Templates from demos are now on GitHub

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 16:02:32 +0000

I’ve had a number of people ask me if I can share the templates I use in my Resource Template sessions at conferences. It’s taken me a while to find the time, but I have created a repo on GitHub and there is a new Visual Studio solution and deployment project with my code.

One very nice feature that this has enabled me to provide is the same ‘Deploy to Azure’ button as you’ll find in the Azure Quickstart Templates. This meant a few changes to the templates – it turns out that Github is case sensitive for file requests, for example, whilst Azure Storage isn’t. The end result is that you can try out my templates in your own subscription directly from Github!

Using MSDeploy to deploy to nested virtual applications in Azure Web Apps

Richard Fennell — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 20:52:26 +0000

Azure provides many ways to scale and structure web site and virtual applications. I recently needed to deploy the following structure where each service endpoint was its own Visual Studio Web Application Project built as a MSDeploy Package

To do this in the Azure Portal in …

Created a Web App for the site http://demo.azurewebsites.net This pointed to the disk location sitewwwoot, I disabled the folder as an application as there is not application running at this level
Created a virtual directory api point to sitewwrootapi, again disabling this folder as an application
Created a virtual application for each of my services, each with their own folder

Running Pester PowerShell tests in the VSTS hosted build service

Richard Fennell — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 23:43:00 +0000

**Updated 22 Mar 2016 **This task is available in the VSTS Marketplace If you are using Pester to unit test your PowerShell code then there is a good chance you will want to include it in your automated build process. To do this, you need to get Pester installed on your build machine. The usual options would be

Manual install from GitHub
Install via Chocolaty
Install via Nuget

If you own the build agent VM then any of these options are good, you can even write the NuGet restore into your build process itself. However there is a problem, both the first two options need administrative access as they put the Pester module in the $PSModules folder (under ‘Program Files’); so these can’t be used on VSTS’s hosted build system, where your are not an administrator So this means you are left with copying the module (and associated functions folder) to some local working folder and running it manually; but do you really want to have to store the Pester module in your source repo? My solution was to write a vNext build tasks to deploy the Pester files and run the Pester tests. The task takes two parameters

A vNext build task to get artifacts from a different TFS server

Richard Fennell — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 12:53:02 +0000

With the advent of TFS 2015.2 RC (and the associated VSTS release) we have seen the short term removal of the ‘External TFS Build’ option for the Release Management artifacts source. This causes me a bit of a problem as I wanted to try out the new on premises vNext based Release Management features on 2015.2, but don’t want to place the RC on my production server (though there is go live support). Also the ability to get artifacts from an on premises TFS instance when using VSTS open up a number of scenarios, something I know some of my clients had been investigating.

Running a SaaS service at scale

Richard Fennell — Fri, 12 Feb 2016 17:16:26 +0000

Brian Harry has done a couple of very interesting posts (post 1 and post 2) on the recent outages of the VSTS service. Whether you use VSTS or not they make interesting reading for anyone who is involved in running SaaS based systems, or anything at scale.

From the posts the obvious reading is you cannot under estimate the importance of

in production montoring
having an response plan
doing a proper root cause analysis
and putting steps in place to stop the problem happening again

Well worth a read

Repost: What I learnt extending my VSTS Release Process to on-premises Lab Management Network Isolated Environments

Richard Fennell — Fri, 12 Feb 2016 17:00:00 +0000

This a a repost of a guest article first posted on the Microsoft UK Developers Blog: How to extend a VSTS release process to on-premises

Note that since I write the original post there have been some changes on VSTS and the release to TFS 2015.2 RC1. These mean there is no longer an option to pull build artifacts from the an external TFS server as part of a release; so invalidating some of the options this post discusses. I have struck out the outdated sections. The rest of the post is still valid, especially the section on where to update configuration settings. The release of TFS 2015.2 RC1 actually makes many of options easier as you don’t have to bridge between on premises TFS and VSTS as both build and release features are on the same server.

Release Manager 2015 stalls at the ‘uploading components’ step and error log shows XML load errors

Richard Fennell — Thu, 11 Feb 2016 09:22:32 +0000

Whilst seting up a Release Management 2015.1 server we came across a strange problem. The installation appears to go OK. We were able to install the server and from the client created a simple vNext release pipeline and run it. However, the release stalled on the ‘Upload Components’ step.

Looking in event log of the VM running the Release Management server we could see many many errors all complaining about invalid XML, all in the general form

vNext Build editor filePath control always returns a path even if you did not set a value

Richard Fennell — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 12:27:57 +0000

You can use the filePath type in a vNext VSTS/TFS task as shown below

1{
2     "name": "settingsFile",
3     "type": "filePath",
4     "label": "Settings File",
5     "defaultValue": "",
6     "required": false,
7     "helpMarkDown": "Path to single settings files to use (as opposed to files in project folders)",
8     "groupName":"advanced"
9   }

to present a file picker dialog in the build editor that allows the build editor to pick a file or folder in the build’s source repository

A VSTS vNext build task to run StyleCop

Richard Fennell — Sat, 06 Feb 2016 18:51:00 +0000

Updated 22 Mar 2016 This tasks is available in the VSTS Marketplace I have previously posted on how a PowerShell script can be used to run StyleCop as part of vNext VSTS/TFS build. Now I have more experience with vNext tasks it seemed a good time to convert this PowerShell script into a true task that can deploy StyleCop and making it far easier to expose the various parameters StyleCop allows. To this end I have written a new StyleCop task that can be found in my vNext Build Repo, this has been built to use the 4.7.49.0 release of StyleCop (so you don’t need to install StyleCop in the build machine, so it works well on VSTS). To use this task:

A new vNext task to run StyleCop

Richard Fennell — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 23:21:00 +0000

Update 6 Feb 2016 - I have made some major changes to this task to expose more parameters, have a look at this post that details the newer version

Today a good way to pull together all your measures of code quality is to run SonarQube within your automated build; in a .NET world this can show changes in quality over time for tools such as FxCop (Code Analysis) and StyleCop. However sometime you might just want to run one of these tools alone as part of your automated build. For Code Analysis this is easy, it is built into Visual Studio just set it as a property on the project. For StyleCop it is a bit more awkward as StyleCop was not designed to be run from the command line.

Follow up from my session at the Black Marble Tech Update 2016

Richard Fennell — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 17:11:29 +0000

There have been some requests for more information about the areas I convered in my presentation at the Black Marble Tech Update 2016 that we held last week.

I could send out slides, but I think it is far more useful to point you at the ‘live’ resource on the Internet. The key reason for this is that the whole of the Visual Studio family is now being released at a ‘cloud cadence’ i.e. new features are appearing rapidly, so anything I write will soon be out of date. Better to look at the live sources where possible.

NDC London 2016 (Post 5 Raspberry PI, Fez Cream and Windows 10)

Robert Hogg — Mon, 18 Jan 2016 05:00:00 +0000

One of the things I showed at NDC was a Raspberry Pi 2 with a FEZ Cream Hat (I know that sounds just so wrong, but that is its name). The FEZ Cream offers Gadgeteer ports out of the Pi, which is just awesome. What this means in reality is you get objects to program against not ports and lines which is mush easier; for time, teaching children and me.

NDC London 2016 (Post 4 Intel Edison )

Robert Hogg — Mon, 18 Jan 2016 04:00:00 +0000

The Intel Edison unit is great for building IOT, people have been asking where to get the bits and for more general information

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/do-it-yourself/edison.html

I would suggest getting the Arduino kit to get started with. I enjoy the Xadow(below) much more but I struggled to get the Edison updated first time on the Xadow but not the Arduino (but that could have been me).

Intel IOT https://software.intel.com/iot

NDC London 2016 (Post 3 IOT Security )

Robert Hogg — Mon, 18 Jan 2016 03:00:00 +0000

I strongly recomend you watch a great security talk on IOT by

Clemens Vasters and Dan Rosanova

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2015/2-625

NDC London 2016 Talks (Videos not up yet, will update as soon as they are ready)

Barry Dorrans + Troy Hunt

NDC London 2016 (Post 2 Books on IOT )

Robert Hogg — Mon, 18 Jan 2016 02:00:00 +0000

This is the list of recomended books on IOT I shared in my session

Enterprise IOT O'Reilly http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920039433.do

Abusing the Internet of Things O'Reilly http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033547.do

I will update this as I find and approve of new books

NDC London 2016 (Post 1 thanks)

Robert Hogg — Mon, 18 Jan 2016 01:00:00 +0000

I had a great time at NDC 2016. It was a very well organised event, everybody enjoyed the event, content and the food.

Huge thanks to the great and efficient organisation by the NDC team.

Also thanks to the great people with clearly great taste who attended my talk.

I am separating the post into a few areas so I can keep updating them without people having to read long lists and work out what has changed.

Fixing cannot load dashboard issues on BlogEngine.NET using sub blog aggregation

Richard Fennell — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 17:59:05 +0000

As I discovered during my BlogEngine upgrade, there is an effort within the project team to focus the codebase on three possible usage models on any given BlogEngine server instance:

Single blog with a user – a personal blog (default)
Single blog with many users – a team/company blog
Many blogs each with a single user – a set of related blogs that can be agregated togther

I needed the third option, problem was in its history our blog has been both of the other two types, so I have multiple user accounts for each blogs, and login usernames are repeated between individual blogs on the server.

Upgraded to BlogEngine.NET 3.2

Richard Fennell — Thu, 31 Dec 2015 13:39:53 +0000

I have just completed the upgrade of this blog server to the new release 3.2 of BlogEngine.NET. I did a manual upgrade (as opposed to the automated built in upgrade) as I needed to make a few changes from the default settings. The process I used followed the upgrade process document

Downloaded the latest release and unzip the folder
Run the SQL upgrade script (in /setup/sqlserver folder), this adds some new DB constraints
Created a IIS web site using the new release
Copied in the sample web.config from the /setup/sqlserver folder.
- Edited the SQL connection string to point to my DB
- IMPORTANT I MISSED THIS AT FIRST - Added the setting to change from the default single blog mode, to multi blog mode (note this is a WIKI on Github not the old CodePlex site)
Copied in my App_DATA folder
Accessed my site

As I had not copied anything from the old custom folder, I had theme issues at this point. However, I decided to moved all the blogs to the newest generation of theme templates, so did a quick fix up by hand on each one, picking the required theme and making sure any settings, like Twitter accounts, were set (note these are set on a per blog/per theme basis, so changing a theme means you need to reenter any custom values). I also needed to copy in a few missing logos and any extra widgets from my old custom folder the blogs were using.

Running CodeUI tests on a VM with on remote desktop session open as part of a vNext build

Richard Fennell — Wed, 23 Dec 2015 12:21:21 +0000

If you want to run CodeUI tests as part of a build you need to make sure the device running the test has access to the UI, for remote VMs this means having a logged in session open and the build/test agent running interactivally. Problem is what happens when you disconnect the session. UNless you manage it you will get the error

Automation engine is unable to playback the test because it is not able to interact with the desktop. This could happen if the computer running the test is locked or it’s remote session window is minimized

Live Writer becomes Open Live Writer

Richard Fennell — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 17:53:13 +0000

My primary blog editor has been Microsoft Live Writer for years, but it has always been a pain to install via Windows Essentials (as I don’t want the rest of the product), also I was never able to find the right version when I rebuilt a PC. This was not helped by the fact there has been no development of the product for years, so I struggled to remember what year version I really needed (last one was 2012 by the way).

Nuget restore fails to restore all the files on VSTS build if using project.json files

Richard Fennell — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 17:28:57 +0000

We are currently working on updating a Windows 8 application to be a Windows 10 Universal application. This has caused a few problem on a TFS vNext automated build box. The revised solution builds fine of the developers box and fine on the build VM if opened in Visual Studio, but fails if built via the VSTS vNext build CI MSBuild process showing loads of references missing.

Turns out the issue was due to Nuget versions.

An out-the-box way to let local Hyper-V VMs see the Internet without using a DD-WRT router

Richard Fennell — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 20:38:00 +0000

Updated 10 Aug 2016 - Revised for Win10 anniversary build 1607

I have posted in the past about using a DD-WRT virtual router to bridge between local VMs on my development PC and the outside world

With the recent changes in HyperV on Windows 10 and Server 2016 we have an alternative as discussed by Thomas Maurer in his post (pre Win10 anniversary build 1607) or this post (post Win10 anniversary build 1607). You can use a NATSwitch, thus removing the need for router VM. This does however raise different issues, that of address assignment, the router was also a DHCP server. However, it does mean I don’t have to mess around with manually setting external IP addresses for the router each time I join a different WIFI network. So on the whole I think iti is a better solution.

First experience of a Band 2

Richard Fennell — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 16:40:00 +0000

I have been using a Band 2 for a couple of weeks now as opposed to my original Band. The major thing I have noticed is I don't notice it on my wrist. It feels just like a watch.

The old one, though not too bad did feel a bit lumpy, banging on the wrist. So that is an improvement, also it looks less like I am a prisoner with a tracker on day release. The Band 2 looks like a designer was more involved as opposed to just engineers.

ALM Rangers guidance on migrating from RM Agent based releases to the new VSTS release system

Richard Fennell — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 19:31:23 +0000

Vijay in the Microsoft Release Management product group has provided a nice post on the various methods you can use to migrate from the earlier versions of Release management to the new one in Visual Studio Team Services.

An area where you will find the biggest change in technology is when moving from on premises agent based releases to the new VSTS PowerShell based system. To help in this process the ALM Rangers have produced a command line tool to migrate assets from RM server to VSTS, it exports all your activities as PowerShell scripts that are easy to re-use in a vNext Release Management process, or in Visual Studio Team Services’ Release tooling.

ALM Ranger provided VSTS extensions

Richard Fennell — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 20:10:16 +0000

Many of the major new features of VSTS are delivered by the new marketplace and extension model, such as code search and package management. However, did you realise that this new way of adding functionality to VSTS is open to you too, not just to Microsoft?

To see what can be done why not have a look at the Visual Studio Team Services Extensions from the ALM Rangers

Visual Studio Dev Essentials announced at Connect() with free Azure time each month

Richard Fennell — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 13:27:41 +0000

One announcement I missed at at Connect() last week was that of Visual Studio Dev Essentials. I only heard about this one whilst listening to RadioTFS’s news from Connect() programme.

Visual Studio Dev Essentials is mostly a re-packing of all the tools that were already freely available from Microsoft e.g. Visual Studio Community Edition, Tem Foundation Server Express etc.; but there are some notable additions* (some coming soon)

Pluralsight (6-month subscription)—limited time only
Xamarin University mobile training— coming soon
WintellectNOW (3-month subscription)
Microsoft Virtual Academy
HackHands Live Programming Help ($25 credit)
Priority Forum Support
Azure credit ($25/month for 12 months)—coming soon
Visual Studio Team Services account with five users
App Service free tier
PowerBI free tier
HockeyApp free tier
Application Insights free tier

*Check the Visual Studio Dev Essentials site for the detailed T&C

Upgrading to SonarQube 5.2 in the land of Windows, MSBuild and TFS

Richard Fennell — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 18:31:55 +0000

SonarQube released version 5.2 a couple of weeks ago. This enabled some new features that really help if you are working with MSbuild or just on a Windows platform in general. These are detailed in the posts

The new ability to manage users with LDAP is good, but one of the most important for me is the way 5.2 ease the configuration with SQL in integrated security mode. This is mentioned in the upgrade notes; basically it boils down to the fact you get better JDBC drivers with better support for SQL Clustering and security.

Finding it hard to make use of Azure for DevTest?

Richard Fennell — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 21:54:14 +0000

Announced at Connect() today were a couple of new tools that could really help a team with their DevOps issues when working with VSTS and Azure (and potentially other scenarios too).

DevTest Lab is a new set of tooling within the Azure portal that allows the easy management of Test VMs, their creation and management as well as providing a means to control how many VMs team members can create, thus controlling cost. Have a look at Chuck’s post on getting started with DevTest Labs
To aid general deployment, have a look that new Release tooling now in public preview. This is based on the same agents as the vNext build system and can provide a great way to formalise your deployment process. Have a looks at Vijay’s post on getting started with the new Release tools

Chrome extension to help with exploratory testing

Richard Fennell — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 19:52:45 +0000

One of the many interesting announcements at Connect() today was that the new Microsoft Chrome Extension for Exploratory Testing is available in the Chrome Store

This is a great tool if you use VSO, sorry VSTS, allowing an easy way to ‘kick the tyres’ on your application, logging any bugs directly back to VSTS as Bug work items.

Best of all, it makes it easy to test your application on other platforms with the link to Perfecto Mobile. Just press the device button, login and you can launch a session on a real physical mobile device to continue your exploratory testing.

Hello to Visual Studio Team Services

Richard Fennell — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 16:59:55 +0000

After Microsoft’s announcements at todays Connect() event, Visual Studio Online (VSO) is now Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS). It is a good job I never changed the tag on this blog from VSTS when Microsoft dropped the Team System name a few years ago.

For a run down of all the VSTS announcements have a look at Brian Harry’s blog

Why you need to use vNext build tasks to share scripts between builds

Richard Fennell — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 16:51:46 +0000

Whilst doing a vNext build from a TFVC repository I needed map both my production code branch and a common folder of scripts that I intended to use in a number of builds, so my build workspace was set to

Map – $/BM/mycode/main - my production code
Map – $/BM/BuildDefinations/vNextScripts - my shared PowerShell I wish to run in different builds e.g. assembly versioning.

As I wanted this to be a CI build, I also set the trigger to $/tp1/mycode/main

Installing Windows 10 RSAT Tools on EN-GB Media-Installed Systems

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 13 Nov 2015 09:13:43 +0000

This post is an aide memoir so I don’t have to suffer the same annoyance and frustration at what should be an easy task.

I’ve now switched to my Surface Pro 3 as my only system, thanks to the lovely new Pro 4 Type Cover and Surface Dock. That meant that I needed the Remote Server Administration Tools installing. Doing that turned out to be much more of an odyssey that it should have been and I’m writing this in the hope that it will allow others to quickly find the information I struggled to.

Versioning a VSIX package as part of the TFS vNext build (when the source is on GitHub)

Richard Fennell — Tue, 10 Nov 2015 21:56:52 +0000

I have recently added a CI build to my GitHub stored ParametersXmlAddin VSIX project. I did this using Visual Studio Online’s hosted build service, did you know that this could used to build source from GitHub?

As part of this build I wanted to version stamp the assemblies and the resultant VSIX package. To do the former I used the script documented on MSDN, for the latter I also used the same basic method of extracting the version from the build number as used in the script for versioning assemblies. You can find my VSIX script stored in this repo.

Why can’t I assign a VSO user as having ‘eligible MSDN’ using an AAD work account?

Richard Fennell — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 21:35:06 +0000

When access VSO you have two authentication options; either a LiveID (or an MSA using it’s newest name) or a Work Account ID (a domain account). The latter is used to provide extra security, so a domain admin can easily control who has access to a whole set of systems. It does assume you have used Azure Active Directory (AAD) that is sync’d with your on premises AD, and that this AAD is used to back your VSO instance. See my previous post on this subject.

SonarQube 5.2 released

Richard Fennell — Tue, 03 Nov 2015 17:56:21 +0000

At my session at DDDNorth I mentioned that some of the settings you needed to configure in SonarQube 5.1, such as DB connection strings for SonarRunner, would not need to be made once 5.2 was release. Well it was released today. Most important changes for we are

Server handles all DB connections
LDAP support for user authentication

Should make the install process easier

Optimising IaaS deployments in Azure Resource Templates

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 01 Nov 2015 22:03:24 +0000

Unlike most of my recent posts this one won’t have code in it. Instead I want to talk about concepts and how you should look long and hard at your templates to optimise deployment.

In my previous articles I’ve talked about how nested deployments can help apply sensible structure to your deployments. I’ve also talked about things I’ve learned around what will successfully deploy and what will give errors. Nested deployments are still key, but the continuous cycle of improvements in Azure means I can change my information somewhat around what works well and what is likely to fail. Importantly, that change allows us to drastically improve our deployment time if we have lots of virtual machines.

Convert new VM’s dynamic IP address to static with Azure Resource Templates

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 01 Nov 2015 22:02:53 +0000

Over the past few posts on this blog I’ve been documenting the templates I have been working on for Black Marble. In a previous sequence I showed how you can use nested deployments to keep your templates simple and still push out complex environments. The problem with those examples is that they are very fixed in what they do. The templates create a number of virtual machines on a virtual network, with static IP addresses for each machine.

Using References and Outputs in Azure Resource Templates

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 01 Nov 2015 22:02:26 +0000

As you work more with Azure Resource Templates you will find that you need to pass information from one resource you have created into another. This is fine if you had the information to begin with within your variables and parameters, but what if it’s something you cannot know before deploy, such as the dynamic IP address of your new VM, or the FQDN of your new public IP address for your service?

Using Objects in Azure Resource Templates

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 01 Nov 2015 22:02:07 +0000

Over the past few weeks I’ve been refactoring and improving the templates that I have been creating for Black Marble to deploy environments in Azure. This is the first post of a few talking about some of the more advanced stuff I’m now doing.

You will remember from my previous posts that within an Azure Resource Template you can define parameters and variables, then use those for the configuration values within your resources. I was finding after a while that the sheer number of parameters and variables I had made the templates hard to read and understand. This was particularly true when my colleagues started to work with thee templates.

Useful links from The ART of Modern Azure Deployments

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 01 Nov 2015 22:01:18 +0000

Within a few days of each other I spoke about Azure Resource Templates at both DDDNorth 2015 and Integration Mondays run by the Integration User Group. I’d like to thank all of you who attended both and have been very kind in your feedback afterwards.

As promised, this post contains the useful links from my final slide.

I’ve already written posts on much of the content covered in my talk. However, since I’m currently sat on a transatlantic flight you can expect a series of posts to follow this on topics such as objects in templates, outputs and references.

My DDDNorth session on Technical Debt and SonarQube

Richard Fennell — Sun, 25 Oct 2015 11:27:42 +0000

Thanks to everyone who came to my session at DDDNorth on SonarQube, hope you found it useful. The links to resources for my session are

And you can find my slides on my GitHub repo https://github.com/rfennell/Presentations

Patterns & Practices Architecture Track at Future Decoded

Richard Fennell — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 15:33:44 +0000

In case you had not noticed, our MD and Connected Systems MVP Robert Hogg posted about the new Patterns & Practices Architecture Track he is hosting on Day 1 of the Microsoft Future Decoded event next month in London.

This track is an additional track to the now full Future Decoded. If you are interested in attending then get in touch with enquiries@blackmarble.com, for the attention of Linda, and she can help you out with a special code (if there are still any left). This code will not only give you access to the excellent p&p track on Day One, but also the Keynotes, so please select Day One when you register!

Wraps are off - patterns & practices Architecture Track at Future Decoded!

Robert Hogg — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 13:08:00 +0000

I am delighted to announce that I am hosting the Azure patterns&practices team in a dedicated invite-only track on Day One of Future Decoded!

I've been pushing to bring the patterns&practices team to the UK for a few years now, and it's excellent that it's finally happening at the Premier UK Microsoft event this November.

We have Christopher Bennage and Masashi Narumoto travelling in from the patterns&practices team in Corp especially for the event. The p&p team demonstrate how to bring together architecture best practices for the diverse Microsoft technologies into a unified and holistic solution. They are passionate about discovering, collecting and encouraging best practices, delighting in software craftmanship, helping developers be successful on Microsoft platforms and bringing joy to engineering software!

Release Manager - New deployment is not allowed as an another deployment is in progress

Richard Fennell — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 21:08:54 +0000

Whilst working with a vNext Release Management pipeline I started seeing the error

Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Release.Common.Helpers.OperationFailedException:
New deployment is not allowed as an another deployment is in progress.
Retry the deployment after sometime.

Problem was I could not see any blocked or paused deployment releases. All Internet searches mentioned multiple pipelines that share components, but this was not the issue.

Eventually I found the issue, my release pipeline included a step that ran CodedUI tests via TCM, hence a previous running of this template had triggered the test via TCM, but they had stalled. I found this by looking in MTM.

Agenda for Black Marble’s annual Architecture Forum is firming up with a keynote from Martin Woodward

Richard Fennell — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 19:46:34 +0000

The agenda for our 8th annual Black Marble Architecture Forum is firming up. Just confirmed is our keynote from Martin Woodward the Executive Director of the .NET Foundation, discussing open source adoption within Microsoft

There are still spaces for this free event, so why not register?

The event is on the 15th of December in Leeds.

Running nUnit and Jasmine.JS unit tests in TFS/VSO vNext build

Richard Fennell — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 13:28:00 +0000

This article was first published on the Microsoft’s UK Developers site as Running nUnit and Jasmine.JS unit tests in TFS/VSO vNext build

With the advent of vNext build in TFS 2015 and Visual Studio Online running unit tests that are not MSTest based within your build process is far more straightforward than it used to be. No longer do you have to use custom XAML build activities or tell all your TFS build controllers where the test runner assemblies are. The ‘out the box’ vNext build Visual Studio Test task will automatically load any test adaptors it finds in the path specified for test runners in its advanced properties, a path that can be populated via NuGet.

Powershell to help plot graphs of how long TFS upgrades take

Richard Fennell — Thu, 17 Sep 2015 16:08:28 +0000

When doing TFS upgrades it is useful to know roughly how long they will take. The upgrade programs give a number of steps, but not all steps are equal. Some are quick, some are slow. I have found it useful to graph past updates so I can get a feel of how long an update will take given it got to ‘step x in y minutes’. You can do this by hand, noting down time as specific steps are reached. However for a long upgrade it usually means pulling data out of the TFS TPC upgrade logs.

Session accepted for DDDNorth

Richard Fennell — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 15:54:52 +0000

Pleased to say my session on SonarQube has been accepted for DDDNorth. And it seems that registration has opened and closed today, there is a wait list up now

Good to see the DDD events still popular after 10 long years

Is the Microsoft Band any good for Triathlon? Training Yes, racing No

Richard Fennell — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 15:51:04 +0000

The title says it all, I have been using a Microsoft Band for a few months now and have found it a great tool for running and cycling as long as you are going out for less than about 5 hours. I tried to use for the first time Triathlon race at at the Leeds Triathlon over the weekend.

As it it not water proof it was not an option for the swim (unlike my old Polar HR monitor), so I put it on in T1 (swim to bike), don’t think it wasted too much time! This is where I hit the first issue (or second if you count that it is not waterproof) that my finger was too wet to operate the touch screen. I have seen this issue on runs on rainy days. So I did not manage to switch it to cycle mode, and did not bother to try again whilst cycling after I had dried out – a had other things on my mind like being a in good aero position and get moving faster.

Running Typemock Isolator based tests in TFS vNext build

Richard Fennell — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 20:02:00 +0000

Updated 22 Mar 2016 This task is available in the VSTS Marketplace)

Typemock Isolator provides a way to ‘mock the un-mockable’, such as sealed private classes in .NET, so can be a invaluable tool in unit testing. To allow this mocking Isolator interception has to be started before any unit tests are run and stopped when completed. For a developer this is done automatically within the Visual Studio IDE, but on build systems you have to run something to do this as part of your build process. Typemock provide documentation and tools for common build systems such as MSBuild, Jenkins, Team City and TFS XAML builds. However, they don’t provide tools or documentation on getting it working with TFS vNext build, so I had to write my own vNext build Task to do the job, wrapping Tmockrunner.exe provided by Typemock which handles the starting and stopping of mocking whilst calling any EXE of your choice.

Voting for DDD North Sessions is now open

Richard Fennell — Mon, 07 Sep 2015 11:09:52 +0000

Voting for DDD North Sessions is now open - http://bit.ly/DDDNorth15Sessions

Vote on what you would like to see at this community conference

WebDeploy, parameters.xml transforms and nLog settings

Richard Fennell — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 15:12:26 +0000

I have been trying to parameterise the SQL DB connection string used by nLog when it is defined in a web.config file of a web site being deployed via Release Management and WebDeploy i.e. I wanted to select and edit the bit highlighted of my web.config file

1<configuration>
2    <nlog xmlns="[http://www.nlog-project.org/schemas/NLog.xsd"](http://www.nlog-project.org/schemas/NLog.xsd") xmlns:xsi="[http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"](http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance")\>
3
4    <targets async="true">
5      <target xsi:type="Database" name="SQL" dbProvider="System.Data.SqlClient" connectionString="Data Source=myserver;Database=mydb;Persist Security Info=True;Pooling=False" keepConnection="true" commandText="INSERT INTO \[Logs\](ID, TimeStamp, Message, Level, Logger, Details, Application, MachineName, Username) VALUES(newid(), getdate(), @message, @level, @logger, @exception, @application, @machineName, @username)">
6
7        <parameter layout="${message}" name="@message"></parameter>
8        …….
9

The problem I had was that the xpath query I was using was not returning the nLog node because the nLog node has a namespace defined. This means we can’t just use a query in the form

Complex Azure Odyssey Part Four: WAP Server

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 30 Aug 2015 15:40:56 +0000

Part One of this series covered the project itself and the overall template structure. Part Two went through how I deploy the Domain Controller in depth. Part Three talks about deploying my ADFS server and in this final part I will show you how to configure the WAP server that faces the outside world.

The Template

The WAP server is the only one in my environment that faces the internet. Because of this the deployment is more complex. I’ve also added further complexity because I want to be able to have more than one WAP server in future, so there’s a load balancer deployed too. You can see the resource outline in the screenshot below: The internet-facing stuff means we need more things in our template. First up is our PublicIPAddress:{ "name": "\[variables('vmWAPpublicipName')\]", "type": "Microsoft.Network/publicIPAddresses", "location": "\[parameters('resourceLocation')\]", "apiVersion": "2015-05-01-preview", "dependsOn": \[ \], "tags": { "displayName": "vmWAPpublicip" }, "properties": { "publicIPAllocationMethod": "Dynamic", "dnsSettings": { "domainNameLabel": "\[variables('vmWAPpublicipDnsName')\]" } } },This is pretty straightforward stuff. The nature of my environment means that I am perfectly happy with a dynamic IP that changes if I stop and then start the environment. Access will be via the hostname assigned to that IP and I use that hostname in my ADFS service configuration and certificates. Azure builds the hostname based on a pattern and I can use that pattern in my templates, which is how I’ve created the certs when I deploy the DC and configure the ADFS service all before I’ve deployed the WAP server. That public IP address is then bound to our load balancer which provides the internet-endpoint for our services:{ "apiVersion": "2015-05-01-preview", "name": "\[variables('vmWAPlbName')\]", "type": "Microsoft.Network/loadBalancers", "location": "\[parameters('resourceLocation')\]", "dependsOn": \[ "\[resourceId('Microsoft.Network/publicIPAddresses',variables('vmWAPpublicipName'))\]" \], "properties": { "frontendIPConfigurations": \[ { "name": "\[variables('LBFE')\]", "properties": { "publicIPAddress": { "id": "\[resourceId('Microsoft.Network/publicIPAddresses',variables('vmWAPpublicipName'))\]" } } } \], "backendAddressPools": \[ { "name": "\[variables('LBBE')\]" } \], "inboundNatRules": \[ { "name": "\[variables('RDPNAT')\]", "properties": { "frontendIPConfiguration": { "id": "\[variables('vmWAPLbfeConfigID')\]" }, "protocol": "tcp", "frontendPort": "\[variables('rdpPort')\]", "backendPort": 3389, "enableFloatingIP": false } }, { "name": "\[variables('httpsNAT')\]", "properties": { "frontendIPConfiguration": { "id": "\[variables('vmWAPLbfeConfigID')\]" }, "protocol": "tcp", "frontendPort": "\[variables('httpsPort')\]", "backendPort": 443, "enableFloatingIP": false } } \] } }There’s a lot going on in here so let’s work through it. First of all we connect our public IP address to the load balancer. We then create a back end configuration which we will later connect our VM to. Finally we create a set of NAT rules. I need to be able to RDP into the WAP server, which is the first block. The variables define the names of my resources. You can see that I specify the ports – external through a variable that I can change, and internal directlym because I need that to be the same each time because that’s what my VMs listen on. You can see that each NAT rule is associated with the frontendIPConfiguration – opening the port to the outside world. The next step is to create a NIC that will hook our VM up to the existing virtual network and the load balancer:{ "name": "\[variables('vmWAPNicName')\]", "type": "Microsoft.Network/networkInterfaces", "location": "\[parameters('resourceLocation')\]", "apiVersion": "2015-05-01-preview", "dependsOn": \[ "\[concat('Microsoft.Network/publicIPAddresses/', variables('vmWAPpublicipName'))\]", "\[concat('Microsoft.Network/loadBalancers/',variables('vmWAPlbName'))\]" \], "tags": { "displayName": "vmWAPNic" }, "properties": { "ipConfigurations": \[ { "name": "ipconfig1", "properties": { "privateIPAllocationMethod": "Static", "privateIPAddress": "\[variables('vmWAPIPAddress')\]", "subnet": { "id": "\[variables('vmWAPSubnetRef')\]" }, "loadBalancerBackendAddressPools": \[ { "id": "\[variables('vmWAPBEAddressPoolID')\]" } \], "loadBalancerInboundNatRules": \[ { "id": "\[variables('vmWAPRDPNATRuleID')\]" }, { "id": "\[variables('vmWAPhttpsNATRuleID')\]" } \] } } \] } }Here you can see that the NIC is connected to a subnet on our virtual network with a static IP that I specify in a variable. It is then added to the load balancer back end address pool and finally I need to specify which of the NAT rules I created in the load balancer are hooked up to my VM. If I don’t include the binding here, traffic won’t be passed to my VM (as I discovered when developing this lot – I forgot to wire up https and as a result couldn’t access the website published by WAP!). The VM itself is basically the same as my ADFS server. I use the same Windows Sever 2012 R2 image, have a single disk and I’ve nested the extensions within the VM because that seems to work better than not doing:``` { "name": "[variables('vmWAPName')]", "type": "Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines", "location": "[parameters('resourceLocation')]", "apiVersion": "2015-05-01-preview", "dependsOn": [ "[concat('Microsoft.Network/networkInterfaces/', variables('vmWAPNicName'))]", ], "tags": { "displayName": "vmWAP" }, "properties": { "hardwareProfile": { "vmSize": "[variables('vmWAPVmSize')]" }, "osProfile": { "computername": "[variables('vmWAPName')]", "adminUsername": "[parameters('adminUsername')]", "adminPassword": "[parameters('adminPassword')]" }, "storageProfile": { "imageReference": { "publisher": "[variables('windowsImagePublisher')]", "offer": "[variables('windowsImageOffer')]", "sku": "[variables('windowsImageSKU')]", "version": "latest" }, "osDisk": { "name": "[concat(variables('vmWAPName'), '-os-disk')]", "vhd": { "uri": "[concat('http://', variables('storageAccountName'), '.blob.core.windows.net/', variables('vmStorageAccountContainerName'), '/', variables('vmWAPName'), 'os.vhd')]" }, "caching": "ReadWrite", "createOption": "FromImage" } }, "networkProfile": { "networkInterfaces": [ { "id": "[resourceId('Microsoft.Network/networkInterfaces', variables('vmWAPNicName'))]" } ] } }, "resources": [ { "type": "extensions", "name": "IaaSDiagnostics", "apiVersion": "2015-06-15", "location": "[parameters('resourceLocation')]", "dependsOn": [ "[concat('Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/', variables('vmWAPName'))]" ], "tags": { "displayName": "[concat(variables('vmWAPName'),'/vmDiagnostics')]" }, "properties": { "publisher": "Microsoft.Azure.Diagnostics", "type": "IaaSDiagnostics", "typeHandlerVersion": "1.4", "autoUpgradeMinorVersion": "true", "settings": { "xmlCfg": "[base64(variables('wadcfgx'))]", "StorageAccount": "[variables('storageAccountName')]" }, "protectedSettings": { "storageAccountName": "[variables('storageAccountName')]", "storageAccountKey": "[listKeys(variables('storageAccountid'),'2015-05-01-preview').key1]", "storageAccountEndPoint": "https://core.windows.net/" } } }, { "type": "Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/extensions", "name": "[concat(variables('vmWAPName'),'/WAPserver')]", "apiVersion": "2015-05-01-preview", "location": "[parameters('resourceLocation')]", "dependsOn": [ "[resourceId('Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines', variables('vmWAPName'))]", "[concat('Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/', variables('vmWAPName'),'/extensions/IaaSDiagnostics')]" ], "properties": { "publisher": "Microsoft.Powershell", "type": "DSC", "typeHandlerVersion": "1.7", "settings": { "modulesURL": "[concat(variables('vmDSCmoduleUrl'), parameters('_artifactsLocationSasToken'))]", "configurationFunction": "[variables('vmWAPConfigurationFunction')]", "properties": { "domainName": "[variables('domainName')]", "adminCreds": { "userName": "[parameters('adminUsername')]", "password": "PrivateSettingsRef:adminPassword" } } }, "protectedSettings": { "items": { "adminPassword": "[parameters('adminPassword')]" } } } }, { "type": "Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/extensions", "name": "[concat(variables('vmWAPName'),'/wapScript')]", "apiVersion": "2015-05-01-preview", "location": "[parameters('resourceLocation')]", "dependsOn": [ "[concat('Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/', variables('vmWAPName'))]", "[concat('Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/', variables('vmWAPName'),'/extensions/WAPserver')]" ], "properties": { "publisher": "Microsoft.Compute", "type": "CustomScriptExtension", "typeHandlerVersion": "1.4", "settings": { "fileUris": [ "[concat(parameters('_artifactsLocation'),'/WapServer.ps1', parameters('_artifactsLocationSasToken'))]", "[concat(parameters('_artifactsLocation'),'/PSPKI.zip', parameters('_artifactsLocationSasToken'))]", "[concat(parameters('_artifactsLocation'),'/tuServDeployFunctions.ps1', parameters('_artifactsLocationSasToken'))]" ], "commandToExecute": "[concat('powershell.exe -file WAPServer.ps1',' -vmAdminUsername ',parameters('adminUsername'),' -vmAdminPassword ',parameters('adminPassword'),' -fsServiceName ',variables('vmWAPpublicipDnsName'),' -adfsServerName ',variables('vmADFSName'),' -vmDCname ',variables('vmDCName'), ' -resourceLocation "', parameters('resourceLocation'),'"')]" } } } ] }

Complex Azure Template Odyssey Part Three: ADFS Server

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 30 Aug 2015 14:59:27 +0000

Part One of this series covered the project itself and the overall template structure. Part Two went through how I deploy the Domain Controller in depth. This post will focus on the next server in the chain: The ADFS server that is required to enable authentication in the application which will eventually be installed on this environment.

The Template

The nested deployment template for the ADFS server differs little from my DC template. If anything, it’s even simpler because we don’t have to reconfigure the virtual network after deploying the VM. The screenshot below shots the JSON outline for the template.

Complex Azure Template Odyssey Part Two: Domain Controller

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 30 Aug 2015 14:11:30 +0000

In part one of this series of posts I talked about the project driving my creation of these Azure Resource Templates, the structure of the template and what resource I was deploying. This post will go through the deployment and configuration of the first VM which will become my domain controller and certificate server. In order to achieve my goals I need to deploy the VM, the DSC extension and finally the custom script extension to perform actions that current DSC modules can’t. I’ll show you the template code, the DSC code and the final scripts and talk about the gotchas I encountered on the way. Further posts will detail the ADFS and WAP server deployments.

An alternative to setting a build quality on a TFS vNext build

Richard Fennell — Fri, 28 Aug 2015 16:00:43 +0000

TFS vNext builds do not have a concept of build quality unlike the old XAML based builds. This is an issue for us as we used the changing of the build quality as signal to test a build, or to mark it as released to a client (this was all managed with my TFS Alerts DSL to make sure suitable emails and build retention were used).

So how to get around this problem with vNext?

Speaking at CloudBurst in September

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 23 Aug 2015 16:29:48 +0000

I’ve never been to Sweden, so I’m really looking forward to September, when I’ll be speaking at CloudBurst. Organised by the Swedish Azure User Group (SWAG – love it!), this conference is also streamed and recorded and the sessions will be available on Channel 9. The list of speakers and topics promise some high-quality and interesting sessions and I urge you to attend if you can, and tune in to the live stream if you can’t.

Complex Azure Template Odyssey Part One: The Environment

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 23 Aug 2015 16:21:00 +0000

Part Two | Part Three | Part Four Over the past month or two I’ve been creating an Azure Resource Template to deploy and environment which, previously, we’d created old-style PowerShell scripts to deploy. In theory, the Resource Template approach would make the deployment quicker, easier to trigger from tooling like Release Manager and make the code easier to read. The aim is to deploy a number of servers that will host an application we are developing. This will allow us to easily provision test or demo environments into Azure making as much use of automation as possible. The application itself has a set of system requirements that means I have a good number of tasks to work through:

Driving Windows 10 for Developers using the Keyboard

Robert Hogg — Sun, 23 Aug 2015 15:19:27 +0000

Key Summary

I have split the key Summary into Essential the essential keys are key combinations you NEED to know and Nice to know. I have left the Win+arrows in the Windows 8 section, while the Windows 10 version is vastly better with snapping, essentially the functionality is the same.

I will be posting later on Cortana and other joys of Windows 10.

Essential Keys (new)

Win
Toggles between the start and the current application if in tablet mode

An Introduction To Azure Resource Templates

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 23 Aug 2015 14:55:47 +0000

I have spent a good deal of time over the last month or two building an Azure Resource Template to deploy a relatively complicated IaaS environment. In doing so I’ve hit a variety of problems along the way and I though that a number of blog posts were in order to share what I’ve learned. I will write a detailed post on certain specific servers within the environment shortly. This post will describe Azure Resource Template basics, problems I hit and some decisions I made to overcome issues. Further posts will detail my environment and specific solutions to creating my configuration.

Back in the Saddle

Robert Hogg — Sun, 23 Aug 2015 14:45:10 +0000

After many months travelling and spending a lot of time planning, I have now got many posts backed up to send, I am currently touching up and posting my back log.

so expect to see a flurry of posts over the next week or so

Using the customScriptExtension in Azure Resource Templates

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 23 Aug 2015 13:10:16 +0000

Documentation for using the customScriptExtension for Virtual Machines in Azure through Resource Templates is pretty much non-existent at time of writing, and the articles on using it through PowerShell are just plain wrong when it comes to templates. This post is accurate at time of writing and will show you how to deploy PowerShell scripts and resources to an Azure Virtual Machine through a Resource Template.

The code snippet below shows a customScriptExtension pulled from one of my templates.

Cannot create an MSDeploy package for an Azure Web Job project as part of an automated build/

Richard Fennell — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 14:28:48 +0000

I like web deploy as a means to package up websites for deployment. I like the way I only need to add

1/p:DeployOnBuild=True;PublishProfile=Release

as an MSBuild argument to get the package produced as part of an automated build. This opening up loads of deployment options

I recently hit an issue packaging up a solution that contained an Azure WebSite and an Azure Web Job (to be hosted in the web site). It is easy to add the web job so that it is included in the Web Deploy package. Once this was done we could deploy from Visual Studio, or package to the local file system and see the web job EXE in the app_datajobs folder as expected.

Using Release Management vNext templates when you don’t want to use DSC scripts – A better script

Richard Fennell — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 10:20:00 +0000

A couple of months ago I wrote a post on using PowerShell scripts to deploy web sites in Release Management vNext templates as opposed to DSC. In that post I provided a script to help with the translation of Release Management configuration variables to entries in the [MSDELPOY].setparameters.xml file for web sites.

The code I provided in that post required you to hard code the variables to translate. This quickly become a problem for maintenance. However, there is a simple solution.

Guest post at Microsoft - nUnit and Jasmine.JS unit tests in TFS/VSO vNext build

Richard Fennell — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 13:26:20 +0000

I have just had a guest post published on the Microsoft UK developers site nUnit and Jasmine.JS unit tests in TFS/VSO vNext build

DDDNorth 2015 submissions are open

Richard Fennell — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 08:41:46 +0000

DDDNorth is on again this year, back in it’s more northern base of the Sunderland University on the 24th of October

You can submit your session proposal in here

TF30063 Errors accessing a TFS 2015 server via the C# API after upgrade from 2013

Richard Fennell — Thu, 13 Aug 2015 10:49:55 +0000

Background

We upgraded our production TFS 2013.4 server to TFS 2015 RTM this week. As opposed to an in-place upgrade we chose to make a few change on the way; so whilst leaving our DBs on our SQL 2012 cluster

We moved to a new VM for our AT (to upgrade from Windows 2008R2 to 2012R2)
Split the SSRS instance off the AT to a separate VM with a new SSAS server (again to move to 2012R2 and to ease management, getting all the reporting bits in one place)

But we do not touch

Running Microsoft Test Manager Test Suites as part of a vNext Release pipeline - Part 2

Richard Fennell — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 20:56:34 +0000

In my last post I discussed how you could wire TCM tests into a Release Management vNext pipeline. The problem with the script I provided, as I noted, was that the deployment was triggered synchronously by the build i.e. the build/release process was:

TFS Build
1. Gets the source
2. Compiled the code
3. Run the unit tests
4. Trigger the RM pipeline
5. Wait while the RM pipeline completed
RM then
1. Deploys the code
2. Runs the integration tests
When RM completed the TFS build completes

This process raised a couple of problems

Running Microsoft Test Manager Test Suites as part of a vNext Release pipeline

Richard Fennell — Tue, 04 Aug 2015 20:41:00 +0000

Also see Part 2 on how to address gotcha's in this process

When using Release Management there is a good chance you will want to run test suites as part of your automated deployment pipeline. If you are using a vNext PowerShell based pipeline you need a way to trigger the tests via PowerShell as there is no out the box agent to do the job.

Step 1 - Install a Test Agent

The first step is to make sure that the Visual Studio Test Agent is installed on the box you wish to run the test on. if you don’t already have a MTM Environment in place with a test agent then this can be done by creating a standard environment in Microsoft Test Manager. Remember you only need this environment to include the VM you want to run the test on, unless you want to also gather logs and events from our machines in the system. The complexity is up to you.

Few issues a few days on with my Windows 10 upgrade

Richard Fennell — Sun, 02 Aug 2015 10:31:34 +0000

A few days in and I have solved the few problems I have had

Can apply update Security Update for Windows 10 for x64-based Systems (KB3074683)

My system tried to apply the KB3074683 patch a couple of time, rolling it back each time. A search of the forums found the answer to this one. As in the forum post I have an Nvidia video card, in fact it caused the problems during the update, so the fix was to delete the UpdatusUser registry entry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionProfileList.

Upgrade from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 on my Lenovo W520

Richard Fennell — Thu, 30 Jul 2015 09:44:00 +0000

I have just done an in place upgrade on my Lenovo W520 from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. Something I had not tried during the beta programme, sticking to running Windows 10 in VMs (mostly on Azure).

I have to say the process was pretty smooth. I only hit one issue, and this was the usual NVidia Optimus problems I saw installing Windows 8 and 8.1.

This is what happened

With Windows 8.1 running mounted the Windows 10 Enterprise ISO

Lessons learnt using simple PowerShell scripts with vNext Release Management

Richard Fennell — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 15:23:41 +0000

If you are using basic PowerShell scripts as opposed to DSC with Release Management there are a few gotcha’s I have found.

You cannot pass parameters

Lets look at a sample script that we would like to run via Release Manager

 1
 2
 3param
 4(
 5    $param1
 6)
 7
 8
 9
10write-verbose -verbose "Start"
11write-verbose -verbose "Got var1 \[$var1\]"
12write-verbose -verbose "Got param1 \[$param1\]"
13write-verbose -verbose "End"

In Release Manager we have the following vNext workflow

Changes in VS/TFS licensing you really need to be aware of

Richard Fennell — Tue, 21 Jul 2015 22:23:56 +0000

With the release of Visual Studio 2015 there are some significant changes to Visual Studio and TFS licensing, you can find the details of Brian Harry’s blog. These changes can make a serious change in what you need to purchase for different roles, so it could well be worth a look.

Stray white space in a ‘path to custom test adaptors’ will cause tests to fail on VSO vNext build

Richard Fennell — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 16:59:47 +0000

If you are providing a path to a custom test adaptor such as nUnit or Chutzpah for a TFS/VSO vNext build e.g. $(Build.SourcesDirectory)packages, make sure you have no leading whitespace in the data entry form.

If you do have a space you will see an error log like this as the adaptor cannot be found as the command line generated is malformed

12015-07-13T16:11:32.8986514Z Executing the powershell script: C:LRMMSServicesMmsTaskAgentProvisionerToolstasksVSTest1.0.16VSTest.ps1 2015-07-13T16:11:33.0727047Z ##\[debug\]Calling Invoke-VSTest for all test assemblies 2015-07-13T16:11:33.0756512Z Working folder: C:a549426d 2015-07-13T16:11:33.0777083Z Executing C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0Common7IDECommonExtensionsMicrosoftTestWindowvstest.console.exe "C:a549426dUnitTestDemoWebApp.TestsScriptsmycode.tests.js" /TestAdapterPath: C:a549426dUnitTestDemoChutzpah /logger:trx 2015-07-13T16:11:34.3495987Z Microsoft (R) Test Execution Command Line Tool Version 12.0.30723.0 2015-07-13T16:11:34.3505995Z Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. 2015-07-13T16:11:34.3896000Z ##\[error\]Error: The /TestAdapterPath parameter requires a value, which is path of a location containing custom test adapters. Example: /TestAdapterPath:c:MyCustomAdapters 2015-07-13T16:11:36.5808275Z ##\[error\]Error: The test source file "C:a549426dUnitTestDemoChutzpah" provided was not found. 2015-07-13T16:11:37.0004574Z ##\[error\]VSTest Test Run failed with exit code: 1 2015-07-13T16:11:37.0094570Z ##\[warning\]No results found to publish.

Cannot run Pester unit tests in Visual Studio but they work Ok from the command prompt

Richard Fennell — Tue, 07 Jul 2015 09:53:33 +0000

I have been using Pester for some PowerShell tests. From the command prompt all is good, but I kept getting the error ‘module cannot be loaded because scripts is disabled on this system’ when I tried to run them via the Visual Studio Test Explorer

I found the solution on StackOverflow, I had forgotten that Visual Studio is 32bit, so you need to set the 32bit execution policy. Opening the default PowerShell command prompt and and setting the policy only effect the 64Bit instance.

Overwriting your own parameters in Release Management can cause Powershell remoting problems

Richard Fennell — Tue, 30 Jun 2015 20:58:06 +0000

I have been doing some work on vNext Release Management; I managed to waste a good hour today with a stupid error.

In vNext process templates you provide a username and password to be used as the Powershell remoting credentials (in the red box below)

My Powershell script also took a parameter username, so this was provided as a custom configuration too (the green box). This was the issue. Not unsurprisingly having two parameters with the same name is a problem. You might get away with it if they are the same value (I did on one stage, which caused more confusion), but if they differ (as mine did in my production stage) the last one set wins, which meant my remote Powershell returned the error

Speaking at Leeds DevOps on the 21st of July

Richard Fennell — Tue, 30 Jun 2015 08:19:44 +0000

I will be speaking at Leeds DevOps on the 21st of July on the subject of Desired State Configuration (DSC).

‘In the Windows world, due to its API based architecture, deployment is too often not as simple as copying an EXE and updating a text configuration file. Desired State Configuration is an attempt to ease the pain we suffer in this space. Providing a set of tools that can be leveraged by any set of deployment tools whether in a Windows or heterogeneous environment. In this session we will look at what DSC is, what resource are available and how to write your own’.

Using Release Management vNext templates when you don’t want to use DSC scripts

Richard Fennell — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 20:35:00 +0000

Update 21 Aug 2015 - This post contains all the basic information, but there is an improved PowerShell script discussed in Using Release Management vNext templates when you don’t want to use DSC scripts – A better script

Many web sites are basically forms over data, so you need to deploy some DB schema and something like a MVC website. Even for this ’bread and butter’ work it is important to have an automated process to avoid human error. Hence the rise in use of release tools to run your DACPAC and MSDeploy packages.

Fix for 500 internal errors when trying to trigger a Release Management pipeline from a build via the REST API

Richard Fennell — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 15:03:50 +0000

With the help of the Release Management team at Microsoft I now have a working REST based automated TFS Build to Release Management pipeline. Previously we were using a TFS automated build and then manually triggering our agent based Release Management pipeline. When we moved to a vNext PS/DSC based RM pipeline I took the chance to automate the link using REST via a PowerShell script to trigger the initial deployment. However, I hit problem, first with a stupid 401 permission error and later with a much stranger 500 internal server error.

Failing Ping tests on Application Insights

Richard Fennell — Mon, 08 Jun 2015 21:35:05 +0000

Whilst setting up Application Insights on one of our web sites I hit a problem. The target site appeared to be working OK, but if I setup a ping test it failed.

Digging into the failure, as with much of Application Insights just keep clicking to go deeper, I found the issue was that a CSS file was failing to load.

Presumably on this Umbraco site the CSS file is meant to be loaded for the site but none of the styles are actually used, hence the site renders OK.

Windows Media Center issues again

Richard Fennell — Mon, 08 Jun 2015 19:43:35 +0000

Today was my day for semi annual Media Center (MCE) problems. As usual they seemed to start with an unexpected power issue, a local power cut, maybe the answer is a UPS for the TV setup? Once the PC was rebooted it had forgotten it had any tuners. If I tried to view live TV or re-setup the TV signal it just hung with a spinning ‘toilet bowl of death’ cursor. Corrupt TV data DB I suspect, I have seen it before

Strange TFS build process template editing issue with Typemock

Richard Fennell — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 14:30:13 +0000

Had a strange issue today while editing our standard TFS 2013 XAML build process template to add an optional post drop script block to allow a Release Management pipeline to be triggered via REST. Our standard template includes a block for enabling and disabling Typemock, after editing our template to add the new script block (nowhere near the Typemock section) our builds failed with the error

1TF215097: An error occurred while initializing a build for build definition BMISS.Expenses.Main.CI: Exception Message: Cannot set unknown member 'TypeMock.TFS2013.TypeMockStart.DisableAutoLink'. (type XamlObjectWriterException) Exception Stack Trace: at System.Xaml.XamlObjectWriter.WriteStartMember(XamlMember property)

It took ages to find the issue, we hunted for badly formed XAML, but the issue turned out to be that when ever we opened the template in Visual Studio 2013 it added the highlighted property

Build and Ignite Event Sessions

Richard Fennell — Thu, 28 May 2015 14:24:27 +0000

If you came to our re:Build and re:Ignite events last week and want more information on the subjects we covered, remember that all the sessions from both the Microsoft Build and Ignite events are available at http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2015 and http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/2015. On these sites you can find videos of the sessions and slide stacks, hours of family viewing.

Free Black Marble Build and Ignite round up event in Yorkshire

Richard Fennell — Thu, 07 May 2015 12:28:42 +0000

Did you miss content from Microsoft Build and Ignite events?

Well you can catch up on Channel9, but we at Black Marble are running free round up events on the 20th May in Leeds.

Why not come and talk to Black Marble and Microsoft staff who attended the events?

To register go to the Black Marble events site.

Generating MsTest wrappers for nUnit tests

Richard Fennell — Thu, 07 May 2015 09:32:23 +0000

Recently whilst at a clients one of our consultants came across an interesting issue; the client was using Selenium to write web tests, they wanted to trigger them both from Microsoft Test Manager (MTM) as local automated tests, and also run them using BrowserStack for multi browser regression testing. The problem was to import the tests into MTM they needed to be written in MsTest and for BrowserStack nUnit.

As they did not want to duplicate each test what could they ?

MSDeploy Parameters.xml can only replace web.config values is a value is already set

Richard Fennell — Fri, 01 May 2015 13:37:10 +0000

If you are using a parameters.xml file to set value with MSDeploy I have just found a gotcha. You need some value in the web.config file, not just an empty XML tag, else the replacement fails. So to explain…

I had the following parameters.xml file, and use Release Management to replace the __TAG__ values at deployment time.

1<parameters>
2  <parameter name="Domain" description="Please enter the name of the domain" defaultvalue="\_\_Domain\_\_" tags="">
3    <parameterentry kind="XmlFile" scope="\\web.config$" match="/configuration/applicationSettings/Web.Properties.Settings/setting\[@name='Domain'\]/value/text()" />
4  </parameter>
5
6  <parameter name="AdminGroups" description="Please enter the name of the admin group" defaultvalue="\_\_AdminGroups\_\_" tags="">
7    <parameterentry kind="XmlFile" scope="\\web.config$" match="/configuration/applicationSettings/Web.Properties.Settings/setting\[@name='AdminGroups'\]/value/text()" />
8  </parameter>
9</parameters>

If my web.config file (in the MSDeploy package to be transformed) was set to

A Visual Studio Extension to create MSDeploy parameters.xml files

Richard Fennell — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 15:18:55 +0000

When you using MSdeploy you should create a parameters.xml file that exposes your web.config settings at the time of installation. This enables good deployment habits, build the product one and then set system specific values using deployment tools. The problem is that this parameters.xml file is a pain to write, it is a series of XML blocks that contain XPath to find the entries to replace, typo’s are easy to introduce.

May is a busy time for events

Richard Fennell — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 15:16:21 +0000

Mid May is a busy time for me presenting-wise:

On the 12th/13th I am presenting at Techorama in Belgium
And on the 14th I will be presenting at a Microsoft/GreyMatter event at Microsoft’s Reading office.

And after that there are also the Black Marble Re:Build and Re:Ignite events. I am sure I will be involved at those, but we have to wait for a couple of week until after Build and Ignite to find out what we will be talking about.

After a few days living with a Microsoft Band…

Richard Fennell — Sun, 05 Apr 2015 15:15:00 +0000

I have worn a Polar s610 heart rate monitor as my watch for years (probably 15+), as I write it needs another battery swap, which means sending it to Polar, something I have done a couple of times in the past for servicing The batteries in the watch last 5 years or so, in the associated heart rate monitor strap maybe a bit more depending on usage.

Running StyleCop from the command line and in a TFS 2015 vNext build

Richard Fennell — Fri, 03 Apr 2015 13:50:00 +0000

Updated 6 Feb 2016 - See the newer post about the new vNext build task I have written to do the same job

Virtually any automated build will require some customisation beyond a basic compile. So as part of my upcoming Techorama session on TFS 2015 vNext build I need a demo of using a custom script as part of the build process. Two common customisations we use are version stamping of assemblies and running code analysis tools. For vNext build there is already a sample of version stamping, so I thought getting StyleCop running would be a good sample.

All change - new SKUs for Visual Studio 2015

Richard Fennell — Tue, 31 Mar 2015 17:42:48 +0000

All change again on Visual Studio SKU licensing, have a look at the blog post on new SKUs for the 2015 release and also the 2015 product site. Basically it is a simplification.

You can find the detailed feature break down on the comparison site

Cross platform build with TFS 2015 vNext Build

Richard Fennell — Mon, 30 Mar 2015 19:11:50 +0000

I have been preparing for my Techorama session on TFS vNext build. One of the demo’s I am planning is to use the Node based cross platform build agent to build something on a Linux VM. Turns out this takes a few undocumented steps to get this going with the CTP of TFS 2015

The process I followed was:

I installed a Mint 17 VM
On the VM, I installed the Node VSOAgent as detailed in the npm documentation (or I could have built it from from source from GitHub to get the bleeding edge version)
I created a new agent instance
vsoagent-installer
I then tried to run the configuration, but hit a couple of issues
_ node vsoagent_

URL error

The first problem was I was told the URL I provided was invalid. I had tried the URL of my local TFS 2015 CTP VM

We are hosting a free event on Visual Studio ALM on the 18th March

Richard Fennell — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 14:20:59 +0000

Black Marble are hosting, at our offices, a Microsoft event on the 18th March on ALM with Visual Studio & TFS 2013. This is a repeat of the sell out event we hosted in the autumn.

For details of the event and registration see the booking site

My Latest and Indeed Greatest Award

Robert Hogg — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 22:23:10 +0000

Today I was lucky enough to present one of Rob Miles legendary “Rather Useful Seminars”

For my talk on “Being Disruptive for Fun and Profit” I was awarded an award, hand carved by Rob from a much bigger award.

Rob assures me there is no other one in the world apart from the second one he gave me.

Thank you to everybody who turned up and I hope if you attended you got a lot from it.

My DSC session is up at TechDays Online 2015 On-Demand

Richard Fennell — Tue, 17 Feb 2015 11:45:14 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I presented on DSC and Release Management as part of the Microsoft UK TechDays Online 2015 event. All the sessions from this three day event are now available on demand at TechDays Online 2015 on-demand sessions.

You do seem to have to register/login to see the content, so I can’t deep link to my session, but browsing the catalogue is a good idea there are some great sessions

Build arguments are not returned for a build definition via the TFS API if they are left as default values

Richard Fennell — Wed, 11 Feb 2015 16:15:59 +0000

We use my TFS Alerts DSL to perform tasks when our TFS build complete, one of these is a job to increment the minor version number and reset the version start date (the value that generates third field – days since a point in time) if a build is set to the quality ‘release’ e.g. 1.2.99.[unique build id] where 99 is the days count since some past date could change to 1.3.0.[unique build id] (see this old post on how we do this in the build process)

Choices DDD South West or the Maker Faire?

Richard Fennell — Mon, 09 Feb 2015 12:50:55 +0000

Speaker registration for DDD South West has opened, problem is the event is the same weekend as the Maker Faire in Newcastle, don’t think I can do both.

Both are great options though, good to have choices

Windows 10 to be an option on the Raspberry PI 2

Richard Fennell — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 13:05:32 +0000

Seem Windows 10 will be an option on the new Raspberry PI 2, that provides some more nice IoT options.

It will be interesting to see which tools Microsoft look to target onto this board, I guess remote development from a PC as per their Galileo board. But there might be enough power for a bit more, we shall see

Fix for timeout exporting a SQL Azure DB using PowerShell or SQLPackage.exe

Richard Fennell — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 12:55:52 +0000

I have been trying to export a SQL Azure DB as a .BACPAC using the command line

"C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft SQL Server120DACbinSqlPackage.exe"
                              /action:Export
                             /sourceservername:myserver.database.windows.net
                             /sourcedatabasename:websitecontentdb
                             /sourceuser:sa@myserver /sourcepassword: /targetfile:db.bacpac

The problem is the command times out after around an hour, at the ‘Extracting schema from database’ stage.

I got exactly the same issue if I use PowerShell as discussed in Sandrino Di Mattia’s post.

The issue is the Azure service tier level I am running the SQL DB on.

Wrong package location when reusing a Release Management component

Richard Fennell — Sat, 31 Jan 2015 15:46:15 +0000

Whilst setting up a new agent based deployment pipeline in Release Management I decided I to reuse an existing component as it already had the correct package location set and correct transforms for the MSDeploy package. Basically this pipeline was a new copy of an existing website with different branding (css file etc.), but the same configuration options.

I had just expected this work, but I kept getting ‘file not found’ errors when MSDeploy was run. On investigation I found that the package location for the component was wrong, it was the build drop root, not the sub folder I had specified.

Fix for cannot run Windows 8.1 units test on a TFS 2013 Build Agent

Richard Fennell — Sat, 31 Jan 2015 12:20:29 +0000

I recently hit a problem that on one of our TFS 2013 build agents we could not run Windows 8.1 unit tests. Now as we know the build agent needs some care and attention to build Windows 8.1 at all, but we had followed this process. However, we still saw the issue that the project compiled but the tests failed with the error

‘Unit tests for Windows Store apps cannot be run with Limited User Account disabled. Enable it to run tests.’

Living with a DD-WRT virtual router – three months and one day on (static DHCP leases)

Richard Fennell — Sat, 31 Jan 2015 11:59:29 +0000

Updated 28 Feb 2015 – Added bit on static addresses

When using a DD-WRT virtual router, I have realised it is worth setting static a MAC address in Hyper-V and DHCP lease on the router for any server VMs you want access to from your base system OS. In my case this is TFS demo VM a connect to all the time.

If you don’t do this the address of the VM seems to vary more than you might expect. So you keep having to edit the HOSTS file on your base OS to reference the VM by name.

Living with a DD-WRT virtual router – three months on

Richard Fennell — Thu, 29 Jan 2015 21:17:02 +0000

I posted in the past on my experience with DD-WRT router running in Hyper-V to allow my VMs internet access. A couple of months on I am still using it and I think have got around the worst of the issues.

The big problem is not with the DD-WRT router, but the way Hyper-V virtual switches use WiFi for some operating systems. Basically the summary is DHCP does not work for Linux VMs.

My Future Decoded session is now online

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 16:55:36 +0000

Susan Smith has posted an interesting DevOps article on the TechNet UK blog. Hidden away in a footnote is a link to recordings and slide decks for the DevOps track at Future Decoded, including my own session. Both the video and my deck are available for you to view online or download.

When trying to load Office document from SharePoint I keep ending up in the Office Web Application

Richard Fennell — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 16:53:57 +0000

Whenever I tried to load an Office 2013 document from our SharePoint 2010 instance I kept ending up in the Office Web Application, the Office application was not being launched.

If I tried the use the ‘Open in Word’ context menu I got the following error (and before you ask yes I was in IE, IE11 in fact, and Office 2013 was installed)

My PC has been build of our standard System Center managed image, others using the same best image seemed OK, so what had gone wrong for me?

Speaking at Techorama 2015

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 16:41:20 +0000

I’m excited to be speaking at the Techorama conference in Belgium this May. Richard spoke last year (and is doing so again) and came back raving about the great time he had, so I’m really looking forward to it. Go on, take a look at the site (the agenda is steadily filling out) and register!

Speaking at Techorama in May

Richard Fennell — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 09:15:28 +0000

I am really pleased to be speaking at Techorama again this year. This is a great friendly conference that covers a wide range of subjects.

Like last year the conference is in Mechelen, Belgium on the 12 and 13th of May. Hope to see some of you there

Windows 10 Update2 is Here (build 9926)

Robert Hogg — Fri, 23 Jan 2015 18:48:10 +0000

The Windows 10 update has just been made available,

Make sure you have all updates before Installing. The Windows team have especially highlighted

KB302380 https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3025380

as a patch to have installed before you update, i.e. if you don't the install will not work as expected.

if you want the ISO’s look here http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/preview-iso

Want to know what’s going on? Come to the Black Marble Tech Update

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 15:41:08 +0000

It’s January, which can only mean one thing. It’s time for the annual Black Marble Tech Update. If you’re an IT or development manager, come along to hear the stuff you need to know about Microsoft’s releases and updates last year and what we know so far about what is coming this year.

Tech Updates are hard work to prepare for, but they’re quite exhilarating to present. In the morning, myself, Andy and Andrew will run through the key moves and changes in the Microsoft ecosystem to help IT managers with their strategic planning: What’s coming out of support, what’s got a new release due; in short, what do you need to pay attention to for your organisation’s IT.

Why you should attend a Microsoft IT Camp

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 14:55:14 +0000

I’ve posted before about helping out at the IT Camps run by the Microsoft DX team. I’m a fervent supporter of them – they are hands-on days of technical content run by great people who know their stuff and, importantly, they are run around the country.

Next week will see me in Manchester with Ed Baker for the latest instalment. The current series of campus are two days with the first being around Mobile Device Management and the second around extending your datacentre into Azure. I’ll be there for day two to be Ed’s wingman as we take attendees through hands-on labs around virtual machines and talk about virtual networks, Azure Active directory and pretty much anything else Azure-related we get asked about.

Speaking at SQLBits 2015

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 14:31:20 +0000

We’re only half way through January and this year is already busy. I am really excited to be speaking at SQLBits this year!

SQLBits is a conference that various members of the Black Marble team attend regularly and rave about. It’s the event if you want to gain knowledge and insight into all aspects of databases and data management, reporting, BI and more. Microsoft are a platinum sponsor of the event this year and a whole heap of big names are flying in to present.

Get informed with TechDays Online 2015

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 12:33:39 +0000

Block out your diary from February 3rd until February 5th. The great guys at Microsoft DX are running another TechDays Online event and it’s absolutely worth your time. I had the absolute pleasure to be involved last year and will again this year, both in front of and behind the camera.

For those who don’t know about the event, TechDays Online is three days (and one evening, this year) of technical content delivered by MVPs and Microsoft evangelists across a broad range of topics. Whilst you watch the sessions, streaming live through the power of the internet, you can ask questions in the chat channel. Some of those questions may find their way to the speaker during the session, but all will be picked up by a team of experts backstage, fuelled by caffeine and sugar.

Fix for ‘An unexpected error occurred. Close the windows and try again’ error adding Azure subscription to Visual Studio Release Management Tools

Richard Fennell — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 20:59:38 +0000

In preparation for my Techdays session next month, I have been sorting demos using the various Release Management clients.

When I tried to create a release from within Visual Studio using the ‘Release Management tools for Visual Studio I found I could not add my Azure subscriptions. I saw the error ‘An unexpected error occurred. Close the windows and try again’

I could download and import the subscription file, it showed the available storage accounts, but when I pressed save I got the rather unhelpful error ‘Object reference not set to an instance of an object’

VSO gets ISO 27001 Certification and European Model Clauses

Richard Fennell — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 16:06:42 +0000

If the reason you have not been using VSO was concern over where it is hosted, then last week Microsoft made an announcement that could ease some of your worries, or at least your legal departments. VSO now has ISO 27001 Certification and European Model Clauses; for more details see Brian Harry’s blog.

This added to the fact that since the end of last October you have been able to choose to host your VSO instance in Europe could well make VSO a more compelling option for many organisations who don’t want to have their own TFS servers on premises

Guest post on the Microsoft UK Developers Site on DSC and Release Management prior to Microsoft TechDays event

Richard Fennell — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 08:47:11 +0000

One of my blog posts has been re-posted on the Microsoft UK Developers blog Resolving the DCS two-step - Release Management vNext deployment

This post covers part of what I will be talking about at Microsoft Techdays on the 5th of February .

You can register here for this free online event

Living with Windows 10 and a Surface Pro 3

Robert Hogg — Sun, 11 Jan 2015 01:51:18 +0000

I have been running Windows 10 on my pro 3 since the preview was first available. Truth being told there have been at least two occasions where taking it off seemed to be the best option but in both cases updates fixed the problem.

Being a developer I don’t always think before upgrading to new technology but in general it works out well as it has in this case.

To lay my stall out I like Windows 8, the concepts of live tiles, applications exposing search APIs etc. was/is a genuine change for the better, having taught developers the ins and outs of Windows 8 more and more I realise how good the concepts are. Windows 8 is a step change, unfortunately the press who slam Microsoft for not changing and when they do slam again seem to be winning out.

Moore’s Law – Deciphering Falsehood’s and Prophecies

Robert Hogg — Sun, 11 Jan 2015 01:49:59 +0000

Several times over the last few months I have encountered people who have misquoted/used Moore's law to justify a solution for a problem they are avoiding or more often are failing to comprehend to any real level. At a base level it is used as a reason not to do anything at worst used to justify the reasons not change poor or degrading solutions.

After far too many of these encounters I thought it was about time I posted my view of and at the same time debunked some of the many falsehoods I have seen Moore's law used to justify, but I also wanted to give a view of what the change over time of the Computing Industry actually means.

M is Dead, Long Live M

Robert Hogg — Sun, 11 Jan 2015 01:45:04 +0000

Years ago I had the privilege of doing some SDR’s with the team developing a toolset code name “Oslo” using a new language named ‘M’. The concept was to bring modelling of data and visualisation of data to all. Sadly the retirement of Oslo the day before a presentation I was to give was a sad day and the passing of the visualisation tool Quadrant sadder still.

However all is not lost, Data visualisation is a keen topic for me and recently I have been spending more and more time with the awesome PowerBI tools for Excel. As it turns out a chance meeting with some of the original team hinted that I should look at Power Query. The Power Query Formula Language used to allow Queries built by the user to be both repeatable and sharable. As this was the key tenant of the M language, it shouldn't really come as a surprise that the PQFL is really M.

Speaking at Microsoft Techdays on the 5th of February

Richard Fennell — Sat, 10 Jan 2015 16:15:26 +0000

On the 5th of February I will be presenting at Microsoft’s online Techdays event. My session is entitled ‘How are you going to deploy that? A look at configuration as code’

“It does not matter what platform you are developing for, you are going to have to deploy your product in the end. Too often in the past the question of deployment has been an afterthought. But it need not be this way, there are tools available that can help with deployment of your code and importantly the provisioning the underlying systems they need too. In this session we will look at Visual Studio Release Management’s vNext release pipeline seeing how it can leverage Desired State Configuration to provision environments and deploy applications”

First Band Update

Robert Hogg — Thu, 08 Jan 2015 11:19:10 +0000

The first firmware update is out for Microsoft Band. To get the update you will need to update your Microsoft Health app. In the UK this means the set region to US, go to the store, check for update.
Run the Health app and it should offer a firmware update to the Band. The update is done over Bluetooth and so I made sure my power was connected to the Band and that the Band and Phone were a few Cm apart.
The first time I tried it failed, but closing the Health App and restarting the app Second time was the Charm.

How to edit registered Release Management deployment agent IP addresses if a VMs IP address changes

Richard Fennell — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 14:04:35 +0000

I have posted in the past that we have a number of agent based deployments using Release Management 2013.4 that point to network isolated Lab Management environments. Over Christmas we did some maintenance on our underlying Hyper-V servers, so everything got fully stopped and restarted. When the network isolated environment were restarted their DHCP assigned IP addresses on our company domain all changed (maybe we should have had longer DHCP lease times set?)

IT Pro New Year’s Honours List 2015

Robert Hogg — Tue, 06 Jan 2015 00:41:28 +0000

The lovely people in the IT Pro team have announced their IT Pro Honours list and I am privileged to be on it.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/uktechnet/archive/2015/01/05/new-year-s-honours-list-2015.aspx

A great set of professionals and Me and Rik.

Me an IT Pro who would have thought.

I suddenly feel the urge to help Rik fix his laptop .

Seriously there is a steady merge between Dev and IT pro in the DevOPS world and what a great world to be in.

Microsoft Band

Robert Hogg — Tue, 06 Jan 2015 00:18:37 +0000

I have been very fortunate to get hold of a Microsoft Band. Bands are currently in short supply, but thanks to an Angel in Minnesota I have one. Currently there is no expected release date for the UK, but a quick look at EBay will turn up enough units to buy, remember the retail price is $199. CAUTION – Check

The Band is Microsoft’s first foray into the wearable's market and first impressions is that they did a good and quite an extensive job. Where most wearable focus on one or two areas, Microsoft Band covers pretty much everything.

Failing to unblock downloaded ZIP files causes really strange errors

Richard Fennell — Mon, 05 Jan 2015 21:55:00 +0000

Twice recently I have hit the problem that I needed to a unblock ZIP files downloaded from a VSO source repository before I extracted the contents. One was a DSC modules, the other a PowerShell script with associated .NET assemblies.

In both cases the error messages I got were confusing and misleading. In the case of the DSC module the error was "cannot be loaded because you opted not to run this software now". The other project just suffered mixed .NET assembly loading errors.

vNext Release Management and Network Isolation

Richard Fennell — Wed, 24 Dec 2014 11:12:11 +0000

If you are trying to use Release Management or any deployment tool with a network isolated Lab Management setup you will have authentication issues. Your isolated domain is not part of your production domain, so you have to provide credentials. In the past this meant Shadow Accounts or the simple expedient of running a NET USE at the start of your deployment script to provide a login to the drops location.

In Release Management 2013.4 we get a new option to address this issue if you are using DSC based deployment. This is Deploy from a build drop using a shared UNC path. In this model the Release Management server copies the contents of the drops folder to a known share and passes credentials to access it down to the DSC client (you set these as parameters on the server).

Thoughts in vNext deployment in Release Management

Richard Fennell — Wed, 24 Dec 2014 10:58:35 +0000

The DCS two step

When working with DSC a difficult concept can be that your desired state script is ‘compiled’ to a MOF file that is then ‘run’ by the desired state manager on the target machine. This is a two step affair and you have no real input on the second part. This is made more complex when Release Management is involved.

Colin Dembovsky did an excellent pair of posts on getting Release Management working with DSC based vNext templates. The core of the first post is that he made use of the Script DSC resource to run SQLPackage.EXE and MSDeploy to do the actual deployment of a system as well as using it to manage the transformation of the configuration files in his MSDeploy package.

Lumia Denim

Robert Hogg — Thu, 18 Dec 2014 23:59:48 +0000

Don’t worry, Nokia are not planning to revive 70s nostalgia aftershave, Denim is the new update for Lumia's providing better low level support of the hardware.

Denim offers several key updates

Camera – for the 830/930/1520 updates specifically for HDR, Dynamic flash and 4k video and speed fixes for the 1520. as a user you will see this surfaced in the new Lumia Camera application update.

Image Quality – Denim also comes with a new generation of image processing algorithms which “should” improve picture quality.

Setting a build version in a JAR file from TFS build

Richard Fennell — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 13:36:21 +0000

Whilst helping a Java based team (part of larger organisation that used many sets of both Microsoft and non-Microsoft tools) to migrate from Subversion to TFS I had to tackle their Jenkins/Ant based builds.

They could have stayed on Jenkins and switched to the TFS source provider, but they wanted to at least look at how TFS build would better allow them to trace their builds against TFS work items.

All went well, we setup a build controller and agent specifically for their team and installed Java onto it as well the TFS build extensions. We were very quickly able to get our test Java project building on the new build system.

Give a Hoot, Learn to Code

Robert Hogg — Mon, 08 Dec 2014 22:31:55 +0000

This week is Computer Science Education week (CSEW) and I am really exited that Computer Science is being seen for what it is, A gateway to an amazing future.

The Hour of Code is upon us and urge everybody to look at helping children and adults do their first hour.

Microsoft have been promoting the Hour of Code and the importance of Teaching Children to program, http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/news/press/2014/Canyoumakeonehourlas.aspx

(Quotes from the good and myself)

Great book full of easily accessible tips to apply the concept of user stories to your team

Richard Fennell — Thu, 04 Dec 2014 13:17:40 +0000

As with many concepts it is not the the idea that is hard but it’s application. ‘Fifty Quick Ideas to Improve Your User Stories’ by Gojko Adzic and David Evans provides some great tips to apply the concept of user stories to real world problems. Highlighting where they work and where they don’t, and what you can do about it.

I think this book is well worth a read for anyone, irrespective of their role in a team; it’s short chapters (usually a couple of pages per idea) means it easy to pickup and put down when you get a few minutes. Perfect for that commute

Can’t build SSDT projects in a TFS build

Richard Fennell — Wed, 03 Dec 2014 13:24:06 +0000

Whilst building a new TFS build agent VM using our standard scripts I hit a problem that SSDT projects would not build, but was fine on our existing agents. The error was

C:Program Files (x86)MSBuildMicrosoftVisualStudiov12.0SSDTMicrosoft.Data.Tools.Schema.SqlTasks.targets (513): The "SqlBuildTask" task failed unexpectedly.
System.MethodAccessException: Attempt by method 'Microsoft.Data.Tools.Schema.Sql.Build.SqlTaskHost.OnCreateCustomSchemaData(System.String, System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2<System.String,System.String>)' to access method 'Microsoft.Data.Tools.Components.Diagnostics.SqlTracer.ShouldTrace(System.Diagnostics.TraceEventType)' failed.

The problem was fixed by doing an update via the Visual Studio > Tools > Extensions and Updates. Once this was completed the build was fine.

Living with a DD-WRT virtual router – one month on

Richard Fennell — Wed, 26 Nov 2014 12:09:40 +0000

I posted a month or so ago about my ‘Experiences using a DD-WRT router with Hyper-V’, well I have been living with it over a month? How has it been going?

Like the curate’s egg ‘good in parts’. It seems OK for while and then everything would get a bit slow to stop.

Just as a reminder this is what I had ended up with

In essence, a pair of virtual switches, one internal using DHCP on the DD-WRT virtual router, and a second one connected to an active external network (usually Ethernet, as DHCP with virtual switches and WIFI in Hyper-V seem a very hit and miss affair).

Why am I getting ‘cannot access outlook.ost’ issues with Office 365 Lync?

Richard Fennell — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 17:13:24 +0000

We use O365 to provide Lync messaging. So when I rebuilt my PC I thought I needed to re-install the client; so I logged into the O365 web site and selected the install option. Turns out this was a mistake. I had Office 2013 installed, so I already had the client, I just had not noticed.

If you do install O365 Lync client (as well as Office 2013 one) you get file access errors reported with your outlook.ost files. If this occurs, just un-install the O376 client and use the one in Office 2013, the errors go away

TFS announcements roundup

Richard Fennell — Sat, 22 Nov 2014 12:18:50 +0000

There have been a load on announcements about TFS, VSO and Visual Studio in general in the past couple of week, mostly at the Connect() event.

Just to touch on a few items

Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2013 Update 4.
The first public preview of Visual Studio 2015 and .NET 2015
The .NET Framework is going open source and cross platform
Visual Studio Community 2013 – a new edition of Visual Studio that combines everything in all the Express products and adds extensibility support. Learn more…
New improvements to Visual Studio Online
Release Management as service on VSO

If you have not had a chance to have look at these features try the videos of all the sessions on Channel9, the keynotes are a good place to start. Also look, as usual, at the various posts on Brian Harry’s Blog. It is time of rapid change in ALM tooling

Errors running tests via TCM as part of a Release Management pipeline

Richard Fennell — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 11:48:24 +0000

Whilst getting integration tests running as part of a Release Management pipeline within Lab Management I hit a problem that TCM triggered tests failed as the tool claimed it could not access the TFS build drops location, and that no .TRX (test results) were being produced. This was strange as it used to work (the RM system had worked when it was 2013.2, seems to have started to be issue with 2013.3 and 2013.4, but this might be a coincidence)

Passed the Scaled Agile Framework assessment

Richard Fennell — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 11:15:07 +0000

Whilst over at the MVP Summit I had the chance to do a Scaled Agile Framework workshop. I am pleased to say I passed the assessment.

Certainly has some interesting ideas in scaling Agile to larger teams working on a single product stream where a simple Scrum of Scrums is not enough.

‘Test run must be created with at least one test case’ error when using TCM

Richard Fennell — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 22:30:00 +0000

I have been setting up some integration tests as part of a release pipeline. I am using TCM.EXE to trigger tests from the command line. Something along the lines

1TCM.exe run /create /title:"EventTests" /collection:"[http://myserver:8080/tfs](http://myserver:8080/tfs)” /teamproject:myteamproject /testenvironment:"Integration" /builddir:[\\serverDropsBuild\_1.0.226.1975”](//\serverDropsBuild_1.0.226.1975”)  /include /planid:26989  /suiteid:27190 /configid:1

I kept getting the error

‘A test run must be created with at least one test case’

Strange thing was my test suite did contains a number of test, and they were marked as active.

Linking VSO to your Azure Subscription and Azure Active Directory

Richard Fennell — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 12:10:18 +0000

I have a few old Visual Studio Online (VSO) accounts (dating back to TFSPreview.com days). We use them to collaborate with third parties, it was long overdue that I tidied them up; as a problem historically has been that all access to VSO has been using a Microsoft Accounts (LiveID, MSA), these are hard to police, especially if users mix personal and business ones.

The solution is to link your VSO instance to an Azure Active Directory (AAD). This means that only users listed in the AAD can connect to the VSO instance. As this AAD can be federated to an on-prem company AD it means that the VSO users can be either

Video card issues during install of Windows 8.1 causes very strange issues

Richard Fennell — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 17:54:00 +0000

Whilst repaving my Lenovo W520 I had some issues with video cards. During the initial setup of Windows the PC hung. I rebooted, re-enabled in the BIOS the problematic video card and I thought all was OK. The installation appeared to pickup where it left off. However, I started to get some very strange problems.

My LiveID settings did not sync from my other Windows 8.1 devices
I could not change my profile picture
I could not change my desktop background
I could not change my screen saver
And most importantly Windows Update would not run

I found a few posts that said all of these problems could be seen when Windows was activated, but that was not the issue for me. It showed as being activated, changing the product key had no effect.

Issues repaving the Lenovo W520 with Windows 8.1 - again

Richard Fennell — Sat, 15 Nov 2014 14:37:00 +0000

Updated 19th Nov 2014

Every few months I find a PC needs to be re-paved – just too much beta code has accumulated. I reached this point again on my main 4 year old Lenovo W520 recently. Yes it is getting on a bit in computer years but it does the job; the keyboard is far nicer than the W530 or W540’s we have and until an ultrabook is shipped with 16Gb of memory (I need local VMs, too many places I go to don’t allow me to get to VMs on Azure) I am keeping it.

Microsoft Connect() event on the 12 and 13 November

Richard Fennell — Mon, 10 Nov 2014 14:48:27 +0000

Microsoft are running a free web-based event Connect() on the 12th and 13th of November. Should be well worth a watch to see the planned direction of developer tooling.

Speaking on DevOps at Future Decoded

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 16:34:26 +0000

I am now going to speaking on the DevOps track at Future Decoded. I’ll be channelling Richard to talk about how our dev-release pipeline is constructed at Black Marble and how the various Microsoft tools that we use could be swapped out for alternatives in a heterogeneous environment.

Whilst this isn’t an area that I usually speak around, it’s something that I am very involved in as Richard and I constantly look to improve our internal practices around development, test and deployment. Big thanks to Susan Smith for inviting me to participate.

Cannot see a TFS drops location from inside a network isolated environment for Release Management

Richard Fennell — Fri, 31 Oct 2014 15:21:08 +0000

I have posted before about using Release Management with Lab Management network isolation. They key is that you must issue a NET USE command at the start of the pipeline to allow the VMs in the isolated environment the ability to see the TFS drops location.

I hit a problem today that a build failed even though I had issued the NET USE.

I got the error

Package location '\storedropsSabs.Main.CISabs.Main.CI_2.5.178.19130\' does not exist or Deployer user does not have access.

Ordering rows that use the format 1.2.3 in a SQL query

Richard Fennell — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 11:31:49 +0000

Whilst working on a SSRS based report I had hit a sort order problem. Entries in a main report tablix needed to be sorted by their OrderNumber but this was in the form 1.2.3; so a neither a numeric or alpha sort gave the correct order i.e. a numeric sort fails as 1.2.3 is not a number and an alpha sort worked but give the incorrect order 1.3, 1.3.1, 1.3.10, 1.3.11, 1.3.12, 1.3.2.

VSO now available in a European Azure Data Center

Richard Fennell — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 15:02:00 +0000

I don’t normal do posts that are just re-posts of TFS announcements, it is much better to get the information first hand from the original post, but this one is significant for us in Europe…

Up to now there has been a barrier to adoption of VSO that the underlying data will be hosted in the USA. Now there are all the usual Azure Microsoft guarantees about data security, but this has not been enough for some clients for legal, regulatory or their own reasons. This has made VSO a non-starter for many European’s where it at first appears a great match.

Having fun with my HDMIPI

Richard Fennell — Sun, 26 Oct 2014 22:03:00 +0000

The HDMIPI screen I supported on KickStarter arrived this week. After a bit of a false start with a driver board that failed after a couple of minutes it is now all up and running. The replacement board arrived in 48Hours – great support service

Now to get down to some projects – that toy robot does look like it needs automating via an IR transmitter and my PiFace

Visual Studio crashes when trying to add an item to a TFS build workflow

Richard Fennell — Fri, 24 Oct 2014 15:56:00 +0000

There has for a long time been an issue that when you try to add a new activity to the toolbox when editing a TFS build workflow Visual Studio can crash. I have seen it many times and never got to the bottom of it. It seems to be machine specific, as one machine can work while another supposedly identical will fail, but I could never track down the issue.

Today I was on a machine that was failing, but …

Getting Release Management to fail a release when using a custom PowerShell component

Richard Fennell — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 12:55:37 +0000

If you have a custom PowerShell script you wish to run you can create a tool in release Management (Inventory > Tools) for the script which deploys the .PS1, PSM files etc. and defines the command line to run it.

The problem we hit was that our script failed, but did not fail the build step as the PowerShell.EXE running the script exited without error. The script had thrown an exception which was in the output log file, but it was marked as a completed step.

DDD North and IOT

Robert Hogg — Sun, 19 Oct 2014 23:53:30 +0000

Yesterday was the ever great DDDNorth. Huge thanks to everybody who came,helped, spoke and organised a great event, what a great bunch of people.

I must also thank the University of Leeds for their support in providing accommodation for the event.

A greater bunch of people where the self selecting bunch who came to Iain and my talk “The Internet of Things ,Thought about it? Now try it.”.

Thank you to everybody who came and congratulations to the people who won an Intel Galileo kit.

ALM Ranger’s release DevOps Guidance for PowerShell DSC – perfectly timed for DDDNorth

Richard Fennell — Sat, 18 Oct 2014 11:59:21 +0000

In a beautiful synchronicity the ALM Rangers DevOps guidance for PowerShell DSC has been release at at the same time as I am doing my DDDNorth session ‘What is Desired State Configuration and how does it help me?’

This Rangers project has been really interesting to work on, and provide much of the core of my session for DDDNorth.

Well worth a look if you want to create your own DSC resources.

"The handshake failed due to an unexpected packet format" with Release Management

Richard Fennell — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 21:47:23 +0000

Whilst configuring a Release Management 2013.3 system I came across a confusing error. All seemed OK, the server, client and deployment agents were all installed and seemed to be working, but when I tried to select a build to deploy from both the Team Projects and Build drop downs were empty.

A check of the Windows event log on the server showed the errors

The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a send
The handshake failed due to an unexpected packet format

Cannot build a SSRS project in TFS build due to expired license

Richard Fennell — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 12:31:35 +0000

If you want to get your TFS build process to product SSRS RDL files you need to call the vsDevEnv custom activity to run Visual Studio (just like for SSIS packages). On our new TFS2013.3 based build agents this step started to fail, turns out the issue was not incorrect versions of DLLs or a some badly applied update, but that the license for Visual Studio on the build agent had expire.

‘Unable to reconnect to database: Timeout expired’ error when using SQLPackage.exe to deploy to Azure SQL

Richard Fennell — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 12:05:52 +0000

I have trying to update a Azure hosted SQL DB using Release Management and the SSDT SQLPackage tools. All worked fine on my test Azure instance, but then I wanted to deploy to production I got the following error

1\*\*\* An error occurred during deployment plan generation. Deployment cannot continue.
2Failed to import target model \[dbname\]. Detailed message Unable to reconnect to database: Timeout expired.  The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.
3Unable to reconnect to database: Timeout expired.  The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.
4Timeout expired.  The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.
5The wait operation timed out

Turns out SQLPackage.exe was connecting OK, as if I entered an invalid password it gave a different error, so it had made the connection and then died.

Microsoft ALM event to Black Marble offices on the 26th of November

Richard Fennell — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 07:58:56 +0000

Black Marble is hosting a free Microsoft ALM event at our offices on the 26th of November. For once I will not be speaker, Giles and Colin from the Microsoft UK Visual Studio Team are coming up to deliver the session.

For more details and registration see http://bit.ly/ALMLeeds

Experiences using a DD-WRT router with Hyper-V

Richard Fennell — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 21:41:29 +0000

I have been playing around with the idea of using a DD-WRT-V router on a Hyper-V VM to connect my local virtual machines to the Internet as discussed by Martin Hinshlewood in his blog post. I learned a few things that might be of use to others trying the same setup.

What I used to do

Prior to using the router I had been using three virtual switches on my Windows 8 Hyper-V setup with multiple network adaptors to connect both my VMs and host machine to the switches and networks

Version stamping Windows 8 Store App manifests in TFS build

Richard Fennell — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 17:44:00 +0000

We have for a long time used the TFSVersion custom build activity to stamp all our TFS builds with a unique version number that matches out build number. However, this only edits the AssemblyInfo.cs file. As we are now building more and more Windows 8 Store Apps we also need to edit the XML in the Package.appxmanifest files used to build the packages too. Just like a Wix MSI project it is a good idea the package version matches some aspect of the assemblies it contains. We need to automate the update of this manifest as people too often forget to increment the version, causing confusion all down the line.

Updated blog server to BlogEngine.NET 3.1

Richard Fennell — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 09:02:46 +0000

Last night I upgraded this blog server to BlogEngine.NET 3.1. I used the new built in automated update tool, in an offline backup copy of course.

It did most of the job without any issues. The only extra things I needed to do was

Removed a <add name="XmlRoleProvider" …> entry in the web.config. I have had to do this before on every install.
Run the SortOrderUpdate.sql script to add the missing column and index (see issue 12543)

Once done and tested locally I upload the tested site to my production server. Just a point to note, that the upgrade creates some backup ZIPs of your site before the upgrade, you don’t need to copy these around as they are large.

Swapping the the Word template in a VSTO project

Richard Fennell — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 22:09:54 +0000

We have recently swapped the Word template we use to make sure all our proposals and other documents are consistent. The changes are all cosmetic, fonts, footers etc. to match our new website; it still makes use of the same VSTO automation to do much of the work. The problem was I needed to swap the .DOTX file within the VSTO Word Add-in project, we had not been editing the old DOTX template in the project, but had created a new one based on a copy outside of Visual Studio.

Using MSDEPLOY from Release Management to deploy Azure web sites

Richard Fennell — Thu, 18 Sep 2014 19:44:05 +0000

Whilst developing our new set of websites we have been using MSDeploy to package up the websites for deployment to test and production Azure accounts. These deployments were being triggered directly using Visual Studio. Now we know this is not best practice, you don’t want developers shipping to production from their development PCs, so I have been getting around to migrating these projects to Release Management.

I wanted to minimise change, as we like MSDeploy, I just wanted to pass the extra parameters to allow a remote deployment as opposed to a local one using the built in WebDeploy component in Release Management

Speaking at PreEmptive’s event on Application Analytics in London on the 30th of September

Richard Fennell — Thu, 18 Sep 2014 19:02:06 +0000

I am speaking at PreEmptive’s event on Application Analytics in at Microsoft’s office in London on the 30th of September. There are various speakers from PreEmptive, Microsoft and Black Marble at this free event.

There are still spaces available, just follow the link: Application Analytics with Visual Studio and PreEmptive Analytics for more details and registration.

“Communication with the deployer was lost during deployment” error with Release Management

Richard Fennell — Thu, 18 Sep 2014 12:55:21 +0000

Whilst developing a new Release Management pipeline I did hit a problem that a component that published MSDeploy packages to Azure started to fail. It had been working then suddenly I started seeing ‘communication with the deployer was lost during deployment’ messages as shown below.

No errors were shown in any logs I could find, and no files appeared on the deployment target (you would expect the files/scripts to be deployed to appear on the machine running a RM Deployment client in the C:users[account]localtempRM folder structure).

Moving our BlogEngine.NET server to Azure

Richard Fennell — Tue, 16 Sep 2014 13:35:26 +0000

As part of our IT refresh we have decided to move this BlogEngine.NET server from a Hyper-V VM in our office to an Azure website.

BlogEngine.NET is now a gallery item for Azure website, so a few clicks and your should be up and running.

However, if you want to use SQL as opposed to XML as the datastore you need to do a bit more work. This process is well documented in the video ‘Set BlogEngine.NET to use SQL provider in Azure’, but we found we needed to perform some extra steps due to where our DB was coming from.

Publishing more than one Azure Cloud Service as part of a TFS build

Richard Fennell — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 14:03:00 +0000

Using the process in my previous post you can get a TFS build to create the .CSCFG and .CSPKG files needed to publish a Cloud Service. However, you hit a problem if your solution contains more that one Cloud Service project; as opposed to a single cloud service project with multiple roles, which is not a problem.

The method outlined in the previous post drops the two files into a Packages folder under the drops location. The .CSPKG files are fine, as they have unique names. However there is only one ServiceConfiguration.cscfg, whichever one was created last.

Getting the correct path and name for a project to pass as an MSBuild argument in TFS Build

Richard Fennell — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 10:59:56 +0000

I have been sorting out some builds for use with Release Management that include Azure Cloud Solutions. To get the correct packages built by TFS I have followed the process in my past blog post. The problem was I kept getting the build error

1The target "Azure PackagesBlackMarble.Win8AppBuilder.AzureApi" does not exist in the project.

The issue was I could not get the solution folder/project name right for the MSBUILD target parameter. Was it the spaces in the folder? I just did not know.

Deploying a Windows service with Release Management

Richard Fennell — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 14:29:00 +0000

recently needed to deploy a Windows service as part of a Release Management pipeline. In the past, our internal systems I have only need to deploy DB (via SSDT Dacpacs) and Websites (via MSDeploy), so a new experience.

WIX Contents

The first step to to create an MSI installer for the service. This was done using WIX, with all the fun that usually entails. The key part was a component to do the actual registration and starting of the service

PowerShell Summit Europe 2014

Richard Fennell — Mon, 08 Sep 2014 09:58:08 +0000

I find I am spending more time with PowerShell these days, as we aim to automated more of our releases and specifically with DSC in PowerShell 4, as I am sure many of us are

Give that fact, the PowerShell Summit Europe 2014 at the end of the month looks interesting. I only found out about it too late and I have diary clashes but might be of interest to some of you. Looks like a really good hands event.

Got around to updating my Nokia 820 to WP81 Update 1

Richard Fennell — Wed, 03 Sep 2014 17:44:30 +0000

I had been suffering with the 0x80188308 error when I tried to update my Nokia 820 to the WP81 Update 1 because I had the developer preview installed. I had been putting off what appeared to be the only solution of doing a reset as discussed in the forums as it seem a bit drastic, thought I would wait for Microsoft to sort out the process. I got bored waiting..

Turns out as long as you do the backup first it is fairly painless, took about an hour of uploads and downloads over WiFi

Getting ‘… is not a valid URL’ when using Git TF Clone

Richard Fennell — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 11:34:51 +0000

I have been attempting to use the Git TF technique to migrate some content between TFS servers. I needed to move a folder structure that contains spaces in folder names from a TPC that also contains spaces in its name. So I thought my command line would be

1git tf clone “http://tfsserver1:8080/tfs/My Tpc” “$/My Folder”’ oldrepo --deep

But this gave the error

1git-tf: “http://tfsserver1:8080/tfs/My Tpc” is not a valid URL

At first I suspected it was the quotes I was using, as I had had problems here before, but swapping from ‘ to “ made no difference.

Build failing post TFS 2013.3 upgrade with ‘Stack empty. (type InvalidOperationException)’

Richard Fennell — Mon, 01 Sep 2014 20:42:43 +0000

Just started seeing build error on a build that was working until we upgraded the build agent to TFS 2013.3

 1Exception Message: Stack empty. (type InvalidOperationException)
 2Exception Stack Trace:    at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestImpact.Analysis.LanguageSignatureParser.NotifyEndType()
 3   at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestImpact.Analysis.SigParser.ParseType()
 4   at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestImpact.Analysis.SigParser.ParseRetType()
 5   at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestImpact.Analysis.SigParser.ParseMethod(Byte num1)
 6   at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestImpact.Analysis.SigParser.Parse(Byte\* blob, UInt32 len)
 7   at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestImpact.Analysis.LanguageSignatureParser.ParseMethodName(MethodProps methodProps, String& typeName, String& fullName)
 8   at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestImpact.Analysis.AssemblyMethodComparer.AddChangeToList(DateTime now, List\`1 changes, CodeChangeReason reason, MethodInfo methodInfo, MetadataReader metadataReader, Guid assemblyIdentifier, SymbolReader symbolsReader, UInt32 sourceToken, LanguageSignatureParser& languageParser)
 9   at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestImpact.Analysis.AssemblyMethodComparer.CompareAssemblies(String firstPath, String secondPath, Boolean lookupSourceFiles)
10   at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestImpact.BuildIntegration.BuildActivities.GetImpactedTests.CompareBinary(CodeActivityContext context, String sharePath, String assembly, IList\`1 codeChanges)
11   at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestImpact.BuildIntegration.BuildActivities.GetImpactedTests.CompareBuildBinaries(CodeActivityContext context, IBuildDefinition definition, IList\`1 codeChanges)
12   at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TestImpact.BuildIntegration.BuildActivities.GetImpactedTests.Execute(CodeActivityContext context)
13   at System.Activities.CodeActivity.InternalExecute(ActivityInstance instance, ActivityExecutor executor, BookmarkManager bookmarkManager)
14   at System.Activities.Runtime.ActivityExecutor.ExecuteActivityWorkItem.ExecuteBody(ActivityExecutor executor, BookmarkManager bookmarkManager, Location resultLocation)

I assume the issue is a DLL mismatch between what is installed in as part of the build agent and something in the 2012 generation build process template in use.

DDDNorth - agenda published - registration opens - and it is full

Richard Fennell — Mon, 01 Sep 2014 13:11:42 +0000

This morning DDDNorth’s agenda was published, registration opened and it was full. All within a couple of hours.

Looks like a good event if you managed to get a ticket. Glad I can get in as a speaker, else this mornings meetings would have left me on the waiting list

My DDDnorth session has been accepted

Richard Fennell — Sun, 31 Aug 2014 11:54:24 +0000

My DDDNorth session "What is Desired State Configuration and how does it help me?" has been accepted, looking forward to it

Listing all the PBIs that have no acceptance criteria

Richard Fennell — Fri, 22 Aug 2014 12:49:37 +0000

Update 24 Aug 2014: Changed the PowerShell to use a pipe based filter as opposed to nested foreach loops

The TFS Scrum process template’s Product Backlog Item work item type has an acceptance criteria field. It is good practice to make sure any PBI has this field completed; however it is not always possible to enter this content when the work item is initially create i.e. before it is approved. We oftan find we add a PBI that is basically a title and add the summary and acceptance criteria as the product is planned.

Guest post on the Microsoft’s UK Developers site ‘Migrating a TFS TFVC based team project to a Git team project - a practical example’

Richard Fennell — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 12:14:45 +0000

I have just had an article published on the Microsoft’s UK Developers site Migrating a TFS TFVC based team project to a Git team project - a practical example

Why is my TFS report not failing when I really think it should ?

Richard Fennell — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 21:35:02 +0000

Whilst creating some custom reports for a client we hit a problem that though the reports worked on my development system and their old TFS server it failed on their new one. The error being that the Microsoft_VSTS_Scheduling_CompletedWork was an invalid column name

Initially I suspected the problem was a warehouse reprocessing issue, but other reports worked so it could not have been that.

It must really be the column is missing, and that sort of makes sense. On the new server the team was using the Scrum process template, the Microsoft_VSTS_Scheduling_CompletedWork and Microsoft_VSTS_Scheduling_OriginalEstimate fields are not included in this template, the plan had been to add them to allow some analysis of estimate accuracy. This had been done on my development system, but not on the client new server. Once these fields were added to the Task work item the report leapt into life.

Where have my freeview tuners gone?

Richard Fennell — Thu, 14 Aug 2014 21:53:00 +0000

I have been a long time happy user of Windows Media Center since it’s XP days. My current systems is Windows 8.1 an ATOM based Acer Revo with a pair of USB PCTV Nanostick T2 Freeview HD tuners. For media storage I used a USB attached StarTech RAID disk sub system. This has been working well for a good couple of years, sitting in a cupboard under that stairs. However, I am about to move house and all the kit is going to have to go under the TV. The Revo is virtually silent, but the RAID crate was going to be an issue. It sounds like and aircraft taking off as the disks spin up.

Getting the Typemock TFS build activities to work on a TFS build agent running in interactive mode

Richard Fennell — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 17:21:00 +0000

Windows 8 store applications need to be built on a TFS build agent running in interactive mode if you wish to run any tests. So whilst rebuilding all our build systems I decided to try to have all the agents running interactive. As we tend to run one agent per VM this was not going to be a major issue I thought.

However, whilst testing we found that any of our builds that use the Typemock build activities failed when the build agent was running interactive, but work perfectly when it was running as a service. The error was

AddBizTalkHiddenReferences error in TFS build when installing ProjectBuildComponent via a command line setup

Richard Fennell — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 15:59:00 +0000

I have been trying to script the installation of all the tools and SDKs we need on our TFS Build Agent VMs. This included BizTalk. A quick check on MSDN showed the setup command line parameter I need to install the build components was

1
2
3/ADDLOCAL ProjectBuildComponent

So I ran this via my VMs setup PowerShell script, all appeared OK, but when I tried a build I got the error

TFS 2013 wizard allows you to proceed to verification even if you have no SQL admin access

Richard Fennell — Fri, 01 Aug 2014 21:13:20 +0000

Had an interesting issue during and upgrade from TFS 2012 to 2013.2 today. The upgrade of the files proceeded as expect and the wizard ran. It picked up the correct Data Tier, found the tfs_configuration Db and I was able to fill in the service account details.

However, when I got to the reporting section it found the report server URLs, but when it tried to find the tfs_warehouse DB it seemed to lock up, though the test of the SQL instance on the same page worked OK.

TFS Alert DSL documentation and downloads update

Richard Fennell — Fri, 01 Aug 2014 21:00:30 +0000

Having installed my TFS Alert DSL today onto a client’s TFS 2013.2, I have realised some of the documentation was a little unclear. So I have have just updated the download page to provide an easy means to get

The actual DSL implementation (without rebuilding the source)
A command line tool to create an event source in case you want log to the Windows event log

Hope this helps

Why is the Team Project drop down in Release Management empty?

Richard Fennell — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 16:41:14 +0000

The problem

Today I found I had a problem when trying to associate a Release Management 2013.2 release pipeline with a TFS build. When I tried to select a team project the drop down for the release properties was empty.

The strange thing was this installation of Release Management has been working OK last week. What had changed?

I suspected an issue connecting to TFS, so in the Release Management Client’s ‘Managing TFS’ tab I tried to verify the active TFS server linked to the Release Management. As soon as I tried this I got the following error that the TFS server was not available.

A week with the Surface Pro 3

Rik Hepworth — Sat, 26 Jul 2014 15:02:00 +0000

Robert unexpectedly (gotta love him!) gave me a surprise present in the form of a Microsoft Surface Pro 3. I’ve now been using it for a week and I thought it was time to put my thoughts into words.

You’ll pry it out of my cold, dead hands

Overall, this is a fantastic bit of kit and it’s the device I have used most at home, for meetings and even sometimes at my desk. The only reason it hasn’t replaced my stalwart ThinkPad X220T is that it has neither the memory nor the storage to run the virtual machines I still need. It’s light, comfortable to hold, has great battery life and the screen is gorgeous.

I have just submitted a session for DDDNorth 2014

Richard Fennell — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 14:47:19 +0000

I have just submitted a session for DDDNorth 2014, which is at the University of Leeds on Saturday 18 October.

There is still time for you to submit yours Session submission

Automating TFS Build Server deployment with SCVMM and PowerShell

Richard Fennell — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 16:47:28 +0000

Rik recently posted about the work we have done to automatically provision TFS build agent VMs. This has come out of us having about 10 build agents on our TFS server all doing different jobs, with different SDKs etc. When we needed to increase capacity for a given build type we had a problems, could another agent run the build? what exactly was on the agent anyway? An audit of the boxes made for horrible reading, there were very inconsistent.

SharePoint 2013: Creating Managed Metadata Columns that allow Fill-In Choices

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 15:57:45 +0000

This is a relatively quick post. There’s a fair bunch of stuff written about creating columns in SharePoint 2013 that use Managed Metadata termsets. However, some of it is a pain to find and then some. I have had to deal with two frustrating issues lately, both of which boil down to poor sharepoint documentation.

Wictor Wilén wrote the post I point people at for most stuff on managed metadata columns, but this time the internet couldn’t help.

Automating TFS Build Server deployment with SCVMM and PowerShell

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 11:49:08 +0000

Richard and I have been busy this week. It started with a conversation about automating the installation of new build servers. Richard was looking at writing PowerShell to install and configure the TFS build agent, along with all the various SDKs that we use across all out projects. Our current array of build servers have all been built by hand and each has a different set of SDKs to build specific project types. Richard’s aim is to make a single, homogenous build server configuration so we can then scale out for capacity much more quickly than before.

Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Common, Version=12.0.0.0’ when running a build on a new build agent on TFS 2013.2

Richard Fennell — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 10:03:16 +0000

I am currently rebuilding our TFS build infrastructure, we have too many build agents that are just too different, they don’t need to be. So I am looking at a standard set of features on a build agent and the ability to auto provision new instances to make scaling easier. More on this in a future post…

Anyway whilst testing a new agent I had a problem. A build that had worked on a previous test agent failed with the error

MSBuild targeting a project in a solution folder

Richard Fennell — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 21:15:36 +0000

Whilst working on an automated build where I needed to target a specific project I hit a problem. I would normally expect the MSBuild argument to be

/t:MyProject:Build

Where I want to build the project Myproject in my solution and perform the Build target (which is probably the default anyway).

However, my project was in a solution folder. The documentation says the you should be able to use for form

Building Azure Cloud Applications on TFS

Richard Fennell — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 14:43:00 +0000

If you are doing any work with Azure Cloud Applications there is a very good chance you will want your automated build process to produce the .CSPKG deployment file, you might even want it to do the deployment too.

On our TFS build system, it turns out this is not a straight forward as you might hope. The problem is that the MSbuild publish target that creates the files creates them in the $(build agent working folder)sourcemyprojectbindebug folder. Unlike the output of the build target which puts them in the $(build agent working folder)binaries folder which gets copied to the build drops location. Hence though the files are created they are not accessible with the rest of the built items to the team.

Interesting license change for VS Online for ‘Stakeholder’ users

Richard Fennell — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 08:39:01 +0000

All teams have ‘Stakeholder’, the people the are driving a project forward, who want the new system to be able to do their job; but are often not directly involved in the production/testing of the system. In the past this has been an awkward group to provide TFS access for. If they want to see any detail of the project they need a TFS CAL, expensive for the occasional casual viewer.

A new badge for Channel9 Guy

Richard Fennell — Mon, 07 Jul 2014 13:01:43 +0000

My Channel9 Guy has a new MVP badge

Post by one of our Testers about experiences with CodeUI and Windows Store Apps on the MSDN blog

Richard Fennell — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 11:38:00 +0000

Nice post by Riccardo Viglianisi, one of Black Marble’s Testers, about his experiences with CodeUI and Windows Store Apps published on the MSDN UK Visual Studio blog.

Well worth a read if you are looking at this technology.

Re-awarded Microsoft MVP for the 7th Year

Richard Fennell — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 08:38:02 +0000

I am really happy to say that I have had my MVP for Visual Studio (ALM) re-awarded, so am an MVP for the 7th time. It is a privilege to get to work with such a great group of people as a have met via the MVP programme.

Safely modify SharePoint 2013 Web.Config files using PowerShell

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 13:22:01 +0000

One of the things we learn early in our SharePoint careers was not to manually edit the web.config files of a web application. SharePoint involves multiple servers and has its own mechanisms for managing web.config updates.

Previously, I’ve created xml files with web.config modifications and copied those to each WFE. Those changes are merged into the initial web.config by SharePoint.

I’ve always been vaguely aware of there being a better way, but never needed to track it down from an IT point of view. Last week, however we wanted to change a setting to enable blobcache on the servers hosting a particular web application so decided to use the opportunity to figure out a ‘best way’ to do this.

How long is my TFS 2010 to 2013 upgrade going to take – Part 2

Richard Fennell — Fri, 27 Jun 2014 16:36:18 +0000

Back in January I did a post How long is my TFS 2010 to 2013 upgrade going to take? I have now done some more work with one of the clients and have more data. Specially the initial trial was 2010 > 2013 RTM on a single tier test VM; we have now done a test upgrade from 2010 > 2013.2 on the same VM and also one to a production quality dual tier system.

Submissions open for DDDNorth 2014

Richard Fennell — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 12:18:05 +0000

DDD North is coming to the University of Leeds on Saturday 18 October.

It is now open for Session submission

List of TFS Widgets

Richard Fennell — Mon, 23 Jun 2014 20:41:51 +0000

The ALM Rangers are again producing a list of useful tools and widgets for TFS. It can be found at aka.ms/widgets and should be updated regularly

Cloning tfs repository with git-tf gives a "a server path must be absolute"

Richard Fennell — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 13:23:35 +0000

I am currently involved in moving some TFS TFVC hosted source to a TFS Git repository. The first step was to clone the source for a team project from TFS using the command

1git tf clone --deep [http://tfsserver01:8080/tfs/defaultcollection](http://tfsserver01:8080/tfs/defaultcollection) ‘$My Project’ localrepo1

and it worked fine. However the next project I tried to move had no space in the source path

1git tf clone --deep [http://tfsserver01:8080/tfs/defaultcollection](http://tfsserver01:8080/tfs/defaultcollection) ‘$MyProject’ localrepo2

This gave the error

Microsoft People-centric IT Roadshow

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 19:07:48 +0000

Microsoft UK have been running technical events around the UK for a couple of years now, and it’s a great thing. Too many events are focused in the south of England and there are lots of IT pros north of the M25!

Starting on Monday, the latest series of events kicks off. The People-Centric IT roadshow content is being delivered by MVPs from across the UK and Ireland. Covering hot-topics like Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and information security, the sessions will talk about using the appropriate tooling from across the Microsoft stack to address these real-world problems.

Adding USB 3 to my Lenovo X220 Tablet

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 12:50:55 +0000

My X220 is a stalwart machine. It’s built like a tank and can be upgraded in a numb of ways. Mine now has 16Gb of RAM and two SSDs which allow me to run multi-VM environments for development and demo. Unfortunately, however, there is no USB 3 on the laptop. That’s a pain if I need to copy stuff on and off via USB, or run VMs from a USB 3 pod.

Our TFS Lab Management Infrastructure

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 12:38:02 +0000

Richard and I spend a good deal of time talking about Lab Manager and our environments. I’ve written here before about our migration to the latest versions of the various components of Lab and both Richard and I have delivered sessions at user groups and conferences.

Richard was in Belgium last week for Techorama, after which he was asked about the specifics of our setup. Between us, we came up with a diagram of our Lab Environment and Richard recently posted that to his blog. Hopefully some of you will find it useful.

Enabling Data Deduplication on my Windows 8.1 Laptop

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 12:33:58 +0000

Lets get the disclaimer out of the way first: What I’ve done is absolutely unsupported by Microsoft. Just because it works for me does not guarantee it will work for you and I am not in any way recommending that you follow my lead!

I use a great many virtual machines for both customer work, internal projects and just tinkering. My ThinkPad X220T is tricked out with extra RAM and two SSDs. Space is still an issue, though, and I can’t squeeze any more storage into my little workhorse.

‘The Circle’ a good read

Richard Fennell — Sat, 07 Jun 2014 13:37:58 +0000

Seven whole years ago I wrote about re-reading [corrected – getting old and forgetful not William Gibson’s it was] Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs and how it compared to his then new book JPod. And how they both reflected the IT world at their time. Speculative fiction always says more about the time they are written than the future they predict.

I have just read ‘The Circle’ by Dave Eggers which in many ways is a similar book for our social media, big brother monitored age. I will leave it to you to decide if it a utopian or dystopia but it is well worth a read

Our TFS Lab Management Infrastructure

Richard Fennell — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 23:08:13 +0000

After my session Techorama last week I have been asked some questions over how we built our TFS Lab Management infrastructure. Well here is a bit more detail, thanks to Rik for helping correcting what I had misremembered and providing much of the detail.

For SQL we have two physical servers with Intel processors. Each has a pair of mirrored disks for the OS and RAID5 group of disks for data. We use SQL 2012 Enterprise Always On for replication to keep the DBs in sync. The servers are part of a Windows cluster (needed for Always On) and we use a VM to give a third server in the witness role. This is hosted on a production Hyper-V cloud. We have a number of availability groups on this platform, basically one per service we run. This allows us to split the read/write load between the two servers (unless they have failed over to a single box). If we had only one availability group for all the DBs one node would being all the read/write and the other read only, so not that balanced.

What new in TFS from Teched 2014?

Richard Fennell — Tue, 13 May 2014 19:19:42 +0000

If you use TFS then it is well worth a look at Brian Harry’s Teched2014 session ‘Modern Application Lifecycle Management’. It goes through changes and new features with TFS both on-premise and in the cloud, including

Migrating Your Data from TFS to Visual Studio Online with New Free Utility from OpsHub
Authentication with your corporate Active Directory account via AAD (planned for Summer 2014)
New API is based on REST, OAUTH, Json and Service Hooks
Release Management, PowerShell DSC, ability to link Azure VMs including client OS for dev/test
Application Insights available inside Visual Studio
Azure vNext portal – bring it all together

Not all these features are in 2013.2 (which was released during the conference). However, in the session they said Visual Studio 2013.3CTP is going to be available next week, so not long to wait if you want a look at the latest features.

New release of TFS Alerts DSL that allows work item state rollup

Richard Fennell — Sun, 11 May 2014 17:33:00 +0000

A very common question I am asked at clients is

“Is it possible for a parent TFS work item to be automatically be set to ‘done’ when all the child work items are ‘done’?”.

The answer is not out the box, there is no work item state roll up in TFS.

However it is possible via the API. I have modified my TFS Alerts DSL CodePlex project to expose this functionality. I have added a couple of methods that allow you to find the parent and child of a work item, and hence create your own rollup script.

Getting ‘The build directory of the test run either does not exist or access permission is required’ error when trying to run tests as part of the Release Management deployment

Richard Fennell — Mon, 05 May 2014 19:34:15 +0000

Whilst running tests as part of a Release Management deployment I started seeing the error ‘The build directory of the test run either does not exist or access permission is required’, and hence all my tests failed. It seems that there are issues that can cause this problem, as mentioned in the comments in Martin Hinshelwood’s post on running tests in deployment, specially spaces in the build name can cause this problem, but this was not the case for me.

Setting the LocalSQLServer connection string in web deploy

Richard Fennell — Fri, 02 May 2014 17:23:21 +0000

If you are using Webdeploy you might wish to alter the connection string the for the LocalSQLServer that is used by the ASP.NET provider for web part personalisation. The default is to use ASPNETDB.mdf in the APP_Data folder, but in a production system you could well want to use a ‘real’ SQL server.

If you look in your web config, assuming you are not using the default ‘not set’ setting, will look something like

Changing WCF bindings for MSDeploy packages when using Release Management

Richard Fennell — Thu, 01 May 2014 12:03:46 +0000

Colin Dembovsky’s excellent post ‘WebDeploy and Release Management – The Proper Way’ explains how to pass parameters from Release Management into MSDeploy to update Web.config files. On the system I am working on I also need to do some further web.config translation, basically the WCF section is different on a Lab or Production build as it needs to use Kerberos, whereas local debug builds don’t.

In the past I dealt with this, and editing the AppSettings, using MSDeploy web.config translation. This worked fine, but it meant I built the product three time, exactly what Colin’s post is trying to avoid. The techniques in the post for the AppSettings and connection strings are fine, but don’t apply so well for the large block swapouts, as I need for WCF bindings section.

Release Management components fail to deploy with a timeout if a variable is changed from standard to encrypted

Richard Fennell — Thu, 01 May 2014 11:47:56 +0000

I have been using Release Management to update some of our internal deployment processes. This has included changing the way we roll out MSDeploy packages; I am following Colin Dembovsky’s excellent post of the subject.

I hit an interesting issue today. One of the configuration variable parameters I was passing into a component was a password field. For my initial tests had just let this be a clear text ‘standard’ string in the Release Management. Once I got this all working I thought I better switch this variable to ‘encrypted’, so I just change the type on the Configuration Variables tab.

‘Windows Phone 8.1 Update’ update

Richard Fennell — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 09:09:36 +0000

I have been running Windows Phone 8.1 Update for a couple of weeks now and have to say I like. I have not suffered the poor battery life others seem to have suffered. Maybe this is an feature of the Nokia 820 no needing as many firmware updates from Nokia (which aren't available yet) note having such power hungry features as the larger phones.

The only issue I have had is that I lost an audio channel when using a headset. Initially I was unsure if it was a mechanical fault on the headphone socket, but I checked the headset was good, it sounded as if the balance was faded to just one side as you could just hear something faint on the failing side. Anyway as often is the case in IT, a reboot of the phone fixed the issue.

The return of Visual Studio Setup projects - just because you can use them should you?

Richard Fennell — Wed, 23 Apr 2014 09:18:59 +0000

A significant blocker for some of my customers moving to Visual Studio 2013 (and 2012 previously) has been the removal of Visual Studio Setup Projects; my experience has been confirmed by UserVoice. Well Microsoft have addressed this pain point by releasing a Visual Studio Extension to re-add this Visual Studio 2010 functionality to 2013. This can be downloaded from the Visual Studio Gallery.

Given this release, the question now becomes should you use it? Or should you take the harder road in the short term of moving to Wix, but with the far greater flexibility this route offers going forward?

All upgraded to the Windows Phone 8.1 Update

Richard Fennell — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 10:03:13 +0000

My Nokia 820 phone is now updated to 8.1 with the developer preview.

The actual upgrade was straight forward, the only issue was that the Store was down last night so updating apps could not be done until this morning. This was made more of an issue by the fact I had had to remove all my Nokia Maps and the iPodcast application (and downloaded podcasts) to free up space on the phone to allow the upgrade. Both these apps could only store data on the phone (not the SDcard) thus blocked the upgrade. This lack of space on the actual phone has been a constant issue for me on the Nokia 820.

The 2013 editions TFS books

Richard Fennell — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 09:27:31 +0000

The 2013 editions of existing TFS books are now available

Also well worth a look is ‘Team Foundation Server 2013 Customization’ by Gordon Beeming. A great look at all the extension points in TFS

A longer list of books can be found in my reading list

Where has my picture password login sign in gone on Windows 8?

Richard Fennell — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 13:45:01 +0000

I have had a Surface 2 for about six months. It is great for watching videos on the train, or a bit of browsing, but don’t like it for note taking in meetings. This is a shame, as this is what I got it for; a light device with good battery life to take to meetings. What I needed was something I could hand write on in OneNote, an electronic pad. The Surface 2 touch screen is just not accurate enough.

Handling .pubxml files with TFS MSBuild arguments

Richard Fennell — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 13:26:29 +0000

With Visual Studio 2012 there were changes in the way Web Publishing worked; the key fact being that the configuration was moved from the .csproj to a .pubxml in the properties folder. This allows them to be more easily managed under source control by a team. This does have some knock on effects though, especially when you start to consider automated build and deployment.

Up to now we have not seen issues in this area, most of our active projects that needed web deployment packages had started in the Visual Studio 2010 era so had all the publish details in the project and this is still supported by later versions of Visual Studio. This meant that if we had three configurations debug, lab and release, then there were three different sets of settings stored in different blocks of the project file. So if you used the /p:DeployOnBuild=True MS Build argument for your TFS build, and built all three configurations you got the settings related to the respective configuration in each drop location.

Windows 8.1 update 1 _KB2919355 Error: 0x80070070

Robert Hogg — Wed, 09 Apr 2014 01:34:04 +0000

While I have been pootling about updating machines at home I received an Error: 0x80070070 for _KB2919355 patch. After some digging the problem and a bit of trial and error was the need for 4.5 Gb of free space to be available which on some of our smaller tablets was a challenge.

But simple enough, clear the space and you are set to go

What I learnt getting Release Management running with a network Isolated environment

Richard Fennell — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 13:58:19 +0000

Updated 20 Oct 2014 – With notes on using an Action for cross domain authentication

In my previous post I described how to get a network isolated environment up and running with Release Management, it is all to do with shadow accounts. Well getting it running is one thing, having a useful release process is another.

For my test environment I needed to get three things deployed and tested

A SQL DB deployed via a DACPAC
A WCF web service deployed using MSDeploy
A web site deployed using MSDeploy

My environment was a four VM network isolated environment running on our TFS Lab Management system.

Fix for ‘Web deployment task failed. (Unknown ProviderOption:DefiningProjectFullPath. Known ProviderOptions are:skipInvalid’ errors on TFS 2013.2 build

Richard Fennell — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 23:36:05 +0000

When working with web applications we tend to use MSDeploy for distribution. Our TFS build box, as well as producing a _PublishedWebsite copy of the site, produce the ZIP packaged version we use to deploy to test and production servers via PowerShell or IIS Manager

To create this package we add the MSBuild Arguments **/p:CreatePackageOnPublish=True /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:IsPackaging=True **

This was been working fine, until I upgraded our TFS build system to 2013.2. Any builds queued after this upgrade, that builds MSDeploy packages, gives the error

Upgrading a VSTO project from VS 2008 to 2013

Richard Fennell — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 13:17:00 +0000

To make sure all our Word documents are consistent we use a Word template that include VSTO action pane.

This allow us to insert standard blocks of text, T&C and the like, and also makes sure document revisions and reviews are correctly logged. We have used this for years without any issues, but I recently needed to make some changes to the underlying Word .dotx template and I had to jump through a couple of hoops to get it rebuilding in Visual Studio 2013 for Office 2013 (previously it had been built against Visual Studio 2008 generation tools)

Build Day One Recap and Analysis

Robert Hogg — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 18:15:55 +0000

Day one at Build brought a lot of anticipated announcements with a great mix of surprises and totally awesome demo’s.

The main overall push was the One Microsoft, in essence Microsoft has managed to bring all of their eco-systems into sync, the bottom line developer code can be used and reused across Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and Xbox One. While this may not seem a major thing to happen and to some a question of why it wasn't like this to start with, either way it means that the entry for corporate customers to deliver Windows and Windows Phone applications is now MUCH lower and I predict the support costs will be much lower as well.

TFS 2013.2 has RTM’d

Richard Fennell — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 16:24:31 +0000

TFS 2013.2 got RTM’d last night and is available on MSDN; interestingly Visual Studio 2013.2 is still only an RC, we have to wait for that to RTM.

As we had a good proportion of our team at Build 2014 I took the chance to do the upgrade today. It went smoothly, no surprises, though the installation phase (the middle bit after the copy and before the config wizard) took a while. On our build agents, they all seemed to want reboot (or two) at this point, the TFS server did not, but took a good few minutes with no progress bar movement when I assume it was updating libraries.

Renewed as MVP

Robert Hogg — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 14:42:00 +0000

Just been renewed as an MVP once again!

Great way start Build :)

Black Marble's Azure-based Virtual Pet Sanctuary

Robert Hogg — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 09:51:00 +0000

I am pleased to announce details of the Black Marble Virtual Pet Sanctuary!

It has been estimated that in the EU alone over 2.1 billion virtual pets/avatars or other cyber creatures, are rotting away due to neglect.

Soon to be enacted EU Regulations, the European Virtual Pet Law (2014) about the long term treatment and care of virtual pets, will mean software manufacturers and users will have a legal obligation to provide long term care of their virtual pets long after they have finished 'playing' with them.

Looking forward to speaking at Techorama in May

Richard Fennell — Sun, 30 Mar 2014 13:56:41 +0000

Looking forward to speaking at Techorama in May, great range of speakers and subjects.

Hope to see you there, for ticket details see http://www.techorama.be/tickets/

Getting started with Release Management with network isolated Lab Management environments

Richard Fennell — Sat, 29 Mar 2014 15:23:26 +0000

Our testing environments are based on TFS Lab Management, historically we have managed deployment into them manually (or at least via a PowerShell script run manually) or using TFS Build. I thought it time I at least tried to move over to Release Management.

The process to install the components of Release Management is fairly straight forward, there are wizards that ask little other than which account to run as

Install the deployment server, pointing at a SQL instance
Install the management client, pointing at the deployment server
Install the deployment agent on each box you wish to deploy to, again pointing it as the deployment server

I hit a problem with the third step. Our lab environments are usually network isolated, hence each can potentially be running their own copies of the same domain. This means the connection from the deployment agent to the deployment server is cross domain. We don’t want to setup cross domain trusts as

Getting ready for Global Windows Azure Bootcamp 2

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 09:22:09 +0000

It’s a busy week. I’m speaking at the [Black Marble-hosted GWAB2 event](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event= Global Windows Azure Bootcamp 2) this Saturday, along with Steve Spencer and Andy Westgarth. Richard and Robert will also be on hand which means between us we should be able to cover questions on much of the newly re-monikered Microsoft Azure.

I’ll be running through IaaS, Azure AD and looking at hybrid cloud solutions from an IT perspective while Steve and Andy talk through the other platform services from a developer point of view.

A better way of using TFS Community Build Extensions StyleCop activity so it can use multiple rulesets

Richard Fennell — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 09:26:13 +0000

Background

The TFS Community Build Extensions provide many activities to enhance your build. One we use a lot is the one for StyleCop to enforce code consistency in projects as part of our check in & build process.

In most projects you will not want a single set of StyleCop rules to be applied across the whole solution. Most teams will require a higher level of ‘rule adherence’ for production code as opposed to unit test code. By this I don’t mean the test code is ‘lower quality’, just that rules will differ e.g. we don’t require XML documentation blocks on unit test methods as the unit test method names should be documentation enough.

Learning the Microsoft Platform Succinctly

Robert Hogg — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 18:44:19 +0000

The good people over at SyncFusion have taken it upon themselves to provide the Microsoft development community with a great set of books to bootstrap you into different Microsoft development technologies.

To find these little gems head over to http://www.syncfusion.com/resources/techportal/ebooks

you have to register but since doing so i have had no email or hassle from SyncFusion unlike other “free” resources on the net.

Here are some of the Titles

Visual Studio 2013 Succinctly

Migrating to SCVMM 2012 R2 in a TFS Lab Scenario

Richard Fennell — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 16:03:14 +0000

Rik has just done a post on upgrading our SCVMM 2012 instance we use with Lab Management to 2012 R2, a good few gotchas in there as you might expect.

Well worth a read

Migrating to SCVMM 2012 R2 in a TFS Lab Scenario

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 13:25:31 +0000

Last week I moved our SCVMM from 2012 with service pack 1 to 2012 R2. Whilst the actual process was much simpler than I expected, we had a pretty big constraint imposed upon us by Lab Manager that largely dictated our approach.

Our SCVMM 2012 deployment was running on an aging Dell server. It had a pair of large hard drives that were software mirrored by the OS an we were using NIC teaming in Server 2012 to improve network throughput. It wasn’t performing that well, however. Transfers from the VMM library hosted on the server to our VM hosts were limited by the speed of the ageing SATA connectors and incoming transfers were further slowed by the software mirroring. We also had issues where Lab manager would timeout jobs whilst SCVMM was still diligently working on them.

Migrating a TFS TFVC based team project to a Git team project retaining as much source and work item history as possible

Richard Fennell — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 11:02:46 +0000

I have just had a guest blog post published on the Microsoft UK Developers site ‘Migrating a TFS TFVC based team project to a Git team project retaining as much source and work item history as possible’. It discusses alternatives to using TFS Integration Platform to migrate source code and associated work items.

Creating Azure Virtual Networks using Powershell and XML Part 4: Local networks and site-site connectivity

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 09 Mar 2014 18:21:00 +0000

This is part 4 of a series of posts building powershell functions to create and modify Azure Virtual Networks. Previous posts have covered functions to create virtual networks and then delete them. In this part, I’m going to show you functions that will define local networks and configure site-site VPN connectivity between a local and virtual network.

Next on my list is to create functions to delete the local networks and remove the site-site connections. Then I really must look at functions to edit the configuration.

Gary Lapointe to the rescue: Using his Office 365 powershell tools to recover from a corrupted masterpage

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:29:00 +0000

I also need to give credit to the Office 365 support team over this. They were very quick in their response to my support incident, but I was quicker!

Whilst working on an Office 365 site for a customer today I had a moment of blind panic. The site is using custom branding and I was uploading a new version of the master page to the site when things went badly wrong. The upload appeared to finish OK but the dialog that was shown post upload was not the usual content type/fill in the fields form, but a plain white box. I left it for a few minutes but nothing changed. Unperturbed, I returned to the mater page gallery… Except I couldn’t. All I got was a white page. No errors, nothing. No pages worked at all – no settings pages, no content pages, nothing at all.

Creating Azure Virtual Networks using Powershell and XML Part 3: Powershell functions for deletion

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 17:30:00 +0000

This is part three of a series of posts about using powershell to script the creation, deletion and (hopefully) modification of Azure Virtual Networks. In part 1 I went through the key steps with some rough code. Part 2 showed the much tidier functions I’ve now written to create virtual network elements. This is part 3, and I will present functions to remove elements. Hopefully I will manage to get the modification functions to work which be a fourth installment!

Creating Azure Virtual Networks using Powershell and XML Part 2: Powershell functions

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 16:11:00 +0000

In my previous post I talked about what was involved in creating an Azure network configuration using Powershell. In this post I’ll cover where I’ve got so so far, which is a series of functions that do the following:

Contact Azure and get the current network configuration. Convert that to sensible XML and if it’s empty, create the basic structure.
Create a new virtual network, checking to see if one with the same name already exists.
Add a subnet to a virtual network, checking to see one with the same address prefix or name doesn’t already exist.
Add a DNS reference to a virtual network, making sure the DNS is defined first.
Create a DNS.
Put the configuration back into Azure to be applied.

Still on my to-do list are removing networks and other elements, and modifying existing networks.

Creating Azure Virtual Networks using Powershell and XML

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 17:56:00 +0000

I’ll be honest, I expected this task to be easier than it is. What I’m working on is some powershell that we might use as part of automated build processes that will create a new Virtual Network in an Azure subscription. What I’m after is to add a new network to the existing configuration.

There aren’t many powershell commands for Azure virtual networks. The two we need to use are get-azureVnetConfig and set-azureVnetConfig.

Declaratively create Composed Looks in SharePoint 2013 with elements.xml

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 10:00:23 +0000

This is really a follow-up to my earlier post about tips with SharePoint publishing customisations. Composed looks have been a part of a couple of projects recently. In the first, a solution for on-premise, we used code in a feature receiver to add a number of items to the Composed Looks list. In the second, for Office 365, a bit of research offered an alternative approach with no code.

What are Composed Looks

A composed look is a collection of master page, colour scheme file, font scheme file and background image. There is a site list called Composed Looks that holds them, and they are shown in the Change the Look page as the thumbnail options you can choose to apply branding in one hit.

Guest post on Microsoft ALM Blog on Lab Management

Richard Fennell — Tue, 25 Feb 2014 22:24:00 +0000

A clarification blog post I wrote on what to do if you have multiple SCVMM servers in your network and want to use TFS Lab Management has just been published on the Microsoft Application Lifecycle Management blog.

For more information on best practices with TFS Lab Management have a look at the ALM Rangers guide

DDD South west

Richard Fennell — Tue, 25 Feb 2014 18:57:55 +0000

There is a call for speakers for DDD South West on the 17th of May in Bristol. I have submitted as proposal, are you going to?

For more details see http://www.dddsouthwest.com/

High CPU utilisation on the data tier after a TFS 2010 to 2013 upgrade

Richard Fennell — Tue, 25 Feb 2014 18:52:36 +0000

There have been significant changes in the DB schema between TFS 2010 and 2013. This means that as part of an in-place upgrade process a good deal of data needs to be moved around. Some of this is done as part of the actual upgrade process, but to get you up and running quicker, some is done post upgrade using SQL SPROCs. Depending how much data there is to move this can take a while, maybe many hours. This is the cause the SQL load.

New ALM Rangers releases

Richard Fennell — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 12:47:06 +0000

While I have been on holiday there have been a few ALM Rangers releases.

I am particularly happy to see the Lab Management Guide … v3 update guidance is available, as this was a project I was working on. The big change from previous editions is that it covers setting up Lab Management to make use of Azure IaaS resources.

So if you use TFS have a look at http://aka.ms/vsarsolutions for a full list of resources

Speaking at NEBytes on February 19th

Rik Hepworth — Sat, 08 Feb 2014 14:52:39 +0000

I’m pleased to have been asked to speak at NEBytes again – a great user group that meets in Newcastle. I’ll be speaking about customising SharePoint 2013 using master pages, themes and search templates, along the same lines as my recent blog post.

It will be an unusual one for me, as I will spend most of the session inside Visual Studio showing how to create and deploy the customisations that can deliver really powerful solutions without needing to resort to writing code (other than for deployment).

A walkthrough of getting Kerberos working with a Webpart inside SharePoint accessing a WCF service

Richard Fennell — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 21:47:23 +0000

Update 2/4/2014 – Added notes about using service accounts as opposed to machine accounts for the AppPool running the web service

In the past I have posted on how to get Kerberos running for multi tier applications. Well as usual when I had to redeploy the application onto new hardware I found my notes were not as clear as I would have hoped. So here is what is meant to be a walkthrough for getting our application working in our TFS lab environment.

Speaking at Gravitas’s Tech Talk #3 -

Richard Fennell — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 17:15:29 +0000

I am speaking at Gravitas’s Tech Talk #3 - "TFS & Visual Studio 2013 vs The Rest" on Tuesday march the 4th about

"Microsoft's Application Lifecycle product has had a lot of changes in the past couple of years. In this session will look at how it can be used provide a complete solution from project inception through development, testing and deployment for project both using Microsoft and other vendor technologies"

Using the Dell Venue 8 Pro Stylus

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 15:24:01 +0000

You will recall from my earlier post how much I like my Dell Venue 8 Pro and how disappointed I was that the stylus was on back-order until March.

Imagine my surprise, then, when a package arrived at the beginning of this week with a shiny new stylus in it!

As you can see from the picture, it works just great with OneNote (and it’s desktop big brother).

Six tips when deploying SharePoint 2013 masterpages, page layouts and display templates

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 17:27:40 +0000

I’ve been hat-swapping again since just before christmas (which explains the lack of Azure IaaS posts I’m afraid). I’ve been working on a large SharePoint 2013 project, most lately on customising a number of elements around publishing. Getting those custom elements into SharePoint from my solution raised a number of little snags, most of which were solved by the great internet hive mind. It took me a long time to find some of those fixes, however, so I thought I’d collect them here and reference the original posts where appropriate.

GDR3 update for my Nokia 820

Richard Fennell — Sun, 02 Feb 2014 09:59:00 +0000

The GDR3 update for my Nokia 820 has at last arrived. As my phone is a developer unit it is at the end of the automated update list. I suppose I could have pulled it down by hand, but I was not in a major rush as I am not doing WP8 development at present.

The update seems to have gone on OK. Only strange thing was I was getting low space warnings prior to the upgrade. I suspect this was the fact the new patch had been download onto the phones main storage, but this was a bit full of content from iPodcast (the otherwise excellent app I use for podcasts can’t store to my SD card). Just to be on the safe side I uninstalled iPodcast, did the GDR3 update and then reinstalled iPodcast. As I have the premium version I could easily restore my podcast lists, including what I had and had not listened to, from the cloud.

Upgraded older Build and Test Controllers to TFS 2013

Richard Fennell — Sat, 01 Feb 2014 14:40:00 +0000

All has been going well since our upgrade from TFS 2012 to 2013, no nasty surprises.

As I had a bit of time I thought it a good idea to start the updates of our build and lab/test systems. We had only upgraded our TFS 2012.3 server to 2013. We had not touched our build system (one 2012 controller and 7 agents on various VMs) and our Lab Management/test controller. Our plan, after a bit of thought, was to so a slow migration putting in new 2013 generation build and test controllers in addition to our 2012 ones. We would then decide on an individual build agent VM basis what to do, probably upgrading the build agents and connecting them to the new controller. There seems to be no good reason to rebuild the whole build agent VMs with the specific SDKs and tools they each need.

Testing new social plugin for BlogEngine

Richard Fennell — Mon, 27 Jan 2014 13:19:22 +0000

We are testing the ‘social publish’ plugin for BlogEngine. Rik’s post has the details on what needs to be done to get it working with the current Twitter APIs

BlogEngine.Net automatically tweeting on new posts

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 27 Jan 2014 11:17:00 +0000

I sadly miss Twitter Notify, the plugin for Windows Live Writer that would tweet when I published a new post. Fortunately, there are a couple of plugins for BlogEngine.Net that purport to do the same thing. I’ve just deployed SocialPublish to our server. Configuration is a bit fiddly, and I’m not sure yet how well it will work with our multi-tennant structure. This is my first post after activation so I’m keen to see if it tweets when I publish!

Living with the Dell Venue 8 Pro

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 26 Jan 2014 16:32:11 +0000

Some time ago I wrote about how disappointed I was with the Acer W3 tablet. I really wanted that small form factor device, but the Acer fell short in pretty much every regard. Late last year Dell launched the Venue 8 Pro – the first of the new generation of 8” Windows tablets out of the gate. I sat on the fence for a while, looking at community comments on the the device, then finally ordered one after speaking to Simon May about his impressions of it.

How long is my TFS 2010 to 2013 upgrade going to take?

Richard Fennell — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 19:44:00 +0000

Update 27 Jun 2013 See update version of post with more data

I seem to be involved with a number of TFS 2010 to 2013 upgrades at present. I suppose people are looking at TFS 2013 in the same way as they have historically looked at the first service pack for a product i.e: the time to upgrade when most of the main issues are addressed. That said TFS 2013 is not TFS 2012 SP1!

Upgrading our TFS 2012 server to 2013

Richard Fennell — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 19:09:55 +0000

We have eventually got around to the 2013 upgrade of our production TFS server. It had been put off due to some tight delivery deadlines around Christmas.

The upgrade went fine, unlike out some previous ones we have had.

The upgrading of our team process templates, to add the new features, was greatly eased by using Feature4Tfs tool on CodePlex. This meant one command line call and all the projects were done (we had no significant process customisation) as opposed to visiting in team project in the admin console.

Changing targeted .NET version for a project means web.config changes for EF

Richard Fennell — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 12:43:48 +0000

I am upgrade an internal system from .NET 4.0 to 4.5 so that I can use the Team API features in TFS. The system is based around a WCF web service that links our customer help desk system to TFS to keep bug reports in sync. It uses Entity Framework to access our help desk SQL DB.

When I changed the targeted .NET framework for the WCF project, I started to get warning to update the Nuget managed references for EF, which I did.

Fix for intermittent connection problem in lab management – restart the test controller

Richard Fennell — Mon, 13 Jan 2014 14:50:42 +0000

Just had a problem with a TFS 2012 Lab Management deployment build. It was working this morning, deploying two web sites via MSDeploy and a DB via a DacPac, then running some CodedUI tests. However, when I tried a new deployment this afternoon it kept failing with the error:

The deployment task was aborted because there was a connection failure between the test controller and the test agent.

F# Compiler as a Service

Robert Hogg — Mon, 13 Jan 2014 14:00:41 +0000

With the interesting move for compilers to become services, it is a natural and welcome follow on that F# is now available as a compiler as a service.

The Package contains

F# Language tokenizer – tokenizer service
Processing untyped AST service
Using editor (IDE) services – components needed to build an IDE
Hosted F# interactive - allows F# to be embedded as a scripting language
Hosting the F# compiler

if F# is your thing (and it should be) or if you are interested in Compiler as a Service as a general idea, you really should check it out.

Nokia Update 3, Nokia Black and Apps

Robert Hogg — Fri, 10 Jan 2014 10:20:20 +0000

A nice surprise today the Nokia Black update appeared on my Nokia 1020. The update brings some great new features but also a hidden fix for those of us running the GDR3 developer preview which now allows correct use of the PlayTo feature.

Updated Nokia Glance

Glance now includes other notifications from apps similar to the lock screen also now in fetching blue and green.

Camera

The Nokia Pro Camera and Smart Camera are have been merged, for 1020 users Raw DNG is now supported and updated imaging algorithms, including a new oversampling algorithm for photos.

Update for Windows Phone Developers

Robert Hogg — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 18:35:06 +0000

In a wrap from last year I am posting some summary's of key information from the last few months that people may have missed.

Since the Windows Phone team made the update 3 available to developers there is now a new set of Images for Update 3

These images allows you to test on Update 3 at the same resolutions as Update 2 but also at 1080 x 1920 resolution screens for phones such as the Lumia 1520. Get Update 3 for the Windows Phone 8.0 SDK Here

Tech Update

Robert Hogg — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 13:24:38 +0000

It is that time of year, our Annual Tech Update is upon us.

if you are an IT manager or IT pro come to the morning and find out what happened in 2013 and see a roadmap for all Microsoft Technologies for 2014 from Windows to SharePoint, from SQL Server to Azure

if you are a Development Manager or Developer come to the afternoon and see the update and Roadmap for developers and development technologies

Great support from BlogEngine.NET

Richard Fennell — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 10:27:32 +0000

I posted yesterday that we had upgraded to the current version of BE 2.9. We, as you might expect, had a few minor issues, but I must say the support on the discussion forums has been excellent.

This included the problems I had that were down to missing files and web.config issues (basically my copy errors when moving content from our BE 2.8 instance to the new BE 2.9 on) and a genuine bug in the new CustomFields code (fixed in 2.9.0.3). All discussion posts were responded to, and in the case of the bug fix, within a very short period of time.

Upgrading from BlogEngine 2.8 to 2.9

Richard Fennell — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 13:57:41 +0000

I have just upgrade our Blog Server from BlogEngine.NET 2.8 to 2.9, all seems to have gone well, as before basically it is just copies files and adds s table to the DB schema, so…

backup your blogs folder and SQL DB in case of problems
delete the contents of the blogs folder
copy in the the new release from the zip
run the SQL upgrade script on your DB
fix the SQL connection string in the web.config
copy in the theme and extension files you were using as detailed in the release notes, but I found using updater utility did a great job for me

As many of our sites were using the standard theme, it picked up the new bootstrap based version. Anyone with the other themes just see what they saw before

Fix for Media Center library issue after Christmas tree lights incident

Richard Fennell — Tue, 24 Dec 2013 13:43:58 +0000

Twas the night before Christmas and….

To cut a long story short the PC that runs my Window Media Center (MCE) got switched on and off at the wall twice whilst Christmas tree lights were being put up.

Now the PC is running WIndows 8.1 on modern hardware, so it should have been OK, and mostly was. However I found a problem that MCE was not showing any music, video or pictures in its libraries but the recorded TV library was fine. I suspected the issue was that my media is on an external USB3 RAID unit, so there was a chance that on one of the unintended reboots the drives had not spun up in time and MCE had ‘forgotten’ about the external drive.

Getting the domainuser when using versionControl.GetPermissions() in the TFS API

Richard Fennell — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 15:40:07 +0000

If you are using the TFS API to get a list of user who have rights in a given version control folder you need to be careful as you don’t get back the domainuser name you might expect from the GetPermissions(..) call. You actually get the display name. Now that might be fine for you but I needed the domainuser format as I was trying to populate a peoplepicker control.

A hair in the gate

Richard Fennell — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 12:39:29 +0000

My Arc mouse started behaving strangely today, very jumpy. Felt like the cursor was being pulled left. Turns out the problem was a tiny hair caught in the led sensor slot

You could see there was a problem as the led was flashing a lot, when it is normally solidly on if turn over the mouse you look into the slot.

Once I got it out all was fine again

Notes from my session of the Visual Studio 2013 launch at NDC London

Richard Fennell — Wed, 04 Dec 2013 21:14:00 +0000

Thanks to anyone who came to my session ‘TFS is not just for Visual Studio users’ at the Visual Studio 2013 at NDC London yesterday. Hope you found it useful and are now thinking of TFS as a tool for heterogeneous teams, not just developers using Visual Studio. As I discussed there are many options:

Developers can work within their IDEs
Visual Studio 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013
Any IDE based on Eclipse

Shape-Shifting Santa and the Merry Mutation Machine!

Linda Hogg — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 19:09:00 +0000

This year, our artistic team has surpassed itself with another fabulous Christmas Card ... or book, and it is coming to a desk or doormat near you.

'Shape-Shifting Santa and the Merry Mutation Team' tells the tale of how the heroic Black Marble brigade once again saves Christmas by rescuing Santa from another Yuletide plot by this year's villain - Buccaneer Badgeit!

And unlike previous editions - this year's card only appears in preview on our website, so if you want your own copy, like us on Facebook or email xmas@blackmarble.co.uk.

The TFS 2013 Brian Keller demo VM is available

Richard Fennell — Thu, 28 Nov 2013 17:08:51 +0000

The TFS 2013 Brian Keller demo VM is available at http://aka.ms/vs13almvm

Fix for 0xc00d36b4 error when play MP4 videos on a Surface 2

Richard Fennell — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 14:51:00 +0000

Whilst in the USA last week I bought a Surface 2 tablet. Upon boot it ran around 20 updates, as you expect, but unfortunately one of these seemed to remove its ability to play MP4 videos, giving a 0xc00d36b4 error whenever you try. A bit of a pain as one of the main reasons I wanted a tablet was for watching training videos and PluralSight on the move.

After a fiddling and hunting on the web I found I was not alone, so I added my voice to the thread, and eventually an answer appeared. It seems the Nvidia Audio Enhancements seem to be the problem. I guess they got updated within the first wave of updates.

Microsoft Patterns & Practice publication ‘Building a Release Pipeline with Team Foundation Server 2012’

Richard Fennell — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 01:47:42 +0000

Are you interested in building your own release pipeline using only the tools within TFS 2012 (or 2013)?

If so why not have a look at the Microsoft Patterns & Practice publication Building a Release Pipeline with Team Foundation Server 2012 it provides great background and a full work through via its hands-on-lab.

My guest post on the UK MSDN blog on ‘Using MSDN Azure benefits with TFS Lab Management’

Richard Fennell — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 19:12:00 +0000

A guest post I wrote has just been published on the UK MSDN blog titled ‘How VPNs can help you use your MSDN Azure benefits with TFS Lab Management’

Announcing a CodePlex project that provides an IronPython DSL that can be used to define the handling of TFS Alerts

Richard Fennell — Sun, 17 Nov 2013 21:03:18 +0000

I have just published a new project to CodePlex http://tfsalertsdsl.codeplex.com/.

Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) provides an alerting model where given a certain condition, such as a check-in, work item edit or build completion, an email can be sent to an interest party or a call made to a SOAP based web service. Using this SOAP model it is possible to provide any bespoke operations you wish that are triggered by a change on the TFS server.

Fixing a WCF authentication schemes configured on the host ('IntegratedWindowsAuthentication') do not allow those configured on the binding 'BasicHttpBinding' ('Anonymous') error

Richard Fennell — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 12:54:39 +0000

Whilst testing a WCF web service I got the error

The authentication schemes configured on the host ('IntegratedWindowsAuthentication') do not allow those configured on the binding 'BasicHttpBinding' ('Anonymous'). Please ensure that the SecurityMode is set to Transport or TransportCredentialOnly. Additionally, this may be resolved by changing the authentication schemes for this application through the IIS management tool, through the ServiceHost.Authentication.AuthenticationSchemes property, in the application configuration file at the element, by updating the ClientCredentialType property on the binding, or by adjusting the AuthenticationScheme property on the HttpTransportBindingElement.

Now this sort of made sense as the web services was mean to be secured using Windows Authentication, so the IIS setting was correct, anonymous authentication was off

When your TFS Lab test agents can’t start check the DNS

Richard Fennell — Fri, 08 Nov 2013 16:11:45 +0000

Lab Management has a lot of moving parts, especially if you are using SCVMM based environments. All the parts have to communicate if the system is work.

One of the most common problem I have seen are due to DNS issues. A slowly propagating DNS can cause chaos as the test controller will not be able to resolve the name of the dynamically registered lab VMs.

The best fix is to sort out your DNS issues, but that is not always possible (some things just take the time they take, especially on large WANs).

Building VMs for use in TFS Lab Management environments

Richard Fennell — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 18:27:36 +0000

We have recently gone through an exercise to provide a consistent set of prebuilt configured VMs for use in our TFS Lab Management environments.

This is not an insignificant piece of work as this post by Rik Hepworth discusses detailing all the IT pro work he had to do to create them. This is all before we even think about the work required to create deployment TFS builds and the like.

More on TF215106: Access denied from the TFS API after upgrade from 2012 to 2013

Richard Fennell — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 15:23:48 +0000

In my previous post I thought I had fixed my problems with TF215106 errors

"TF215106: Access denied. TYPHOONTFS\TFSService needs Update build information permissions for build definition ClassLibrary1.Main.Manual in team project Scrum to perform the action. For more information, contact the Team Foundation Server administrator."}

Turns out I had not, acutally I not idea why it worked for a while! There could well be an API version issue, but I had to actually also missed I needed to do what the error message said!

Dealing with AD sync issues in an Azure hybrid deployment

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 22:21:38 +0000

I’ve been building demo environments for Tech.Days Online for the past few days. I had been blogging as I built, but then I hit problems and time pressure meant I had to pause my series on building the hybrid network. I will pick up the remainder of those posts in the near future but in the meantime, I want to give you all the heads up on one of my problems.

‘Upgrading’ my Lenovo W520 to Windows 8.1

Richard Fennell — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 16:35:03 +0000

The upgrade experience for Windows 8 Enterprise is basically a reinstall, as you lose some many desktop apps and settings. So I decided to do a clean install, my PC was in need of a repave anyway.

My PC has 3 disks, a bitlockered SSD for the OS, another bitlockered drive used for data and a non bitlockered drive I use for ISOs, downloads etc. Just to be on the safe side I removed the bitlocker encryption on my second drive, then I deleted the contents of my SSD and re-installed.

Building an Azure IaaS and on-premise hybrid environment Part 2: DC and servers in the cloud

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 20:26:44 +0000

This is part 2 of a series of posts bout building a hybrid network connecting Windows Azure and on-premise. For more background on what the goals are, and for information on how to create the Azure Network and connect the VPN tunnel between on-premise and cloud see part 1.

Creating a DC on our Azure Network

I’m going to create a new VM on Azure using the VM gallery. One important point when doing this is that you should add a second drive to the VM for domain controllers. This is down to how read/write caching works on the primary drive (it’s enabled) which means there is a risk that a write operation may make it to the cache but not to the drive in the event of a failure. This would cause problems with AD synchronisation and for that reason we add a seond drive and disable caching on it so we can use it to host the AD database.

Building an Azure IaaS and on-premise hybrid environment Part 1: The plan and Azure Network Connection

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 03 Nov 2013 15:51:09 +0000

I’ve been meaning to build a test lab to kick the tyres of Windows Azure Networks for a while. Two things combined together to make me get it done, however: First was the need to build exactly that for a customer as part of proof-of-concepts; the second was an invitation to present at Tech.Days Online on the subject.

I’ve built and rebuilt said lab a few times now. I am about to build it again in order to have a demo environment for Tech.Days and I though it would be a good opportunity to blog the steps involved.

Connecting Azure Network Site-Site VPN to a SonicWall Appliance

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 28 Oct 2013 20:30:36 +0000

I am with a customer this week, building a test Azure Network+IaaS/Azure AD/Office 365 environment. We struggled to get the site-site VPN connection up for a while and there wasn’t a great deal on the greater internet to help, save for a couple of posts in a discussion forum by the marvellous Marcus Robinson. We finally got it working when we found a tech note from SonicWall, published just a few days ago on the 7th October.

Teaching kids to Program

Robert Hogg — Sun, 27 Oct 2013 00:18:10 +0000

The guys over at Microsoft Research Gadgeteering.NET have produced a really good guide on teaching programming to kids using Visual Basic and Gadgeteer.

it is aimed at 14-19 year olds, you can get it free from Here

Speaking at UK Tech.Days Online 2013

Rik Hepworth — Sat, 26 Oct 2013 15:48:40 +0000

I’ve been supporting the great team of evangelists at Microsoft with their UK Tech.Days events for some time now. I am chuffed to bits that they have asked me to contribute to the fantastic UK Tech.Days Online event. If you haven’t heard about it, go look at the agenda right now! Three days of great content on the latest technologies covering client, server, cloud and dev. The whole thing will be streamed live thanks to the wonder of the internet and includes a live interview with Steve Ballmer.

Changes in Skydrive access on Windows 8.1

Richard Fennell — Tue, 22 Oct 2013 17:38:06 +0000

After upgrading to Windows 8.1 on my Media Center PC I have noticed a change in SkyDrive. The ‘upgrade’ process from 8 to 8.1 is really a reinstall of the OS and reapplication of Windows 8 applications. Some Windows desktop applications are removed. In the case of my Media Center PC the only desktop app installed was Windows Desktop Skydrive that I used to sync photos from my MediaPC to the cloud. This is no longer needed as Windows 8.1 exposes the Skydrive files linked to the logged in LiveID as folders under the c:user[userid]documents folder, just like Windows Desktop client used to do.

TF215106: Access denied from the TFS API after upgrade from 2012 to 2013

Richard Fennell — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 20:19:00 +0000

Updated 6th Nov 2013 - Also see this updated post , the API mentioned here maybe an issue, but the rights change in this other post is probably the real issue

After upgrading a test server from TFS 2012 to 2013 I started getting the following exception when trying to set the retention for a build policy via the TFS API

"TF215106: Access denied. TYPHOONTFS\TFSService needs Update build information permissions for build definition ClassLibrary1.Main.Manual in team project Scrum to perform the action. For more information, contact the Team Foundation Server administrator."}

A fix for power saving stopping my slow application installation

Richard Fennell — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 13:14:42 +0000

I am getting sick of the fact that the Samsung 500T tablet running Windows 8.1 I am installing applications on keeps going into sleep mode to save power. I start the install, leave it to run, look back later it has been saving power, started and stopped Wifi and I have one very confused install. It is not as if it is anything weird, just Office 2013.

So the the workaround (as I admit I forgot to pickup it’s PSU this morning) is pop it into Presenter Mode (via the Windows key X and Mobility Center). This means it ignore Power saving and just runs for me. Install finish fine and I am good to go

Can I use the HP ALM Synchronizer with TF Service?

Richard Fennell — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 11:39:51 +0000

I recently tried to get the free HP ALM Synchronizer to link to Microsoft’s TF Service, the summary is it does not work. However, it took me a while to realise this.

The HP ALM Synchronizer was designed for TFS 2008/2010 so the first issue you hit is that TF Services is today basically TFS 2013 (and is a moving goal post as it is updated so often). This means when you try to configure the TFS connection in HP ALM Synchronizer it fails because it cannot see any TFS client it supports. This is fairly simple to address, just install Visual Studio Team Explorer 2010 and patch it up to date so that it can connect to TF Service (you could go back to the 2008 and achieve the same if you really needed to)

Upgrading Windows 8 Media Center to 8.1

Richard Fennell — Sat, 19 Oct 2013 00:19:58 +0000

Just done the update of my Windows 8 Media Center to 8.1. First issue was I looked in the store and could not see the update. I was looking for an ‘update’ in the top right not a huge application entry in the middle of the screen. Strange how you can miss the obvious

The download took about 30 minutes which worked in background whilst I was using Media Center. It then did a reboot, the main install of files took about 30 minutes too. It seemed to sit at 85% for a long time, then another reboot. A few ‘preparing devices’ messages and ‘getting ready’ for a good 10 minutes, then ‘Applying PC settings', another reboot then ‘setting up a few more things’ . I then had to accept some licenses, and login with a LiveID, and eventually it started, and everything was working.

Problems with Microsoft Fake Stubs and IronPython

Richard Fennell — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 14:45:58 +0000

I have been changing the mocking framework used on a project I am planning to open source. Previously it had been using Typemock to mock out items in the TFS API. This had been working well but used features of the toolset that are only available on the licensed product (not the free version). As I don’t like to publish tests people cannot run I thought it best to swap to Microsoft Fakes as there is a better chance any user will have a version of Visual Studio that provides this toolset.

Generation 2 Virtual Machines on Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2 plus other nice new features

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 13:43:50 +0000

DDD North 2013 was a fantastic community conference but sadly I didn’t get chance to deliver my grok talk on Generation 2 virtual machines. A few people came up to me beforehand to say they were interested in the topic, and a few more spoke to me afterwards to ask if I would blog. I had planned to write a post anyway, but when you know it’s something people want to read you get a bit more of a push.

Feeling the Microsoft Developer Love on Phone 8

Robert Hogg — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 22:23:23 +0000

it has been a general gripe in the developer community that preview updates for Windows Phone are carrier dependant and to say the least the Windows Phone team rarely allowed early access.

But this has changed, the latest update (Update 3) is available as a preview for developers (FEEL THE LOVE) through the new developer program

i) You need to have a developer account on dev.windowsphone.com

(if you don't have one, you should coz they are fab)

Links from my DDDNorth session ‘Automated Build Is Not The End Of The Story’

Richard Fennell — Sun, 13 Oct 2013 20:14:57 +0000

Thanks to everyone who came to my DDDNorth session ‘Automated Build Is Not The End Of The Story’, the links to the tools I discussed are as follows

Visual Studio Lab Management
MSDN http ://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd997438.aspx
ALM Rangers best practice guidance http://vsarlabman.codeplex.com/
Building Environments
SC-VMM http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610610.aspx
ALM Rangers VM Factory http://vsarvmfactory.codeplex.com/
Chef http://www.opscode.com/chef/
Puppet http://puppetlabs.com /
Deployment
ALM Rangers Test Infrastructure Guidance http://tig.codeplex.com/
ALM Rangers DevOps Workbench Express Edition http://vsardevops.codeplex.com/releases/view/111294
Octopus Deploy http://octopusdeploy.com/
Buildmaster http://inedo.com/buildmaster/overview
InRelease http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/inrelease/

All Set for DDD North 2013

Linda Hogg — Fri, 11 Oct 2013 13:08:00 +0000

Black Marble is a supporting DDD North - the premier Developer Community event running in the North of England. Taking place at the University of

Sunderland on Saturday 12 October, it has 400+ attendees, speakers, sponsors and exhibitors converging to hear their peers talk technical.

Always free, thanks in the main to the sponsors and organisers, this is a key date in the developer community calendar.

Get rid of that that zombie build

Richard Fennell — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 22:03:09 +0000

Whilst upgrading a TFS 2010 server to 2012 I had a problem that a build was showing in the queue as active after the upgrade. This build was queued in January, 10 months ago, so should have finished a long long time ago. This build had the effect that it blocked any newly queued builds, but the old build did not appear to be running on any agent – a zombie build.

Fix for - Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell’ on TFS 2010 Build Controller

Richard Fennell — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 21:47:34 +0000

I have previously posted about when TFS build controllers don’t start properly. Well I saw the same problem today whilst upgrading a TFS 2010 server to TFS 2012.3. The client did not want to immediately upgrade their build processes and decided to keep their 2010 build VMs just pointing them at the updated server (remember TFS 2012.2 and later servers can support either 2012 or 2010 build controllers).

The problem was that when we restarted the build service the controller and agents appeared to start, but then we got a burst of errors in the event log and we saw the controller say it was ready, but have the stopped icon.

Unexpectedly now doing a session at DDD North 2013

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 09:41:44 +0000

I had a surprise exchange of text messages last night with Andy Westgarth. Sadly, one of the people who was to speak in one of the first session slots has had to pull out. Andy did the thing all the best conference organisers do – he called his friends! As a result, Richard and myself will be presenting a session about our experience with Lab Manager on Saturday morning.

Lab Manager is an interesting part of the development puzzle, allowing automated provisioning of environments that can then have software deployed to them and automated tests run against them. However, building a good Lab Manager environment (or machines to then be composed into an environment) is a very different task than the bare-metal scripting guerrilla devops approach that is very en-vogue right now. Richard and I will speak about how we run our Lab from both the perspective of the development/ALM specialist (that would be him!) and the IT guy (that would be me!).

Miracast with Surface Pro, Windows 8.1 release and Netgear Push2TV

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 09:31:31 +0000

One of the most useful features of Windows 8.1 for me is the native support for Miracast (which is compatible with Intel Widi) for connecting to a wireless projector or display. Being able to wander around with my tablet whilst speaking is really handy.

Sadly, whilst this worked for a little while during the preview, everything stopped with no reason. Searching the internet hive mind suggested that a Windows Defender update during the preview release had borked it, but nobody could confirm.

Grok talking at DDDNorth 2013

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 09:01:00 +0000

DDD North 2013 is almost upon us and I hope you’re all converging on Sunderland for what should be a great for devs. I’ll be helping out during the day, and I will also be doing a short Grok Talk on how Generation 2 Virtual Machines in Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 are new, different and cool. Come along and heckle, why don’t you?

Take care installing firmware updates on your Surface Pro if it’s bitlocker encrypted

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 06 Oct 2013 21:11:03 +0000

A quick tip, this one. I downloaded the latest firmware update to my Surface Pro this evening. It rebooted and promptly requested my bitlocker unlock code. I don’t keep those to hand – they’re stored in our Active Directory. Fortunately I had another laptop with DirectAccess so I could find the key. Be ready with your recovery key if you too have enabled bitlocker and perform firmware updates.

And the most ridiculous packaging award of the day goes to…

Richard Fennell — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 12:32:21 +0000

CPC who managed to send two resistor-capacitor balances for LED lights, which as about 1cm in size

in a box as shown here

Other than loads of that inflatable packing material there was a huge CPC catalogue, with the interesting sticker

So an online electronics company, that provides free shipping (a really good thing when the components were only a couple of £s), chose to also send a very heavy catalogue that they know is out of date, when I have already used their quick and easy web site.

Being allowed out in public: Forthcoming events

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 15:21:34 +0000

It’s autumn again, and that means event season is upon us once more. In the next few months I’m getting around a bit, so this post is a plug for the events I’m either attending or speaking at.

October 1st is VMUG Leeds. I’m registered to attend, but chances are I’ll be spending much of the day helping the Microsoft guys run their hand-on lab. The agenda has some great-sounding sessions and I believe there are still spaces so why not register and come along.
October 12th is DDDNorth in Sunderland. Perhaps unsurprisingly my Lab Manager session wasn’t voted in, but I’m sure that’s because the range of speakers and topics available to choose from during voting meant hard choice had to be made . As with last year, I’m helping out on the day but I’m also hoping to attend (heckle) some of the sessions. Black Marble should be there in force, as Richard, Steve and Gary are all speaking. Former BM staffer Iain Angus’ session looks interesting too!
December 4th is the Black Marble [Architecture Forum in the North](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Architecture Forum in the North - 6). With so many great speakers lined up already I’m not sure if Linda will squeeze me in, but I’ll certainly be there to join in the discussion (and make sure the AV works!).
January 29th is the Black Marble Annual Tech Update. I’ll be speaking in the [morning, IT-focused session](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Annual TechUpdate for Microsoft Technologies for the IT Pro). It’s hard work to prep for but great fun to deliver and the feedback we get is always really great so come along if you want to be informed about the Microsoft roadmap to help your planning process. The [afternoon session covers the development technologies](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Annual TechUpdate for Microsoft Technologies for Developers) too!
Microsoft also have a new season of Tech.Days about to kick off, so keep an eye on their web site for details.

Building environments for Lab Manager: Why bare metal scripting fails

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 14:58:15 +0000

In the world of DevOps it’s all about the scripts: I’ve seen some great work done by some clever people to create complex environments with multiple VMs all from scratch using PowerShell. That’s great, but unfortunately in the world of Lab Manager it just doesn’t work well at all.

We’ve begun the pretty mammoth task of generating a new suite of VMs for our Lab Manager deployment to allow the developers and testers to create multi-machine environments. I had hoped to follow the scripting path and create these things much more on the fly, but it wasn’t to be.

Links from presentation on Server 2012 R2

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 19:16:19 +0000

Thanks to all who attended the ReBuild and TechEd revisited event today. I promised that I would post the links from the final slide to this blog so you can all start evaluating Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2.

Download and evaluate the Preview software

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/evaluate/trial-software.aspx

Refer to additional Windows Server 2012 R2 resources

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/windows-server/windows-server-2012-r2.aspx

Windows Server 2012 R2 on TechNet

http ://www.Microsoft.com/technet

Refer to additional System Center 2012 R2 resources

‘TF400499: You have not set your team field’ when trying to update Team Settings via the TFS API

Richard Fennell — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 12:50:56 +0000

I have recently been automating TFS admin processes such as creating a new team within an existing team project. The TFS team is now our primary means we use to segment work so we need to create new teams fairly often, so automation makes good sense.

As far as I can see, there are no command line tools, like TF.EXE or WITADMIN.EXE, to do most of the team operations. They are usually browser based. So I have been using PowerShell and the TFS API for the automation.

Moving from Ubuntu to Mint for my TEE demos

Richard Fennell — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 21:50:58 +0000

I posted a while ago about the problems with DHCP using a Hyper-V virtual switch with WIFI and an Ubuntu VM, well I never found a good solution without hard coding IP addresses.

I recently tried using Mint 15 and was please to see this did not suffer the same problems, it seems happy with DHCP over Hyper-V virtual switches. I think I will give it a go a do a while for any cross platform TEE demos I need for a while.

Where did that email go?

Richard Fennell — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 12:05:01 +0000

We use the TFS Alerts system to signal to our teams what state project build are at. So when a developer changes a build quality to ‘ready for test’ an email is sent to everyone in the team and we make sure the build retention policy is set to keep. Now this is not the standard behaviour of the TFS build alerts system, so we do all this by calling a SOAP based web service which in turn uses the TFS API.

Maybe I should have got the Nokia 925

Richard Fennell — Sun, 01 Sep 2013 12:13:54 +0000

I was at Jodrell Bank to see Sigur Ros last Friday. I could have really done with the low light features of Nokia 925 as opposed to my 820. The shots I took of the projected light show onto the radio telescope disk were not as good as I hoped.

But the panorama earlier in the evening worked well

Life with a Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13

Rik Hepworth — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 16:33:49 +0000

My wife’s desktop computer is eight years old. In fairness, it was good kit at the time, and the dual core, 64-bit AMD CPU and it’s four gigabytes of RAM are still more than enough to run her apps today. But the disks are slow and, frankly, it’s just getting tired. Time to get a new one…

I had no real preference whether we replaced the old computer with a new traditional-style desktop and screen, or an all-in one, or a convertible or even a tablet. The only thing I was firm about was that we should get a computer with touch, whatever the form factor. It’s not that my wife loves touch (in truth, I’m not sure she does…) but that’s the way we’re all headed and I wanted to make sure we got something that would last.

I wouldn’t be where I am today… How encouraging kids in computing is important

Rik Hepworth — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 15:49:00 +0000

I’ve been mulling this blog post for a while. Those of you who know Black Marble will have seen that we all believe very strongly in encouraging young people to take up computing and put time into sharing our knowledge and expertise. I thought it was worth sharing how I got to where I am today, which would not have been possible without the help and encouragement of three key people who worked with technology. There’s a message in the story though, about how we need to help the next generation of computing professionals in the same way.

Installing .Net 3.5 onto Windows 8 and 8.1 using DISM

Rik Hepworth — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 14:24:32 +0000

This is one of those posts to save me searching the web every time I need to install .Net 3.5 on a Windows 8 (and now 8.1) system. If the automated installation via add/remove features fails then you need the correct DISM command.

For those who have not yet encountered it, DISM allows you to perform actions on Windows image files in a process called Offline Servicing. However, it also allows you to perform the same functions online – on your current windows system.

DDDNorth registration is now open

Richard Fennell — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 16:21:59 +0000

DDDNorth registration is now open, and I am sure will soon close and move to a wait list. So if you want to attend I would get in early

Review of ‘Software Testing using Visual Studio 2012’ from Packt Publishing

Richard Fennell — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:01:14 +0000

I have just been reading Software Testing using Visual Studio 2012 by Subashni. S and Satheesh Kumar. N from Packt Publishing

This book does what it says on the cover, it is a general introduction to the testing tools within the Visual Studio 2012 family. My comment is not about how well it is done, it is a clear enough introduction, but why produce a book that really just covers what is in MSDN, Channel9, numerous podcasts, blogs and ALM Rangers documentation?

A week with a Nokia 820

Richard Fennell — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 20:42:22 +0000

I have been using a Nokia 800 (Windows Phone 7.8) for a year or so and been happy with it. It does what I needed i.e. phone, email, media player mainly for podcasts. So given all the reported issues with WP8 and podcasts (no Zune client to manage the subscription/sync and you can only subscribe through the store if you are in the USA) I was not too keen to ‘upgrade’

DDDNorth session voting is now open

Richard Fennell — Thu, 15 Aug 2013 17:43:47 +0000

You can now vote for the sessions you wish to see at DDNorth2

Hope to see you there on Saturday 12th October 2013 in Sunderland

Editing Windows Server 2012 Group Policies for Direct Access with Windows 8.1 Enterprise Preview

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 18:20:00 +0000

I finally got time to upgrade my Surface Pro to Windows 8.1 Enterprise. One of the things I most want to test is DirectAccess, as I live and die by this on my main laptop. However, despite the computer object for my machine being in the group that the DA group policies are applied to, no DA settings appeared.

TIP: On Windows 8.1, use Get-DAClientExperienceConfiguration in a PowerShell window to check your settings.

Installing Windows 8.1 Enterprise on Surface Pro

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 18:17:57 +0000

Windows 8.1 Enterprise preview was released a week or two ago. Being on holiday prevented me trying it out until I returned to the office. Everyone has different methods for installing Windows 8/8.1 on a Surface Pro. It’s actually pretty simple. Windows 8 can be done in the same way as I list here. However, you will need to download the Surface Pro Driver pack from Microsoft – Windows 8 doesn’t automatically find all the hardware; Windows 8.1 does.

Typescript 0.91 Released

Robert Hogg — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 11:10:46 +0000

With the 0.91 release the loss of performance going from 0.83 to 0.9 has been redressed.

there are general improvements including better ASP.NET support.

The Typescript site has all of the documentation and download packages for Visual Studio and Node.js

http://www.typescriptlang.org/

Microsoft Mathematics 2013 for Word and OneNote

Robert Hogg — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 14:49:47 +0000

Every now and again I post about the great tooling for kids and geeks that Microsoft product, the latest update in this set is the Microsoft Mathematics 2013 update for Word and OneNote.

The add in allows you to

• Compute standard mathematical functions, such as roots and logarithms
• Compute trigonometric functions, such as sine and cosine
• Find derivatives and integrals, limits, and sums and products of series
• Perform matrix operations, such as inverses, addition, and multiplication
• Perform operations on complex numbers
• Plot 2-D graphs in Cartesian and polar coordinates
• Plot 3-D graphs in Cartesian, cylindrical, and spherical coordinates
• Solve equations and inequalities
• Calculate statistical functions, such as mode and variance, on lists of numbers
• Factor polynomials or integers
• Simplify or expand algebraic expressions

Why is my TFS Lab build picking a really old build to deploy?

Richard Fennell — Thu, 01 Aug 2013 14:51:23 +0000

I was working on a TFS lab deployment today and to speed up testing I set it to pick the build of the TFS build that actually builds the code, as opposed to queuing a new one each time. It took me ages to remember/realise why it kept trying to deploy some ancient build that had long since been deleted from my test system.

The reason was the build means the last successful build, not the last partially successful build. I had a problem with my code build that means a test was failing (a custom build activity on my build agent was the root cause if the issue). Once I fixed my build box so the code build did not fail the lab build was able to pickup the files I expected and deploy them

Fix for ‘Cannot install test agent on these machines because another environment is being created using the same machines’

Richard Fennell — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 13:56:03 +0000

I recently posted about adding extra VMs to existing environments in Lab Management. Whilst following this process I hit a problem, I could not create my new environment there was a problem at the verify stage. It was fine adding the new VMs, but the one I was reusing gave the error ‘Microsoft test manager cannot install test agent on these machines because another environment is being created using the same machines’

Making the drops location for a TFS build match the assembly version number

Richard Fennell — Sat, 27 Jul 2013 16:20:00 +0000

A couple of years ago I wrote about using the TFSVersion build activity to try to sync the assembly and build number. I did not want to see build names/drop location in the format 'BuildCustomisation_20110927.17’, I wanted to see the version number in the build something like 'BuildCustomisation 4.5.269.17'. The problem as I outlined in that post was that by fiddling with the BuildNumberFormat you could easily cause an error where duplicated drop folder names were generated, such as

I can never remember the command line to add use to the TFS Service Accounts group

Richard Fennell — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 10:57:57 +0000

I keep forgetting when you use TFS Integration Platform that the user who the tool (or service account is running as a service) is running as has to be in the “Team Foundation Service Accounts” group on the TFS servers involved. If they are not you get a runtime conflict something like

Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Migration.Tfs2010WitAdapter.PermissionException: TFS WIT bypass-rule submission is enabled. However, the migration service account 'Richard Fennell' is not in the Service Accounts Group on server 'http://tfsserver:8080/tfs'.

An attempted return for ‘Brian the build bunny’

Richard Fennell — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 22:51:20 +0000

Background

Back in 2008 Martin Woodward did a post on using a Nabaztag as a build monitor for TFS, ‘Brian the build bunny’. I did a bit more work on this idea and wired into our internal build monitoring system. We ended up with a system where a build definition could be tagged so that it’s success or failure caused the Nabaztag to say a message.

This all worked well until the company that made Nabaztag went out of business, the problem being all communication with your rabbit was via their web servers. At the time we did nothing about this, so just stopped using this feature of our build monitors.

Adding another VM to a running Lab Management environment

Richard Fennell — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 14:29:24 +0000

If you are using network isolated environment in TFS Lab management there is no way to add another VM unless you rebuild and redeploy the environment. However, if you are not network isolated you can at least avoid the redeploy issues to a degree.

I had a SCVMM based environment that was a not network isolated environment that contained a single non-domain joined server. This was used to host a backend simulation service for a project. In the next phase of the project we need to test accessing this service via RDP/Terminal Server so I wanted to add a VM to act in this role to the environment.

Experiences with a Kindle Paperwhite

Richard Fennell — Sat, 20 Jul 2013 11:18:00 +0000

I wrote a post a while ago about ‘should I buy a Kindle’, well I put if off for over a year using the Kindle app on my WP7 phone, reading best part of 50 books and been happy enough without buying an actual Kindle. The key issue being poor battery life, but that’s phones for you.

However, I have eventually got around to getting a Kindle device. They key was I had been waiting for something that used touch, had no keyboard, but most importantly worked in the dark without an external light. This is because I found one of the most useful features of the phone app was reading in bed without the need for a light.

Washing your phone headset

Richard Fennell — Sun, 14 Jul 2013 14:23:42 +0000

As part of my on-going experiments to see what pieces of personal electronics can be put through a washing machine on 40C wash, I can confirm the headset off my Nokia phone has survived.

Minor issue on TFS 2012.3 upgrade if you are using host headers in bindings

Richard Fennell — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 10:03:14 +0000

Yesterday I upgraded our production 2012.2 TFS server to update 3. All seemed to go OK and it completed with no errors, it was so much easier now that the update supports the use of SQL 2012 Availability Groups within the update process, no need to remove the DBs from the availability group prior to the update.

However, though there were no errors it did reported a warning, and on a quick check users could not connects to the upgraded server on our usually https URL.

Setting SkyDrive as a trusted location in Office 2013

Richard Fennell — Tue, 09 Jul 2013 14:03:17 +0000

We use a VSTO based Word template to make sure all our documents have the same styling and are suitably reformatted for shipping to clients e.g revision comments removed, contents pages up to date etc. Normally we will create a new document using this template from our SharePoint server and all is OK. However sometimes you are on the road when you started a document so you just create it locally using a locally installed copy of the template. In the past this has not caused me problems. I have my local ‘My documents’ set in Word as a trusted location and it just works fine.

The Acer Iconia W3: An object lesson in how NOT to design a tablet

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 15:52:00 +0000

As you may have seen from my recent tweets, I was fortunate enough to attend //Build again this year in lovely San Francisco. In what appears to be an emerging tradition, conference attendees received not one, but two Windows 8 tablets: A 128Gb Microsoft Surface Pro with Type Cover, and an Acer Iconia W3 with keyboard dock.

Many column inches have been dedicated to the Microsoft device, which I won’t bother repeating. The Acer, however, is a different story.

VS2012 Tasks Defaulting to Resolved when you check in.

Tom Barnes — Wed, 03 Jul 2013 13:50:32 +0000

Problem

So when you have a task in TFS under My Work that you are actively working on and want to check in some changes but the task is not complete. It defaults to Resolved. Which if you make a quick mistake and don't set it to associate using the drop down (Fig1) removing the hours remaining value (Scrum Template) from your task and mark it as done. You the have to find your work item again and set it back to in progress to check in further work against it and find out the remaining hours of the task re-inputting the value.

Renewed as an MVP for Visual Studio ALM

Richard Fennell — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 17:09:13 +0000

Really pleased to say I have been renewed as a Microsoft MVP for Visual Studio ALM. It great to be involved with such as activity community as the ALM crowd, can’t wait for the next summit in November.

DDDNorth session submission has opened

Richard Fennell — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 10:19:53 +0000

The next DDDNorth event is to be held at Sunderland University on the 12th October. Session submission has now opened so why not get your session proposal in?

The best way to enjoy Build on the road.

Richard Fennell — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 09:49:07 +0000

The way most big conferences manage to virtually live stream everything is very impressive. I started watching the stream of yesterdays Microsoft Build keynote on the office’s big projection screen with everyone else at Black Marble. I have always said the best way to enjoy a keynote is on the comfy sofa with a beer at the end of the day. So much better than an early queue then a usually over air conditioned hall with 10,000 close friends.

A day of TFS upgrades

Richard Fennell — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 13:36:50 +0000

After last nights release of new TFS and Visual Studio bits at the Build conference I spent this morning upgrading my demo VMs. Firstly I upgraded to TFS 2012.3 and then snapshotting before going onto 2013 Preview. So by changing snapshot I can now demo either version. In both cases the upgrade process was as expected, basically a rerun of the configuration wizard with all the fields bar the password prefilled. Martin Hinshelwood has done a nice post if you want more details on the process

Black Marble at Build 2013 in San Francisco

Linda Hogg — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 00:18:00 +0000

The Black Marble team is out at Build this week in San Francisco, having a great time and learning all there is to know about Windows 8.1 and other key Microsoft announcements.

Follow the team on Twitter for updates, and check out our Facebook Album! If you want to follow it live, check out Channel 9.

Why can’t I find my build settings on a Git based project on TFS Service?

Richard Fennell — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 11:05:45 +0000

Just wasted a bit of time trying to find the build tab on a TFS Team Project hosted on the hosted http://tfs.visualstudio.com using a Git repository. I was looking on team explorer expecting to see something like

But all I was seeing the the Visual Studio Git Changes option (just the top bit on the left panel above).

It took to me ages to realise that the issue was I had cloned the Git repository to my local PC using the Visual Studio Tools for Git. So I was just using just Git tools, not TFS tools. As far as Visual Studio was concerned this was just some Git repository it could have been local, GitHub, TFS Service or anything that hosts Git.

Error adding a new widget to our BlogEngine.NET 2.8.0.0 server

Richard Fennell — Tue, 25 Jun 2013 14:07:00 +0000

Background

if you use Twitter in any web you will probably have noticed that they have switched off the 1.0 API, you have to use the 1.1 version which is stricter over OAUTH. This meant the Twitter feeds into our blog server stopped working on the 10th of June. The old call of

http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=blackmarble

did not work and just change 1 to 1.1 did not work.

So I decided to pull down a different widget for BlogEngine.NET to do the job, choosing Recent Tweets.

Using SYSPREP’d VM images as opposed to Templates in a new TFS 2012 Lab Management Environment

Richard Fennell — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 13:49:01 +0000

An interesting change with Lab Management 2012 and SCVMM 2012 is that templates become a lot less useful. In the SCVMM 2008 versions you had a choice when you stored VMs in the SCVMM library. …

You could store a fully configured VM
or a generalised template.

When you added the template to a new environment you could enter details such as the machine name, domain to join and product key etc. If you try this with SCVMM 2012 you just see the message ‘These properties cannot be edited from Microsoft Test Manager’

Great experience moving my DotNetNuke site to PowerDNN

Richard Fennell — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:29:34 +0000

I posted recently about my experiences in upgrading DotNetNuke 5 to 7, what fun that was! Well I have now had to do the move for real. I expected to follow the same process, but had problems. Turns out the key was to go 5 > 6 > 7. Once I did this the upgrade worked, turns out this is the recommended route. Why my previous trial worked I don’t know?

Anyway I ended up with a local DNN 7 site running against SQL 2012. It still was using DNN 5 based skin (which has problems with IE 10) which I needed to alter, but was functional. So it was time to move my ISP.

Using git tf to migrate code between TFS servers retaining history

Richard Fennell — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 17:48:54 +0000

Martin Hinshelwood did a recent post on moving source code between TFS servers using git tf. He mentioned that you could use the --deep option to get the whole changeset check-in history.

Being fairly new to using Git, in anything other than the simplest scenarios, it took me a while to get the commands right. This is what I used in the end (using the Brian Keller VM for sample data) …

Beta release of the ALM Rangers Unit Test Generate VS Extension

Richard Fennell — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 17:09:56 +0000

With Visual Studio 2012 have you missed the automated unit test generation tools that were present in Visual Studio 2010?

If you have then the ALM Rangers have produced the ‘Unit Test Generate VS Extension’. The first beta of this is now available on the VSGallery.

Why not download it and try out so you can provide feedback to the team?

Where did my parameters go when I edited that standard TFS report?

Richard Fennell — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 13:56:05 +0000

I have been doing some editing of the standard scrum TFS 2012 Sprint Burndown report in SQL 2012 Report Builder. When I ran the report after editing the MDX query in the dsBurndown DataSet to return an extra column I got an error:

on a remote PC it just said error with dsBurndown dataset
on the server hosting reporting services, or in Report Builder, I got a bit more information, it said the TaskName parameter was not defined.

On checking the state of the dataset parameters before and after my edit I could see that the TaskName parameter had been lost

Nice discussion on real world issues with software projects

Richard Fennell — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 15:37:26 +0000

Just watched a good session from TechEd USA 2013, it was billed as Agile Software Development with Microsoft Visual Studio ALM but has little that was specifically TFS based; no demos just war stories from Aaron Bjork and Peter Provost

It is a good discussion of the problems, experiences and solutions the Microsoft Visual Studio team went through when trying to move to agile development, including

Sprint lengths, be consistent across teams
Retrospectives, do you actually act on them?
Technical debt, do you write features or bugs?
Measure what you do
What is the role of the product owner/manager?

Well worth a watch

DHCP does not seem to work on Ubuntu for wireless based Hyper-V virtual switches

Richard Fennell — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 10:02:50 +0000

If running an Ubuntu guest VM on Windows 8 Hyper-V you have a problem if you want to make use of a wireless network on the host machine. DHCP does not seem to work.

Firstly you have to create a virtual switch in Hyper-V

and connect it to your wireless card

you can then connect a Network Adaptor on the Ubuntu guest VM to the new switch.

Visual Studio 2013 announcement at TechEd USA

Richard Fennell — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 19:25:00 +0000

Today at TechEd USA Brian Harry announced Visual Studio 2013, have a look at his blog for details of the new ALM features. These include…

Agile Portfolio Management
Git source control on premises
Revised team explorer including pop out windows
Improvements in code editing and annotation
Improvement in web based test management
Team Room – chat like collaboration
Cloud based web load testing
The start of addition of release management to TFS via the purchase of InRelease

For more info see the various sessions up on Channel 9

Lenovo W520 problems with Wifi and Windows 8

Richard Fennell — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 19:12:00 +0000

My Windows 8 based Lenovo W520 has an Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 Wifi chipset, it has been giving me problems with this for a while.

The most usual problem is that if I sleep or hibernate the PC when I restart it, in a different location, there is a chance I cannot connect to Wifi networks. I can see them, get a limited connection but no IP address as DHCP fails. Sometimes using the hardware Wifi switch on the front left of the PC helps, sometimes switching into Windows 8 airplane mode and back out does, but not always. Often I need to restart the PC.

My session on TFS at the ‘Building Applications for the Future’

Richard Fennell — Wed, 22 May 2013 22:21:07 +0000

Thanks to everyone who attended my session on ‘TFS for Developers’ at the Grey Matter’s ‘Building Applications for the Future’ event today. As you will have noticed my session was basically slide free, so not much to share there.

As I said at the end of my session to find out more have a look at

Brian Keller’s TFS 2012 VM – ready to run demo VM with plenty of hands on labs
Team Foundation Service – the free hosted version of TFS – go on give it a try.
Brian Harry’s Blog – all announcements on TFS can be found here

Also a couple of people asked by about TFS and Eclipse, which I only mentioned briefly at the end. For more on Team Explorer Everywhere look at the video I did last year on that very subject

Video on Nuget for C++ on Channel 9

Richard Fennell — Wed, 22 May 2013 22:04:03 +0000

I have been out to a number of sites recently where there are C++ developers. We often get talking about package management and general best practices for shared libraries. The common refrain is ‘I wish we had something like Nuget for C++’.

Well it was released in Nuget 2.5 and there is a video on Channel9 all about it.

Webinar on PreEmptive Analytics tools on the 28th of May

Richard Fennell — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:47:17 +0000

A key requirement for any DevOps strategy is the reporting on how your solution is behaving in the wild. PreEmptive Analytics™ for Team Foundation Server (TFS) can provide a great insight in this area, and there is a good chance you are already licensed for it as part of MSDN.

So why not have a look on the UK MSDN site for more details the free Microsoft hosted event.

MSDN Webinar Improve Software Quality, User Experience and Developer Productivity with Real Time Analytics
Tuesday, May 28 2013: 4:00 – 5:00 pm (UK Time)

Getting Wix 3.6 MajorUpgrade working

Richard Fennell — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:07:00 +0000

Why is everything so complex to get going with Wix, then so easy in the end when you get the syntax correct?

If you want to allow your MSI installer to upgrade a previous version then there are some things you have to have correct if you don’t want the ‘Another version of this product is already installed’ dialog appearing.

The Product Id should be set to * so that a new Guid is generated each time the product is rebuild
The Product UpgradeCode should be set to a fix Guid for all releases
The Product Version should increment on of the first three numbers, by default the final build number is ignored for update checking
The Package block should not have an Id set – this will allow it to be auto generated
You need to add the MajorUpgrade block to you installer

So you end up with

Upgrading DotNetNuke from V5 to V7

Richard Fennell — Fri, 17 May 2013 08:51:56 +0000

I recently needed to upgrade a DNN V5 site to V7 (yes I know I had neglected it, but I was forced to consider a change due to an ISP change). Now this is a documented process, but I had a few problems. There are some subtleties the release notes miss out. This is what I found I had to do to test the process on a replica web site …

Why do all my TFS labels appear to be associated with the same changeset?

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 May 2013 08:41:34 +0000

If you look at the labels tab in the source control history in Visual Studio 2012 you could be confused by the changeset numbers. How can all the labels added by my different builds, done over many days, be associated with the same changeset?

If you look at the same view in VS 2010 the problem is not so obvious, but that is basically due to the column not being shown.

Problem with CollectionView.CurrentChanged event not being fired in a WPF application

Richard Fennell — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:59:03 +0000

Had an interesting issue on one of our WPF applications that is using MVVM Lite.

This application is a front end to upload and download folder structures to TFS. On my development PC all was working fine i.e. when we upload a new folder structure to the TFS backend the various combo’s on the download tab are also updated. However, on another test system they were not updated.

Tech Update for Public Sector

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 14 May 2013 15:19:32 +0000

Right now I am putting the finishing touches to my deck for an event Black Marble are running at Cardinal Place next week. As many of you will know, for the past ten years we have run the annual Tech Update covering moves and changes across the entire Microsoft spectrum of products. Until now that has only taken place in Leeds but for the first time we are taking that show on the road.

Robert's new arrival

Richard Fennell — Tue, 14 May 2013 11:03:00 +0000

Look what the stork delivered to Robert!

He has bought himself a robot, and brought it in to the office to show to everyone today

Setting up a TFS 2012 proxy in a cross domain system

Richard Fennell — Fri, 10 May 2013 21:16:00 +0000

Today I have been setting up a cross domain TFS proxy. The developers are in one domain and the TFS server in another. Given there is no trust between these domains you have use a trick to get it to work.

So I created a local user tfsproxy.local on both the TFS server and proxy with the same password on each. At the proxy end I made this local user a local admin.

Interested in some tutor delivered training on TFS 2012 in the UK?

Richard Fennell — Fri, 10 May 2013 09:23:52 +0000

Interested in some tutor delivered training on TFS 2012? Well Anthony Borton, the TFS trainer and ALM MVP, is over in the UK running his excellent set of the TFS/VS 2012 focused courses.

TFS 2012 Configuration and Administration
10th – 12th June 2013 | Course Outline
Software testing with Visual Studio 201213th- 14th June 2013 | Course Outline
TFS 2012 Developer Fundamentals
17th – 18th June 2013 | Course Outline

Interestingly these courses can be taken in the room with the trainer or via Quicklearn’s Remote Classroom Instruction (RCI), so you can take the course in real time with the other students from the comfort of your own home/desk, but with all the benefits of a tutor classroom environment

How healthy is my TFS server?

Richard Fennell — Wed, 08 May 2013 15:31:17 +0000

If you want to know the health of the TFS server there are a number of options from a full System Center MOM pack downwards. A good starting point are the performance reports and administrative report pack produced by Grant Holiday. Though the performance pack is designed for TFS 2008 they work on 2010 and 2012, but you do need to do a bit of editing.

As the installation notes state, create a new shared data source called “TfsActivityReportDS”
1. Set the connection string to: Data Source=[your SQL server];Initial Catalog=Tfs_[your TPC name] - this is the big change as it this used to point to the tfs_ActivityLogging DB, this (as of TFS 2010) is now all rolled into you Team project Collection DB, so you need to alter the connection string to match your TPC. Also note if you use multiple TPCs you will need multiple data sources and reports.

Speaking at NEBytes about TFS 2012 Lab and SCVMM 2012

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 08 May 2013 10:45:30 +0000

On Wednesday 15th May 2013, Black Marble travels north, as Steve Spencer and I will both present sessions for the great guys at NEBytes.

Whilst Steve covers fun hardware and software dev using Gadgeteer, I will be talking about our experiences with TFS 2012 Lab and SCVMM 2012.

If you have seen some of my earlier posts, our migration to the latest and greatest was interesting, to say the least. I learned a great deal about how SCVMM and Lab talk to each other and I will be running through how we built our environment and the things we learned that could save you pain as you follow in our footsteps.

Getting going with the TFS Java API

Richard Fennell — Sat, 04 May 2013 08:53:27 +0000

If you are using the TFS 2012 Java API it is important you read the release notes. It is not enough to just reference the com.microsoft.tfs.sdk-11.0.0.jar file in your classpath as you might expect. You also have to pass a Java system property that associates com.microsoft.tfs.jni.native.base-directory with the location of the native library files that provide platform specific implementation for method calls. The command line for this is done in the form

Accessing TFS work item tags via the API

Richard Fennell — Fri, 03 May 2013 22:35:00 +0000

With TFS 2012.2 Microsoft have added tags to work items. These provide a great way to add custom information to work items without the need to customise the process template to add custom fields. This is important for users of the hosted http://tfs.visualstudio.com as this does not, at this time, allow any process customisation.

It is easy to add tags to any work item via the TFS web client, just press the Add.. button and either select an existing tag or add a new one. In the following PBI work item example I have added two tags, Tag1 and Tag2.

Workaround for TF900546: An unexpected error occurred while running the RunTests activity

Richard Fennell — Wed, 01 May 2013 15:01:21 +0000

The problem

I have been working on a project that contains SharePoint 2010 WSP packages and a MSI distributed WPF application. These projects are all in a single solution with their unit tests. I have been getting a problem with our TFS 2012.2 build system, all the projects compile but at the test point I get the unhelpful

TF900546: An unexpected error occurred while running the RunTests activity: 'Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information.'.

Follow the Yorkshire Global Windows Azure Event

Richard Fennell — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 10:48:33 +0000

Today Black Marble is hosting the Yorkshire Global Windows Azure Bootcamp event.

To see what is happening check out the photos on our Facebook gallery and the #GlobalWindowsAzure Twitter hashtag

Getting SQL 2012 SSIS packages built on TFS 2012.2

Richard Fennell — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:36:50 +0000

I have been trying to get SQL 2012 SSIS packages built on a TFS2012.2 build system. As has been pointed out by many people the problem is you cannot build SQL SSIS packages with MSBuild. This means you have to resort to call Visual Studio DevEnv.exe from within your build.

Jakob Ehn did a great post on this subject, but it is a little dated now due the release of VS 2012 and SQL 2012

Upgraded to BlogEngine.NET 2.8

Richard Fennell — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:16:09 +0000

I have just upgrade our Blog Server from BlogEngine.NET 2.7 to 2.8, all seems to have gone well, basically it is just file copies as there is no DB schema change, so…

backup your blogs folder
delete it’s contents
copy in the the new release from the zip
fix the SQL connection string
copy around a few files as detailed in the release notes, basically any customisation you have done,

That that seems to be it, just a case now of swapping themes to get the new look, if you want it

Thanks for attending my webinar on lab management

Richard Fennell — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:58:24 +0000

Thanks to everyone who attended my webinar session today in TFS Lab Management, I hope the audio issues were not too much of a problem and you found the session useful. We are looking into the causes of the audio problem so hopefully the next webinar will not need people dialling in via the phone unless they want to.

A number of people asked for the slides, you can find a copy of them here.

Lab Management webinar next week

Richard Fennell — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:53:30 +0000

If you are interested finding out more about TFS Lab Management why not come to the [Black Marble Bite size webinar](http://blackmarble.com/events.aspx?event=Tips for Visual Studio Lab Management (Black Marble Byte Size Webinar)) next Tuesday (23rd April). I will be giving a basic overview of the product and discussing some of our experiences implementing it.

Our upgrade to TFS 2012.2 has worked OK

Richard Fennell — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:57:47 +0000

I have mentioned in past posts the issues we had doing our first quarterly update for TFS 2012. Well today we had scheduled our upgrade to 2012.2 and I am please to say it all seems to have worked.

Unlike the last upgrade, this time we were doing nothing complex such as moving DB tier SQL instances; so it was a straight upgrade of a dual tier TFS 2012.1 instance with the DB being stored on a SQL2012 Availability Group (in previous updates you had to remove the DBs from the availability group for the update, with update 2 this is no longer required).

Great event in Antwerp

Richard Fennell — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 12:46:00 +0000

I had a great time yesterday at the VISUG Conference in Antwerp, thanks to everyone involved in event.

The ALM track organiser Pieter and all the speakers, myself, Martin and Neno, were really pleased to see how full our room was all day. There certainly seems to be more interest in ALM than ever before.

If you want to find out more on areas of TFS I was talking on i.e connecting from environments other than Visual Studio, why not look at a very similar session I recorded last year, it can be found on Channel9.

Part of the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp

Linda Hogg — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 18:41:00 +0000

Have you heard about the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp? Around the world in 80+ locations, community groups are running an Azure Bootcamp on the 27th April - mainly organised by MVPs, this is an event with over 3000 attendees! From the UK to the USA, in Asia, the Pacific and Australia - liked-minded individuals are coming together to share what they know about Windows Azure. Supported by the Microsoft Azure team, this is a fantastic opportunity to show the world what the community can do with Azure and how you can get up to speed with developing for it!

Error TF400129: Verifying that the team project collection has space for new system fields when upgrading TFS to 2012.2

Richard Fennell — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:02:30 +0000

Whist testing an upgrade of TFS 2010 to TFS 2012.2 I was getting a number of verification errors in the TFS configuration upgrade wizard. They were all TF400129 based such as

TF400129: Verifying that the team project collection has space for new system fields

but also mention models and schema.

A quick search threw up this thread on the subject, but on checking the DB tables I could see my problem was all together more basic. The thread talked of TPCs in incorrect states. In my case I had been provided with an empty DB, so TFS could find not tables at all. So I suppose the error message was a bit too specific, should have been ‘DB is empty!!!!’ error. Once I got a valid file backup restored for the TPC in question all was ok.

Can TFS work within your company’s processes?

Richard Fennell — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 20:07:05 +0000

I am often asked how well TFS it can be integrated within a company’s larger management processes. This is an especially common question in companies where developing software is not their primary business, it is just a means to enable the business’s core business.

A really nice discussion on this question can be found on a recent .Net Rocks about Columbia Sportswear, well worth a listen.

What machine name is being used when you compose an environment from running VMs in Lab Management?

Richard Fennell — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 13:00:27 +0000

This is a follow up to my older post on a similar subject

When composing a new Lab Environment from running VMs the PC you are running MTM on needs to be able to connect to the running VMs. It does this using IP so at the most basic level you need to be able to resolve the name of the VM to an IP address.

If your VM is connected to the same LAN as your PC, but not in the same domain the chances are that DNS name resolution will not work. I find the best option is to put a temporary entry in your local hosts file, keeping it for just as long as the creation process takes.

Lab Management with SCVMM 2012 and /labenvironmentplacementpolicy:aggressive

Richard Fennell — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 11:05:52 +0000

I did a post a year or so ago about setting up TFS Labs and mentioned command

C:Program FilesMicrosoft Team Foundation Server 2010Tools>tfsconfig lab /hostgroup /collectionName:myTpc ?/labenvironmentplacementpolicy:aggressive /edit /Name:"My hosts group"

This can be used tell TFS Lab Management to place VMs using any memory that is assigned stopped environments. This allowed a degree of over commitment of resources.

As I discovered today this command only works for SCVMM 2010 based system. if you try it you just get a message saying not support on SCVMM 2012. There appears to be no equivalent for 2012.

Kerbal Space Program - Its educational and written in Mono too!

Richard Fennell — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 11:35:26 +0000

My son is really taken with Kerbal Space Program. This great games allows you to design your own space craft and so run your own on-going space program, all with a realistic physics engine.

What is particularly nice is that this cross platform Mono based application is being built in a very agile manner with a new release most weeks, each adding features as well as bug fixes. There also seems to be an active community of people building plug-ins for extra space craft components and rovers.

TF900548 when using my Typemock 2012 TFS custom build activity

Richard Fennell — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 21:52:00 +0000

Using the Typemock TFS 2012 Build activity I created I had started seen the error

TF900548: An error occurred publishing the Visual Studio test results. Details: 'The following id must have a positive value: testRunId.'

I thought it might be down to having patched our build boxes to TFS 2012 Update 1, maybe it needed to be rebuild due to some dependency? However, on trying the build activity on my development TFS server I found it ran fine.

Black Marble is hosting the Yorkshire Chapter of the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp on the 27th of April

Richard Fennell — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 12:45:51 +0000

Black Marble is hosting the Yorkshire Chapter of the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp taking place in several locations globally on the April 27th, 2013. This free community organised event is one day deep dive class where you will get you up to speed on developing for Windows Azure. The class includes a trainer with deep real world experience with Windows Azure, as well as a series of labs so you can practice what you just learned.

Kinect 1.7 update now out

Robert Hogg — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 15:43:00 +0000

Kinect for Windows has just had a update to version 1.7. The Kinect team are calling it "our most significant update to the SDK since we released the first version"

And they are right, it is just awesome , will be talking a lot about Kinect 1.7 over the next few months.

The new version includes

Kinect Fusion - 3D object scanning application creates live 3D models

New recognisable gestures - push-to-press buttons, grip-to-pan

Installing a DB from a DACPAC using Powershell as part of TFS Lab Management deployment

Richard Fennell — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:45:53 +0000

I have been battling setting up a DB deployed via the SQL 2012 DAC tools and Powershell. My environment was a network isolated pair of machines

DC – the domain controller and SQL 2012 server
IIS – A web front end

As this is network isolated I could only run scripts on the IIS server, so my DB deploy needed to be remote. So the script I ended up with was

You don’t half get strange errors when two servers have the same SID

Richard Fennell — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:30:00 +0000

You don’t half get strange errors when building a test environment if when you run SYSPREP’d each copy of your VM base image you forget to check the ‘generalize’ box

If you forget this, as I did, each VM has a different name but the same SID. Basically the domain/AD is completely confused as who is what. The commonest error I saw was that I could not setup application (Report Services, SP 2010 and TFS 2012) with domain service accounts. In all cases I got messages about missing rights or cannot communicate with domain controller.

Windows 8 Developer Rewards (free phones,games)

Robert Hogg — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:45:02 +0000

The great people over in the Windows Team have set up a rewards program to thank developers for producing great Windows 8 Applications

if you are developing or want to develop for Windows Look at and Register with

http://www.appbuilder-rewards.co.uk/

for some great rewards.

The amount and value of the rewards are staggering, from Xbox Subscriptions to Samsung TV’s

There are added bonus for early adopters such as free Windows Phones, copies of Halo.

Cannot run Microsoft Fakes based test if Typemock Isolator enabled

Richard Fennell — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 15:07:22 +0000

With Microsoft Fakes moving to the Premium SKU of Visual Studio in 2012.2 (CTP4 is now available) more people will be looking at using them.

I have just installed CTP4 and have seen a behaviour I don’t think I have not seen in the previous version of Visual Studio (I need to check because as well as CTP4 I have recently installed the new version of Typemock Isolator 7.3.0 that addresses issues with Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012).

TFS TPC Databases and SQL 2012 availability groups

Richard Fennell — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 13:46:00 +0000

Worth noting that when you create a new TPC in TFS 2012, when the TFS configuration DB and other TPC DBs are in SQL 2012 availability groups, the new TPC DB is not placed in this or any other availability group. You have to add it manually, and historically remove it when servicing TFS. Though the need to remove it for servicing changes with TFS 2012.2 which allows servicing of high availability DBs

Recovering network isolated lab management environments if you have to recreate your SC-VMM server’s DB

Richard Fennell — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 17:12:43 +0000

Whilst upgrading our Lab Management system we lost the SC-VMM DB. This has meant we needed to recreate environments we already have running on Hyper_V hosts but were unknown to TFS. If they were not network isolated this is straight forward, just recompose the environment (after clear out the XML in the VM descriptions fields). However if they are network isolated and running, then you have do play around a bit.

Fixing a dodgy proximity sensor on my Nokia Lumia 920

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 18:08:44 +0000

I’ve just had a really infuriating half an hour trying to figure out why I couldn’t get the keypad to appear during a call on my Lumia 920. When I took my phone away form my ear the screen stayed black. Pushing the power button made the display switch on and then immediately switch off. Power cycling and even resetting made no difference.

A close examination showed that the small round circle next to the speaker slot at the top of the phone display was full of dust. Exactly how this happened I am not sure – you’d expect that bit to be sealed, wouldn’t you.

Fixing Lab Manager environments with brute force

Richard Fennell — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 17:22:34 +0000

Another post from Rik Fixing Lab Manager environments with brute force following our Lab Management upgrade

Fixing Lab Manager environments with brute force

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 14:37:07 +0000

As you’ve probably seen, our Lab Manager/SCVMM 2008 R2 upgrade to SCVMM 2012 SP1 was not the smoothest in the world. The end result was a clean lab manager and SCVMM install, but a raft of virtual machines that had previously been part of environments.

In tidying up, Richard and I learned a few things about picking apart VMs that were once part of an environment such that a new environment could be built form the wreckage.

Creating VMs for lab management

Richard Fennell — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 12:46:15 +0000

Rik has done a post on creating VMs for Lab management to follow up on the one I did yesterday on our Lab upgrade.

Things to remember when building virtual machines for a lab manager environment

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 12:18:03 +0000

As you will have read on both mine and Richard’s blogs, we have recently upgraded our Lab environment and it wasn’t the smoothest of processes.

However, as always it has been a learning experience and this post is all about building VM environments that can be sucked into Lab and turned into a Lab environment that can be pushed out multiple times.

Note: This article is all about virtual machines running on Windows Server 2012 that may have been built on Windows 8 and are managed by SCVMM 2012 SP1 and Lab Manager/TFS 2012 CU1. Whilst the things I have found in terms of prepping VMs for Lab Manager are likely to be common to older versions, your mileage may vary.

Notes from the field on our SCVMM/Lab Manager environment upgrade

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 20:33:00 +0000

Richard has posted a group effort article on his blog about our System Center 2008 R2/Lab Manager upgrade to System Center 2012 SP1/Lab Manager. All did not go swimmingly…

I have more helpful notes that I am writing up myself and will post over the next few days around the steps to fix virtual machines that are part of an environment and tips on building complex multi-machine rigs for lab manager.

Upgrading our TFS 2012 Lab Management to use SC-VMM 2012 SP1

Richard Fennell — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 17:45:50 +0000

Background

We have been successfully using our TFS Lab Management system for a while. However, we have noticed an issue that when deploying environments the performance of the system slowed. This was down to I/O congestion between our servers and the SAN that provided their main VM storage because the library store and the hyper-v host servers all shared the same SAN.

Also we had the need to start to create environments using Windows 8 and Server 2012. This is not possible using System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 or Hyper-V hosted on earlier than Windows 2012.

ALM Rangers ship more guidance

Richard Fennell — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 15:24:00 +0000

Yesterday two new ALM Ranger projects shipped, practical guidance on the use of Microsoft Fakes (which I worked on) and for Team Foundation Server (TFS) Disaster Recovery avoidance, planning and step-step recovery walkthroughs for the worst case scenarios.

Also updates for the Coded UI test tooling guide and the TFS Upgrade guide were released..

For more details see below to follow the links to the Ranger blogs and CodePlex to download the materials.

TypeScript 0.83 update

Robert Hogg — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 00:12:07 +0000

Wow the typescript guys are busy the new version has a bunch of compiler improvements and fixes especially around large project compilation speed and consistency in the visual studio experience.

Great improvements in the Visual Studio delivery allowing direct connection to projects not in scope, allowing debugging of files which are not in the current project.

Get it Here

For those hard to mock moments - Microsoft Fakes or Typemock Isolator?

Richard Fennell — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 19:29:32 +0000

About a year ago I wrote a post ‘Now that VS11 has a fake library do I still need Typemock Isolator to fake out SharePoint?’. Well this discussion becomes relevant for more people as with Visual Studio 2012.2 (currently available as a CTP) the Microsoft Fakes move from the Ultimate SKU to the Premium SKU.

From my experience the Ultimate SKU is not present on too many developer’s PCs. It is most commonly found on the PCs of the team leads, software architects or test developers (managing coded UI/load testing etc. efforts). If a team was historically going to use Microsoft Fakes then they had to buy more Ultimate SKUs; as what is the point of a unit test using a mocking framework that only part of the team can run?

VS Anywhere–Have a look at distributed pair programming

Richard Fennell — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 19:46:28 +0000

Whilst at the MVP Summit in Redmond last week there were MVP2MVP sessions, these are much like DDD conferences we have in the UK, sessions delivered by MVPs on their experiences and products they offer.

One of the most interesting I saw last week was VS Anywhere. This is an extension to Visual Studio that allows distributed pair programming. This far more than desktop sharing in Skype or Lync, think more like the concurrent document editing in Office 365.

TFS Lab Management and Windows 8 and Server 2012

Richard Fennell — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 19:22:14 +0000

TFS Lab Management can be a good way to manage your development and test environments, providing a means to more easily store, deploy and snapshot environments. Problem is they are not magic, you need to create the virtual machines you will use. You can use tools such the ALM Rangers VM Factory to speed this process, but you still need the source ISOs to create the VMs.

Until the release of System Center 2012 SP1 (and TFS 2012 QU1) Lab Management did not support Windows 8 or Server 2012. This was a limitation with the System Center 2008 Virtual Machine Manager. But with the release of these new versions you now have no excuse not to have a look at TFS Lab Management for even your most cutting edge projects. And remember you are licensed Lab Management (including SC-VMM for the sole use of TFS Lab Management) as part of your TFS 2012 MSDN license.

Running an external command line tool as part of a Wix install

Richard Fennell — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 15:21:01 +0000

I have recently been battling running a command line tool within a Wix 3.6 installer. I eventually got it going but learnt a few things. Here is a code fragment that outlines the solution.

<Product ………>
……… loads of other Wix bits

<!—Next we define the actual CustomAction that does the work. This needs to be deferred (until after the files are installed) and set to not be impersonated
          so runs as the same elevated account as the rest of the MSIExec actions. (assuming your command line tool needs admin rights -->
<CustomAction Id="SilentLaunch" BinaryKey="WixCA" DllEntry="CAQuietExec" Execute="deferred" Return="check" Impersonate="no" />

<!—Finally we set where in the install sequence the CustomActions and that they are only called on a new install
          Note that we don't tidy up the actions of this command line tool on a de-install -->

   NOT Installed
   NOT Installed

New release of Typemock Isolator

Richard Fennell — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:49:57 +0000

Typemock have released a new version of Isolator (7.3) that addresses some problems they have been having with Visual Studio 2012 and Windows 8

Resolved all issues concerning the breaking MS update
Boosted performance across the board (up to 44% faster)
Enhanced SmartRunner UI
Improved mocking capabilities
Better integration with .NET development ecosystem

You can download this release, or a free trial if you don’t have an Isolator license, from the Typemock site

Speaking on TEE at VISUG Conference in April

Richard Fennell — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 21:14:30 +0000

On the 17th of April I will be speaking at VISUG Conference in Antwerp.

Looks to be an interesting day with 3 tracks, Win8, Web and ALM. I am on the ALM track with Martin Woodward and Neno Loje.

Lost with all the ALM ranger projects? A Windows 8 App to here to help

Richard Fennell — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 22:09:03 +0000

The new Windows 8 ALM Readiness Treasure Map application is available on the store. This is a great way to navigate a whole range of resources available for anyone involved in ALM work.

More in rights being stripped for the [team project]contributors group in TFS 2012 when QU1 applied and how to sort it.

Richard Fennell — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 10:23:00 +0000

I recently wrote a post that discussed how the contributor rights had been stripped off areas in TFS 2012 server when QU1 was applied, this included details on the patches to apply the manual steps to resolve the problem.

Well today I found that it is not just in the area security you can see this problem. We found it too in the main source code repository. Again the [Team project]contributors group was completely missing. I had to re-add it manually. Once this was done all was OK for the users

Notes from the North East: Imagine Cup Hackathon 2012

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 12:10:02 +0000

We had a great time at the Imagine Cup North East Hackathon this weekend. Black Marble turned out in force with myself, Steve, Richard, Robert, Linda, Josh and Riccardo all helping out. Andy Westgarth and the guys at Sunderland Software City had done a solid job on the organisation and we were well looked after.

There were nine teams there in total, from a wide range of Universities and Colleges in the Newcastle/Sunderland area. I was impressed by their ideas and their tenacity in defending those ideas against a barrage of questions from myself and others. I was also taken by the range of ages we had. Some of the teams were A-level and college students, whilst others were in various years of their university degree courses. Even if they don’t make it through to the national finals this year, the younger teams will gain great experience and can enter again next year and beyond.

Getting Windows Phone 7.8 on my Lumia 800

Richard Fennell — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 18:08:24 +0000

Microsoft have release Windows Phone 7.8 in the last few days. As usual the rollout appears to be phased, I think based on serial number of your phone. As with previous versions you can force the update, so jumping the phased rollout queue. The process is

Put the phone in flight mode (so no data connection)
Connect it to your PC running Zune, it will look to see if there is an OS update. If it finds it great, let it do the upgrade
If it does not find it, select the settings menu (top right in Zune)
You need to select the update menu option on the left menu
Zune will check for an update, about a second or two after it starts this process disconnect the PC from the Internet. This should allow Zune to get a list of updates, but not the filter list of serial numbers. So it assume the update is for you.
You should get the update available message, reconnect the internet (it needs to download the file) and continue to do the upgrade

You will probably have to repeat step 5 a few times to get the timing correct

Visual Studio 2012.2 changes

Richard Fennell — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 13:40:34 +0000

The Git support was not the only announcement for TFS at the ALM Summit last week. On Brian Harry’s blog you can see more on the new features either in the TFS/VS 2012.2 (Update 2) CTP or planned to appear in later CTPs. The list is long, but the ones that caught my eye beyond that of Git support are

Microsoft Fakes moves from the Ultimate SKU to Premium, thus making it a ‘free’ option for many corporate developers as they already have that SKU
Easier customisation of the Kanban board
Tagging of workitems to allow flexible filtering
Testing visibility in the web admin pages

… and many other improvements. Have a look at the blog posts, or even better pull down the CTP for a look. Also remember if you want to see new TFS features why not try them via a Team Foundation Server account?

Tales from last weekend’s Imagine Cup North East Hackathon

Richard Fennell — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 13:32:54 +0000

I spent much of the weekend at the Imagine Cup North East Hackathon; for those of you who don’t know the Imagine Cup is Microsoft’s world wide student competition. This event was to help students in the North East of England to get there entries kick started before their regional final in a few weeks, which lead to the UK finals and for one team the worlds in Russia in July.

The event seemed a great success, everyone seemed to enjoy it and we mentors saw huge progress in the entries of all the teams. Not just in new code written, but arguably the more important areas of better team working and presentation skill.

My TFS session at Black Marble’s Tech Update is already out of date, there were announcements last night

Richard Fennell — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 13:53:41 +0000

At the ALM Summit yesterday Brian Harry made some major TFS and Visual Studio announcements

Git support for the hosted visualstudio.com, this allows you to choose if you want a centralised (existing TFS) source control repository or DVSC (using Git). There is also new tools with VS2012 to make using Git easier. Read more as to why Microsoft have made this addition to their offering in his blog. For those of you using on premises TFS you will have have to wait for the next major release of TFS, don’t expect to see this in a quarterly update.
Also he outline what is to be in Visual Studio 2012 Update 2, loads of tool enhancements.

Have a look the posts to find out more

Renewing a Developer Licence on Windows 8/RT

Tom Barnes — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 12:26:00 +0000

Here's a quick tip if you have some side loaded apps on windows 8/RT and your developer licence has expired. When this happens the apps have a cross on them and are unable to open taking you to the store.

Problem

Error "Your developer license has expired. To continue to use this app, please renew your license"

Solution

Open PowerShell with admin privileges and execute the following command

Show-WindowsDeveloperLicenseRegistration

This will prompt you through the same dialog as when installing your first side loaded app. A developer Licence expires every month so a quick script to bring up this prompt could be handy.

Microsoft Surface File Size Limit with Explorer Fix

Tom Barnes — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 18:57:01 +0000

Today I ran into an issue on a win RT device when trying to download few folders from our SharePoint site using Explorer.

The Problem

This problem occurred when I used the ‘Open with Explorer’ interface in the Library Tools > Library pane to get the required folders, as I wanted to copy a few folders down from SharePoint onto my Surface.

One of the files failed to copy with the following error:

Tom Testing His New Blog!

Tom Barnes — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 17:33:00 +0000

Hello, I’m currently setting up my first blog and this is a post to check its configured correctly. All being well this should go to my LinkedIn and Twitter accounts auto-magically .

Hopefully I'll have some useful and interesting stuff coming soon around the MS Technologies and solutions to problems I come across in my role of Software Developer in Test, for now here's a picture (to make my post prettier) of the case I just bought for my gaming rig.

Fixing area permission issues when creating new teams in TFS 2012 after QU1 has been installed

Richard Fennell — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 16:30:00 +0000

[Updated 4 Fe 2013 See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2013/02/01/hotfixes-for-tfs-2012-update-1-tfs-2012-1.aspx for the latest on this ]

One of the side effects of the problems we had with TFS 2012 QU1 was that when we created a new team within a team project contributors had no rights to the teams default Area. The workaround was that we had to add these rights manually, remembering to add these as you would expect is something you forget all the time, so it would be nice to fix the default.

Looking forward to the Imagine Cup Hackathon

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 14:18:00 +0000

It’s a busy week this week and I’m really looking forward to being involved with the Imagine Cup Hackathon for the North East Region this Friday and Saturday (1st and 2nd February).

Black Marble have a long history of supporting the UK Imagine Cup teams and it’s great to be able to continue that support. We’ll be in The Life Science Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne in force this week. Steve Spencer, Richard Fennell, Robert Hogg and myself will be accompanied by Riccardo Viglianisi and Josh Whittle from Black Marble.

More UK TechDays on System Center 2012 and Windows 8

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 13:41:00 +0000

Our good friends in the UK TechDays team have announced another raft of events in their fantastic IT Camps series. I’m hoping to be there for at least on of them and if you’re at all interested in Windows 8 or System Center 2012 I cant recommend them highly enough.

No slides, no marketing – just technical content, demo driven with as much audience participation as they can manage. Everyone I’ve spoken to at previous camps has enjoyed them and learned a great deal.

Leeds# Meetup 8 - Coding Dojo - Thursday 31 January

Richard Fennell — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 12:26:00 +0000

If you are at a loose end next Thursday and in Leeds, why not check out the Coding Dojo at the Leeds Sharp user group.

Unfortunately looks like I am on a client visit, but it does sound interesting

My session today at Modern Jago

Richard Fennell — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 20:06:13 +0000

Thanks to everyone who came along to the Microsoft event today at Modern Jago. I hope you all found it useful. I got feedback from a few people that my tip on not trusting company WIFI when trying to do remote debugging of Windows RT devices was useful (or any other type of device for that matter).

I have seen too many corporate level Wifi implementation, and a surprising number of home ASDL/Wifi routers, doing isolation between WiFi clients. So each client can see the internet fine, but not any another Wifi devices. My usual solution is as I did today, use a MiFi or phone as a basic Wifi hub, they are both too dumb to try anything as complex as client isolation. Or look on your Wifi hub to check if you can disable client isolation.

TypeScript– Application grade JavaScript

Robert Hogg — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 16:21:42 +0000

During Decembers Architect Forum I talked about TypeScript and some recent updates have prompted a post.

So what is the rational behind Yet another JavaScript language, when there are already a few out there. Microsoft's motivation was to produce an Application grade version of JavaScript which would not impede only improve existing JavaScript development.

The design choices made in TypeScript which make it so appealing is that it is built as a set of Optional extensions to JavaScript so in effect all JavaScript code is also TypeScript code. Combined with the TypeScript implementation which compiles the Typescript down into JavaScript (EC3 or EC5) means that it will run on all platforms where JavaScript runs with out the need of any additional runtime. These give key advantages in both adoption which can be done at the start or during a project and also it does not preclude any existing user libraries which is the classic stumbling block for any new language.

Hilo : Developing an End-to-End Windows Store app using C++ and XAML

Robert Hogg — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 10:32:00 +0000

I have been a massive fan of the work the Microsoft Patterns and Practices team for years and in the past year I have been lucky enough to be able to help out as a reviewer on a couple of projects.

What makes the P&P team stand out is the fact that their aim is to make your life easier and you to look better by helping you delivering better products faster.

Thinking about Printing a House

Robert Hogg — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 00:21:55 +0000

Now is the time to start thinking about projects for the year and by recent posts it should be clear that 3D printing is on my mind as is building a house and so when the worlds collide, I suspect fear will be striking the hearts of anybody who knows me

A Company called D Shape are moving ahead with the concept of Printing Buildings http://www.d-shape.com/index.htm

it looks at a R&D stage but here is an article of Enrico Dini in Action, what an Awesome concept. He is planning to build a Mobius Strip House using the printer.

Print your own case for the Nokia Lumia 820–Awesome

Robert Hogg — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 00:10:32 +0000

I love it when worlds collide, in this case my world of mobile phone development and the world of 3D printing.

In a great move to encourage users to embrace the Lumia platform, Nokia have released, all of the 3D assets needed to enable users to print their own cases using 3D printers.

Looking at the 820 with the back off, external batteries can be built in as can the most excellent wireless charging unit, however what would have been the icing on the cake would be the ability to interface devices into shells. There are two pins not related to battery or charging which I still have not be able to identify when the back case is off so here’s hoping ( i suspect they are case off detection )

TF237111 errors when trying to add work items to the backlog after TFS 2012 QU1 is applied

Richard Fennell — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 12:58:00 +0000

[Updated 4 Feb 2013 See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2013/02/01/hotfixes-for-tfs-2012-update-1-tfs-2012-1.aspx_ for the latest on this ]_

I posted earlier in the week about my experiences with the post TFS 2012 QU1 hotfix. When I posted I thought we had all our problems sorted, we did for new team projects, but it seems still had an issue for teams on our team projects that were created prior to the upgraded from RTM to QU1. As I said in the past post we got into this position due to trying to upgraded a TPC form RTM to QU1 by detaching from the 2012 RTM server and attaching to a 2012 QU1 server – this is not the recommended route and caused us to suffer the problem the KB2795609 patch addresses.

Developing Secure Applications for Health

Robert Hogg — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 12:23:35 +0000

As many people know I am a huge fan of Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle. There are a set of guides which are well worth knowing about one of which deals with Health

The paper is designed for anybody developing Software and Software Interfaces in Health (specifically HIPPA) in the US but it is just as applicable in the UK.

So if you are in the Health software market Download it and read it from here

Teaching Children to Program with Small Basic[Updated Jan 2013]

Robert Hogg — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 22:10:39 +0000

Many years ago Black Marble undertook to help people to program, not with the aim of turning out large numbers of developer minions but to show how learning to program teaches people how to break down and solve problems.

Lynn Lagit and LLewellyn Falco have produced a series of videos based on the workshops they are running for children as well as some extensions for Small Basic.

For convenience here are links to the videos, but I urge you look look at Lynn’s blog for more details

Incorrect IIS IP Bindings and TFS Server Url

Richard Fennell — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 12:27:45 +0000

By default the TFS server uses http://localhost:8080/tfs as it’s Server URL, this is the URL used for internal communication, whereas the Notification Url is the one TFS tells client to communicate to it via. Both these Urls can be changed via the Team Foundation Server Console, but I find you do not usually need to change the Server Url, only the notification one.

I hit a problem recently on a site where if you tried to edit the Team Project Collection Group Membership (via the web or TFS admin console) you got a dialog popping up saying ‘HTTP 400 error’. Now this you have to say looks like a URL/binding issue, the tools cannot find an end point.

Windows 8 Store Certification 2.2 Update

Robert Hogg — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 11:21:53 +0000

I have been discussing Windows 8 development with several developer groups this month and it seems that only a few developers were aware that in November update to the Windows App Certification Kit (ACK) was posted, it offers several bug fixes and more importantly new tests which came into force in the middle of December.

In fact many are not using the ACK at all, I urge all Windows 8 developers to run the ACK before submission as it will help you find any store validation errors !!!!!

What’s New in Azure

Robert Hogg — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 16:06:28 +0000

Just before Christmas a number of enhancements were released, the continual growth combined with the short release cadence is showing Azure to be an amazing platform for development and delivery.

Included in the update:

Mobile Services
- CRON – a well built job scheduler for routine maintenance (tutorial here)
- CLI Support – The azure command line tool now has mobile service support
- European Locations – now Europe is a Service location
Web Sites
- can be run across 6 Shared or 10 Reserved Instances
- Publish from Source Control (TFS/Git)
Portal Enhancements for
- SQL Data Sync
- ACS Management
Media Services
- Job and Task management
- Adding content from a Windows Azure storage account
- Scaling to increase encoding concurrency
Virtual Network enhancements (thank goodness)

to learn more come to a BM Azure event check out www.blackmarble.com/events

User profile service failures caused by Distributed Cache on SharePoint 2013

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:39:31 +0000

This is a relatively quick post, largely because I was not able to record the details of the error messages we saw in the farm before we fixed them.

On a recent engagement we were investigating problems with a SharePoint 2013 farm that had been installed for our customer by a third party. There were a number of issues that we worked through but I wanted to record this one for the community.

Upcoming presentations

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:31:44 +0000

It’s the start of a new year and my engagement diary is filling rapidly. Once again I am covering a wide range of topics for an equally broad audience which is something I really enjoy.

January 15th will find me in Manchester at a Microsoft event for Fire Services. I’m giving an overview of Windows Azure PaaS and IaaS services and how they might be used to complement as well as replace existing IT systems.
January 30th is the annual Black Marble Tech Update. For our tenth year we have changed the format slightly. The morning will be focused on IT and the afternoon on Development. IT Managers attending the morning session will hear myself, Andy Dawson and Andy Davidson run through the recent releases and upcoming changes to Microsoft product and service offerings in order to help with strategic planning for the coming year. The afternoon session will be similar, but for Development Managers.
Find out more on the Black Marble web site.
March 5th is the next UK Techdays IT Camp that I will be helping out at. This one is in York and will cover Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V.
Find out more on the UK Techdays events page.
March 6th takes me to London where Robert Hogg and I will deliver a Tech Update for the Public Sector at Cardinal Place.

Also this year Black Marble are pleased to be involved with the Microsoft Imagine Cup once more. Teaming up with Andy Westgarth and our friends in Sunderland, we are running an Imagine Cup Hackathon on Friday 1st and Saturday 2nd February, where a number of us will be on hand to give teams from the region help and advice on development and technical matters, but also presentation techniques, business plan and other areas important to success.
Find out more on the Imagine Cup site.

Experiences applying TFS 2012 QU1 and it subsequent hotfix

Richard Fennell — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 14:57:03 +0000

Brian Harry posted last week about a hotfix for TFS 2012 QU1 (KB2795609). This should not be needed by most people, but as his post points out does fix issues for a few customers. Well we were one of those customers. When upgrading from 2012 RTM to 2012 QU1 we had attempted what with hindsight was an over ambitious hardware migration too. This involved swapping our data tier from a SQL 2012 instance to a new 2012 availability group and merging team project collections from different server as well as applying the QU1. Our migration plan contained some team project collection detach/attach steps hence getting into the area this hotfix addresses.

TFS 2012 Update 1 Hotfix

Robert Hogg — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 19:07:45 +0000

There has been a hot fix that fixes some issues in Update 1 some from the RTM.

Issues Addressed

Collections that are attached to a server that is running TFS 2012 Update 1 may lose permissions
Group scopes may incorrectly cause permission errors
Severe decrease in performance after TFS 2012 Update 1 is installed
Identity sync jobs may fail repeatedly
Warehouse is not updated correctly, or fields that represent a person are not filled
Users can see names of collections of which they are not a member

the full KB Article is here

Life with the Nokia Lumia 920

Robert Hogg — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 13:01:56 +0000

I have had a Nokia 920 with Windows Phone 8 for several months and I thought it worth the effort to put some notes down

Good Bits

The screen is large and clear, pinning apps in small and large format allows me all of the configuration I need.

Nokia Drive + is just awesome, maps for the whole world, all available offline. what more could you ask for.

The main camera is one of the best cameras I have used, I am not a camera head but the pictures make me look good which is a feat in itself. The lens plugins like Cinemagraph and Smart Shoot.

Speaking on Windows 8 development

Richard Fennell — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 21:22:26 +0000

On the 23rd of January I am doing a short presentation on the various options for Windows 8 development in Visual Studio 2012 as part of the Modern Jango ‘Tools for Windows 8 - Tips & Tricks on Visual Studio 2012 to inspire beautiful app development’ event.

For more details check out the UK MSDN site

Lost in nLog configuration files

Richard Fennell — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:43:40 +0000

I have been trying to track down a performance problem today on an ASP.NET MVC. It all turned out to be down to an incorrect connection string in a nLog.config file for logging to a SQL DB. As soon as I commented out the Db target for nLog my login to the web site was virtually instant as opposed to taking 30 seconds (what i assume is a SQL timeout)

I had suspected a problem with the logged as I was not seeing anything in DebugView, but it all took a while to track down as i did not seem to get any logging output.

EPG for Windows Media Center is fixed

Richard Fennell — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 15:53:13 +0000

It seems that the EPG problem with Media Center has been fixed by Microsoft. The are publishing the EPG data again, so we don’t have to rely on the 7 day guide embedded within the TV signal.

It is interesting to see the happy MCE users coming out the wood work on The Register’s comments section. We MCE users might not be too numerous, but the people who use it really seem to like it. However, after reading the comments I should have a look at XBMC too as it now has PVR features. Though it does look a bit more complex too setup!

BizTalk 2013 Update

Robert Hogg — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 15:39:06 +0000

The BizTalk team recently announced that the next version of BizTalk is to be a major release not R2.

Feature Updates

ESB Toolkit integration – ESB Toolkit is now fully integrated with BizTalk Server and the ESB Toolkit configuration has been simplified.
Dependency tracking - The dependencies between artefacts can now be viewed and navigated in Admin console
Improvements in dynamic send ports
Improvements in mapping engine performance
Ordered Send Port improvements – increased performance of ordered send port scenarios.

Adapter Updates

More fun with Windows 8 Media Center

Richard Fennell — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:47:27 +0000

Signal Strength

Since upgrading my Media Center PC to Windows 8, on the same hardware, I have seen that it seems to perform better that on Windows 7. However some channels seem to be dropping out, the usual digital pixilation or a message saying no signal (but often with some audio).

As I had not changed any hardware I though this strange, but I have always seemed to have a borderline signal strength even though I can see my local terrestrial transmitter, it is about 15 miles away in direct line of sight. After a bit of reading on the subject I found that my signal booster may be the issue, amplifying the noise and not the signal (seems you should only use masthead amps for digital). This was a hangover from my old flat with an awful signal. Once this was removed from the system my problems appear to have gone away. However, as I did not see the issue all the time I will wait a while before declaring it a complete success.

Fabulous Response to our Very Special Christmas Greeting!

Linda Hogg — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:51:40 +0000

We’ve been receiving fabulous feedback for our Christmas ‘card’ this year! To mark our 15th Anniversary, we decided to put together ‘A Fight Before Christmas’ based on the poem, ‘T’was the night before Christmas …’. We are delighted with the response and I thought I would put together some of them here. If you would like your own copy of the book, please email us at xmas@blackmarble.co.uk with your address!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Linda Hogg — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 22:06:25 +0000

We love Christmas at BM HQ and this year , we have a very special Christmas Card … Inspired by the the poem ‘A Visit by St. Nicholas’ (more commonly known by its first line, ‘T’was the Night before Christmas …’), the Black Marble Brigade have another great Christmas adventure, in book form – “The Fight Before Christmas”!

As it is our 15th Anniversary year, we are feeling particularly festive and generous, and if you like us on Facebook, then we will send you a copy! Make sure you send us your address too – either via FB message or email xmas@blackmarble.co.uk. Plus, you can still follow the adventure on our Website, where we will be making the artwork available as colouring-in sheets!

Why can’t I create an environment using a running VM on my Lab Management system?

Richard Fennell — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 21:47:48 +0000

With TFS lab management you can build environments from stored VM and VM templates stored in an SCVMM library or from VMs running on a Hyper-V host within your lab infrastructure. This second form is what used to be called composing an environment in TFS 2010. Recently when I tried to compose an environment I had a problem. After selecting the running VM inside the new environment wizard I got the red star that shows an error in the machine properties

Agile Yorkshire - December Lightening Talks

Richard Fennell — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 09:31:42 +0000

December's Agile Yorkshire, on the Tuesday, 11 December 2012, will be Lightening Talks covering a range of agile topics and be held at a new venue The Round Foundry Media Centre.

Submissions for Lightening Talks are still arriving so the precise agenda may change but proposed topics included:

Visual agile assessment for improvement
Continuous Integration
Agile Interviewing
Difficult conversations
Time management
Refactoring using the Mikado Method
PowerShell
Agile testing
Burn up charts
Multi-team, multiple kanban board problems.

For more details and registration see the event site

Upgrading my Windows 7 Media Center to Windows 8

Richard Fennell — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 22:27:29 +0000

Updated 4th December 2012 – Roku setup

I have been a happy user of Windows Media Center since (even) XP. I have found it reasonably stable and more importantly it has a nice user interface compared to most pvr/set-top boxes I have owned. So as my Windows 7 based system has been stable for just over a year (since a move to HD tuners prompted by a motherboard failure) I thought it high time to destabilise it with an upgrade to Windows 8. What actually prompted this was Robert had upgraded his Media Center which is also based on similar Acer Revo (Intel Atom) hardware to mine and he had found the general performance much improved. The Atom CPU is only just up to the job, but I do like the Revo as it is a nice low wattage package for Media Center

TFS & Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 is available

Richard Fennell — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 22:36:08 +0000

For those who attended Black Marble’s event today I mentioned there was an upcoming TFS and Visual Studio 2012 Update 1. Well I was out of date whilst talking, it had already been released overnight.

See Brian Harry’s blog for details and Grant Holiday’s blogs for a nice explanation of the download options.

Did I delete the right lab?

Richard Fennell — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 16:18:04 +0000

It was bound to happen in the end, the wrong environment got deleted on our TFS Lab Management instance. The usual selection of rushing, minor mistakes, misunderstandings and not reading the final dialog properly and BANG you get that sinking feeling as you see the wrong set of VMs being deleted. Well this happened yesterday, so was there anything that can be done? Luckily the answer is yes, if you are quick.

New book from Gojko Adzic ‘Impact Mapping’

Richard Fennell — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 17:24:47 +0000

A common problem with getting software developed is the needing to get everyone aiming for the same goal. This too often gets lost in the development process; the real goal of the business is not communicated to the development team. It maybe that the goal professed by the business is not the one they even really want, but their current viewpoint obscures the true goal.

In this new book from Gojko Adzic provides a excellent introduction to Impact Mapping as a tool to help address this problem. It describes using workshops and simple graphical tools as a way to tackle this problem of keeping an eye on the true goal. These are tools to use well before starting down the user story/ALM path to make sure the goal of your project is sound, known and measurable.

Black Marble at the 2012 Abbey Dash

Richard Fennell — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 12:28:42 +0000

Another good turn out this year for the Age UK Abbey Dash 10K in Leeds. Over 9000 runners this year, certainly seemed much busier than previous years.

Again Black Marble had staff members running. As with last year we did a wisdom of crowds based handicap race for the impressive Black Marble trophy (we all estimate each others expected times, the winner is who beats mean estimate the most). This year there was a tie to the second between Jon and Becky, who are as we speak negotiating over trophy sharing for the next year.

Upcoming free events from Black Marble

Richard Fennell — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:07:46 +0000

Winter is rushing on, so it is time for a new season of Black Marble events in Yorkshire.

21 Nov 2012 (All day) - [Whats New in SharePoint 2013](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Whats New in SharePoint 2013)

All the updates and announcements from the Microsoft SharePoint Conference around SharePoint 2013.

27 Nov 2012 (AM) - [An Introduction to Windows 8 Development](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=An Introduction to Windows 8 Development)

We welcome Microsoft Evangelist Mike Taulty to present a morning on Windows 8 for developers.

Upgraded to BlogEngine .NET 2.7

Richard Fennell — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 09:47:00 +0000

Just upgraded this blog server to BlogEngine .NET 2.7 from 2.6. Nice straight forward upgrade.

Why does ‘Send to > email link’ in SharePoint open Chrome on my PC?

Richard Fennell — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 19:44:53 +0000

I must have clicked something in error on my Win 8 PC as when I open one of our SharePoint 2010 sites and select a file, right clicked and selected Send To > Email Link instead of an Outlook email opening my PC tries to open Chrome.

A bit of quick digging showed the issue was that the file association for mailto: was wrong. You can check this setting in IE > Internet Options > Programs > Internet Programs > set Programs (button)

TF900546, can’t run Windows 8 App Store unit tests in a TFS build

Richard Fennell — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:20:06 +0000

Today has been one of purging build system problems. On my TFS 2012 Windows 8 build box I was was getting the following error when trying to run Windows 8 App Store unit tests

TF900546: An unexpected error occurred while running the RunTests activity: 'Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information.'.

On further investigation, I am not really sure anything was working too well on this box. To give a bit of background

More thoughts on addressing TF900546 ‘Unable to load one or more of the requested types’ on TFS2012

Richard Fennell — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 11:33:03 +0000

A while ago I posted about seeing the TF900546 error when running unit tests in a previously working TFS 2012 build. The full error being:

TF900546: An unexpected error occurred while running the RunTests activity: 'Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information.'.

Well late last week this problem came back with avengeance on a number of builds run on the same build controller/agent(s). Irritatingly I first noticed it after a major refactor of a codebase, so I had plenty of potential root causes as assemblies had been renamed and it was possible they might not be found. However, after a bit of testing there were no obvious candidates as all tests worked fine locally on my development PC, and a new very simple test application showed the same issues. It was defiantly an issue on the build system.

Change in the System.AssignedTo in TFS SOAP alerts with TFS 2012

Richard Fennell — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 20:29:56 +0000

Ewald’s post explains how to create a WCF web service to act as an end point for TFS Alerts. I have been using the model with a TFS 2010 to check for work item changed events, using the work item’s System.AssignedTo field to retrieve the owner of the work item (via the TFS API) so I can send an email, as well as other tasks (I know I could just send the email with a standard alert).

Cannot run coded ui test on a TFS lab due to lack of rights to the drops folder

Richard Fennell — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 20:09:45 +0000

Whilst setting up a TFS 2012 Lab management environment for Coded UI testing we got the problem that none of the tests were running, in fact we could see no tests were even being passed to the agent in the lab

On the build report I clicked on the ‘View Test Results’ which loaded the result in Microsoft Test Manager (MTM)

and viewed the test run log, and we saw

Using IISExpress for addresses other than localhost

Richard Fennell — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 22:34:01 +0000

I recently had the need to use IISExpress on Windows 8 to provide a demo server to a number of Surface RT clients. I found this took me longer than I expected. It might be me but the documentation did not leap out.

So as a summary this is what I had to do, let us say for example that I want to serve out http://mypc:1234

Make sure you have a project MyWebProject in Visual Studio that works for http://localhost:1234 using IISExpress
Open the TCP port 1234 on the PC in the Control Panel > Admin Tools > Firewall
Edit C:Users[current user]DocumentsIISExpressconfigapplicationhost.config and find the site name section for your Visual Studio project. And change the to . This means IISexpress can now listen on this port for any IP address
You finally need to run IISExpress with administrative privileges. I did this by opening a PowerShell prompt with administrative privileges and running the command C:Program FilesIIS Expressiisexpress.exe /site:MyWebProject

Once all this was done my client PCs could connect

Reinstalling again…

Richard Fennell — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 17:10:33 +0000

Just completing the second reinstall of Windows 8 on my Lenovo W520 in 10 days due to my new SSD failing and needing to be replaced.

To try to ease the process I though I would try putting on the miscellaneous tools I use such as 7Zip, Filezilla etc. using Chocolatey. I have to say first impressions are good, one command and the product is on, the files pulled from the appropriate site.

Obviously there is the issue that packages are may not be kept up to date, unlike Nuget (which is at Chocolatey’s core) the packages are not stored on the Chocolatey site. I noticed the SysInternal package is a bit behind, but I could always submit the updated package myself couldn’t I.

Team Foundation Service RTMs

Richard Fennell — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 17:15:00 +0000

Today at Build 2012 it was announced that https://tfspreview.com has RTM'd as Team Foundation Service on https://tfs.visualstudio.com.

Up until now there has been no pricing information, which had been a barrier to some people I have spoken to as they did not want to started using something without knowing the future cost.

So to the really good news, as of now

It is free for up to 5 users
If you have an active MSDN subscription it is also free. So a team of any size can use it as long as they all have MSDN

The announcement said to look out for further price options next year.

403 and 413 errors when publishing to a local Nuget Server

Richard Fennell — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 12:03:00 +0000

We have an internal Nuget Server we use to manage our software packages. As part of our upgrade to TFS2012 this needed to be moved to a new server VM and I took the chance to upgrade it from 1.7 to 2.1.

The problem

Now we had had a problem that we could publish to the server via a file copy to its underlying Packages folder (a UNC share) but could never publish using the Nuget command e.g.

Nice introduction to the new features of VS2012

Richard Fennell — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 20:01:00 +0000

If you are looking for a nice introduction to the new features of Visual Studio 2012, I can heartily recommend Richard Banks 'Visual Studio 2012 Cookbook'.

This book covers a wide range of subjects including the IDE, .NET 4.5 features, Windows 8 development, Web development, C++, debugging, async and TFS 2012. This is all done in a easy to read format that will get you going with the key concepts, providing sample and links to further reading. A great starting off point.

Problems re-publishing an Access site to SharePoint 2010

Richard Fennell — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 22:33:14 +0000

After applying SP1 to a SharePoint 2010 farm we found we were unable to run any macros in an Access Services site, it gave a –4002 error. We had seen this error in the past, but the solutions that worked then did not help. As this site was critical, as a workaround, we moved the site to a non-patched SP2010 instance. This was done via a quick site collection backup and restore process. This allowed us to dig into the problem at our leisure.

Moving to an SSD on Lenovo W520

Richard Fennell — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 10:20:00 +0000

[Also see http://blogs.blackmarble.co.uk/blogs/rfennell/post/2013/01/22/More-on-HDD2-boot-problems-with-my-Crucial-M4-mSATA.aspx]

I have just reinstalled Windows 8 (again) on my Lenovo W520. This time it was because I moved to a Crucial m4 256Gb 2.5” internal SSD as my primary disk. There is a special slot for this type of drive under the keyboard, so I could also keep my 750Gb Hybrid SATA drive to be used for storing virtual machines.

I had initially planned to backup/restore my previous installation using IMAGEX as I had all I needed in my PC, but after two days of fiddling I had got nowhere, the problems being

Many upcoming speaking engagements

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 14:02:00 +0000

I seem to have been doing a lot of presenting lately, and the next few weeks are similarly busy. As a one-stop shop to plug them all, here is a list of upcoming events I will be presenting, co-presenting or supporting:

VMUG Leeds, 25th October 2012
I am co-presenting with the marvellous Andy Fryer on a range of content around Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V. It’s the first time I’ve attended a VMUG so I’m looking forward to it!
Windows 8 IT Pro Camp Leeds, 13th November 2012
The rolling thunder of IT Camps is back in Leeds for a day with Windows 8. Andy Fryer and Simon May should be there, with myself and Andrew Davidson chipping in and helping things to run smoothly. The last Leeds camp on Server 2012 was fully booked and really well received by attendees and presenters alike, so make sure you book for what should be a great day.
[What’s New in SharePoint 2013](http://www.blackmarble.com/events.aspx?event=Whats New in SharePoint 2013), 21st November 2012
When Andy gets back from the SharePoint conference we will make sure that we give you the latest information at the first of this year’s Black Marble events.
[Architecture Forum in the North](http://www.blackmarble.com/events.aspx?event=Architecture Forum in the North 5), 5th Dec 2012
Black Marble are once again running the well received Architecture Forum and I will be speaking, once more with Andy Fryer, about how Windows Server 2012 can facilitate pragmatic cloud architectures with a mix of on-premise, hosted private cloud and public cloud hosting.
[The Tenth Annual Tech Update](http://www.blackmarble.com/events.aspx?event=The Tenth Annual Technical Update - AM), 30th January 2013
See in the new year with our famous Tech Update. This year we’ve split the day into two, focused on IT Managers and Business Decision Makers in [the morning](http://www.blackmarble.com/events.aspx?event=The Tenth Annual Technical Update - AM) and Developers and Technical Decision Makers in [the afternoon](http://www.blackmarble.com/events.aspx?event=The Tenth Annual Technical Update - PM).

I also have a raft of invite-only events I’ll be speaking at over the next few months. As always, please come and say hi and feel free to ask questions!

New video on unit testing in VS2012 and TFS

Richard Fennell — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 13:23:34 +0000

A video has just be uploaded that I did on the new unit testing features in Visual Studio and TFS 2012. This is quick 10 minute introduction to some of the material I will be covering at DDDNorth next weekend.

Hope you find it useful

Driving Windows 8 for Developers with the Keyboard

Robert Hogg — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 17:22:31 +0000

For most developers the ability to drive applications with just the keyboard is as much instinctive as it is productive and Windows 8 allows it. Following on from my previous post this post covers how to navigate and use the touch interface of Windows 8 with the Keyboard

The key to effective Windows 8 keyboard mastery is the the Windows key, the Windows key will bring you back to the start screen and act as a short cut to most Windows 8 key (groan) features. The short version is navigate with the arrow keys, Windows Key +Z or the List Key will display the app bar and return complete the action.

More fun with creating TFS 2012 SC-VMM environments

Richard Fennell — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 17:14:23 +0000

Whilst setting up new a new SC-VMM based lab environment I managed to find some new ways to fail above and beyond the ones I have found before.

We needed to build a new environment for testing CRM application, this needed to have its own DC, IIS server and a CRM server. The aim was to have this as a network isolated environment, but you have to build it first as the various VMs.

Windows 8 Essential Developer Tools

Robert Hogg — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 22:23:03 +0000

Obviously the most important tool is Visual Studio 2012 which is available as Express and the various wonderful SKU’s but along side these there are some great toolkits which will help your Windows 8 escapades no end.

this list will be updated regularly

Calisto

The Calisto Toolkit developed by Tim Heuer adds helper functions and XAML controls, must useful are the controls to help deliver the settings fly out.

https://github.com/timheuer/callisto/tree/master/src/Callisto

Or you can download and install Callisto from Visual Studio Gallery

Windows 8 Application submission error 4.1

Robert Hogg — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 22:15:01 +0000

I am just pushing applications through into the Windows 8 Marketplace. On checking the progress of an application it had the word “Failed”, being unfamiliar with this word I looked it up and it turns out to be some form of non success. Rushing to find out why this was the case I was presented with

Your app doesn't meet requirement 4.1. Learn more

hummm, the basis of this error is apparently my failure to provide notification and opt in of sharing personal information, hold on a minute my app is a game which hold NO user information whatsoever.

Boost your Windows 8 C++ application

Robert Hogg — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 22:12:00 +0000

As an out of band Windows 8 post for many of us C++ is somewhat a hidden shame, but not really a shame just hidden out of sight while we dream of closer to the metal coding.

With the joys of Windows 8, C++ is once again back to the fore, I thought a couple of notes on how to get things moving might help

Boostis regarded as one of the best written and comprehensive libraries for C++

Developer Quick Guide (101) to Using Windows 8

Robert Hogg — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 22:11:09 +0000

In many of my presentations on Windows 8 over the last year, there has been a raft of standard questions on how to use Windows 8 effectively, so here is the first of a set of using Windows 8 posts. This aim for this post is to clarify terms and show the main Windows 8 features to allow future posts a frame of reference.

First of all Windows 8 is simple to use, but there are a few gotchas for developers as there is a need to use both desktop and “Modern UI (MI)”. Needless to say that having multiple screens makes the work easier, but knowing how to drive Windows 8 using keyboard and mouse will make development/test/release much faster.

Getting a SQL LocalDB to create an ASPNETDB data base without aspnet_regsql

Richard Fennell — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 22:42:57 +0000

I started working today on a solution I had not worked on for a while. It makes use of an ASP.NET web application as a site to host SharePoint webparts (using Typemock to mock out any troublesome calls). The problem I had was that when I opened this VS2010 solution in VS2012 I could not run up this test web site. As the test web pages have WebpartManager controls it needs an ASPNETDB in the AppData folder to persist the settings data. This is usually auto created when SQLExpress is installed, problem is with VS2012 you get the newer LocalDB and I am trying to avoid installing SQLExpress

TFS Test Agent cannot connect to Test Controller – Part 2

Richard Fennell — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 22:33:24 +0000

I posted last week on the problems I had had getting the test agents and controller in a TFS2012 Standard environment talking to each other and a workaround. Well after a good few email with various people at Microsoft and other consultants at Black Marble I have a whole range of workarounds solutions.

First a reminder of my architecture, and note that this could be part of the problem, it is all running on a single Hyper-V host. Remember this is a demo rig to show the features of Standard Environments. I think it is unlikely that this problem will be seen in a more ‘realistic’ environment i.e. running on multiple boxes

TFS Test Agent cannot connect to Test Controller gives ‘No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it 127.0.0.1:6910’

Richard Fennell — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 14:38:38 +0000

Updated 1st October – See the Part 2 post which provides more workaround solutions

Whilst setting up a TFS 2012 Standard Lab Environment for an upcoming demo I hit a problem. Initially my environment had worked fine, I could deploy to my server VM in the environment without error. However, after a reboot of the TFS server (which has the build and test controllers on it) and the single server VM in the environment, the test agent on the VM could not connect to the test controller on the TFS SERVER. The VM’s event log showed

Release of Typemock Isolator Basic edition

Richard Fennell — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 21:05:52 +0000

Some great news today from Typemock, there is now a free basic edition of Typemock Isolator. The addresses a key historic problem with Isolator, that of its cost when you don’t need the advanced features of Isolator all the time.

Now if you need the cool advanced mocking features of Isolator, such as mocking sealed private classes, then the cost is not really a factor, you buy the product or don’t get the features. However what do you do if you just want to do just do ‘normal mocking’ in a project ? e.g. mock out an interfaces. Do you use Typemock as you already have it, or swap to a different mocking framework, only using Typemock when you have to use its advanced features?

Speaking at Designing Beautiful Windows Apps in Dublin

Rik Hepworth — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 18:38:14 +0000

I’m really excited to be presenting at a one day event on Windows 8 application design in Dublin on Wednesday 26th September. I’m excited because Bill Buxton is delivering the keynote at the event and I’m a big fan.

I’m delivering a session snappily titled ‘From 8 to 88 inches: designing for everyone’ and I’ll be talking about the challenges posed by the incredible variety of devices Windows 8 will be used with.

Back Online

Robert Hogg — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 21:23:46 +0000

Due to much travelling and many machine rebuilds, I have not been blogging as much as I ought.

It looks like a hectic and exciting few months in the Merry world that is Microsoft and so I plan to start of with a set of posts on effective Windows 8.

There will be the mandatory Widows 8 101 (boy do I dislike that phrase), but then practical quick guides to help you find what you need quickly and efficiently to develop windows 8 applications.

Experiences upgrading an MVC 1 application to MVC 3

Richard Fennell — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 16:16:05 +0000

I have recently had to do some work on a MVC 1 application and thought it sensible to bring it up to MVC 3, you don’t want to be left behind if you can avoid it. This was a simple data capture application written in MVC1 in Visual Studio 2008 and never needed to be touched since. A user fills in a form, the controller then takes the form contents and stores it. The key point to note here is that it was using the Controller.UpdateModel Method (TModel, IValueProvider) method, so most of the controller actions look like

Update on my experiences with Lenovo W520 Drivers and Windows 8

Richard Fennell — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 12:50:19 +0000

After I installed Windows 8 RTM I still had two devices missing drivers. I have made a little progress

Base System Device - was the Ricoh PCIe SDXC/MMC Host controller I used this Win 8 beta driver
Unknown driver – seems to be the Lenovo Power Management devices. However the Win 8 Beta driver fails to install. I had to use the Windows 7 driver, installed OK and seems to show the right information in the tool tray, but in Device Manager it still says the unknown driver.

I guess I really need to wait until Lenovo ship their release drivers

Its events time again

Richard Fennell — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 18:57:30 +0000

if you missed yesterdays DDD10, as I did, then don’t worry. You can come to DDD North in Bradford at the University Management Centre on the 13th of October. There is another great set of speakers, I was lucky enough to get my session on Unit Testing and Fakes in VS2012 accepted. Hope to see you there

Also my company Black Marble as announced our free autumn and winter events, check them out on our events page. There is a good varied selection this year, something for everyone.

Type ‘InArgument(mtbwa:BuildSettings)’ of property ‘BuildSettings’ errors in TFS 2012 RTM builds

Richard Fennell — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 15:30:02 +0000

I posted a while ago that you saw errors when trying to edit TFS 2012RC build process templates in VS 2012RC if the Visual Studio class library project you were using to manage the process template editing was targeting .NET 4.5, it needed to be 4.0. Well with Visual Studio 2012 RTM this is no longer the case, in fact it is the other way around.

I have recently upgraded our TFS 2012 RC –> RTM and I today came to edit one of our build process templates (using the standard method to edit a process template with custom activities) and got the following error when I tried to open the XAML process template for editing

Two bits of good news – DDDNorth and Raspberry PI

Richard Fennell — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 14:06:23 +0000

The registration has opened for DDDNorth 2 (In Bradford) where I will be speaking on Unit testing in VS2012

Also my Raspberry PI has just arrived – after only 6 months of waiting, but I don’t think I can work it into my DDDNorth session

DDD North 2012

Linda Hogg — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:38:56 +0000

The Northern wing of the UK’s premier Developer Community event is coming to Yorkshire on the 13th October. Here are some things you need to know

The venue is the University of Bradford’s Management Centre.
The agenda has now been published.
Some accommodation suggestions are on organiser’s Andy Westgarth’s blog. He’ll keep updating this blog, so keep an eye on it.

Black Marble is supporting this event – so look forward to seeing you in October!

Getting Typemock Isolator running within a TFS 2012 build – part 2

Richard Fennell — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 15:05:00 +0000

I posted previously on getting Typemock 7.x running in a TFS 2012 RC build process . Well it seems the activities I previously published did not work on the TFS 2012 RTM build i.e if you do nothing other than upgrade your TFS server from RC to RTM a previously working build fails, no attempt was made to run any tests and I got the unhelpful error

TF900546: An unexpected error occurred while running the RunTests activity: 'Executor process exited.'.

Experiences upgrading our TFS2012RC to RTM

Richard Fennell — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:56:00 +0000

We have just completed the upgraded of our TFS2012 server from RC to RTM. All went smoothly, just a few comments worth mentioning

The install of TFS2012 (after the removal of the RC) required three reboots, 2 for C++ components and one for .NET 4.5. So if seeing reboots don’t worry too much.
When running the upgrade wizard we got a verify warning over port 443 already being used (we had manually configured via IIS manager for our server to use 8080 and 443). We ignored this warning. However after the upgrade wizard had completed, with no errors, we found that the new web server could not start. Turns out it it had been left bound as HTTP to Port 443, so it was very confused. We just deleted this binding and re-added HTTP on 8080 and HTTPS on 433 with our wildcard certificate and it was fine. So in hindsight we should have headed the warning and removed our custom bindings.

So now off to the long job of upgrading build box, test controller and the rest.

Weekend trip to see family – 1 OS upgrade, 1 network printer installed and 3 machines de-virused

Richard Fennell — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 11:48:00 +0000

I have been away over the weekend seeing family, and as anyone who is in IT (or is a medical doctor I suspect) would expect I had the standard experience – everyone wanted me to show me something they were worried about that turned to be virus related. This trip I did one operating system upgrade, one network printer installation and de-virused three PCs. So nothing out of ordinary.

The one thing I would mention was how useful I found the contents of Mark Russinovich’s TechEd Session ‘Malware Hunting with the Sysinterals Tools’. This saved me the complete machine rebuild I had feared for one PC which had got infected with a bit of poor quality ransomware that turns out to only be a splash screen that I could easily spot with Autoruns from the Sysinternals Suite. The video is well worth a watch for all of us in the family IT support game.

A move to Windows 8 RTM (and VS2012 RTM), not too painful

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 16:45:49 +0000

First I thought I could do an in-place upgrade of my Windows 8RC PC, turns out you can’t (not sure if it would have been wise anyway) so it was format disk time.

I had hoped for a seamless install of Windows 8, but it hung after detecting devices. It seems it was the ‘old problem’ down to Lenovo/Nvidia Optimus graphics drivers issues. So I checked my bios settings which were set to Nvidia Optimus mode disabled (the only way I could get the RC to install), and changed it to Optimus mode enable and the install all worked without an issue. However though as a laptop it work find, including with a second external monitor. I did have to set Optimus back to disabled and run in discrete video mode if I wanted to use a projector. It seems the Optimus mode certainly gets confused with the Benq projector we have in the office, it will allow you to extend your desktop but not duplicate it. As soon as you switch back to discrete graphic mode all is OK (though you do lose the ability to run two external monitors)

Moving podcast subscriptions with Zune

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 16:29:59 +0000

If like me you listen to many podcasts, then swapping the PC your Phone7 syncs to collect the podcasta is a real pain. The problem being as far as I can see Zune has no podcast subscription export/import, so you are left with a lot of copy typing to re-enter them.

Whilst rebuilding my PC with Windows 8 today I have at least found a work around

On your old Pc open you ‘c:user[user]My Podcasts’ folder (shown in Windows Explorer as the ‘Podcast’ folder).
You will see a folder for each podcast you are subscribed to
Copy the whole folder to the same location on your new PC (I did via a USB drive as I was reformatting the disk on the same PC)
Install Zune on the new PC
Open Zune and look in the Collection>Podcasts, you should see all your podcast – but your are not subscribed yet
In Zune, highlight and select all podcasts
Right click and you should see a Subscribe option, select it.
Zune now sorts itself out re-subscribing and checking for new programmes
It gets a bit confused over what you have watched so might pull them down again. Also you might want to alter subscription settings for specific podcasts as it will default back to just 3 programmes.
When you are happy with your settings just drag the podcasts onto your newly resync’d mobile device to finish the job.
You might need to look at the podcasts that are on the device as seems it does not removed one previously there via Zune (again it seems unsure of what you have listened too)

Not perfect but better than trying to removed load of site URLs

Visual Studio 2012 RTM and the ALM Rangers SIM Ship best practice guidance

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 10:07:13 +0000

Overnight Visual Studio and TFS 2012 became available on MSDN for download; I really pleased to say that the ALM Rangers also SIM shipped all our 2012 guidance at the same time.

I have been working on two of the Ranger project for the past year and have to say I have learnt a lot working with such a great crowd of Microsoft and external TFS experts. Some stuff I learnt was about the 2012 release it is true, but there was plenty on working with a a globally distributed team with a whole host of logistical and time constraints.

TF900546 error on a TFS 2012 build

Richard Fennell — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 12:27:46 +0000

Whilst moving over to our new TFS 2012 installation I got the following error when a build tried to run tests

TF900546: An unexpected error occurred while running the RunTests activity: 'Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information.'.

This was a new one on me, and nothing of much use on the web other than a basic MSDN page.

Turns out the immediate fix is to just restart the build controller. Initially I did this after switching to the default build process template, and setting it to NOT load any custom activities, but I seems a simple restart would have been enough as once I re-enabled all custom activities it still worked.

At last my Nokia Lumia 800 gets its firmware upgrade to allow tethering

Richard Fennell — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 14:14:00 +0000

At last my Nokia Lumia 800 gets its firmware upgrade to allow tethering. The 8773 update seems to be made up of three updates, two operating system ones (which I managed to force down in the usual way), but this Nokia firmware one has taken weeks to get to me, forcing did not help. I had to wait.

I don’t think I am alone in not being too impressed with the update process. The throttling/delaying update process is probably Ok for the man in the street, who just wants a working phone, but there should be an easier way to get updates if you want/need them ASAP for development purposes or are trying to run consistent versions for all phones in an organisation.

Using an internal Nuget server to manage the Typemock assembly references.

Richard Fennell — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 10:38:51 +0000

In my last post I discussed the process I needed to go through to get Typemock Isolator running under TFS 2012. In this process I used the Auto Deploy feature of Isolator. However this raised the question of how to manage the references within projects. You cannot just assume the Typemock assemblies are in the GAC, they are not on the build box using auto deploy. You could get all projects to reference the auto deployment location in source control. However, if you use build process templates across projects it might be you do not want to have production code referencing build tools in the build process are directly.

Getting Typemock Isolator running within a TFS 2012 build

Richard Fennell — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 12:01:00 +0000

Update 23rd Aug 2012: This blog post was produced testing against the 2012RC, seems it does not work against the 2012 RTM release. I am seeing the error in my build logs

_ TF900546: An unexpected error occurred while running the RunTests activity: 'Executor process exited._

I am looking into this, expect to see a new blog post soon

Update 24th Aug 2012: I have fixed the issues with TFS2012RTM, the links to zip containing a working version of the activity in this post should now work. For more details see my follow up part 2 post

Audio problem on Windows 8 RP and Lenovo W520 with Lync 2013

Richard Fennell — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 09:33:34 +0000

I have been really pleased with Windows 8 RP on my Lenovo W520, I have had no major problems. I have seen the issues with slow start-up of networking after a sleep as others have seen, but nothing else.

However today I tried to do a Lync audio call with Lync 2013 Beta and found I had no audio. Up to now I had just used the drivers Windows 8 installed which had seemed OK. It turns out I had to install the Conexant Audio Software 8.32.23.5 from the Lenovo site. Once I did this and Lync was restarted the audio leapt into life. As I remember I had a similar issue with Windows 7 and getting the audio to work correctly on my Lenovo base station.

Two problems editing TFS2012 build workflows with the same solution

Richard Fennell — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 20:27:00 +0000

Updated 30th Aug 2012: This post is specific to TFS/VS 2012 RC - for details on the RTM see this updated post

Whilst moving over to our new TFS2012 system I have been editing build templates, pulling the best bits from the selection of templates we used in 2010 into one master build process to be used for most future projects. Doing this I have hit a couple of problems, turns out the cure is the same for both

SUR-40 (what used to be a Surface) event at Leeds Sharp User group

Richard Fennell — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 11:19:00 +0000

I am pleased to say that Black Marble will be doing a session at the Leeds Sharp User group on the evening of the 30th of August on the [Samsung SUR40 with Microsoft PixelSense (what used to be call a Surface2)](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/SectionDisplay.aspx?name=Specialisations&subsection=Samsung SUR40 (Surface 2)).

Should be an interesting session as we will be bringing one of our rental units along for everyone to have a go on.

DDD10 registration open

Richard Fennell — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 11:10:17 +0000

DDD10 registration opens today, and probably closes about 10 minutes later (server overloads allowing) from past experience. If you can’t make the date, or the don’t fancy the trip down south to TVP remember DDDNorth in October at Bradford University has many of the same speakers and is located in a far more convenient Yorkshire location.

Problems I had to address when setting up TFS 2012 Lab Environments with existing Hyper-V VMs

Richard Fennell — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 23:23:00 +0000

Whilst moving all our older test Hyper-V VMs into a new TFS 2012 Lab Management instance I have had to address a few problems. I already posted about the main one of cross domain communications. This post aims to list the other workaround I have used.

MTM can’t communicate with the VMs

When setting up an environment that includes existing VMs it is vital that the PC running MTM |(Lab Center) can communicate with all the VMs involved. The best indication I have found that you will not have problems is to use a simple Ping. If you are creating a SCVMM environment you need to be able to Ping the fully qualified machine name as it has been picked up by Hyper-V e.g: server1.test.local. If creating a standard environment you only need to be able to Ping the name you specify for the machine e.g: server1 or maybe server.corp.com.

Getting TFS 2012 Agents to communicate cross domain

Richard Fennell — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 16:27:32 +0000

I don’t know about your systems but historically we have had VMs running in test domains that are connected to our corporate LAN. Thus allowing our staff and external testers to access them from their development PCs or through our firewall after providing suitable test domain credentials. These test setups are great candidates for the new TFS Lab Management 2012 feature Standard environments. It does not matter if they are hosted as physical devices, or on Hyper-V or VMware.

Where did my custom Word templates go in 2013?

Richard Fennell — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 11:43:00 +0000

I installed Office 2013 customer preview yesterday and all seemed good. Today I needed to create a new document using one of our company standard templates. I opened Word, went to the new document section and was presented with a list of great looking templates, but not my custom ones. The page suggested I used search to find more templates, it did find more templates from the Internet, but did not find my locally stored ones.

_atomic_fetch_sub_4 error running VS2012RC after Office 2013 Customer Preview is installed

Richard Fennell — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 12:59:00 +0000

When I installed Office 2013 customer preview all seemed good, loads of new metro look Office features. However when I tried to load my previously working Visual Studio 2012RC I got the error

“The procedure entry point _atomic_fetch_sub_4 could not be located in the dynamic link library devenv.exe”.

This is a known issues with the C++ runtime and a patch was release last week, install this and all should be OK

Cannot access the ‘site setting’ on a reporting services instance using IE

Richard Fennell — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 12:28:40 +0000

On site recently I had a problem that I could not access the site settings in reporting services if I used Internet Explorer from an client PC. IE worked fine on the server and other browsers were OK on the client, just not IE. Initially I though it was just rights, but that was not the case

Turns out this is down to Kerberos negotiation as discussed in the MSDN article. To fix the issue, on this site where we did not need Kerberos, we just disabled Kerberos negotiation in the [Program files]Microsoft SQL ServerMSRS10.MSSQLSERVERReporting ServicesReportServerRSreportServer.config file, e.g.

TFS build service cannot connect to a TFS 2012 server - seeing EventID 206 MessageQueue in error log

Richard Fennell — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 21:03:36 +0000

Whilst setting up our new TFS 2012 instance I had a problem getting the build box to connect to the TFS server.

When I started the build service (on a dedicated VM configured as a controller and single agent, connected to a TPC on the server on another VM). All appears OK, the controller and agents said they were running and state icons went green
About 5 seconds later the state icons go red, but message says the controller and agents are still running, from past experience I know this means it is all dead.
On the build service section a new ‘details’ link appears, but if you try to click it get a 404 error (see below)

Re-awarded as a MVP for Visual Studio ALM

Richard Fennell — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 19:47:51 +0000

I am really happy to say that I have had my Microsoft MVP for Visual Studio ALM Re-awarded, it is a privilege to get to work with such a great group of people as a have met via the MVP programme.

Microsoft Cloud Day slides

Richard Fennell — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 14:56:48 +0000

My slides and those of other presenters at last weeks Microsoft cloud day have been published

2012 Editions of TFS books are out

Richard Fennell — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 10:14:47 +0000

As Brian Harry announced on his blog there are new 2012 editions of the two main TFS books on the way. I have added links to them from my reading list page but as yet you can only pre-order them as the release dates are not available.

Why Typemock Isolator does not work on TFS 2012 Build and what you can do about it

Richard Fennell — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 09:58:00 +0000

Update 4/Aug/2012: See post on my implementation of a 2012 version of this activity

If you are using Typemock Isolator in your unit testing then you be wanting to include then in your automated build process. Unlike other mocking frameworks you have to do a bit of work to achieve this with Isolator, this is because to enable its advanced features of mocking items like sealed private classes you have to start the interceptor that does the magic prior to running the tests and the switch it off afterwards.

Next Leeds Sharp user group meeting is a coding kata session

Richard Fennell — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 08:43:00 +0000

The next Leeds Sharp user group meeting on the 28th of June is a Kata session using Conway’s game of life. For more details see their site.

Not sure if I can make it yet have to keep an eye on my ever filling diary

Adding DHCP Option 119 (Domain Search List) to Windows Server 2008 R2

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 12:27:20 +0000

If you’ve seen my recent blog post on making Android work in Hyper-V you will have seen my problems around DNS resolution when in the office. That turned out to be down to the DHCP options being handed back by our Server 2008 R2 box. Or rather, it was what wasn’t being handed back to the client that was the problem.

Linux (and Apple OSX, as it turns out) both want a response to option 119, which defines the domain suffix search order. Windows does not request this option and the windows DHCP server does not offer the option at all.

DDDNorth session submission is open

Richard Fennell — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 09:47:01 +0000

Session submission has opened for the next DDDNorth on the 13th October at Bradford University.

Why not submit a session?

A Virtual Ice Cream Sandwich: Android 4 x86 in a Hyper-V VM

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 09:10:31 +0000

More and more of our projects include a stipulation from the client that any web sites must work on the tablet devices of senior management. Up until recently that was exclusively iPads, but we are now seeing more Android devices out there. I wanted to find a straightforward way for us to test on such devices, preferably without needing to build up a collection of expensive physical kit.

I read with interest Ben Armstrong’s post about running Android 2.2 (Froyo) in a VM using a build from the Android x86 project. I started my journey by replicating his steps, so I won’t document any of that here, other than to note that the generic x86 build you need is now a deprecated one, so I had to hunt a little to find what I needed.

Where did my Visual Studio 2010 link go from my Windows 8 desktop after I installed SSDT?

Richard Fennell — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 17:59:34 +0000

I have been finding the ‘hit the windows key and type’ means to launch desktop applications in Windows 8 quite nice. It means I get used to the same behaviour in Windows or Ubuntu to launch things, no need to remember menu locations just type a name, all very slickrun . However, I hit a problem today, I hit the windows key, typed Visual and expected to see Visual Studio 2012 and 2010, but I only saw Visual Studio 2012

Speaking at NEBytes on TFS2010

Richard Fennell — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 23:23:34 +0000

I am speaking at NEBytes next week on VS/TFS2012 with Andy Westgarth, check the NEBytes site for details

TFSPreview.com no longer needs an invite code

Richard Fennell — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 14:51:59 +0000

At TechEd USA 2012 in the keynote and the ALM session it was announced that you no longer need an invite code to access the Azure hosted TFSPreview.com, it is now open to all.

There are no final details as yet over the pricing when it goes fully to production but they did say there will be some form of free offering going forward. We will have to wait for more details on that front.

Tweaking my Lenovo x220 Tablet and running Windows 8

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 09:01:37 +0000

A short while ago I replaced my trusted by heavy Acer laptop with a Lenovo x220 tablet. After a couple of months running windows 8 I’m ready to put my thoughts into words.

If you’ve landed on this post looking for notes on Windows 8 drivers for the x220, skip to the end. UPDATE 12/06/2012 – added some points to the Windows 8 section.

A painful purchase

Nothing could have prepared me for the deeply unpleasant experience of actually purchasing my new tablet. The Lenovo UK site is shockingly bad at providing the information and options you need. Examples include (some of which bit me!):

Cannot update local workspace in TFS 2012RC due to UAC

Richard Fennell — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 14:50:39 +0000

Whilst preparing the demos for my [TFS 2012 ALM session on Wednesday (still places available of you are in the Yorkshire area)](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=How to Plan your Application Lifecycle Implementation with TFS11), I got the following error whey trying to add a new solution of sample code to TFS

Access to the path 'C:ProgramDataMicrosoft Team Foundation Local Workspaces43519e4-72cf-4cd0-a711-f4bb8b817f30TYPHOON;432cfb95-26d6-4a68-af26-b102c950a90dproperties.tf1' is denied.

It seems that the ..4535… folder had been created when I was running VS2012 using ‘run as administrator’. When I tried to browse it I was prompted for UAC elevated privileges. So if I was not running VS2012 as administrator I could not access the folder. For me the solution was to just delete the folder and let VS/TFS recreate it. I had no checked out files so it did not matter. Once done all was OK

Drivers needed on my Lenovo W520 with Windows 8 RP

Richard Fennell — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 18:27:40 +0000

I posted recently on running Win8 RP on my Lenovo W520, well a few days on it is still working fine. I have adopted by usual practice of installing as few hardware vendor drivers/tool as possible, as I tend to find these make matters worse most of the time. However, I as expected I could not only rely on just what came with Windows 8.

On installing Windows the only device not discovered was the single device ‘Intel Chipset’, this needed the Intel Chipset Support driver
I noticed today that when on my docking station my speakers did not work. I expected to have to install the Lenovo provided audio drivers, but a check for ‘updated drivers’ on the audio device in device manager got the right ones from Windows Update.
The fingerprint reader just work had to do nothing other than enrol my fingerprint in Control Panel –> Biometics, and unlike with the Lenovo version of the UI I had on Windows 7, I can now user a fingerprint to elevate my privileges via UAC. One issue seem to be the green LED by the reader does not light up, but as it works I can live with that.

I will report more things I need to do as I find them.

TF215097 when running a build

Richard Fennell — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 18:16:53 +0000

I have been working on one of our build boxes today restructuring our Surface solutions to make better of Nuget. This involved upgraded the Azure SDK on the build box to the new June release, which needed a reboot halfway through the process. After the reboot and tried a new build I got the error

TF215097: An error occurred while initializing a build for build definition SurfaceRetailApplication.Main CI: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Drawing, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies. The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131040)

DDD North to be held at Bradford University on 13th October

Richard Fennell — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 10:53:59 +0000

This years DDD North is to be held at Bradford University on 13th October, keep an eye open for the call for speakers

Windows 8 RP and my Lenovo W520

Richard Fennell — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 22:49:28 +0000

I tried to install the Windows 8 CP on my Lenovo W520 with no success as I posted about in the past.I was only able to install Windows 8 CP only if I disabled the Nvidia graphics card and just used the integrated Intel controller. This was of no real use as I need dual monitors.

With the release of Windows 8 RP I though I would try again.

The first attempt failed with the same problem, it hung detecting devices. I check the BIOS and noticed I was set to discrete only (the Nvidia setting). I knew the RP should work on the W520 as other at the office have got it working. So I changed the BIOS to Nvidia Optimus (the auto swap system between Intel and Nivdia) and tried again – and it worked. So this is the first post from Windows 8.

ALM Rangers sim-ship guidance with the VS11 RC

Richard Fennell — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 08:50:26 +0000

I am really proud to have been involved in the team of ALM Rangers who have SIMultaneous-SHIPped best practice guidance with Visual Studio 11 RC, which became available last night**.**

I am sure anyone working with Visual Studio and TFS will find the guidance of value, I have certainly learned a lot whilst helping produce the material. It has been a great experience working with a great crowd of people both inside and outside of Microsoft.

First meeting of the Leeds-Sharp user group

Richard Fennell — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 07:57:00 +0000

Last night I attended the first meeting of the new .NET user group Leeds Sharp. This is a flavour of user group we don’t have in Leeds; we have SQL, Ruby, Agile user groups, the list goes on, but not a dedicated .NET one. So hopefully this .NET usergroup will take off. Especially as Microsoft conveniently decided to launch Windows 8 Release Preview and Visual Studio 11 RC during our opening session, so there are loads of new subjects to talk about.

Solution to “We couldn't get your developer Licence for Windows 8 Consumer Preview” on Win8 Server beta

Richard Fennell — Tue, 29 May 2012 10:38:52 +0000

Whilst preparing for the Black Marble Windows 8 event tomorrow (still places available for this free event) I hit problem with VS11Beta and Metro projects.

I was sorting out a demonstration of remote debugging, I had a Samsung tablet PC running WIn8CP and intended to use a WIn8Server CP running inside a VirtualBox VM on Windows 7 PC.

I installed VS11 Ultimate 11 Beta on both devices
On the Win8 Tablet I loaded the VS11 remote debugger monitor

On the panel at Tech.Days: Visual Studio 11 Online Event

Richard Fennell — Mon, 28 May 2012 21:08:50 +0000

A while ago I recorded a video Visual Studio Team Foundation for Everyone, this forms part of Tech.Days: Visual Studio 11 Online Event, 28th June 2012, 1pm to 3pm. To lift the agenda from the MSDN site

This event will cover the key new features and capabilities that Visual Studio 11 offers software development teams, and the opportunity to ask questions to the UK Developer Tools team and partners. There’ll be something for almost anyone involved in software development, from Project Managers & Scrum Masters to developers and testers.

Skydrive pushes me over my broadband usage

Richard Fennell — Mon, 28 May 2012 21:00:46 +0000

I got back from a trip away to find an unexpected bill for broadband through the letterbox. I have paid about the same each quarter for broadband for a good while now, I don’t see much variation as I rarely use my home phone, then again who does?

This bill was nearly double, why?

I think it was mostly due to setting up Skydrive to mirror my family photos and video as a backup, though this can’t explain it all, but then again my son as found Roblox. In each month I went over my usage it was costing me £5 a 5Gb block. It adds up fast.

DDD South West session on Unit testing in VS11

Richard Fennell — Sat, 26 May 2012 13:04:09 +0000

Thanks to everyone who attended my session at DDDSW today. The session was completely demo driven so no slides to share, but the contents of the session is covered in the blog posts

Links for todays Typemock webinar

Richard Fennell — Tue, 22 May 2012 13:39:22 +0000

Thanks to everyone who attended my Typemock Isolator and SharePoint session. The links I mentioned were

I will post a link to the recording as soon as it is made available

Upgrading our blog server from BlogEngine 2.5 to 2.6

Richard Fennell — Mon, 21 May 2012 20:51:00 +0000

A week ago version 2.6 of BlogEngine.net was released. This has plenty of new features such as a new file manager and image tools, but for us the most important was site aggregation.

As I posted about previously, we moved to BlogEngine from Community Server because we need multi blog hosting, but with BlogEngine 2.5 we had to write our own basic site aggregation by creating a custom theme that managed some RSS feed merging behind the scenes. Now with BlogEngine 2.6 this type of feature available out the box.

Renting the Microsoft Surface for your Events

Linda Hogg — Sun, 20 May 2012 22:35:00 +0000

Black Marble has made several Samsung SUR40s (Microsoft Surface 2) available for Rent throughout the UK and Ireland!

So if you want an SUR40 for a one-off occasion such as a corporate event or tradeshow, either internal or external, please get in touch. The SUR40 is v2.0 of the Microsoft Surface, and Black Marble is a Surface Premier Partner.

Black Marble can create bespoke applications for your organisation and event, plus we have a set of existing applications that can be configured to meet your needs – please call for a competitive quotation.

New .NET usergroup in Leeds

Richard Fennell — Thu, 17 May 2012 20:17:00 +0000

Please to say there is a new .NET usergroup leeds-sharp.org in Leeds, their inaugural meeting is on the 31st of May. I hope to be able to make it if I am in Yorkshire that day.

A bit busy with upcoming presentations

Richard Fennell — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:22:08 +0000

I am a bit busy with upcoming presentations, all of which are free to attend

Monday 21st May - Black Marble Webinar ‘How to Kick start your ALM Process ‘
Tuesday 22nd May – Typemock Webinar ‘Using Typemock Isolator to speed up the development of SharePoint Web Parts’
Saturday 26th May – DDD South West (Bristol) ‘Unit Testing with Visual Studio 11 Beta’
Wednesday 30th May – Black Marble (Holiday Inn Leeds) ‘A day with Windows 8’ – I’m talking on development in the afternoon
Wednesday 13th June - Black Marble (BM Offices) ‘How to Plan your Application Lifecycle Implementation with TFS11’
Wednesday 20th June – NEBytes (Newcastle) ‘Overview of Visual Studio/TFS 11’ - Event To be confirmed
Friday 22 June – Black Marble Architect Track at the Microsoft Cloud Day (London) – My subject to be confirmed

I think that is all for now; wow a looks worse when they are all written down in one place. I better get writing….

Interested in Windows 8 Development?

Richard Fennell — Sun, 13 May 2012 16:15:16 +0000

Are you interested in Windows 8 Development?

Well if you are Black Marble are running a free event on Windows 8 on the 30th of May in Leeds.

Also Jon Fowler, one of our development leads has just started a series of blog posts on converting Prims to .NET for Windows 8 metro style apps. This is all tied to his port of Prism to Metro which you can download from Codeplex

Enjoy….

DDD10 1st September 2012

Richard Fennell — Sat, 12 May 2012 17:46:14 +0000

I see after a few days of issues the DDD10 site is back up and ready for submission. I have submitted a session, why don’t you – it will be fun!

08/05 – Call for speakers opens
02/07 – Call for speakers closes
03/07 – Voting opens
24/07 – Voting closes
27/07 – Schedule opens
30/07 – Registration opens
01/09 – DDD10

Doing a webinar on Typemock Isolator and Sharepoint

Richard Fennell — Thu, 10 May 2012 23:05:00 +0000

I am presenting a webinar on Typemock Isolator and Sharepoint on the 22nd of May. For more details and to register see the Typemock site

You do that that PS2 keyboard on that old PC, not a USB one

Richard Fennell — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:52:00 +0000

Whilst using DBAN to clean down some very old PCs for disposal to new homes at good causes I hit a stupid gotcha.

I booted off the DBAN CDRom but could not continue beyond the first screen as it did not detect I had pressed the return key.

Turns out the PCs were so old that, though their BIOS allowed USB keyboards (and I could enter setup and edit BIOS settings with a USB keyboard) the Linux kernel on the CDRom could not detect them. Once I switched to an old PS2 keyboard it all worked fine.

A fix for my failure to login to TFSpreview.com problems

Richard Fennell — Thu, 10 May 2012 10:49:56 +0000

I use a number of site collections on the Azure hosted Team Foundations Service (http://tfspreview.com); I have just solved a problem that I could not login to one of them via Visual Studio (2010, Dev11 or also TEE 11, I tried then all), but I could login to my other collections. Also I could access the collection if I logged in via a browser, just not with VS; all very good for work item management, but not much help for source code check-ins.

TFS Build error, 'Index (zero based) must be greater than or equal to zero and less than the size of the argument list” when building XAML projects

Richard Fennell — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:45:59 +0000

We had an interesting issue of late building a Surface2 application solution within a TFS 2010 build system. The solution built fine in VS2010 on both my development PC and also using VS2010 on my TFS build box (both Windows 7 64bit PC), so I know I had all the right SDKs in place. However if I built it via TFS 2010 Team Build I got the error

More on using the VS11 fake library to fake out SharePoint

Richard Fennell — Sat, 05 May 2012 15:35:08 +0000

I recently posted on how you could use the new fakes tools in VS11 to fake out SharePoint for testing purposes. I received comments on how I could make my Shim logic easier to read so though I would revisit the post. This led me down a bit of a complex trail, and to Pete Provost for pointing the way out!

When I did the previous post I had used SP2007, this was because I was comparing using Microsoft Fakes with a similar sample I had written ages ago for Typemock Isolator. There was no real plan to this choice, it was just what had to hand at the time. This time I decided to use SP2010, this was the process used that actually worked (more on my mistakes later) …

Thoughts on my Channel9 post

Richard Fennell — Sat, 05 May 2012 09:49:00 +0000

After hearing my TEE video on Channel9 mentioned on Radio TFS I thought I should watch it through, I had only found time to do a quick look previously. This is all part of my on-going self review process, a form of self torture.

It seems the issues I mentioned last time are still there, I still have too many err’s. The thing that stood out the most was I looked like a very shifty newsreader. My movement behind the table and losing eye contact with the camera were too noticeable to me.

Thoughts on the new Skydrive

Richard Fennell — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:36:00 +0000

I have swapped to the new version of Microsoft Skydrive, replacing my old Mesh setup. It is a nice slick experience, allowing easy viewing of files on Skydrive from Windows and WP7. However, I do have couple of issues

I used Mesh to sync photos from my Window 7 Media Center up to cloud storage as a backup, don’t want to loose all the family photos due to a disk failure. This was simple with Mesh, just set up a sync. This is not so easy with the new Skydrive, which appears only as a folder in your user area. The only solution I can spot is to copy my photos into this folder e.g. xcopy d:photos c:usersrichardskydrivephotos. Once the copy is done this will be synced up to the cloud. With mesh if I added a file to my PC it sync’d without me doing anything, now I need to remember the xcopy (or whatever sync copy tool I am using), or have the copy being run on a regular basis via a timer.
Letting Skydrive start automatically on a laptop Windows PC is dangerous. I was on site today using my Mifi and in about 10 minutes used a whole days credit. So I would recommend changing your tool tray setting to make sure you can see the Skydrive icon all the time, so you have a chance see when it is syncing and can stop it when on a connection that cost you money.

My video on using Team Explorer Everywhere is published on Channel9

Richard Fennell — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:58:00 +0000

I recently recorded a video on using Visual Studio Team Explorer Everywhere, this has today been published in the UK Techdays section of Channel 9.

Hope you find it useful.

Back from holiday to find my DDD Southwest session has been accepted

Richard Fennell — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:28:12 +0000

Got back from holiday today to find my DDDSW (26th May) session on unit testing in Visual Studio 11 has been accepted.

I see the event is already full, but hope to see some of you there

Fix for problem faking two SPLists in a single unit test with Typemock Isolator has been released

Richard Fennell — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:00:13 +0000

A blogged a while ago about a problem faking multiple SPList with Typemock Isolator in a single test. With the release of Typemock Isolator 7.0.4.0 you no longer have to use the workaround I documented.

You can now use the code if the originally planned, and it works as expected

1 1: public partial class TestPage : System.Web.UI.Page 2: { 3: public TestPage() 4: { 5:  var fakeWeb = Isolate.Fake.Instance<SPWeb>();
2 7: Isolate.WhenCalled(() => SPControl.GetContextWeb(null)).WillReturn(fakeWeb); 8: 9: // return value for 1st call
3 10: Isolate.WhenCalled(() => fakeWeb.Lists\["Centre Locations"\].Items).WillReturnCollectionValuesOf(CreateCentreList()); 11: // return value for all other calls 12: Isolate.WhenCalled(() => fakeWeb.Lists\["Map Zoom Areas"\].Items).WillReturnCollectionValuesOf(CreateZoomAreaList()); 13: } 14: 15: private static List<SPListItem> CreateZoomAreaList()
4 16: { 17: var fakeZoomAreas = new List<SPListItem>(); 18: fakeZoomAreas.Add(CreateZoomAreaSPListItem("London", 51.49275, -0.137722222, 2, 14)); 19: return fakeZoomAreas; 20: } 21: 22: private static List<SPListItem> CreateCentreList()
5 23: { 24: var fakeSites = new List<SPListItem>(); 25: fakeSites.Add(CreateCentreSPListItem("Aberdeen ", "1 The Road, Aberdeen ", "Aberdeen@test.com", "www.Aberdeen.test.com", "1111", "2222", 57.13994444, -2.113333333)); 26: fakeSites.Add(CreateCentreSPListItem("Altrincham ", "1 The Road, Altrincham ", "Altrincham@test.com", "www.Altrincham.test.com", "3333", "4444", 53.38977778, -2.349916667)); 27: return fakeSites; 28: } 29: 30: private static SPListItem CreateCentreSPListItem(string title, string address, string email, string url, string telephone, string fax, double lat, double lng)
6 31: { 32: var fakeItem = Isolate.Fake.Instance<SPListItem>(); 33: Isolate.WhenCalled(() => fakeItem\["Title"\]).WillReturn(title); 34: Isolate.WhenCalled(() => fakeItem\["Address"\]).WillReturn(address); 35: Isolate.WhenCalled(() => fakeItem\["Email Address"\]).WillReturn(email); 36: Isolate.WhenCalled(() => fakeItem\["Site URL"\]).WillReturn(url); 37: Isolate.WhenCalled(() => fakeItem\["Telephone"\]).WillReturn(telephone); 38: Isolate.WhenCalled(() => fakeItem\["Fax"\]).WillReturn(fax); 39: Isolate.WhenCalled(() => fakeItem\["Latitude"\]).WillReturn(lat.ToString()); 40: Isolate.WhenCalled(() => fakeItem\["Longitude"\]).WillReturn(lng.ToString()); 41: return fakeItem; 42: } 43: 44: private static SPListItem CreateZoomAreaSPListItem(string areaName, double lat, double lng, double radius, int zoom)
7 45: { 46: var fakeItem = Isolate.Fake.Instance<SPListItem>(); 47: Isolate.WhenCalled(() => fakeItem\["Title"\]).WillReturn(areaName); 48: Isolate.WhenCalled(() => fakeItem\["Latitude"\]).WillReturn(lat.ToString()); 49: Isolate.WhenCalled(() => fakeItem\["Longitude"\]).WillReturn(lng.ToString()); 50: Isolate.WhenCalled(() => fakeItem\["Radius"\]).WillReturn(radius.ToString()); 51: Isolate.WhenCalled(() => fakeItem\["Zoom"\]).WillReturn(zoom.ToString()); 52: return fakeItem; 53: } 54: 55: }

A check of the returned values shows

Unit testing in VS11Beta and getting your tests to run on the new TFSPreview build service

Richard Fennell — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 21:23:00 +0000

One of my favourite new features in VS11 is that the unit testing is pluggable. You don’t have to use MSTest, you can use any test framework that an adaptor is available for (at the release of the beta this meant the list of framworks on Peter Provost’s blog, but I am sure this will grow).

So what does this mean and how do you use it?

Add some tests

First it is worth noting that you no longer need to use a test project to contain your MSTest, you can if you want, but you don’t need to. So you can

How I try to keep up to date

Richard Fennell — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 12:16:26 +0000

I have just added a page to the blog that lists some of the podcasts I try to listen to, in an attempt to keep up to date.

Keeping up to date

Richard Fennell — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 09:25:45 +0000

Ours is a fast moving industry and as times goes on I find the need to specialise more and more. However, I believe there is a great value in at least having a passing knowledge of as much of our field as possible, IT pros can learn from developers and .NET team from Java and of course the other way around.

I find the best way to try to keep abreast of new ideas is to listen to podcasts; I personally find it hard read enough blogs, but I can find time to listen to a podcast whist travelling or working around the house. Here is a list of a few I find give me at least a feel for what is going on, I still feel that they are a bit Microsoft focused, so interested to hear any other suggestions

Problems editing TFS11 build templates in VS11Beta

Richard Fennell — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 15:12:12 +0000

Whilst writing documentation for TFS community build extensions (just published the Zip activity documentation) I hit upon a problem working with TFS11. The TFS community build extensions support both TFS2010 and TFS11beta, unfortunately the two versions need to be built separately (once against TFS2010 DLLs and once against TFS11 ones). As of version 1.3 of the extensions both versions are shipped in the download.

In the past in the past I have tended to work in TFS2010 on this community project, but since the VS/TFS11 beta release I am trying to move over to the new build. So to write the documentation for the ZIP activity I started in TFS11. I followed the usual method to use a custom activity (there is no improvement over this frankly horrible process in VS11) so within VS11 I added the ZIP activity to a copy of the defaultprocesstemplate.xaml. All appeared OK but when I ran a build with this new template. I got the error

More thoughts on Typemock Isolator, Microsoft Fakes and Sharepoint

Richard Fennell — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:01:53 +0000

I posted yesterday on using Typemock and Microsoft Fakes with SharePoint. After a bit more thought I realised the key thing in using Typemock I found easier was the construction of my SPListItem dataset. Typemock allowed me to fake SPListItems and put them in a generic List then just make this the return value for the Item collection using the magic .WillReturnCollectionValuesOf() method that converts my List to the required collection type. With the Microsoft Fakes I had think about a delegate that constructed my test data at runtime. This is not a problem, just a different way of working.

Now that VS11 has a fake library do I still need Typemock Isolator to fake out SharePoint?

Richard Fennell — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:16:00 +0000

Updated 5 May 2012 Also see my follow up post, this corrects some of the information of faking SharePoint

I have done posts in the past about how you can use Typemock Isolator to fake out SharePoint to speed design and testing. The reason you need special tooling, beyond standard mocking frameworks like Rhino or MOQ, is that SharePoint has many sealed private classes with no public constructors. So in the past you only had two options: Typemock Isolator and Moles from Microsoft research.

Typemock Isolator Version 7

Richard Fennell — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 10:54:28 +0000

Whilst travelling I had neglected to post about the new release of Typemock Isolator Version 7. This new release extends the range of the product to provide a variety of ‘test support tools’ that help you track down bugs sooner.

However, the best new feature for me is that it allows support of historic versions of Isolator, this means you don’t have to upgrade all projects to V7 at the same time. The V7 engine will use the older assemblies e.g. V6 perfectly happily. Make managing build boxes far easier

Dropping build output to source control in TFS11

Richard Fennell — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:18:20 +0000

One of the nice new feature of TFS11 is that you get a third option for what to do with your build output

Don’t copy output anywhere – good for CI builds that nobody will ever consume, just used to run tests
Drop to a UNC share e.g. \server1drops – the default and used 9 times out 10
The new one - drop to source control e.g. $/myproject/drops.

The advantage of this new third option is your build agents can place the files they create in a location that can be accessed by any TFS client i.e. in the source control repository. A user no longer needs to be on a VPN or corporate LAN to be able to see a UNC share.

Team Explorer Everywhere is now free

Richard Fennell — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 09:24:34 +0000

It was announced overnight that TEE is now free. What does this mean?

It means if you do not have to buy TEE as some extra software if you already have a TFS CAL. This removed a barrier to adoption for developers who work in heterogeneous systems, there is no extra cost to integrate Eclipse as well a Visual Studio with TFS .

If you want to find out more about TEE why not come Black Marble’s free webinar I am delivering on the 19th?

Free webinar on Team Explorer Everywhere on the 19th of March

Richard Fennell — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 20:09:30 +0000

I recently did a guest post for the VSTS UK Team Blog on Team Explorer Everywhere. On the 19th of March I will be doing a free webinar on the same subject. To register for this event please see the Black Marble web site.

Propose a session for DDD South West

Richard Fennell — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:25:22 +0000

I have proposed a session for DDD South West, why don’t you?

Two Team Explorers in TEE 11 Beta – twice as good?

Richard Fennell — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 16:41:02 +0000

When you install TEE11 Beta in Eclipse you will notice their are two Team Explorer windows

Team Explorer 2010 – The old style window
Team Explorer – The new VS11 style window

This is an artefact of the beta as TEE transitions to the new VS UI.

I would recommend you use the new one as this will be the experience going forward. I certainly would not recommend having both open as I have shown in this screenshot

A bit of an edge case – Using Git-TFS to get the best (or worst?) of both worlds

Richard Fennell — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 21:24:51 +0000

Background

Whilst at the Microsoft MVP summit there are a number of MVP2MVP sessions, these are similar to DDD style sessions with MVPs presenting as opposed to Microsoft staff. One I found really interesting was one by Richard Banks based on his post on using GIT with TFS. Now this was a usage of source control tools I had not considered, a mixture of Git and TFS (or could be Git to SVN, similar tools are available)

ALM Rangers VS11 Beta Guidance

Richard Fennell — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:22:29 +0000

Today, as well as the new VS11 Beta bits from Microsoft, the ALM Rangers also shipped best practice guidance to get you started with the beta. This is a project I am very proud to have been involved with.

The full details of the supporting guidance shipped can be found here

Installing the TEE11 Beta as an upgrade to the plug-in in Eclipse

Richard Fennell — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 19:26:33 +0000

The big news today is is that Microsoft released the VS11 Beta, part of which is Team Explorer Everywhere (TEE). (Oh they also release something called Windows 8 too – whatever that is)

Whilst upgrading my TEE instance in Eclipse (Indigo) I hit the same gotcha as I had when I originally installed TEE (in Eclipse is in your ‘c:programs files’). On Windows, if UAC is enabled you have to run Eclipse as administrator to do the plug-in else you get the error message.

My Boss has brought his iPad! Consumer devices in corporate networks

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 14:22:03 +0000

There’s a new term in town – Consumerisation of IT. All of us who work in IT should care about this because it’s going to have a deep impact on the approach many of us have taken when deploying services to our organisations.

I don’t profess to be a thought leader on this topic, although I find it interesting that I have been dealing with the ‘problem’ here at Black Marble ever since we started up many moons ago. I may well post more about what we deliver in terms of services and solutions within the organisation later, but this article is intended to drive your attention to two important places.

IT Camp Leeds Roundup

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 14:08:46 +0000

Yesterday was great fun and I was really pleased to see so many Black Marble event regulars at the IT Camp. It was great to hear so many requests for more events like it in Leeds. We’re all keen to run more, but we need people to attend and give us feedback in order to be able to do that.

I hope those of you who were there took away useful knowledge from the event. Andy and Simon were very keen that it should not be a day of PowerPoint and canned demos and we certainly delivered that. Did we have technical issues that meant we had to change plans on the fly? Sure! Certainly nobody we spoke to seemed to mind. All of us from Black Marble thought the concept for the day – one of interaction, audience participation and trying to build systems on the fly – should be fun and we thought it was.

(Not) Using a Huawei E585 MIFI in the USA

Richard Fennell — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:46:45 +0000

I have an unlocked Hauwei E585 MIFI that I use around europe, avoiding roaming charges for my UK mobile contract. I buy a local pay as you go SIM for the appropriate country and off I go.

I thought I would try the same here in the USA, where I am for the MVP Summit. I bought a T-Mobile data SIM, but it did not work so well.

Basically the issue is one of aerials it seems. The E585 does not have the aerials it needs to connect for data in the USA, best it can do is a 2G connection, and even this seems to have issues, as mentioned in this post, that you need a phone SIM and not a data SIM. The bottom line seems to be the E585 is 2100MHz/900MHz UMTS only, AT&T are 850Mhz UMTS, T-Mobile will work on EDGE (2G) only. Verizon is CDMA. So it just just not going to work.

Hands-on Microsoft IT Camps–we’ll be there and you should too!

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:14:37 +0000

Andy and I are really pleased to be able to help our friends at Microsoft with their latest idea for engaging with IT Professionals. Next week (Tuesday 28th February) sees the first in a series of new IT Camps taking place in Leeds. The idea is to run a full day event that is very light on PowerPoint and heavy on the hands-on, roll up your sleeves and install things as a group.

More on new TFS 11 announcements

Richard Fennell — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:19:38 +0000

There is a good discussion of the new TFS 11 announcements in the new Radio TFS podcast

TFS 11 and VS 11 Announcements

Richard Fennell — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:54:32 +0000

Microsoft have made a few announcements today

On Brian Harry’s Blog

In the TFS 11 range there will be a new download of TFS, called Team Foundation Server Express, that includes core developer features:
Source Code Control
Work Item Tracking
Build Automation
Agile Taskboard
and is free for 5 users (you buy CALs to add more)
Visual Studio Express will support TFS

On Jason Zander’s Blog

A sneak peak of details of the upcoming VS11 and TFS 11 beta

For more details read the full posts I have linked to, and look out for the beta that will out on the 29th

Free webinar on Typemock Isolator V7

Richard Fennell — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:54:26 +0000

Next Wednesday (the 22nd of February) Typemock are running a free webinar ‘Isolator V7 Preview: A New Perspective on Unit Testing’.

It will be showcasing

Immediate feedback of newly introduced bugs with a new autorunner.
Pinpoint identification of the bug's location with the failed-test analyzer.
Visual coverage of which part of your code is covered
Powerful mocking, guaranteeing that you can write tests for any code, whether new code or legacy code
Industry integration with major development tools

All attendees get a free beta license for the new V7 product.

Follow up to the North East Imagine Cup event

Richard Fennell — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 11:15:36 +0000

Steve did a nice post on the fun we had at the event for Universities and Colleges in the North East of England to help them to develop their ideas for their Imagine Cup entries.

I won’t bother to just repeat what he wrote, other than it was very nice to see students so engaged with our industry. I hope some of the attendees will be able to make it to other community events.

You don’t need to keep that old TFS server to support older versions of Visual Studio

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:57:00 +0000

I have recently spoken to a number of people who were under the impression that older versions of Visual Studio could not connect to TFS2010. This is not the case. So for example you do not need to keep a TFS2005 running for your VS2005 clients.

Why you might ask does this question even come up? VS2010 can build any .NET 2.0 –> 4.0 project so why not upgrade all your projects to VS2010? The answer is that products such as Biztalk and SQL Business Intelligence use older versions of the Visual Studio Shell e.g. so for SQL 2008 BI you are using in effect VS/Team Explorer 2008. Though it must be said this issue is getting better currently a BI developer still ends up having to use VS 2008 (until SSDT arrives with SQL 2012)

Thanks to everyone who came to my session at NEBytes last night

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 10:57:43 +0000

Thanks to everyone who attended my session at NEBytes last night, sorry I had to rush away. As my session was demo based I don’t have much in the way of slides to upload, but if you want to find out more have a look at my guest blog post on the UK Visual Studio blog on ‘TFS for Everyone’.

Also keep an eye on the [Black Marble site for upcoming free webinar](http://www.blackmarble.com/events.aspx?event=Visual Studio Team Foundation for Everyone (Online)) sessions on the same subject

Speaking on the 15th Feb at the NE Bytes user group on “TFS for Everyone”

Richard Fennell — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:23:04 +0000

I will be speaking at the NE Bytes user group next Wednesday (the 15th of Feb) on ‘TFS for Everyone’.

This a session based on the guest blog post on the UK Visual Studio blog I did on how TFS is not just for .NET developers. It can be used from a whole range of development platforms and operating systems. I will be including demos using Eclipse and Ubuntu.

Hope to see you there.

Webinar on migration from VSS to TFS

Richard Fennell — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:14:41 +0000

I will be giving a free webinar presentation on the morning of Monday the 20th February on ‘Why migrate from Visual SourceSafe to Visual Studio Team Foundation Server’.

[To register for this event please check out the Black Marble site](http://blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Why migrate from Visual SourceSafe to Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (Online))

Filtering in MDX Calculated Members

Richard Fennell — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:28:53 +0000

BI development is not something I do that often, but from time to time you need to develop a custom report in TFS. I recently had to battle a MDX problem that someone who does more BI development I am sure why have had no issue with; but as with most of these blog posts (or my long term memory as I think of it) I thought it worth a post in case it helps anyone else

Enjoyed our SDL event last week?

Richard Fennell — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:56:58 +0000

If you enjoyed Black Marble’s SDL event last week there is more info on the subject of SDL on this weeks .NET Rocks podcast

My guest post on Microsoft Visual Studio UK Team Blog published

Richard Fennell — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:48:18 +0000

A guest post I wrote on TFS for the non-.NET developer has just been published on the Microsoft Visual Studio UK Team Blog. Why not pop over and have a look.

Update released to fix issue for TFS 2010 with SQL Enterprise Page Compression

Richard Fennell — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:51:00 +0000

Brian Harry has just posted on his blog about a bug in SQL page compression (found in SQL Enterprise) that can cause problems with TFS 2010 or TFS1(preview), previous version of TFS did not support page compression.

So if you are using TFS and SQL Enterprise have a read and make sure the correct updates are in place.

Have you tried switching it on and off again? Go on be aggressive!

Richard Fennell — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:43:09 +0000

We have been building ‘standard’ environments for our TFS Lab Management system. Environments that can be used for most of the projects we are involved in without too much extra setup e.g. a small domain controller VM and a Server VM with SQL and SharePoint. These environments have a series of snapshots so it can be used in a number of ways e.g if we just want SQL and IIS we just go back to a snapshot prior to SharePoint being installed.

Links from our SDL event today

Richard Fennell — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:30:42 +0000

Thanks to everyone who attended our SDL event today. Here are a few links to information we mentioned

Microsoft SDK home page, full of downloads, links and training videos
TFS Build extensions for CAT.NET, showing how to add SDL validation to a TFS build
And there are selection of links to books on SDL on my blog’s reading list page

Black Marble Events–now Online!

Linda Hogg — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:54:08 +0000

Do you enjoy our Black Marble events, but can’t always make it in person? Busy day at the office, mean you can’t attend a full or even a half day event? From 30 January 2012, we are introducing a series of online seminars – running most Mondays though to the end of June, we are covering a range of topics in bite-size sessions. Follow the links for more information and to register – or call on 01274 300175 for more details.

New 1.3.0.0 release of the Community TFS Build Extensions for TFS 2010

Richard Fennell — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:53:24 +0000

A new 1.3.0.0 release of the Community TFS Build Extensions has been published today. This contains some fixes and two new activities

SPDisposeChecker – checks for SharePoint best practice
CatNetScan – checks for common security issues

Black Marble launches new series of free online event

Richard Fennell — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:31:39 +0000

For many years Black Marble has run free events on a wide range of technologies. Originally we only ran these locally in Yorkshire, but as time progressed we have run them across the UK and Eire. They are a great way to help your staff whether technical or managerial get up to speed with new developments in our industry.

For 2012 we have decided to try running some events online. The format for these events will be a short 30 minute interactive sessions where you will have the chance to see a short presentation and/or demonstration on a technology followed by a Q&A session with the presenter.

TF266026 error when a workflow will not start in a lab environment

Richard Fennell — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:05:13 +0000

A common cause of the TF266026 error is because when the build agent tries to start (it is the build agent that runs the workflows in Lab Management) it cannot access the custom assemblies folder as defined for its parent build controller. Obviously this problem only occurs if you have set a custom assemblies path for parent build controller.

The reason for the error is because the agent is running as the Lab Management service account, in my case tfs2010lab, as defined for the TPC in the TFS Administration Console. This account by default has no rights to the source folder assigned for the custom assemblies. This is not usually an issue until it needs to access source control to load custom assemblies (which actually it probably does not ever use as it is not building code!).

‘Showing a modal dialog box or form when the application is not running in UserInteractive mode’ error upgraded to TFS build extensions 1.2.0.0

Richard Fennell — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:14:00 +0000

Whilst upgrading a TFS 2010 build today to the new 1.2 release of the Community TFS Build Extensions we hit an issue. All seemed to go OK until the build tried to use the StyleCop activity, which failed with the error

Showing a modal dialog box or form when the application is not running in UserInteractive mode is not a valid operation. Specify the ServiceNotification or DefaultDesktopOnly style to display a notification from a service application.

Confused over the workflow to get an environment setup in TFS Lab Management?

Richard Fennell — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:48:54 +0000

It can be a bit confusing to get work out which tools to use at which stages required to get a lab environment up and running in TFS. Here is a basic workflow showing what you need to do in System Center Virtual Machine Manager prior to starting in MTM Lab Center

Note: if you want to copy environments between TFS Team project Collections have a look at this post

TF260073 incompatible architecture error when trying to deploy an environment in Lab Manager

Richard Fennell — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:21:40 +0000

I got a TF260073, incompatible architecture error when trying to deploy a new virtual lab environment using a newly created VM and template. I found the fix in a forum post.

The issue was that when I had build the VMs, I had installed the Lab Management agents using a VMprep DVD ISO and mounted it using ‘share image instead of copying it’ option. This as the name implies means the ISO is mount from a share not copied to the server running the VM, this save time and disk resources. When I had stored my VM into the SCVMM Library I had left this option selected i.e the VMPrep.iso mounted. All I had to do to fix this issue was open the settings of the VM stored in the SCVMM Library and dismount the ISO, as shown below

Living with the Nokia Lumia 800

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:07:35 +0000

If you call in at Black Marble you’ll see Nokia’s everywhere. They’re talking over the place. It takes me back… I remember when almost everybody I knew had some kind of Nokia or another. I started with the 5.1 on Orange, followed by a sequence of progressively smaller phones. Then came Series 60 and I walked away – I never liked the interface. I swapped to Sony Ericsson and the P800, P900 and P910. I moved to Windows Mobile for time, until I could stand it no more and swapped to an iPhone (much to the grumbling of folk round here!).

Getting a ‘File Download’ dialog when trying to view TFS build report in Eclipse 3.7 with TEE

Richard Fennell — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:17:05 +0000

When using TEE in Eclipse 3.7 on Ubuntu 11.10 there is a problem trying to view a TFS build report. If you click on the report in the Build Explorer you would expect a new tab to open and the report be shown. This is what you see in Eclipse on Windows and on older versions of Eclipse on Linux. However on Ubuntu 11.10 with Eclipse 3.7 you get a File Download dialog.

StyleCop 4.7 now with VS 11 support

Robert Hogg — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:33:36 +0000

The great guys on the StyleCop project have now released StyleCop 4.7.4.0 which now has VS11 preview support.

It also gives support for new templates which unlike the visual studio supplied templates are StyleCop compliant and it also supports the Async CTP.

Get it here

Changed my phone to a Nokia

Richard Fennell — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 12:52:09 +0000

I swapped to a Nokia Lumia 800 yesterday from my LG E900, all very quick an easy after my experience last month.

My first impressions

the on/off/volume buttons were better placed for a left hander on the LG, but I expect I will get used to that.
the poor reception in my house was not the LGs fault – just a bad reception area
the Nokia does seem faster

Problems finding XULRunner when running TEE11 CTP1 on Ubuntu and connecting to TFS Azure – a solution

Richard Fennell — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 21:41:00 +0000

I recently got round to taking a look at Team Explorer Everywhere 11 CTP1. This is the version of TEE that allows you to access the Azure hosted preview of the next version of TFS using Eclipse as a client. I decided to start with a clean OS so

Downloaded the Ubuntu 32bit ISO
Used this ISO to create a test VM on my copy of VirtualBox (currently using VirtualBox as this allows me to create 64bit and 32bit guest VMs on my Windows 7 laptop without have to reboot to my dual boot Windows 2008 partition to access Hyper-V)
Selected default installation options for Ubuntu
When completed used the Ubuntu Software Centre tool to install Eclipse 3.7
Downloaded the Team Explorer Everywhere 11 CTP1 and installed the Eclipse plug as detailed on the download page.
Once installed I then tried to connect to our in house TFS2010 server from with Eclipse – it all worked fine

I next tried to connect to my project collection on https://tfspreview.com and this is where I hit a problem….

Jan 2012 Agile Yorkshire meeting – An Extreme Hour

Richard Fennell — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:27:00 +0000

Agile Yorkshire is kicking off the New Year on the Tuesday Jan 10 at Old Broadcasting House, Leeds where the subject will be Extreme Programming(XP). The session will be based around an Extreme Hour: a hands-on XP project miniature with no coding experience required. Then off to be pub to continue the chat.

Unfortunately I cannot make the session, but I am sure it will be interesting, especially if you have not tried an Extreme Hour.

Radio TFS is back

Richard Fennell — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:21:07 +0000

In case you had not noticed, the Radio TFS podcast is back after an eight month hiatus. A good place to keep in touch the the new announcements related to VS11

Radio TFS is back

Richard Fennell — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:21:07 +0000

In case you had not noticed, the Radio TFS podcast is back after an eight month hiatus. A good place to keep in touch the the new announcements related to VS11

BizTalk state of the Union for 2012

Robert Hogg — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:31:03 +0000

it has in general the past year has been quiet for BizTalk but it looks like 2012 will be quiet different.

The BizTalk Team have announced that during 2012 BizTalk 2010 R2 will be out however its release will be dependant in VS 11 and Windows Server 8 and so no dates just yet

New Platforms and Infrastructure

Windows Server 8*
SQL Server 2012*

Increased Developer and IT Productivity

Visual Studio 11 and Windows 8 to develop solutions
In-place migration from BizTalk Server 2010

Extended Platform Integration

Moving Environments between TPCs when using TFS Lab Management

Richard Fennell — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 13:09:00 +0000

Background

One area I think can be found confusing in TFS Lab Management is that all environments are associated with specific Team Projects (TP) within Team Project Collections (TPC). This is not what you might first expect if you think of Lab Management as just a big Hyper-V server. When configured you end up with a number of TPC/TP related silos as shown in the diagram below.

Moving Environments between TPCs when using TFS Lab Management

Richard Fennell — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 13:09:00 +0000

Background

Community TFS Build Extensions – December 2011 released

Richard Fennell — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 12:51:52 +0000

A new release of Community TFS Build Extensions have shipped. You can find more details on Mike Fourie’s blog or at the project home on Codeplex

Don’t need to go into work at all

Richard Fennell — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:11:00 +0000

Today we got Direct Access working; I can now access all the features of our TFS Lab Management instance from home. No more remoting onto on box to hop to another. I never need to go to the office again!

Windows update now includes Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1, so expect a slow shutdown when it applies

Richard Fennell — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 14:36:20 +0000

The Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 is now coming down as part of Windows Update. Watch out for this, my PC has just taken best part of two hours to reboot as it decided to apply this service pack, even though I had already applied it manually when I built the PC

Debugging CodedUi Tests when launching test as a different user

Richard Fennell — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:17:57 +0000

If you are working with CodedUI tests in Visual Studio you sometimes get unexpected results, such as the wrong field be selected in replays. When trying to work out what has happened the logging features are really useful. These are probably already switched on, but you can check by following the details in this post.

Assuming you make no logging level changes from the default, if you look in the

%Temp%UITestLogsLastRun

DevOps are testers best placed to fill this role?

Richard Fennell — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:51:01 +0000

DevOps seems to be the new buzz role in the industry at present. People who can bridge the gap between the worlds of development and IT pros. Given my career history this could be a description of the path I took. I have done both, and now sit in the middle covering ALM consultancy where I work with both roles. You can’t avoid a bit of development and a bit of IT pro work when installing and configuring TFS with some automated build and deployment.

When you try to run a test in MTM you get a dialog ‘Object reference not set to an instance of an object’

Richard Fennell — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:41:29 +0000

When trying to run a newly created manual test in MTM I got the error dialog

‘You cannot run the selected tests, Object reference not set to an instance of an object’.

On checking the windows event log I saw

Detailed Message: TF30065: An unhandled exception occurred.

Web Request Details Url: http://……/TestManagement/v1.0/TestResultsEx.asmx

So not really that much help in diagnosing the problem!

Turns out the problem was I had been editing the test case work item type. Though it had saved/imported without any errors (it is validated during these processes) something was wrong with it. I suspect to do with filtering the list of users in the ‘assigned to’ field as this is what I last remember editing, but I might be wrong, it was on a demo TFS instance I have not used for a while.

New community build extensions documentation for the RoboCopy activity

Richard Fennell — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 22:24:46 +0000

I have just published some documentation on theTFS2010 community build extensions RoboCopy activity

Updated SharePoint TFS Team Build Activity documentation

Richard Fennell — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:38:40 +0000

I have just published updated documentation on the SharePoint build activity for the Community TFS build extensions.

Fujitsu Stylistic Q550: A Tablet for the Enterprise

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 09:54:41 +0000

Every now and again, whilst I’m away from the office, the gadget pixies visit my desk and leave something interesting for me to play with. It’s a bit like Bagpuss, except stuff works when it arrives and I can never get the guys to wake up when I need them too.

The last time this happened there was a tablet sitting on my desk. I like it enough to write about it.

SharePoint

SharePoint 2007

SharePoint 2010

Access

Web Design

User Experience

Process

The battle of the Lenovo W520 and projectors

Richard Fennell — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:02:42 +0000

My Lenovo W520 is the best laptop I have owned, but I have had one major issue with it, external projectors. The problem is it does not like to duplicate the laptop screen output to a projector, it works fine if extending the desktop, not duplicating.

Every time I have tried to use it with a projector I either end up only showing on the projector and looking over my shoulder, or fiddling for ages until it suddenly works, usually at a low resolution, I don’t know what I did to get to this point so I don’t dare fiddle any more so use it anyway. A bit of a problem given the number of presentations I do. A quick search shows I am not alone in this problem.

Error 0x80070490 when trying to make any purchase on WP7 MarketPlace

Richard Fennell — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 16:37:34 +0000

Recently I have had a problem with my LG E900 Windows Phone 7 running Mango. Whenever I try to make a purchase on marketplace I was getting the error “There has been a problem completing your request. Try again later” and seeing the error code 0x80070490. A search on the web, asking around everyone I thought might have an answer and placing a question on Microsoft Answers got me no where.

Streaming video to XBOX 360 from Windows Home Server 2011

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:16:22 +0000

This one threw me for a while and I could find nothing specific on the web. I wanted to use my Xbox 360 to watch video streamed from my Windows Home Server. Streaming is switched on by default, I hear you say. Why, yes it is, but each time I tried to connect the Xbox I received an error.

The solution? Enable the Guest account on the server. Do this with care – revoke it’s access to everything except the folders you want to stream unless you want to allow read access to everything on the server.

When you forget to save a word document

Richard Fennell — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:33:05 +0000

We have all done it, opened Word typed all morning, not bothering to save the file as we go along and then for some mad reason exited Word say you did not want to save. So you loose the mornings work.

Now we know that Word does an auto save, but if you are stupid enough to say yes on exit without saving how do you get the auto backup file? Does Word even keep a backup if you never saved the file for the first time?

My experiences moving to BlogEngine.NET

Richard Fennell — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:16:00 +0000

Background

I have recently moved this blog server from using Community Server 2007 (CS2007) to BlogEngine.NET.

We started blogging in 2004 using .Text, moving through the free early versions of Community Server then purchased Community Server Small Business edition in 2007. This cost a few hundred pounds. We recently decided that we had to bring this service up to date, if for no other reason, to patch the underling ASP.NET system up to date. We checked how much it would cost to bring Community Server to the current version and were shocked by the cost, many thousands of dollars. Telligent, the developers, have moved to only servicing enterprise customers, they have no small business offering. So we needed to find a new platform.

Fundaments of planning your beautiful SharePoint web site

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:03:23 +0000

This article is all about preparation. It’s about the thinking and planning you need to do if you’re going to successfully build your wonderful, unique and striking website on the SharePoint platform.

I’ve been helping customers implement SharePoint solutions for quite a while. Life gets interesting when those customers want to use SharePoint to host their public website or an intranet of published content. SharePoint is a great platform with a host of powerful features that make it a solid choice for large or complex websites, sites that have to deal with large volumes of traffic or simply sites that need real business processes wrapped around the publishing model. Much of my time in these scenarios is spent helping the customer prepare and plan, and I’d like to share some of my experience.

Problems starting the User Profile Synchronisation Service on Servers prepared from VMware templates

Andrew Davidson — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:14:00 +0000

At a recent installation engagement a colleague and I were (un)fortunate to come across provisioned servers in a VMware environment. We installed SharePoint 2010 quite happily and were configuring until we came to the User Profile Service. No matter what we appeared to try the service would refuse to start. After much hunting around we found out that the User Profile service relies on the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Co-Ordinator to work.

Displaying a SharePoint 2010 library on a page in a different site within the same site collection

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:51:30 +0000

One of our customers contacted us the other day with a problem. They wanted to put a view of a document library that was located in the top level site of a site collection onto the landing pages of all the second level sites in that collection. The customer had consulted the internet hive mind and found a blog post with instructions which had been diligently followed and yet whenever a user clicked ‘New’ on the ribbon bar an error occurred.

Starting the Document Conversion and Load Balancer Service and Document Conversion Launcher Service on SharePoint 2010 using PowerShell

Andrew Davidson — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 11:22:00 +0000

During my training in SharePoint I’ve been tasked with scripting an install of SharePoint. I know that there are other installers out there, but I wanted to learn as much as I could about installing it the ‘hard’ way. I had most of my 2 server farm installed and working without touching the GUI once. (Well OK, just once – but I haven’t worked my way around that yet!)

In all of the Installer routines I found on the internet there wasn’t one that documented starting the pair of Document Conversion… services. So I had a try myself. Starting the first service, the Document Conversions Load Balancer Service wasn’t too hard. I simply issued*

Starting the Document Conversion and Load Balancer Service and Document Conversion Launcher Service on SharePoint 2010 using PowerShell

Andrew Davidson — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 11:22:00 +0000

Black Marble’s blog server has changed platform to blogengine.net

Richard Fennell — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 09:45:00 +0000

Hopefully you should not notice, but we have moved this Blog Server from using Community Server 2007 to BlogEngine.NET. We have been busy bring over all the content so any search should still return the same page, but it might take a few days.

I will be posting on my experiences as soon as I have my notes sorted.

THE MAIN CHANGE YOU MIGHT SEE IS THAT THE BM-BLOGGERS AGGREGRATE FEED HAS MOVED TO http://blogs.blackmarble.co.uk/blogs/syndication.axd

The Agenda for the Architecture Forum in the North

Linda Hogg — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 14:56:00 +0000

Eagerly anticipating our Architecture Forum in the North – now in its fourth year! Taking place on 8 December here in Yorkshire, it is shaping up to be a great day!

We have a great range of speakers lined up and this is a sample of what you can expect from some of the Microsoft Speakers:

Andrew Fryer – Technical Evangelist in Microsoft DPE - All SQL, No SQL, Some SQL

The trusty old relational database has been around for forty odd years, but will it survive another forty and if so in what form. In this session we’ll look at how the demands of modern business are changing the what and how of data management.

Seasons Greetings! And the Return of the Black Marble Brigade

Linda Hogg — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:02:01 +0000

We love Christmas at Black Marble and our Black Marble Christmas Adventure has already begun – please follow the adventure online to find out what peril has befallen Santa this time, and how the team can save him!

Our website has it’s Christmas style on - and our office is decorated from top to bottom! Advent calendars are everywhere too

We need to teach children computer science

Richard Fennell — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 11:14:44 +0000

The Today programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning had a section on children not being taught computer science. so says a variety of employers who cannot find the staff they need. It seems entry to Computer Sciences degrees has been dropping over the years and the current ICT course at school are to blame.

I was at school in the first generation to get access to computers. I did Computer Sciences O level (1982 I think, it is a while ago) and we learnt about flowcharts, CPU, memory and programmed in BASIC on a teletype and sent 5 hole punch paper tape off to a local Polytechnic for processing and a week or so later got back a printout saying error on line 10 (and my staff today complain about their slow PCs!). During the course we did at least move onto a Tandy TRS80 so it did get a bit more immediate.

Windows Phone 7 not synchronising Outlook

Richard Fennell — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:22:23 +0000

I had a problem with my LG E900 WP7 phone over the weekend, Outlook stopped synchronising with our office Exchange server.

It started when I got back from a trip Ireland. My phone switched back from roaming and started to use 3G for data again, as opposed to WIFI. Also over the weekend we had a connectivity problem from the office to the Internet so for a while I could not connect to any of our services from any device. However, even after both these things were sorted my Outlook still failed to sync, it said it was in sync but showed no new email since Friday when it was disconnected from my Irish ISP based MIFI in Ireland. No errors were shown. I waited until I got back to the office and tried a sync via our internal WIFI, all to no effect.

Working with Hyper-V, VLAN tags and TFS 2010 Lab Management

Richard Fennell — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 15:45:25 +0000

I did a post at the start of the year about Lab management and VLAN tags, how they are not supported, but you can work around the problems. Over the past few months we have split our old Hyper-V cluster into one for production and one for test/lab development. This gave our IT team a chance to look at the VLAN problem again.

So a quick reminder of the issue – the deployment tools in Lab management that create environments provide no means to set a VLAN tag for any networks connections they create. Once an environment is created you can manually set a VLAN tag, but it is all a bit of a pain and certainly unsupported.

Typemock Isolator 6.2 released–now with TFS2010 build support

Richard Fennell — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:00:03 +0000

Typemock have recently released a new version of Isolator, 6.2. As well as the usual fixes and enhancements you would expect, this is the first version to support TFS 2010 team build out the box.

Prior to this release Typemock supported MSBuild based TFS builds (2005/2008) but not the Windows Workflow based version in TFS 2010. The issue was that in TFS 2010 builds it was possible for build steps to run in parallel, maybe on different build agent PCs, so you could not guarantee that Typemock Isolator was intercepting the correct threads. You could call the MSBuild tasks to enable the mocking interception, as in 2005/2008) it was just that they did not work in practice on 2010.

Black Marble at the Abbey Dash in Leeds

Richard Fennell — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 10:36:03 +0000

We got a good turn out of Black Marble staff at this years Age UK Abbey Dash 10K in Leeds. We were amongst over 8000 runners who turned out for a cool and foggy Yorkshire Sunday morning run.

We had a handicap race amongst ourselves, using a wisdom of crowds poll to estimate everyone target time. This was won by Steve Spencer our Development Director. He beat his target by 20 minutes. I am not sure whether this says more about his fitness or our staff’s opinion of him!

More experiences upgrading my Media Center to receive Freeview HD

Richard Fennell — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 11:47:25 +0000

In my post experiences upgrading my Media Center to receive Freeview HD I said I thought the reason my Windows 7 Media Center was hanging at the "TV signal configuration” step was down to using mixed tuner cards. Well my second PCTV nanoStick T2.arrived yesterday so I was able to try the same process with a pair of identical USB T2 tuners.

Guess what? I got the same problem!

However, being USB devices it mean I could test the tuners on my laptop, a Lenovo W520 (Core i7, 16Gb, Windows 7). So I plugged them both in, they found drivers from the web automatically, I ran Media Center, select setup the TV signal and……. it worked! A few worrying pauses here and there, but it got there in about an hour.

Access denied when running a command with InvokeProcess in a TFS team build

Richard Fennell — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:33:37 +0000

When you are trying to run a command line tool via the InvokeProcess activity in a TFS 2010 Team build you might see the somewhat confusing ‘Access denied’ error. There appears to be no more detail in the log.

I have found that this is usually down to a type on the filename property of the activity.

It should be set to something like

“c:my toolstool.exe”

but is actually set to

Black Marble events for the remainder of 2011 and into 2012

Richard Fennell — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:55:28 +0000

Whilst I have been on holiday Black Marble have announced some new events and this time they are not just in the UK, we have a couple in our new Dublin office location. The programme up to new year is:

17 Nov 2011 (Holiday Inn Leeds/Bradford)
- Am - [Delivering High Impact WebSites with SharePoint](http://www.blackmarble.com/events.aspx?event=Delivering High Impact WebSites with SharePoint) SharePoint 2010 creates a dynamic and striking internet experience for your users.
- Pm - [A Guide to Successfully Adopting the Cloud for IT Managers](http://www.blackmarble.com/events.aspx?event=A Guide to Successfully Adopting the Cloud for IT Managers) This session will be exploring the business value of cloud computing with Microsoft Windows Azure.
30 Nov 2011 (Black Marble office Cleckheaton)
- Am- [TFS for the small team – hosted in the cloud](http://www.blackmarble.com/events.aspx?event=TFS for the small team – hosted in the cloud) I’m doing this one and I will be talking about the hosted version of TFS, its UI, the new features it exposed from TFS vNext.
6 Dec 2011 (Dublin)
- Am - [The Right Tools for your Application Lifecycle](http://www.blackmarble.com/events.aspx?event=The Right Tools for your Application Lifecycle) This session will discuss how this Application Lifecycle Management process can be managed, and what are the right tools to do that – Visual Studio Team Foundation Server.
- Pm - [An Afternoon of Windows 8](http://www.blackmarble.com/events.aspx?event=An Afternoon of Windows 8) Following the fanfare, what is there in Windows 8 for developers and the IT professional?
8 Dec 2011 (Holiday Inn Leeds/Bradford)
- All day - [Architecture Forum in the North 4](http://www.blackmarble.com/events.aspx?event=Architecture Forum in the North 4) The top Microsoft Architecture Forum in the UK returns for its fourth year.
26 Jan 2012 (Holiday Inn Leeds/Bradford)
- Am - [Black Marbles Annual Technical Update for Microsoft Technologies – 2012](http://www.blackmarble.com/events.aspx?event=Black Marbles Annual Technical Update for Microsoft Technologies - 2012) Return of our roadmap for all things Microsoft!
- Pm - [Implementing the Secure Development Lifecycle in your ALM Process](http://www.blackmarble.com/events.aspx?event=Implementing the Secure Development Lifecycle in your ALM Process) A look at how implementing Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) into your development process can improve quality, reliability and long-term maintainability.

Hope to see you at some of these events, I won’t be at all of them due to client commitments, shame I enjoy doing these.

Experiences upgrading my Media Center to receive Freeview HD

Richard Fennell — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:23:17 +0000

[Update: Also so More experiences upgrading my Media Center to receive Freeview HD]

I have used a Windows Media Center as my only means to watch TV for about 5 years; upgrading over the years from XP to Vista and onto Windows 7.

![Picture of Windows Media Center](http://res1.windows.microsoft.com/resbox/en/Windows 7/main/9b3f877b-eaad-494e-a4ab-938576edf074_60.jpg "Picture of Windows Media Center")

I am a completely hooked on the ease of use, especially if you just want a means to watch and record Freeview (the UK free to air terrestrial service). Far easier UI than any Freeview PVR I have seen, and I personally think easier than Sky+ box (satellite) or Virgin’s Tivo (cable) though I don’t have much experience of these device (and they do look a bit of a pain to integrate with Media Center, but they are not really designed for that)

No error detail when using VMPrep

Richard Fennell — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:28:55 +0000

When using VMPrep to setup a VM for use in a Lab Management system I got the error cross at the bottom of the dialog

Not too much help, usually there is a link to the log file or a message.

If you look in the log file in c:user[name]AppdataRoamingLMInstaller.txt you see that the path to the Patches folder is invalid.

This is fixed by editing the VMPrepToolVMPrepToolLibraryApplications.XML file and correcting the path (which I had made a typo in)

Speaking at a Black Marble event on TFS on Azure

Richard Fennell — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 11:12:33 +0000

I will be speaking at a [Black Marble event on the 30th November on the new TFS vNext announcements for TFS on Azure](http://www.blackmarble.com/events.aspx?event=TFS for the small team – hosted in the cloud). Though this event is target as hosted TFS, I will be doing demos of the new web based UI for agile project management in TFS that is common across all VNext versions.

Hope to see you there

Using Nuget and TFS Build 2010

Richard Fennell — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 10:38:02 +0000

At one of our recent events I was asked if I had any experience using Nuget within a TFS 2010 build. At the time I had not, but I thought it worth a look.

For those of you who don’t know Nuget is a package manager that provides a developer with a way to manage assembly references in a project for assemblies that are not within their solution. It is most commonly used to manage external commonly used assemblies such a nHibernate or JQuery but you can also use it manage your own internal shared libraries.

Zune Lament

Robert Hogg — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 10:13:01 +0000

Well it looks like Microsoft has killed off the Zune Hardware, although only available in the US, many of us had Zune’s. I have to say the Zune devices are/were great.

if Microsoft have decided not to make the hardware, it must be said it puzzles me why they don’t license the software to other vendors, a model I think they might already be quite familiar.

so come on Microsoft find it in your hearts to rescue this rather wonderful bit of kit and maybe make some money with some great hardware vendors.

Developers Guide To AppFabric (free)

Robert Hogg — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 08:50:36 +0000

My great friend Alan Smith has recently released a really great guide to AppFabric, Alan is well known for his BizTalk Bloggers guide and I expect that this volume will enjoy as much if not more success.

The guide is well written and comprehensive, saying that my understanding is that Alan plans to keep updating it over time.

if you are into AppFabric at all get it here

You can still sign up for DDDNorth tomorrow

Richard Fennell — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 12:03:29 +0000

Registration is still open for tomorrow’s event so if your weekend has just become free why not come along?

Documentation for the PowerShell activity in the TFS Community Build Extensions published

Richard Fennell — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 20:43:26 +0000

I have just published documentation for the PowerShell activity in the TFS Community Build extensions. This opens up a whole range of possibilities for your build process. Off to look at using it for SharePoint deployment now…..

Seeing loads of ‘cannot load load assemblies’ errors when editing a TFS 2010 build process workflow

Richard Fennell — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 11:47:46 +0000

I have been following the process in the ALM Rangers build guide and in the Community Build Extensions to edit a build process workflow. Now I am sure this process was working until recently on my PC (but we all say that don’t we!), but of late I have found that when the .XAML workflow is loaded into Visual Studio I see loads of warning icons. If I check the list of imported namespaces many of them also have warning icons which if the icons are clicked they say the assembly cannot be found.

Empty groups not being expanded in a combobox for a TFS work item

Richard Fennell — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 11:41:40 +0000

A common work item type (WIT) edit in TFS is to limit the list of names shown in a combo to the users assigned to the project i.e. the members of the Team Projects Contributors and Project Administrators groups.

This is done by editing the WIT either via your favourite XML editor or the Process Template Editor (part of the power tools). You edit the Allowedvalues for the field you wish to limit such as the Assigned To as shown below,

Tempted by the new Kindle?

Richard Fennell — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 15:32:58 +0000

I am back on the should I buy a Kindle train of thought. Todays announcements are certainly interesting, I am not talking so much about the new Kindle Fire, but the new entry level version and the Touch. For me the tempting feature is still the E-Ink and battery life.

The point is I have got used to reading on my phone, a Kindle might be easier on the eye, but it is more kit to carry, and I just don’t think I want to carry any more things.

Can we Build-IT?

Linda Hogg — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 21:34:30 +0000

Black Marble’s Robert Hogg, Steve Spencer and Rik Hepworth flew all the way to Anaheim in California in order to bring you the highlights and key announcements around Windows 8!

On 12 October, at The Holiday Inn in Yorkshire, we will bring our take on the news for IT Professionals in the morning, and for developers in the afternoon.

Come for the whole day – a great lunch is provided!

Just posted VirtualPC activity documentation for TFS 2010 Community Build Extensions

Richard Fennell — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 14:18:47 +0000

I have just posted new VirtualPC activity documentation for TFS 2010 Community Build Extensions. This has been a really nasty set of documentation to write as getting this activity running raises a lot of issues over COM security; thanks to Rik and Andy (our SharePoint specialists at Black Marble who are therefore used to COM problems!) who helped get to the bottom the issues.

The best thing I can say about this VirtualPC activity (and I wrote much of it) is don’t use it. Much better to use the Hyper-V one it is far more flexible, allowing control of remotely hosted VMs, or even better use TFS Lab Management

Upcoming Black Marble event on Windows 8

Richard Fennell — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 10:09:08 +0000

In case you did not make it to the Microsoft Build Conference, Black Marble are running a pair of free events in Leeds on the 12th of October on Windows 8 and the other announcements made in Anaheim earlier this month.

The morning session is focused on the IT pro side and the afternoon on development, so why not make a day of it?

To get more information, and to register for these free events, have a look at http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/Events

Syncing the build number and assembly version numbers in a TFS build when using the TFSVersion activity

Richard Fennell — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:42:00 +0000

Updated 27 July 2013 - Here is a potential solution

Update 27 Sep 2011 – this seemed such as good idea when I initially tried it out, but after more testing I see changing the build number part way through a build causes problems. The key one being that when you queue the next build it is issued the same revision number [the $(Rev:.r) in the BuildNumberFormat] as the just completed build, this will fail with the error

Video of my Webinar for Typemock is available

Richard Fennell — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 09:26:59 +0000

The video of my recent webinar for Typemock on using Isolator for designing SharePoint webparts is up at http://www.typemock.com/sharepoint-web-parts

You can also find a link to it from http://bit.ly/RFennellVideos, as well as links to all the other videos of my presentations I know of that are publically available.

New Release of the Community TFS 2010 Build Extensions

Richard Fennell — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 07:42:15 +0000

Mike Fourie has just announced that we’ve just shipped the second stable release of the Community TFS 2010 Build Extensions. Well worth a look if you need to customised your TFS 2010 build with any of the following

AssemblyInfo
BuildReport
BuildWorkspace
CodeMetric
DateAndTime
Email
File
GetBuildController
GetBuildDefinition
GetBuildServer
GetWebAccessUrl
Guid
Hello
HyperV
IIS7
ILMerge
InvokePowerShellCommand
nUnit
QueueBuild
RoboCop
SqlExecute
StyleCop
TFSVersion
VB6
VirtualPC
VSDevEnv
Wmi
WorkItemTracking
Zip

Follow up to todays Typemock Webinar

Richard Fennell — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:06:38 +0000

Thanks to any one who attended my Typemock Isolator session today, hope you found it useful.

In due course the video will be up on the Typemock site. But of you want to read more on using Isolator with SHarePoint have a look at

Stupid gotchas on a SQL 2008 Reporting Services are why I cannot see the Report Builder Button

Richard Fennell — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:17:22 +0000

There is a good chance if you are using TFS that you will want to create some custom reports. You can write these in Reporting Services via BI Studio or Excel, but I wanted to use Report Builder, but could not see the Report Builder button on this Reporting Services menu

The problem was multi-levelled

First I had to give the user access to the Report Builder. This is done using folder property security. I chose to give this right to a user (along with browser rights) from the root of the reporting services site

Another ALM/TFS focused blogger at Black Marble

Richard Fennell — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 08:36:24 +0000

Robert Hancock, another one of Black Marble’s ALM consultants, has started blog technical tips on this blog server. You can find Robert’s new blog here or the aggregate feed of all Black marble bloggers here

What to do when your TFS build agent says it is ready, but the icon says it is not

Richard Fennell — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 20:10:00 +0000

When using TFS2010 It is possible for a build agent to appear to be ready (or so the status label says) but the icon stays in the off state.

This is usually due to a couple of broad categories of error, you can find out which by checking the Windows event log.

The build agent cannot communicate with the controller

In the event log you see something like

TFS on Windows Azure preview announced at Build

Richard Fennell — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 20:59:48 +0000

At the Build conference today the preview of TFS on Windows Azure was announced. All the attendees of the conference have been given access codes for the preview. If you did not make it to Build have a look at Brian Harry’s blog for details of how everyone else can get access to the preview.

Bitlocker keeps asking for my recovery key after a change in my disk’s MBR

Richard Fennell — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:40:34 +0000

My development laptop is bitlocker’ed, and yours should be too. It provides a great and non-invasive way (assuming you have a TPM chip) to protect you and your clients data on a machine that is far to easy to steal or loose. However, whilst fiddling with Windows 8 I did trip myself up.

I have my PC setup for a boot to Windows 7 from a bitlocker’ed drive C with a non bitlocker’d drive D used to boot to Windows 2008 for demos (and hence no production data). To try out Windows 8 I added a new boot device, a boot from VHD partition. This edited the PC’s master boot record (MBR) and bitlocker did not like it. It thought the PC had a root kit or something similar to prompted me to enter a my bitlocker recovery key (which is 48 characters long) when I tried to boot to Windows 7. However, once this is done my bitlocker’ed Windows 7 partition worked find, but on each reboot I had to type the key in, bit of pain. Removing the new VHD boot entry did not help, the MBR has still be edited, so bitlocker complained

First try with Windows8 and it won’t boot (updated with notes on a solution)

Richard Fennell — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:16:28 +0000

I tried to install Windows 8 Developer Preview on my Lenovo W520 laptop as a VHD boot. All seemed to go well following the same process as for windows 7. I got a nice new blue Window 8 boot partition choice screen (which went back to the Windows 7 DOS like one after I made Windows 7 my default partition).

If I selected Windows 8 it tried to but but ended up with the error

Why can’t I see my custom work item types in Team Explorer?

Richard Fennell — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:40:21 +0000

If you are editing a TFS process template you have the choice editing XML files or using the Process Template Editor within the TFS 2010 PowerTools. Unfortunately neither is fool proof. You can make errors than means the revised template does not fully work.

The worst of these errors will be picked up when upload the process template to a Team project Collection as during this process the XML is validated.

Bradford the centre of all scientific advance (at least this week)

Richard Fennell — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 10:23:00 +0000

Over the weekend I took my son to the excellent ‘Bang goes the Theory’ Live road show which is part of the Festival of Science in Bradford. If a similar event is near you I recommend you go along, fun for all the family even if science is not really your thing. The whole event makes the subject very accessible to all.

Even if I had not known this was on I might have guessed something as afoot in Bradford as virtually every Radio 4 news program has had a short article on some new scientific advance from Bradford University. Today a lie detector using facial analysis and a new cancer treatment to name just the ones I remember. Now I went to Bradford and I know it is world leader in biomedical science, but I do wonder if they have been saving press released to get the biggest bang. Or is it the BBC and other media outlets are in Bradford at the festival so it is easy to get Bradford stories?

‘Expected to find an element’ error when running VS2010 Database unit tests

Richard Fennell — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 22:31:00 +0000

If you use the database unit testing feature of VS2010 there is a good chance you will want to run these tests on more than one PC and probably the build server. The issue is that these different PC will need different deployment paths and SQL connection strings. Luckily there is a feature to address this, as detailed on MSDN. Basically the test runner swaps in a different config file based on either the PC name or user running the tests.

Registration has opened for Black Marble’s Autumn Events 2011

Richard Fennell — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 14:04:57 +0000

If you look on the Black Marble web site you will find listing of the free events we are running up to the end of the year and into the new year. This year our events include

12 Oct 2011

[Re-Build – IT
](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Re-Build - IT)[Re-Build – Dev](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Re-Build - Dev)

Black Marble will bring you the key announcements and developments from Microsoft Build about Windows 8

17 Nov 2011

[Delivering High Impact WebSites with SharePoint](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Delivering High Impact WebSites with SharePoint)

Update on using Typemock Isolator to allow webpart development without a Sharepoint server

Richard Fennell — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 21:56:01 +0000

I have in the past posted about developing SharePoint web parts without having to use a SharePoint server by using Typemock Isolator. This technique relies on using Cassini or IIS Express as the web server to host the aspx page that in turn contains the webpart. This is all well and good for SharePoint 2007, but we get a problem with SharePoint 2010 which seems to be due to 32/64bit issues.

Doing a webinar on using Typemock Isolator with SharePoint Webparts

Richard Fennell — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 13:50:52 +0000

I am doing a free webinar on Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 3:00 PM BST with the title "Using Typemock Isolator to speed the development of SharePoint Web Parts".

For more details have a look at http://www.typemock.com/webinars the details should be up soon

#DDDNorth registration has opened

Richard Fennell — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 12:14:15 +0000

The agenda is up for DDDNorth, seems .JS related subjects are the fashionable topics for this conference. As I suspected my session on build customisation did not make the cut, just not cool enough!

As with all DDD events the event is free, but the place tend to go quickly. I think this DDD has 300 spaces so I suggest you register quickly to avoid disappointment

Verifying non–public methods have been called using Typemock Isolator in VB.Net

Richard Fennell — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 21:30:00 +0000

I am currently writing some training material for a client on mocking showing how life is so much easier if software is designed with testing in mind. As part of this material I showing that though we aim for nice design patterns which allow testing we have to deal with legacy systems that were not designed this way. However, there are tools that allow us to write unit tests for poorly designed (with testing in mind) legacy systems, specifically Typemock Isolator. Using Isolator means we can write tests that we can use to make sure the code is not broken whilst refactoring to new structures.

You can vote now for sessions at #dddnorth

Richard Fennell — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 10:43:39 +0000

Session voting has opened at DDD North, vote for what you would like to see at the conference in October

Problem setting an email alert for the TFS 2010 Power Tools backup

Richard Fennell — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 20:15:54 +0000

One of the very useful features of the TFS 2010 Power Tools is that it provides a backup wizard, great for teams using TFS who don’t have much SQL/IT Pro experience. Whist setting this up on a server I hit an interesting gotta with sending alerts.

This TFS server in question was configured to enable SMTP alerting (via the TFS Administration Console)

and this was working

During the backup configuration wizard you have the option to be send email if the backup job fails. The SMTP details are picked up from the TFS servers SMTP alert settings. When I enter a TO: email address and pressed the test button I got an error

TF80070 when loading a team query in MS Project

Richard Fennell — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 15:50:04 +0000

I create a number of task work items in TFS 2010 using a list in Excel. This all appeared to work OK, and I could run a work item query in Team Explorer and see all my new work items. However then I tried to open the work item query in Project I got a TF80070 error. It loaded the work items up a point in the list then failed and showed error dialog.

One week left to submit a session for DDDNorth

Richard Fennell — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 09:08:59 +0000

Any session submissions for DDDNorth have to be in by Friday the 26th.

Go on you must have something you want to talk about……..

New release of TFS 2010 Power Tools

Richard Fennell — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 16:41:17 +0000

The latest set of TFS 2010 power tools are out, well worth updating if you are using the March release, and if not using any version a definite install.

There are major update across the board, summary details can be found on Brian Harry’s blog. With the main release note and download on Visual Studio Gallery

Windows search not starting, making itself disabled on a reboot

Richard Fennell — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 10:15:43 +0000

Since I got my new laptop I have had a problem that the Windows Search services in Windows 7 keeps setting itself to be Disabled whenever I restart the the PC. I usually notice this when I try to do a search in Outlook and I have to press enter in the search box to start a search, it is not matching emails as soon as I start to type.

New TFS 2010 Community TFS Build Extension documentation – nUnit

Richard Fennell — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 08:17:00 +0000

I have just posted new ‘how to use it 101’ documentation for the nUnit activity on the community extensions site.

New TFS 2010 Community TFS Build Extension documentation – TFSVersion

Richard Fennell — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 20:40:00 +0000

I have just posted new ‘how to use it 101’ documentation for the TFSVersion activity on the community extensions site.

Where has my mouse cursor done? Unable to record a video in Microsoft Test Manager

Richard Fennell — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 14:13:20 +0000

MTM has the feature that you can use Expression Media Encoder 4 to record the test run as a video. To enable this feature, after you install MTM, you have to install the basic version of Expression Encoder, and a few patches see notes here for a list of files and the process.

I recently did this on PC and tried to record a video. As soon as the recording process started the PC virtually stopped. It ran to 50%+ load on a dual core 2.3GHz CPU and the mouse disappeared. As soon as I stopped MTM (via task manager and the keyboard alone) it became responsive again. If I ran MTM without a video recording it was fine. Should be noted that if I ran the Expression Encoder (not via MTM) I got the same problem.

More on using the StyleCop TFS 2010 Build Activity– handling settings files

Richard Fennell — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 16:00:46 +0000

In a recent build I wanted a bit more control over rules used by StyleCop; in the past I have just tended to have the correct ruleset in the Program FilesStyleCop directory and be done with that. This time I wanted to make sure different rules were associated with different given solutions.

The StyleCop build activity does allow for this; there is a property to set the path to the settings file. In my build process template I set this property as below, via an assignment activity

Do you find editing TFS Build Process Templates slow?

Richard Fennell — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 13:41:53 +0000

… of course you do.

Microsoft have today released a patch to improve performance and reliability of workflow designer which should help with the Build Process Template design surface.

See Buck Hodges blog for details

Still time to propose sessions for DDDNorth

Richard Fennell — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 13:12:55 +0000

It is great to see a good wide selection of proposed sessions for DDDNorth, many from new speakers to the DDD events, which is always nice to see.

There is still time for you to get involved and propose a session. Go on you know you want to….

Cumulative update package 3 for BizTalk Server 2009

Robert Hogg — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 08:37:54 +0000

Microsoft have just released CU3 for BizTalk Server 2009 get it here , it contains a bunch of fixes. Installation is straightforward (stop the services, install and reboot)

Zune HD (still going)

Robert Hogg — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 23:57:22 +0000

On the long road to Windows Phone 7, Zune and Zune HD laid a solid foundation, now in many peoples eyes these really excellent devices have been side-lined. I must admit being somewhat fond of my(now my daughters) Zune HD.

But this week a new set of free games and tools have been launched for the Zune HD adding just a bit more life to the platform.

Go to your Zune Desktop, plug your Zune in and look for the new apps and games

Where do I find the product key for Team Explorer Everywhere?

Richard Fennell — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:23:27 +0000

When TEE is installed you have to provide a product key if you do not wish to run it in 90 day trial mode. Those of you used to using MSDN Subscriber downloads would guess you press the Key button next to the Download button and a product will be provided. However this is not the case, all you get is the message the product does not require a key.

Linking a TFS work item to a specific version of a document in SharePoint

Richard Fennell — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 13:39:49 +0000

SharePoint in my opinion is a better home for a Word or Visio requirements document than TFS. You can use all the SharePoint document workspace features to allow collaboration in the production of the document. When you have done enough definition to create your projects user stories or requirement then you can create them in TFS using whatever client you wish e.g. Visual Studio, Excel, Project etc.

You can add a Hyperlink from each of these work items back to the SharePoint hosted document they relate to, so you still retain the single version of the source document. The thing to note here is that you don’t have to link to the last version of the document. If SharePoint’s revision control is enabled for the document library you can refer to any stored version. Thus allowing the specification document to continue evolving for future releases whilst the development team are still able to reference the specific version their requirements are based on.

DDD in t’North

Richard Fennell — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:54:55 +0000

It was announced at DDDSW that there will be a DDD event on the 8th October 2011 in Sunderland, DDD North. As of today, session submission is now open. Why not proposes one yourself?

More tips and tricks using my Typemock custom build activity with TFS 2010 build

Richard Fennell — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:54:38 +0000

Every time I add the Typemock Isolator custom activity to a TFS 2010 build I learn something new that eases the process. In the past I have posted on the basic process to get the activity into your build, and I would also draw your attention to the ALM rangers guide to build customisation, which provides loads of useful information on this front.

Today, when I added the activity to a build I made the following improvements to the settings to make life a bit easier. This build is one used wildcard scanning for assemblies containing test with a test configuration file (this is the red usage in the documentation, it will make sense if you read the documentation)

More on running multiple TFS build controllers on a single VM

Richard Fennell — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 15:05:02 +0000

I have been having a on-going project to run multiple build controllers on a single VM. Today I needed to reconfigure a on of the controllers to point at a different TPC. You have to do this the correct way to avoid problems.

My error log was full of

_Http communication failure:
_Exception Message: Cannot listen on pipe name 'net.pipe://build/ServiceHost/1' because another pipe endpoint is already listening on that name. (type AddressAlreadyInUseException)

WP7 update fails when using laptop docking station, works when direct to laptop

Richard Fennell — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 15:55:18 +0000

When I plugged my WP7 LG-E900 today it told me there was a update. When I tried to install this it failed, twice. So I changed USB cable and plugged it directly into a port on my laptop, not my usually phone syncing cable plugged into my laptops docking station, and it worked.

So not sure if it a USB cable quality issue, or a USB port issue, just something to remember.

WP7 update fails when using laptop docking station, works when direct to laptop

Richard Fennell — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 15:55:18 +0000

So not sure if it a USB cable quality issue, or a USB port issue, just something to remember.

Follow up to last nights session on mocking

Richard Fennell — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 11:17:10 +0000

Thanks to everyone who came to my session at NxtGen in Southampton last night, and congratulation to the people who won Typemock Isolator licenses kindly provided by Typemock.

The session was meant to be based on TDD and Mocking, quite a big subject for 90 minutes. I of course had to gloss over some areas that are interesting around the edges of this subject. As I mentioned there are videoes of related sessions on this blog; also here are links on other subjects I touched on…

The community - a route to free training

Richard Fennell — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:21:15 +0000

I presented last night at the West Yorkshire BCS and received a number of comments that it was great to see free training being available. This for me is one of the most important areas of our community, and an area we are very lucky with. There are plenty of opportunities to access knowledge…..

Of late we have seen that the big vendor conferences (such as Microsoft’s TechEd, PDC and MIX) and the platform independent developer conferences (such as NDC) streaming their sessions live for free and also have their sessions available for free download within a few days. Microsoft’ Channel 9 is also an excellent resource of conference sessions and specially made material on a vast range of subjects from language design to scheduling of the buses on Microsoft campus. Or if you prefer to listen to something whist your drive why not try the .Net Rocks podcast. There are plenty more specialist resources out there on the web.

Solution to ‘Missing requirement: Shared profile 1.0.0.1308118925849’ error when installation TEE SP1 on Eclipse Indigo

Richard Fennell — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 19:16:00 +0000

[Updated 1 mar 2012 - This should only effect you if Eclipse is unzipped into your 'c:program files' folder structure)

During my new laptop build I have had to reinstall Eclipse, so I took the chance to upgrade to the Indigo release. When I tried to install the TFS 2010 Team Explorer Everywhere SP1 plug-in I got the error

Cannot complete the install because one or more required items could not be found.
Software currently installed: Shared profile 1.0.0.1308118925849 (SharedProfile_epp.package.java 1.0.0.1308118925849)
Missing requirement: Shared profile 1.0.0.1308118925849 (SharedProfile_epp.package.java 1.0.0.1308118925849) requires 'org.maven.ide.eclipse [1.0.0.20110607-2117]' but it could not be found

Lenovo W520 – one week on

Richard Fennell — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 10:00:00 +0000

I have had my Lenovo W520 a week now and must say I am very happy with it. I am still hitting the wrong keys a good deal of the time, the only problem being the Fn and Ctrl keys are reversed in position from my old Acer, it is a good job Fn-V and Fn-C does nothing dangerous!.

The keyboard is very nice to type on, a far more solid feel than any previous laptop I have had.

Moving a VHD boot disk to Hyper-V

Richard Fennell — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 10:30:14 +0000

I have just replaced my old Acer laptop with a rather nice Lenovo W520. This has plenty of memory and is able to run Hyper-V. In the past for TFS demos I had used boot from VHD to boot the Acer into Windows 2K8, as the Acer could not run Hyper-V due to lack of hardware virtualisation support in the bios. So I had a fully configured VHD boot what I wanted to move to Hyper-V.

Speaking at usergroups in Leeds and Southampton

Richard Fennell — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 10:39:24 +0000

Next week I am speaking at:

The West Yorkshire BCS on “Application Lifecycle Management - supporting the software development process from inception to retirement” , Wednesday 20 July 2011, 6.30pm (refreshments available from 5.45pm) at NTI Leeds, Old Broadcasting House, 148 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, LS2 9EN.

and

NxtGen Southampton on “TDD & Mocking, a love affair”, Thursday, July 21, 2011 , 7pm, St Andrew's Hall, Avenue St Andrew's URC, SOUTHAMPTON, SO17 1XQ

Workaround to connect to a TFS Lab Environment from outside a TMG firewall

Richard Fennell — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 11:56:39 +0000

Whist on the road I have had need to access our Lab Management system via our TMG firewall through which we expose our TFS 2010 for remote users (via SSL). When I load Microsoft Tests Manager (MTM) I can connect to the TFS server, as expected, and go into ‘Lab Center’ mode. I can see my project’s environment and can start, stop and deploy them without issue (all communication routed via our TFS server). However the MTM environment viewer fails to make a connection to the test VMs in the environments.

TF30162: Task "BuildTask" from Group "Build" failed – when creating a team project

Richard Fennell — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 11:00:50 +0000

When trying to create a new Team Project on my test TFS 2010 basic installation I got the error

Time: 2011-07-05T11:43:36
Module: Engine
Event Description: TF30162: Task "BuildTask" from Group "Build" failed
Exception Type: Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.PcwException
Exception Message: Multiple identities found matching workspace name 'TYPHOONfbb296e15246421e9fc8d25e9d128512typhoon (VC)' and owner name 'BLACKMARBLEfez'. Please specify one of the following workspace specs:
TYPHOONfbb296e15246421e9fc8d25e9d128512typhoon (VC);BLACKMARBLEfez
TYPHOONfbb296e15246421e9fc8d25e9d128512typhoon (VC);BLACKMARBLEfez
Stack Trace:
   at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamFoundation.Build.ProjectComponentCreator.ExecuteInternal(ProjectCreationContext context, XmlNode taskXml, Boolean validationOnly)
   at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamFoundation.Build.ProjectComponentCreator.Execute(ProjectCreationContext context, XmlNode taskXml)
   at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamFoundation.ProjectCreationEngine.TaskExecutor.PerformTask(IProjectComponentCreator componentCreator, ProjectCreationContext context, XmlNode taskXml)
   at Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamFoundation.ProjectCreationEngine.RunTask(Object taskObj)
--   Inner Exception   --
Exception Message: Multiple identities found matching workspace name 'TYPHOONfbb296e15246421e9fc8d25e9d128512typhoon (VC)' and owner name 'BLACKMARBLEfez'. Please specify one of the following workspace specs:
TYPHOONfbb296e15246421e9fc8d25e9d128512typhoon (VC);BLACKMARBLEfez
TYPHOONfbb296e15246421e9fc8d25e9d128512typhoon (VC);BLACKMARBLEfez (type MultipleWorkspacesFoundException)

First Stable Release of Community TFS 2010 Build Extensions

Richard Fennell — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 09:44:33 +0000

The first stable release of the Community TFS Build Extensions has been shipped. It contains around 100 activities. It is hoped that this project will be be shipping on a 2 to 3 month cycle in the future.

So have a look, this project provides many ways to extend your build process. And if you have ideas for more activities why not contribute?

I’ve been re-awarded as an ALM MVP for 2011

Richard Fennell — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 10:58:19 +0000

I am really pleased to say I have been re-awarded as a Microsoft MVP for Visual Studio ALM for 2011, this is my fourth year. I am looking forwarded to another year of working with such a great crowd of people.

Enterprise Library now with added Silverlight goodness

Robert Hogg — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 22:02:44 +0000

A series of updates are available for Enterprise Library and Unity and a few other bits of general interest

There is an update for the Enterprise Library 5.0 which is only required if you are using the Silverlight Integration Pack and need WCF RIA Services Integration or configuration tool support. get it here

However the most interesting development is a version of the Enterprise Library for Silverlight developers get it here it contains Caching Application Block, Exception Handling Application Block, Logging Application Block, Policy Injection Application Block, Validation Application Block, and Unity Application Block allowing you to develop best practice effectively.

BizTalk General Updates and Updated Resource List

Robert Hogg — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 22:01:40 +0000

New

BizTalk 2009 and Adapter Pack 2.0 as recently had some rollup updates

Cumulative Update Package 1 for BizTalk Server 2009 (KB 2429050) contains 60 fixes get it here

Cumulative Update Package 1 for BizTalk Adapter Pack 2.0 (KB 2444952) contains 11 fixes get it here.

More great news, There is now a poster available for the ESB Toolkit. You can get it here.

for people looking to draw up BizTalk for architecture diagrams, Sandro Pereira has produced a Visio 2010 stencil for BizTalk 2010 get it here

July update

Robert Hogg — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 20:54:45 +0000

I looked back and realised I had missed a few updates to post ( I blame Microsoft for bringing out lots of great things all at once )

Light switch Beta 2 is out get it here, the site now suggests that a July 26th launch date is on the cards

StyleCop 4.5 has now been released get it here , if you haven’t tried StyleCop, its main aim is to help deliver standards of code style and standards across an organisation, but it is in fact a perfect pair to FxCop (see the Windows 7.1 .net 4.0 SDK) as FxCop analyses binaries , StyleCop analyses source code.

Todays ISV event at Microsoft UK

Richard Fennell — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 20:42:39 +0000

Thanks to everyone who came today’s ISV session at TVP.

You can find all the slides from the event at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ukisvdev/archive/2011/06/27/slides-and-links-from-alm-and-visual-studio-2010-event-on-the-27th-june-2010.aspx

Microsoft UK Techdays video’s available

Richard Fennell — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 11:42:05 +0000

The videos from the various Microsoft UK Techdays events can now be viewed at the UK TechDays site. This includes my session on ‘Virtualisation of the Test Environment’ and the joint one I did with James Mann on the new experience for developing SharePoint solutions in VS2010 from the Leeds event.

Speaking at Microsoft UK next week

Richard Fennell — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 10:19:07 +0000

I will be speaking at Microsoft UK’s ‘Application Lifecycle Management for Independent Software Vendors’ event next Monday. I am one of four speakers, between us well all address a variety of subjects within ALM

Modern Software Delivery: The continuous delivery of high quality software - Colin Bird
Driving Quality Throughout the Application Lifecycle - Richard Erwin
Extending Testing into the Lab - Richard Fennell
The Secrets of Repeatable Success - Adam Gilmore

I believe there are still spaces available

More from the ALM Rangers - Lab Management Guide

Richard Fennell — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 20:45:00 +0000

The Build Customisation project was not the only ALM Rangers release over the weekend. The Lab Management Guide was also shipped. This provides scenario based and hands-on guidance for the planning, setup, configuration and usage of Visual Studio Lab Management, backed by custom VM Template automation for reference environments.

If you work with Lab Management, or would like, this is well worth a read

TFS 2010 SP1 Cumulative Update 1

Richard Fennell — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 20:40:03 +0000

For those of you have have not spotted it the TFS 2010 SP1 Cumulative Update 1 is now available. This is a roll up of all the fixes that have be released since TFS 2010 SP1. This form of cumulative release is going to be the way forward for TFS, so it will be easier to know what to install on a server without reading loads of QFE documents.

For more details read the full details on Brian Harry’s blog

ALM Ranger’s Build Customization Guidance has shipped

Richard Fennell — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 20:13:00 +0000

I am really please to say that the first ALM Rangers project I have been involved with, the Build Customization Guidance, has shipped.

The project had the primary goal of delivering scenario based and hands-on lab guidance for the customization and deployment of Team Foundation Build 2010 activities such as versioning, code signing, and branching. You can find details at the Rangers blog,the project table of content or the codeplex site

I have certainly learnt a good deal working on this projects, thanks to everyone who made it such a interesting experience. Hope anyone reading the materials find them as useful.

My first serious problem with my WP7 device

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 07:35:00 +0000

My WP7 LG-E900 decided to do a factory reset last night. It locked while playing the XBox Live GEODefense game on a particular busy level I had just lost (so lots of graphic processing). The phone paused for a while then restarted and ran the first use wizard, in German. This is because it is one of the PDC units that seem, given the packaging, to have been sourced from Vodafone German.

Using VSTO to access TFS

Richard Fennell — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 22:40:51 +0000

Have you ever thought ‘I know that you get the Team ribbon in Excel to manage TFS work items, and I can use Excel to as a SQL/OLAP client to run reports from the TFS warehouse but I want to do more….’?

Have you every considered using VSTO to create an ActionPane that uses the TFS .NET API?

In this example I have created an ActionPane that allows you to select a Team Project Collection, a Team Project and then a build definition. Press the button and it lists the builds that have run of this type using the TFS .NET API.

Cannot connect to a Lab Management Environment using the MTM Environment Viewer

Richard Fennell — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 16:27:45 +0000

Today we had a problem that we could not connect to VMs within a Lab Management environment from the Environment Viewer in MTM. We had composed the environment from VMs independently create and tested on the HyperV host. The plan in the end is to have this as a network isolated environment, but for now it is a private domain that exists on our main LAN.

The first issue we had was that as this was a private domain the various hosts were not registered on our DNS, so we got a DNS lookup error for the VM host names. This is best fixed with network isolation, but for a quick fix we put some entries in a local hosts file on the PC we were using to resolve the name to IP addresses.

How to fix extra Quickstart help menu items when installing Typemock Isolator

Richard Fennell — Mon, 30 May 2011 20:58:22 +0000

I recently noticed that I had a few too many ‘Typemock Isolator Quickstart’ help menu items in Visual Studio 2010

After a quick check with Typemock it seems this was a known issue with previous versions of Isolator, you should not see it on a new installation (6.0.10). If you do have the problem do as I was advised, run the VS macro, created by Travis Illig, to remove the extra items.

Links to Videos of my Presentations

Richard Fennell — Sat, 28 May 2011 15:21:06 +0000

I have added page to this blog that has links to videos of my presentations. Should make them easier to find them when I need to refer to them.

Recording Silverlight actions on Microsoft Test Manager

Richard Fennell — Fri, 27 May 2011 16:13:04 +0000

Whilst try to record some manual tests in MTM for a new Silverlight application I found I was not getting any actions recorded, just loads of “Fail to record the object corresponding to this action” warnings in the actions window.

Turns out to fix this you have to do three things

Install the Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2 (MSDN Subscribers Only) – this adds Silverlight support to MTM (this I had already done)
In your SIlverlLight application you need to reference the Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UITest.Extension.SilverlightUIAutomationHelper.dll from the folder C:Program Files (x86)Common Filesmicrosoft sharedVSTT10.0UITestExtensionPackagesSilverlightUIAutomationHelper
Finally if using IE9 you need to run IE in IE8 mode. To do this in IE9 press F12 and select the browser mode

TFS vNext video from Teched up on Channel9

Richard Fennell — Wed, 18 May 2011 11:40:55 +0000

Cameron Skinner’s TechEd session that goes into more depth on the announcements for TFS vNext is up on Channel 9. Just downloading it for to watch on the train to London this afternoon. I tried streaming live on the East Coast mainline before, their on train WiFi is just not up to it.

Announcements at TechEd USA 2011 about TFS vNext and a Java API available now

Richard Fennell — Mon, 16 May 2011 22:40:22 +0000

Watching the keynote of TechEd 2011 there were some interesting announcements on the vNext for TFS (the TFS section starts about 1:20 into the keynote).

Storyboarding Assistant – A new product using PowerPoint as the core tools to gather requirements
New web based dashboard to help manage requirement work items, with loads of drag and drop and pulling much of the functionality of the current Excel planning workbooks into the browser.
A new web based taskboard (that was demo’d using a huge touch screen monitor)
Giving the developer a task oriented means to say what work they are working on, and behind the scenes setting their workspace appropriately
New tooling to allow users to provide feedback on the release in an MTM like style
Also mentioned was code review tooling, intellitrace in production and much more…

Have a look at the keynote (the video is available now) and breakout session video streams when they appear. Also there is more detail on Jason Zanders blog

Speaking at Microsoft’s “Application Lifecycle Management for Independent Software Vendors”

Richard Fennell — Fri, 13 May 2011 10:20:52 +0000

In the 27th June I will be speaking on Lab Management at Microsoft’s “Application Lifecycle Management for Independent Software Vendors” event at TVP.

For more details see the Microsoft event site

Making SharePoint 2010 search pages work with a proper master page

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 12 May 2011 18:05:00 +0000

If you talk to those who know me about my pet hates in SharePoint, the search pages will come up every time. It’s not that I hate search itself – that’s great, but the minimal.master is just plain annoying. It makes the search centre a black hole into which you can fall but not navigate out of – there’s no navigation and the portal site connection doesn’t work.

I’ve been meaning to get search working with a real master page (step forwards, v4.master) for a while and never got around to it. However, I needed to fix it for a demo and having done so I thought I’d document the steps involved for the world.

Connected Development–Another great Northern Event!

Linda Hogg — Tue, 10 May 2011 13:11:37 +0000

Can’t make it to London for Microsoft TechDays? Microsoft is running Connected Development in the heart of Yorkshire, with the top industry speakers from Microsoft and Gold ALM partners Black Marble and nFocus.

Highlights include Microsoft Developer Evangelist Mike Taulty on the latest news from MIX, TFS Product Manager Martin Woodward on TFS for Everyone and Black Marble discussing their Award-winning Windows Phone 7 application – TFS Phone Explorer.

Cross domain usage of TFS Integration Platform

Richard Fennell — Fri, 06 May 2011 11:53:47 +0000

Whist trying to do a cross domain migration of some source between two TFS2010 servers, I got the less than helpful runtime exception

System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: activeWorkspace
at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Migration.Tfs2010VCAdapter.TfsUtil.CleanWorkspace(Workspace activeWorkspace)
at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Migration.Tfs2010VCAdapter.TfsVCMigrationProvider.ProcessChangeGroup(ChangeGroup group)

On checking the _tfsintegrationservice_.log I found the more useful

TFS::Authenticate : Caught exception : Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TeamFoundationServerUnauthorizedException: TF30063: You are not authorized to access tfsserver.otherdomain.com. ---> System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized.

Microsoft goes Manga for Azure and Powershell

Robert Hogg — Thu, 05 May 2011 21:17:19 +0000

Spelunking through the internet I came across a project at Microsoft to engage people with various Microsoft Technologies using comic form. Black Marble have been producing Xmas comics over the last few years and the results have been great.

The series of comics follows “Squishy” the stress ball, Leah and Zach in a Manga inspired view of IT and development

In "Climbing Mt. PowerShell" the heroes learn PowerShell and the power of scripting to save the day, get it here

Our WP7 TFS Phone Explorer has won first prize in the Red Gate WP7 competition

Richard Fennell — Thu, 05 May 2011 16:31:58 +0000

Great news the Black Marble’s WP7 TFS Phone client has won one of the three top prizes on Red Gate Software’s Windows Phone 7 Competition

You can read the judges comments on the competition blog, I would stress it only mentions my name, but this was Black Marble team effort.

If you want to try it out get the trial version from the marketplace

Free webcast of Architecture and Installation of TFS 2010

Richard Fennell — Thu, 05 May 2011 13:47:20 +0000

Are you unsure how TFS 2010 hangs together or what is entailed in installing it?

Well never fear, Microsoft are hosting a webcast on the 12th May that will be given by Black Marble’s own Robert Hancock one of our ALM consultants, which will explain all.

To register check the Microsoft events site

Registration open for the “Connected Development” event on the 26th of May

Richard Fennell — Thu, 05 May 2011 13:38:11 +0000

There are still space on the “Connected Development” event, a free event hosted by Black Marble and supported by Microsoft TechDays, on the 26th of May.

I am one of a number of speakers from Microsoft and Gold ALM Partners who will be talking about the latest news and announcements for Application Lifecycle Management and Developing for the Microsoft Platform.

Full details about the event can be found at Microsoft Events.

Creating a TFS Team Project Collection using Powershell

Richard Fennell — Thu, 05 May 2011 12:00:00 +0000

Grant Holiday posted on how to create a TPC using Powershell. However his post did not address how to set the SharePoint or Reporting Services parameters. His example used for the form

Dictionary<string, string> servicingTokens = new Dictionary<string, string>();
servicingTokens.Add("SharePointAction", "None"); // don't configure sharepoint
servicingTokens.Add("ReportingAction", "None"); // don't configure reporting services

So not much use if like ourselves you have your TFS integrated with the company wide SharePoint farm

Problems and workaround for the EMC Scrum for Team System Process Template

Richard Fennell — Wed, 04 May 2011 16:19:32 +0000

I have recently been looking at the EMC Scrum for Team Systems (SFTS) 3 Template for TFS 2010 with SharePoint 2010. The core of it works, and works well for Scrum based teams. If you have not used it before have a read of the getting started post to get a feel of what it can do.

However, there are some issues when you try to make use of SharePoint 2010 as opposed to SharePoint 2007. Hopefully you will find some of the adventures I have had enlightening

Problems and workaround for the EMC Scrum for Team System Process Template

Richard Fennell — Wed, 04 May 2011 16:19:32 +0000

However, there are some issues when you try to make use of SharePoint 2010 as opposed to SharePoint 2007. Hopefully you will find some of the adventures I have had enlightening

My upcoming speaking engagements for Spring/Summer 2011

Richard Fennell — Tue, 03 May 2011 11:50:00 +0000

I have a couple of community speaking engagements coming up

Both are free, so if you are in the either area, I would be surprised if you were at both given the locations, I hope you can come along

The slow slide to a paperless life

Richard Fennell — Tue, 03 May 2011 11:17:27 +0000

I posted in the past about my though processes on getting a Kindle, they boiled down to to

Why do the books cost virtually as much as paper edition when the author gets no more royalties and the production/distribution costs as far lower?
I don’t want an extra device to carry about

Well I have been using the WP7 Kindle Client to read free classics and actually buying current novels. When I finished my first purchased novel, it was virtually automatic to go and buy another. No going to the bookshop or waiting for Amazon to deliver.

How to use the TFS 2010 Community StyleCop Build Actvity (Addendum)

Richard Fennell — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 16:04:38 +0000

Recently I posted on How to use the TFS 2010 Community StyleCop Build Activity and I am sure it all sounded very awkward and complex, well it did to me.

The point I should have made is that you don’t have to follow this process every time you want to make use of the custom activity. As long as the build process template is the same between to builds you can just copy it, you only need to follow the method in the post the first time.

Professional Foundation Server 2010

Richard Fennell — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:15:58 +0000

Over the holiday I have been reading Professional Foundation Server 2010 by Ed Blankenship, Martin Woodward, Grant Holiday and Brian Keller, yes I know how to have time off and have fun!

So who is this book for? It is a comprehensive guide to TFS 2010, the components and their usage, but this does not mean the book is only for teams new to TFS or people planning to take certification exams. Spread throughout there are useful little titbits of information where you find yourself going ‘I never know that’ or ‘arr.. that explains so much’

Added a reading list to my blog

Richard Fennell — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 10:01:00 +0000

I am always being asked when at events for details of books I have recommended. So I have added a list of books I have found useful to this blog, it can be found at http://blogs.blackmarble.co.uk/blogs/rfennell/pages/reading-list.aspx.

Thus far I have added the ones I have been looking at recently, but will add more as I go along.

Hope you find them as useful as I have

Developer Update for April

Robert Hogg — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 13:42:04 +0000

Microsoft as ever have been busy with new drops and SP1 refreshes of technology for us all to embrace and here is a summary update for this month

The Microsoft F# (2.0.0.0), April 2011 Community Technology Preview is available here

While not all new if you are looking at F# I would suggest keeping an eye on

F# PowerPack

F# Samples

F# Developer Center

For learning F# check out the Try F# tutorials here

How to use the TFS 2010 Community StyleCop Build Activity

Richard Fennell — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 14:04:00 +0000

[Updated 27th April 2011 Also see How to use the TFS 2010 Community StyleCop Build Actvity (Addendum)]

The Codeplex Community TFS Build Extensions contains a StyleCop activity, but the way to use it is less than obvious. This is not helped by the complexity in using any custom activity within TFS 2010 builds. In this post I will try to show how to get going with the StyleCop activity, which might shed some light on using other custom assemblies.

Now I have three TFS build instances on my VM

Richard Fennell — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:10:23 +0000

A while ago I posted on my experiences running multiple instances of 2010 build service on a single VM. Well a couple more experiences as now one of my VM is running 3 instances.

Firstly it seems to work OK, you have to have the right build profile i.e. fairly low load but a need to support many Team Project Collections. This is not a solution for a highly loaded build environment. At Black Marble we run a TPC per client model and tend to have fair few projects on the go at any one time, so need plenty of build controllers. However, in general the builds are small, taking minutes not hours If we have a seriously long running build I would still create a dedicated build service VM.

Release of Black Marble’s WP7 TFS Phone Explorer

Richard Fennell — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 10:59:18 +0000

Over the weekend we have released Black Marble’s WP7 TFS Phone client to the WP7 Marketplace.

This app allows the user of a WP7 phone to access their TFS server to perform common operations. They can:

See recent builds and drill into the results
Queue new builds
View and add work items

This client talks via a custom web service to a TFS 2008 or 2010 server, which are available from Black Marble. But if you just want a quick look to see what it can do we have setup a demo web service so you can trial the application, just use the default account details stored in the application. These are

TF30162: Task "UploadStructure" from Group "Classification" failed

Richard Fennell — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:06:18 +0000

When trying to create a new Team Project on TFS2010 from a client PC I got the following error

_Event Description: TF30162: Task "UploadStructure" from Group "Classification" failed
Exception Type: Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.PcwException

Inner Exception Details:_

Exception Message: TF205029: No catalog resource type exists with the following identifier: 41c8b6db-39ec-49db-9db8-0760e836bfbe. (type CatalogResourceTypeDoesNotExistException)

However if I did the create on the TFS console all was fine.

Turned out the problem was due to the caching done by Team Explorer in Visual Studio. Exiting the copy of VS2010 on the client and reloading it fixed the problem as the updated team process settings will cached locally.

TF255115 Access Denied when starting TFSAgent Service

Richard Fennell — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 20:31:06 +0000

Whist configuring a new TFS2010 server I got the error

TF255115: The following service did not start: TfsJobAgent. Cannot start service TfsJobAgent on computer ''.

This was identical to the thread on MSDN and it turned out my problem was similar.

I was installing TFS onto drive D:APPS, not the usual C:PROGRAM FILE. The problem was the User group did not have the default Read & Execute, List Folder Contents and Read rights on the D:APPS directory and sub directory, the right all users have on C:PROGRAM FILES.

PC Rebuild time – remembering how to mount a bitlockered VHD

Richard Fennell — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 19:27:25 +0000

When your PC reaches the point that MSI cannot connect to the Install Service you know it is time to repave the PC. This is the time to you have to try remember what you installed on the PC, your license codes and how you actually got things to work.

So going through this process this week all went OK until I tried to remember how I handled bitlockered VHDs.

Speaking at the BCS in Edinburgh on Agile Methods

Richard Fennell — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 19:12:44 +0000

I am speaking at the BCS group in Edinburgh on the 11th of May in Agile and Lean Methods.

For more details see http://edinburgh.bcs.org.uk/events/2010-11/110511.htm

Mix 11 delivers a slew of interesting updates across the board

Robert Hogg — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 23:10:49 +0000

across the two keynotes of the 2011 Microsoft have demonstrated and released a

IE10 Preview is now out, it has a nice set of enhanced features (faster etc). more importantly Microsoft are continuing with dev preview and a sensible cadence of 8-12 weeks, get it here

The ASP.NET MVC 3 Tooling Update which contains lots of new features including Modernizr a JavaScript library that delivers auto down grade browser support get it here

Silverlight 5 Beta is now out, check out its features here get it here also the CHM is available here remember to Service Pack both Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Web before trying out the new tools.

New home for my Techdays video on Lab Management from last year

Richard Fennell — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 19:15:38 +0000

Last year I presented at Microsoft UK’s Techdays on Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management and the session was videoed. I recently tried to refer someone to this recording and I found that the Techdays site had been rebuilt for this years event and I could not find the video. Well after a bit of searching I found it on MSN at Putting some Testing into your TFS Build Process

Doing a webcast for Microsoft next week ‘Lab Management and Automated Build’

Richard Fennell — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 15:47:57 +0000

Next Tuesday lunchtime (12th Apr 2011 1pm) I will be doing a webcast on on ‘Lab Management and Automated Build’. I will be looking at the build options in TFS and also how they can be extended with Lab Management.

The event is free to attend you just need to register at http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-gb/visual-studio-events

Content Types programmatically added to SharePoint libraries not appearing on New menu

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 13:57:17 +0000

This one caused some consternation, I can tell you. As usual, the solution could be found on the great wide web, but it took some digging, so as usual I am repeating it here.

As part of a SharePoint migration we did recently, we replaced a SharePoint 2007 feature that the client was using (which added content types to libraries from a central list) with a mix of content type replication and PowerShell to add the content types to the libraries.

Content type replication not working on imported or migrated site collections

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 13:31:38 +0000

A while ago I posted about a hidden feature that was needed if you want to use Managed Metadata columns in your SharePoint 2010 sites. We were doing some 2007-2010 migration work for a client recently that also involved exporting and importing sites and site collections to rework the content structure. Once we’d got the new structure sorted we discovered that content type replication was not occurring on the site collections we had imported. Some comparison of working and non-working SPSite properties with PowerShell later, we discovered that the culprit was the same hidden TaxonomyFieldAdded (ID 73ef14b1-13a9-416b-a9b5-ececa2b0604c) feature as I noted earlier. See my earlier post for instructions on enabling the feature.

Why can’t I see my TFS reports?

Richard Fennell — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 12:32:53 +0000

Whist recently installing a TFS 2010 system onto a single box server, that was also a domain controller, I had a problem that though everything seemed in order I could not view my reporting services based reports in either SharePoint or directly from the http://myserver/reports interface.

During the installation I had verified I had the correct password for my [domain]tfsreports account used to run the reports. If went to the http://myserver/reports page and edited the TFS2010ReportsDs or TFS2010OlapReportDS and tried to test the [domain]tfsreports login it failed. However, if I swapped to the [domain]administrator all was fine and my reports worked.

How to waste time with Lab Management – Missing the obvious that MTM points to a Team Project

Richard Fennell — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 09:56:53 +0000

I posted a while ago about common confusion I had seen with Lab Management. We I have recently managed to get myself completely confused whilst working with Lab Management. It turns out the issue was so obvious I managed to miss it for hours, but as usual I learnt a good deal whilst trying to troubleshoot my stupidity.

I have a Lab Management system linked up to a a Team Project Collection (TPC). In this TPC there is a Team Project used for SharePoint development and on my Lab Management system I have an environment to allow testing of the SharePoint products. I setup a new Team Project in this TPC. In the new project I created a new MVC solution and created an automated build, which all worked fine.

How to expose IIS Express to external network connections and use a non-self signed certificate

Richard Fennell — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 21:02:32 +0000

IIS Express is a great addition to the tools for .NET web developers; it allow a slightly cut down copy of IIS 7.5 to be run without administrative privileges on a developer’s PC. This means we can hopefully get away from the problems associated by either

Using Cassini – which is not IIS and does not do any clever
Using full IIS which means Visual Studio has to run as administrator to debug it and also causes source control issues when a project is shared between multiple developers (their IIS setup must match up)

If you install Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and IIS express you now get a new option, that is to use IIS express as your web server. This, via a few clicks, can be configured for SSL and should address 90%+ of the needs of most developers. Once a project is set to use IIS express the key properties are set via the VS Property windows

A slow experience installing VS2010 SP1, but worth it in the end

Richard Fennell — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 14:10:00 +0000

I got round to installing Visual Studio 2010 SP1 on my laptop last night; well I started last night via the Web Platform Installer method. It downloaded the bits fast but sat for ages on the first step, installing the actual service pack. There was no obvious activity on the CPU or disk. In the end I gave waiting and went to bed. I was pleased to see it was finished this morning.

Getting the WP7 SDK onto a Windows Server 2008 TFS Build Agent

Richard Fennell — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 09:25:20 +0000

If you try to create an automated TFS build of a Windows Phone 7 Silverlight application on a ‘default installed’ build agent you will see errors along the lines of

The imported project "C:Program FilesMSBuildMicrosoftSilverlight for Phonev4.0Microsoft.Silverlight.WindowsPhone.Overrides.targets" was not found. Confirm that the path in the declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.

This is because the PC your build agent is running on does not have the WP7 SDK installed.

DDD Scotland registration is now open

Richard Fennell — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 19:14:48 +0000

For those who have not noticed, DDD Scotland’s registration is now open at http://developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/scotland2011/Default.aspx.

Sad to say my proposed session did not get accepted, but that just means I have the chance to see more sessions myself!

Speaking on VS 2010 ALM and Testing at events in Belfast and Dublin

Richard Fennell — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 16:20:51 +0000

At the end of the month I will be speaking at a series of free Microsoft events in Belfast and Dublin. There going to be two session at each location

Managing application lifecycle “From requirements to retirement” with Team Foundation Server 2010

Dublin - 31/03/2011 (AM): https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032480694&Culture=en-IE
Belfast – 01/04/2011 (AM): https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032480760&Culture=en-IE

Better testing with lower costs - Saving your teams time and resources using Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft Test Manager

Install order guidance for VS2010 SP1

Richard Fennell — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 21:54:10 +0000

Further to yesterdays post on new bits for VS and TFS 2010, there is now some guidance to what order to apply SP1 to server and clients.

Fixed numerous issues with VS2008 using a /resetskippkgs

Richard Fennell — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 21:50:12 +0000

I am doing some work on VS2008 at present and I when I started my VS2008, which I had not used for a while, I was plagued by errors along the lines of "The operation could not be completed". These occurred when running major features such as:

Loading LINQ to SQL Designer
Running the SQL 2008 Project Wizard

The fix turned out to be resetting the package skip loading flag. It seems a number of add-ins were not being loaded on startup. This command is run from the "Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt" by typing

A day of new releases and announcements in Visual Studio 2010 land

Richard Fennell — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 17:20:44 +0000

Today we have seen the release of the Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and the TFS-Project Server Integration Feature Pack. Both are available on the MSDN download site.

As well was the new downloads they have announced a change to licensing over Load Test Agent. This gives Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN users the ability to do unlimited load testing. No longer do you need to purchase Load Test Packs, thus making load testing an option for more teams.

What to do with project dependencies?

Richard Fennell — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 01:36:10 +0000

Many development teams hit the problem that they have dependencies on libraries that they do not want to have as part of their solutions. If these dependencies are open source projects then there are options using technologies like NuGet or OpenWrap. However, in many cases the dependency is to an internal project, such as the company standard logging library, which it is never going to put up into a centralised repository. So normally you end up with either:

The March 2011 version of the TFS Power Tools have been released

Richard Fennell — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 00:37:38 +0000

The March 2011 version of the TFS Power Tools has been released. There are plenty of fixes and enhancements, especially to the TFS backup tool.

For more details have a look at Brian Harry’s blog.

Mocking out calls in unit tests to a TFS Server using Typemock

Richard Fennell — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 00:06:45 +0000

If you are developing custom application using the TFS API then there is a good chance you will want to mock out the calls to your TFS server to enable better testing of the business logic in your application. The architecture of the TFS API does not lend itself to mocking using the standard means provided in most auto-mocking frameworks i.e there is not an interface for all the objects you care about. However, with Typemock Isolator you can fake the classes required, as Isolator can fake an instance of virtually any class.

Alpha release of TFS 2010 Build Extensions

Richard Fennell — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 05:12:47 +0000

Back in September I asked the question Does anyone need a VS2010 Custom Build Activity for StyleCop? and a good few people said yes and asked me when the activity would be released.

Well I had forgotten to say that the Codeplex TFS Build Extensions project, which the activity code got included into, has made it’s first public alpha release i.e. a release that means you don’t have to download the source and build it yourself. There is now a downloadable ZIP will just the built assemblies.

Black Marble aids West Yorks Fire and Rescue Services with SharePoint 2010

Linda Hogg — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 21:06:46 +0000

In case you haven’t seen it yet – we have had a Case Study published on the Microsoft Case Studies website, highlighting how our use of Microsoft Best Practices for SharePoint 2010 greatly improved the collaboration experience for West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Services. Initially carrying out a Health Check to improve the implementation of SharePoint 2007, Black Marble returned to assist in the migration to SharePoint 2010.

Avviso Page Templates and Editing Video

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 16:53:00 +0000

We’ve just put a video of the page templates and editing process up on the AvvisoSharePoint YouTube channel. Our plan is to add more videos over time to show the different things Avviso can do. Enjoy!

Update: It seems our Community Server install blocks the embedded youtube object so you’ll need to follow the link to the video. Sorry.

TF30040 error when attaching a team project collection

Richard Fennell — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:17:20 +0000

Whilst doing some tidying on a multi-server TFS 2010 system I needed to move a team project collection from one Application Tier (AT) to another. Both ATs (which were not a load balanced pair) shared the same SQL server data tier (DT). It should have been easy using the TFS Administration Console.

I backed up the TPC database using SQL Management tools, the TPC was then detached without any issue from the first AT. I then backed up the SQL DB again in the detached state.

Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0' provider is not registered on 64bit IIS7 server

Richard Fennell — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 23:22:07 +0000

When loading an ASP.NET 3.5 web application that has been compiler for Any CPU onto an IIS7 server I got the error

The 'Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0' provider is not registered on the local machine.

This was because the server was running a 64bit OS and only the 32bit Access Driver was installed. The quick fix to get this running was to enable 32-bit applications on the AppPools advanced settings.

Another DDD opportunity

Richard Fennell — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:59:25 +0000

DDD South West 3.0 has opened for session proposals, got an idea for one? Why not have a go and submit a session.

Demonstrating Avviso at NEBytes on 23rd February 2011

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 10:14:34 +0000

I am really chuffed to have been invited back to NEBytes for a follow-up to my last session on content publishing with SharePoint 2010. This time I’ll be demonstrating Avviso and talking about the thought processes that lead to its development, the problems we are trying to solve and where we’d like to go next.

If you’d like more information about Avviso, take a look at my recent post. To see more about NEBytes and their events, check out their web site.

My experiences getting started with writing custom adaptors for TFS Integration Platform

Richard Fennell — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 16:37:13 +0000

The TFS Integration Platform is an ALM Rangers project that provides an excellent set of tools to migrate or synchronise source code and/or work items between different TFS servers or TFS server and third party platforms. For many people the supported release on Code Gallery will do all they need. However if you have a need to connect to a system that there is no adaptor for you need the Codeplex version so you can write it yourself. To get the environment up and running, not unsurprisingly, the best place to start is the Getting Started documents.

Black Marble O7 Game in Windows Phone Marketplace

Linda Hogg — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 12:12:15 +0000

Update!

An update has pushed through on our O7 game that contains a vastly improved set of rules – 5 full screens, with animations to aid you play.

Our O7 game is now Free to download from the Windows Phone Marketplace!

Strategically take over the board by growing your pieces into the spaces around them.

Black Marble O7 game up on Windows Phone 7 Marketplace

Richard Fennell — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 11:30:28 +0000

Black Marble’s first WP7 game has been published onto the Marketplace, a game of strategy. Choose to grow the number of counters you have your jump squares to gain territory.

It’s free so why not give it a try, assuming you have a WP7 phone!

Windows Phone 7 Dev Kit Jan Update

Robert Hogg — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 07:47:10 +0000

The anticipated January Developer kit update for Phone 7 is available here , it includes the October update as well as Emulator updates for Cut and Paste ( How to: Test Copy and Paste in Windows Phone Emulator. )

The cut and paste will only work on end user phones after they have received the actual phone update (available soon).

NOTE: this is an update and you MUST have the Phone 7 dev kit already installed.

Windows Phone 7 Training Kit Update

Robert Hogg — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 22:15:57 +0000

Microsoft have released an update for the Phone 7 Training Kit get it here

Renaming branches in TFS2010

Richard Fennell — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 10:38:54 +0000

I recently was asked why a client had experienced some unexpected results when merging a development branch back into the main trunk on a TFS 2010 installation.

Turns out the issue was that during some tests that the both the Main and Dev branches had been renamed, and new branches of the same names created. So they had a structure like this:

$/ProjectX

Dev

Newly created after the rename

Main

Black Marble’s Social Network

Linda Hogg — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 22:27:37 +0000

Consider this a reminder of all the different ways you can engage with Black Marble.

You can follow us on Twitter. Keep up to date with where we are, what events are running, what key staff are blogging about and generally any breaking news.

Do Programmers Dream in Byte Code?
But it works on my PC!
Steve Spencer
When Software Attacks!

Somewhat nasty upgrade experience with Seesmic Desktop 2

Richard Fennell — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 15:53:39 +0000

A few days ago I got the regular ‘there is a new version of seesmic’ message.

So I pressed update and got the less than helpful message

After a quick search on the web I found the log files are in C:Users[username]DocumentsSeesmicSeesmic Desktop 2Logs, why that cannot be listed on the error dialog I don’t know!.

Unfortunately there was nothing obvious in the log, just a list of plug-ins it loaded. So I went back and tried the upgrade again, reading the release notes (I know a strange idea) and noticed that it mentioned a specific version of Silverlight. A quick check of this showed I was not up to date, so I went to http://www.microsoftr.com/silverlight and ran the installer, which updated my install (I would have expected Windows Update to have done this).

Problems connecting a Netgear WG111 USB Wifi Dongle to a Netgear DG834GT router

Richard Fennell — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 18:44:07 +0000

Just spent an interesting hour trying to connect a Netgear WG111v2 USB WiFi Dongle to Netgear (Sky Branded) DG834GT router. They are both from the same manufacturer so you would they would work together!

This router was setup with its default Sky settings so WiFi was setup as WPA.

I installed the WG111 onto an XP laptop installed the newly downloaded V 5.1.1308 (26 Dec 2007) drivers and tried to connect. The router was spotted without problems and I was prompted to enter my WPA password, which was printed onto the bottom of the router (I had logged in to router via the web admin console to check this was correct). After what seemed like a long delay I was left not corrected to the router, but with no obvious error.

Gojko Adzic is presenting at the next Agile Yorkshire meeting on acceptance tests

Richard Fennell — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 17:16:04 +0000

February’s Agile Yorkshire is on the 8th. The session will be given by Gojko Adzic on ’Long term value of acceptance tests’ I have seen Gojko speak at a number of events, including Agile Yorkshire, he is always an engaging speaker so well worth the effort to attend. I know I am going to give it a go, but have been really struggling to make Agile Yorkshire as Tuesday nights are a bit busy of late. My diary is just too full!

Not made it to DDD9

Richard Fennell — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 13:44:15 +0000

I was busy for the few minutes that the DDD9 registration was open, so did not manage to get on the attendee list, but I have been try to keep an eye on that is going on at Twitter.

The good news is that there are more DDD events on the way

DDD Belfast - March 2011
DDD Scotland - May 7th 2011

Session submissions are open for Scotland, I have submitted on writing custom build activities for TFS 2010. It is great experience presenting and attending at these events, I really recommend you give both a try.

Follow up to yesterdays events on ‘enabling agile development with cool tools’

Richard Fennell — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 12:05:50 +0000

Thanks to everyone who attended yesterdays Black Marble event ‘Enabling agile development with cool tools’, both Gary Short’s and my sessions seemed well received. I was asked if my slides would be available anywhere, well the answer is no. The reason for this is that my session was mostly demo driven, so the slides just set the scene. After a bit of thought, a quick blog post seems a better option; so this post covers the same basic points as the session. If you are interested in any of the products I would urge you to download them and give them a go. Many are free and all have at least a free fully functional evaluation edition.

Follow up to yesterdays events on ‘enabling agile development with cool tools’

Richard Fennell — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 12:05:50 +0000

Errors with TMG + Exchange Edge Connector + FPE resulting in rejected emails

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 12:08:04 +0000

Frustrating errors with little or no explanation…

Once again I find myself wiring a blog post in order to save people the time we spent figuring out what was going on and getting help with our fault.

We have Microsoft Threat Management Gateway installed at our perimeter. The Exchange 2010 Edge Connector is also installed as our mail gateway, and finally Forefront Protection for Exchange (FPE) deals with mail scanning. There are some gotchas that can trip you up when installing that lot, which I suppose I should put in another post, but the overall result is that you can manage the email filters (spam, malware etc) from within TMG’s console. It’s a nice, unified management interface and a good solution. When it works…

Black Marble’s Annual Technical Update for Microsoft Technologies

Linda Hogg — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:40:18 +0000

We are delighted by the response to our Annual Technical Update for Microsoft Technologies this year. The event is perfect as an introduction to Black Marble events, as well as providing a Roadmap for all-things Microsoft. Ideal for planning your business’ IT needs for the next twelve months.

Having raised your interest, the bad news is that the event is actually full-up and we are running a waiting list, but the good news is we are running an overflow event in early February. The demand for that session is also picking up so please get in touch soon if you want to secure a place! Email events@blackmarble.co.uk for more information.

At last my creature it lives – adventures with Lab Management and VLAN tags

Richard Fennell — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 13:52:37 +0000

After much delay I have at last got our internal Lab Management running on ‘real’ hardware as opposed to it’s initial home on a demo rig PC. We have just been too busy to find the time to reconfigure and redeploy our own kit! You know how it is ‘a plumber’s house is full of drippy taps’. That said I of course still want more hardware, as soon as you start to build up test environments you eat Hyper-V server resources very quickly; memory seems to be my most pressing current limitation on how much I can run at the same time.

Windows Phone Toolkit(update)

Robert Hogg — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 09:36:11 +0000

A new toolkit for Windows Phone 7 has been released on Coding4Fun. The toolkit includes Controls,Converters and Helpers.

(update) Get it here

With Controls such as

About Prompt
Input Prompt
Progress Overlay
Round Button
Round Toggle Button
Memory Counter
TimeSpan Picker

I suspect that most WP7 developers should look at this kit

Preparing for my session next week on ‘enabling agile development with cool tools’

Richard Fennell — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 22:56:47 +0000

I have spent today preparing my presentation and demos for the Black Marble event next week [Enabling Agile Development with Cool Tools](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Enabling Agile Development with Cool Tools). I will be presenting with Gary Short of DevExpress. He is going to be talking about refactoring under the intriguing title ‘How to Eat an Elephant’.

My session will be on the tools to aid the project management side of the ALM process. Specifically the tools available for TFS 2010 both those ‘out the box’ and from third party vendors. I only have a hour slot, so I have had to be selective as there are may ‘cool tools’ to choose from. So after some thought I have chosen

Microsoft Math

Robert Hogg — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 12:54:46 +0000

Microsoft has had a good but generally unknown history of producing really quite remarkable Mathematics additions to its OS’s and Applications

Microsoft has just published a new version 4.0 get it here

Math contains

Graphing calculator
allows 2D and 3D colour graphing.
Formulas and Equations Library
more than 100 commonly used equations and formulae.
Triangle Solver
teaching tool for triangles and their parts.
Unit Conversion tool
convert units of measure, including length, area, volume, weight, temperature, pressure, energy, power, velocity, and time.

User Manuals for most Consumer Products

Robert Hogg — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 18:44:55 +0000

I was searching for a manual for my US Blu-Ray Player and I stumbled across Retevo which has a very large collection of manuals for consumer products.

TF215097 error when using a custom build activity

Richard Fennell — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 14:59:15 +0000

Whist trying to make use of a custom build activity I got the error

TF215097: An error occurred while initializing a build for build definition Tfsdemo1Candy: Cannot create unknown type '{clr-namespace:TfsBuildExtensions.Activities.CodeQuality;assembly=TfsBuildExtensions.Activities.StyleCop}StyleCop'

This occurred when the TFS 2010 build controller tried to parse the build process .XAML at the start of the build process. A check of all the logs gave no other information other than this error message, nothing else appeared to have occurred.

Kindle on the Phone 7

Richard Fennell — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:10:25 +0000

I asked the question a while ago if I should buy a Kindle? I still think that new books are too expensive, but as there are loads of out of copyright books available for the platform so I did not hesitate to download the Windows Phone 7 Kindle app today. You never know when you need something to read and what could be better to dip into than a bit of Sherlock Holmes?

DDD9 Sessions announced

Richard Fennell — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 11:40:19 +0000

Seems yet again my sessions for a DDD event did not excite the voting public; the selected sessions for DDD9 are out and I am not on the list. Again it does look a nice varied selection of sessions. I have tried to see if I can see a trend in what is being selected, but it seems a fair mix between language feature introductions, web technologies, tools and architecture/process/patterns – so something for everyone.

Phone 7 Hacks

Robert Hogg — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 22:18:23 +0000

as the phone 7 hacks start rolling in, I thought I would keep a list, still no HTC hacks

Samsung Hacks http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/11/easy-hack-enables-usb-tethering-on-wp7-phones/

http://www.liveside.net/2010/11/11/windows-phone-7-supports-tethering-for-samsung-focusomnia-7-anyway/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+liveside+%28LiveSide%29

http://www.liveside.net/2010/11/11/windows-phone-7-supports-tethering-for-samsung-focusomnia-7-anyway/

Using the Phone as a USB device

http://www.intomobile.com/2010/11/18/windows-phone-7-usb-mass-storage-mode-discovered/

StyleCop Compliant Code Snippets

Robert Hogg — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 21:58:13 +0000

For all of you who know that I am a big big fan of StyleCop, I am super pleased that Doug Holland has released is a new update of a set of really good code snippets

Get them here

I would recommend reading Doug's blog posts for the last two updates, well worth the effort.here and here

Doug also has some StyleCop compliant project templates which are well worth a peek

Get them here

Avviso: A Content Publishing Framework for SharePoint 2010

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 14:15:31 +0000

Last week was really exciting for me and my colleagues here at Black Marble as the work we’ve been doing with a partner came to fruition. Words and Pictures are a communications agency based not far from us, and we’ve been working together on a great product that builds upon SharePoint 2010 to greatly improve content publishing.

I’ll come to the product in a little while, but I’d like to talk about how we created it first, as it’s a great example of how working together within the Microsoft space can help companies build upon their strengths and overcome their weaknesses.

Holidays are coming … Part 3 of ‘Going Postal’ now live!

Linda Hogg — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 10:32:07 +0000

In case you hadn’t realised it, but at Black Marble we LOVE Xmas! Not only have we decorated the office … but we’ve also added some festive fun to our website!

The top banner looks great this year, and as ever the Managers have slipped into their Xmas finery ….

And of course, not forgetting our Xmas card … another 7-part outing for the BM Brigade, as they uses their Windows Phone 7s to spring into action and save Santa from Junk-Mail

Server Core, Hyper-V and VLANs: An Odyssey

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 10:57:20 +0000

A sensible plan

This is a torrid tale of frustration and annoyance, tempered by the fun of digging through system commands and registry entries to try and get things working.

We’ve been restructuring our network at Black Marble. The old single subnet was creaking and we were short of addresses so we decided to subnet with network subnets for physical, virtual internal and virtual development servers, desktops, wifi etc. We don’t have a huge amount of network equipment, and we needed to put virtual servers hosted on hyper-v on separate networks so we decided to use VLANs.

Episode 2 of the BMXmas Adventure–Going Postal–Now Live!

Linda Hogg — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 12:51:37 +0000

Episode Two of this year’s Xmas Card Adventure is now live on our website – want to know what the BMBrigade find on reaching their destination? What has happened to Santa?! Can our heroes’ Windows Phone 7’s help save the world this Xmas??

Enjoying the adventure? Watch out for Episode Three on 8th December, when General Junk-Mail’s fiendish plot is revealed!

And this year, find out how our customers can benefit from our skills in Visual Studio with an ALM Health Check … and gain the opportunity to win an XBox with Kinect!

5 Great Reasons to get a Visual Studio TFS Health Check …

Linda Hogg — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 15:54:38 +0000

… from Black Marble this December

Black Marble has always been proud of its strong credentials for the work we do, and this year we are encouraging our customers to take advantage of them too!

This year we have 5 Great Reasons for you to take out a Visual Studio Health Check from Black Marble:

1. Gold ALM Partner – Black Marble is the first UK partner to achieve the new Gold standard in the ALM competency. Microsoft re-launched the Partner Network this autumn, and to ensure customers know they are getting experts in their field, they raised the bar for companies to reach the Gold standard in individual competencies. At Black Marble we ensured our staff were suitably qualified and experienced, in order to be ready to achieve Gold when the new competencies were launched and we were delighted to be the first UK partner to do so!

While you are stuck at home due to snow why not vote for your favourite DDD9 session?

Richard Fennell — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 11:28:00 +0000

The voting has opened for DDD9, As with all the DDD style events the agenda is set by you, the attendees, so get in there any say what you are interested in, it is not as if there is not a great choice this time.

I have a session up on writing custom build activities for TFS 2010 which I hope some of you will find interesting, but I do fear it is a rather specialist area!

Going Postal–Can the Black Marble Brigade Save Xmas 2010?

Linda Hogg — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 23:06:00 +0000

It’s that time of year again … Santa has been kidnapped and the only team that can save him is the Black Marble Brigade! And what great tools do the team have at their disposal this year?! Why Windows Phone 7 and Microsoft Surface! There is no limit to what use these can be put to to save Santa and Christmas in 2010.

Reminder about by web session on mocking Sharepoint with Typemock Isolator next week

Richard Fennell — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:44:36 +0000

Did you miss the Typemock session on mocking legacy system this week? If you you can watch a recording at the Typemock site.

If you are interested a more SharePoint specific session check out my session next week.

Kinect Structured Light

Robert Hogg — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 10:26:21 +0000

The Kinect works by projecting infrared dots and mapping the distortion to find out what is happening in the world

Audrey Penven a photographer has taken some stunning pictures with an infra-red camera of how this works

http://www.flickr.com/photos/audreypenven/5197391931/in/set-72157625454305998/

Just keep pretending to yourself that you really look that cool when you are playing on Kinect

Powershell to find missing features in SharePoint 2010

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 17:06:59 +0000

When migrating from SharePoint 2007 to 2010, no matter how hard you try there’s always the chance the the content database upgrade process will throw out errors about features being referenced that are not present in the farm. We have used Stefan Goßner’s WssAnalyzeFeatures and WSSRemoveFeatureFromSite (see his original article) to track down the references and exterminate them. It’s not the fastest thing on two legs though, and I have a fondness for having my SharePoint 2010 tooling in PowerShell because of the flexibility it gives me.

Where can you learn more on Typemock after last night session at NEBytes?

Richard Fennell — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 14:16:23 +0000

Thanks to everyone who turned out from Rik’s and my session last night at NEBytes. I have not bothered uploading my slides as it was really a demo driven session, but there is a video of a similar session I did at NDC2010

However, if you want to learn more about using Typemock Isolator with legacy system why not attended Roy Osherove’s ‘Be a Legacy Code Unit Test Ninja with Typemock Isolator’ web session next week?

0x80004004 when trying to upgrade Live Writer and Messenger

Richard Fennell — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 11:33:30 +0000

For ages now I have have been prompted when I loaded Live Writer that there was an upgrade available, and every time I tried it get it, at the end of the install it failed and rolled back. As I did not have time to dig into it I just used the older version.

Well today, due to upgrades in our LAN, I need to upgraded Live Messenger and as this is of part of the same Live Essentials 2011 package it not unsurprising I hit the same problem. A bit of experimentation showed the issues was that the upgrade was not able to remove the old version. If i tried to remove it via Control Panel it failed with a 0x80004004 error. In the error log I saw

Adding a Visual Basic 6 project to a TFS 2010 Build

Richard Fennell — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 22:30:41 +0000

Adding a Visual Basic 6 project to your TFS 2010 build process is not are hard as I had expected it to be. I had assumed I would have to write a custom build workflow template, but it turned out I was able to use the default template with just a few parameters changed from their defaults. This is the process I followed.

I created a basic ‘Hello world’ VB6 application. I had previously made sure that my copy of VB6 (SP6) could connect to my TFS 2010 server using the Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider so was able to check this project into source control.

You can’t edit a TFS 2010 build workflow template with just Team Explorer installed

Richard Fennell — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 09:26:07 +0000

I tried to open a TFS 2010 build template within the Visual Studio shell (the bit that gets installed when you put Team Explorer onto a PC) and saw the error “The document contains errors that must be fixed before the designer can be loaded”.

”

At the bottom of the screen it showed that all the underling assemblies could not be found.

The solution is simple, install a ‘real version’ of Visual Studio, I put on Premium. It seems that the shell does not provide all the assemblies that are needed. Once I did this I could edit the XAML with no problems

Enabling the TaxonomyFieldAdded feature to fix ManagedMetadata Column errors

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 16:53:00 +0000

We’re working on a solution at the moment that uses a custom site definition. For various reasons we stated with the Blank Site definition and worked from there. Our customisations include content types using custom columns that link to managed metadata term sets. We create all those through features – great! The tricky bit came when after deployment our managed metadata columns were greyed out. Examining the column we say an error telling us that the feature supporting the functionality was not activated.

[More] Fun with WCF, SharePoint and Kerberos

Richard Fennell — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 16:27:10 +0000

This is a follow up to the post Fun with WCF, SharePoint and Kerberos – well it looks like fun with hindsight

When I wrote the last post I thought I had our WCF Kerberos issues sorted, I was wrong. I had not checked what happened when I tried to access the webpart from outside our TMG firewall. When I did this I was back with the error that I had no security token. To sort this we had to make some more changes.

Windows Phone 7

Robert Hogg — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 23:31:45 +0000

Having had a phone 7 for a few days now and I thought I would share some thoughts on the platform, My overall feeling is 99% good, the office integration is great and the UI is delightful. The developer experience is fantastic.

The LG offer of free applications is amazing and Flowers is just a great game.

but as ever with a new device some nice to have features or oddities.

A week with a Windows Phone 7 – It just works!

Richard Fennell — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 10:10:07 +0000

I have had my LG WP7 phone about a week now. The best thing about it, it just works. Ok I have had a few learning issues over the Metro UI, but usually the answer is so obvious I have just overlooked it. Stupid things like I was looking for the button that was equivalent to the long press on the end key on my HTC Windows 6.5 phone to lock the phone; I had not consider the off button! A classic UTS (user too stupid) error, or maybe a user dragging old habits over to a very different way of working?

November Agile Yorkshire meeting “William Hill Agile Case Study”

Richard Fennell — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 16:50:05 +0000

The title of the November Agile Yorkshire meeting (on Tuesday the 9th) is "A case study exploring how agile methodologies were used to help change the way sports are traded at William Hill forever.". As usual this is a free event and is hosted at the Old Broadcasting house in Leeds starting at 6:30pm and I am sure people will go to the pub afterwards.

I have to go to Edinburgh that day to present at a Microsoft ALM event (still space available if you are in the Edinburgh area) and I doubt I will be back in time. A shame as this subject looks like a very interesting one.

Speaking at NeBytes in November on SharePoint for Content Publishing

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 08:30:53 +0000

On the 17th of November I’ll be keeping Richard company on the drive up to Newcastle to speak at the NEBytes user group. My session will be a shortened version of the Using SharePoint for Content publishing I will deliver at the Black Marble event on November 3rd. I will be showing what can be done with SharePoint 2010 when the brief is for a content publishing site, be it internet- or intranet-facing and I will talk about the things we have learned along the way whilst delivering such projects – things to avoid as well as things that work well.

Fun with WCF, SharePoint and Kerberos – well it looks like fun with hindsight

Richard Fennell — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 12:08:52 +0000

[Updated 10 Nov 2010: Also see [More] Fun with WCF, SharePoint and Kerberos]

I have been battling some WCF authentication problems for a while now; I have been migrating our internal support desk call tracking system so that it runs as webpart hosted inside Sharepoint 2010 and uses WCF to access the backend services all using AD authentication. This means both our staff and customers can use a single sign on for all SharePoint and support desk operations. This replaced our older architecture using forms authentication and an complex mix of WCF and ASMX webservices that have grown up over time; this call tracking system started as an Access DB with a VB6 front end well over 10 years ago!

PDC 2010 thoughts - the next morning

Richard Fennell — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 09:02:27 +0000

I sat in the office yesterday with a beer in my hand watching the PDC2010 keynote. I have to say I preferred this to the option of a flight, jet lag and a less than comfortable seat in a usually overly cooled conference hall. With the Silverlight streaming the experience was excellent, especially as we connected an Acer 1420P to our projector/audio via a single HDMI cable and it just worked.

So what do you lose by not flying out? Well the obvious is the ‘free’ Windows Phone 7 the attendees got; too many people IMHO get hooked up on the swag at conferences, you go for knowledge not toys. They also forget they (or their company) paid for item anyway in their conference fee. More seriously you miss out on the chats between the sessions, and as the conference is on campus the easier access to the Microsoft staff. Also the act of travelling to a conference isolates you from the day to day interruptions of the office, the online experience does not and you will have to stay up late to view sessions live due to timezones. The whole travelling experience still cannot be replaced by the online experience, not matter how good the streaming.

Common confusion I have seen with Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management

Richard Fennell — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 21:34:47 +0000

With any new product there can be some confusion over the exact range and scope of features, this is just as true for VS2010 Lab Management as any other. In fact given the number of moving parts (infrastructure you need in place to get it running) it can be more confusing than average. In this post I will cover the questions I have seen most often.

What does ‘Network Isolation’ really mean?

First look at Postsharp AOP framework for .NET

Richard Fennell — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 15:13:11 +0000

At the Software Craftsmanship 2010 conference I met Gael Fraiteur of Sharpcrafters, he had given a talk on Aspect Oriented Programming AOP.Since the conference I have had a chance to look at his Postsharp AOP product for .NET.

I decided to do a quick spike project for a tender I have been working on, the requirement is to add a security model to an existing .NET assembly. Usually this would have entailed adding some security logic at the start of each public method to implement the security model. Using AOP I hoped I would be able to get the same effect by adding an attribute to the classes/methods, hopefully making the changes easier to read and quicker to develop.

First look at Postsharp AOP framework for .NET

Richard Fennell — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 15:13:11 +0000

Typemock Isolator++ Video

Richard Fennell — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 12:36:46 +0000

I mentioned at the Developer Group meeting I was speaking at last week at the Typemock had a new C++ version of their product. They have now published the video of their webinar on this product.

Video interviews from Software Craftsman 2010

Richard Fennell — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 21:25:46 +0000

Gael Fraiteur of Sharpcrafters recorded some interviews at the Software Craftsmen conference a couple of weeks ago. The interviewees include Ben Hall, Jason Gorman, Sandro Mancuso, Zi Makki and myself. They are all up on Youtube

Living with the Acer Aspire 1420P

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 14:00:06 +0000

This blog has been a very quiet place for a long time now, reflecting somewhat how busy I have been elsewhere. During this period of heavy work I have found a new friend in my Aspire 1420Tp In some ways it’s sad – my trusty and reliable Dell Mini 9 has been neglected in favour of a younger, sexier model.

The 1420P is the production model Acer convertible tablet, a variant of which was given to all Microsoft PDC conference attendees last year. We have quite a few in the office; sadly I am the only person to have paid for theirs. However, I benefit greatly from the fact that mine has a UK keyboard with all the right keys in their correct and proper places.

Windows Phone 7 SDK update for October

Robert Hogg — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 12:08:09 +0000

There is an October update for the Windows Phone 7 Developer kit get it here

It includes two new utilities, the Windows Phone Capability Detection Tool which allows you to work out which phone capabilities you need to register and a tool to allow connection to a phone without Zune for debugging , it also includes update for Bing Maps

I am speaking at NEBytes in November on Mocking with Typemock Isolator

Richard Fennell — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 20:51:24 +0000

On the 17th of November I will be speaking in Newcastle at the NEBytes user group on the subject ‘Using Typemock Isolator to enable testing of both well designed code and nasty legacy systems’.

NEBytes meetings have an interesting format of a developer and an IT Pro talk at each meeting. The IT Pro session in November is to be given by another member of Black Marble staff, Rik Hepworth, and is on Sharepoint I think.

I am speaking at NEBytes in November on Mocking with Typemock Isolator

Richard Fennell — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 20:51:24 +0000

On the 17th of November I will be speaking in Newcastle at the NEBytes user group on the subject ‘Using Typemock Isolator to enable testing of both well designed code and nasty legacy systems’.

Should I buy a Kindle?

Richard Fennell — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 11:05:07 +0000

I have always read a lot of novels, and I like to have a book with me for those unexpected moments when I get a chance to read. Of late this has meant I use the Microsoft Reader on my phone. It is not too bad an experience, using Project Gutenberg I can get a book (fiddle a bit in Word) and export to the Reader format. However I would like a slicker experience and be able to read new releases, so the Kindle seems just the job.

Do you work with C++? Typemock Isolator++ webinar

Richard Fennell — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 10:20:03 +0000

I don’t work with C++, but if you do you might be interested in Typemock’s free webinar this Thursday (21st October) on Isolator++. It will cover:

The basic API design principles of Isolator++ (from AAA to recursive fakes, loose fakes, sticky behaviour etc..)
What can Isolator++ do that others can’t?
Code examples using Google Test framework and Isolator++, to test nasty untestable C++ code
And as it is being given by Roy Osherove, possibly a short song, suitable for the occasion, performed live.

Also as an added incentive Typemock, in honor of the first release of Isolator++, Typemock are giving away a free Isolator++ license to all webinar attendees .

All our futures behind us?

Richard Fennell — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 19:58:22 +0000

I had a strangely thought provoking weekend, I took my son to do the tour of Concorde at Manchester Airport, and whilst in the area popped into Jodrell Bank to look at the Radio Telescope and the arboretum. Two great technological achievement, well worth a visit, but I felt both seemed to be in our past. I remember Concorde, I remember Apollo (just) and I remember sitting in a room at school to watch the first Shuttle launch, but where is the equivalent today? I started to feel that this ‘thrusting to the future’ style of project no longer exists; there seem to be few children saying ‘I want to be an engineer’ or ‘an astronaut’. I fear they are too often now saying ‘I just want to be famous’.

ALM Rangers ship SCOM Management pack for TFS2010

Richard Fennell — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 20:26:10 +0000

Want to monitor the health of your TFS system? Then wait no longer, the ALM Rangers have just shipped a SCOM Management pack for Visual Studio 2010.

The management pack provides availability and configuration monitoring, performance data collection, and default thresholds. So if you use any SKU of SCOM 2007 and TFS 2010 why not download it and have a look.

Leeds Hack Day 2010 registration open

Richard Fennell — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 14:08:57 +0000

To quote their site….

Leeds Hack is a 24 hour hack day in the city of Leeds (surprise!). 100+ people in a room – Feed them, water them, take them out for walks every now and them and let them create some amazing things.

Best of all… It’s free..

For more details have a look at http://leedshack.com/

Speaking at the Developer Group on Typemock Isolator on the 20th of October

Richard Fennell — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 21:46:05 +0000

The detailed agenda for the Developer Group Meeting on the 20th of October in London has been published. I am speaking in the afternoon on ‘Using Typemock Isolator to enable testing of both well designed code and nasty legacy systems’

Hope to see you there

Thoughts on the Software Craftsmanship 2010

Richard Fennell — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 21:38:42 +0000

I have reached my hotel after the days events at Software Craftsmanship 2010 at Bletchley Park and got a chance to write up my thoughts. I had planned to Tweet during the day, but just never got round to it, too busy.

So how was the event? I have to say I don’t think I enjoyed it as much as last year’s event. That is not to say this was not a good event, but this years seemed to focus on hands on programming tasks. This is great but I always feel that I could have been doing this at home, or in a dojo session in the office (not that I do this oftan enough). Last year the sessions were more Randori Kata format and the group discussion this engendered I found very useful. I think conferences like this are probably at their best when they open your mind to new technique and ideas; yes coding kata can do this, but I feel that a conference needs to focus on the meta level of ‘why do this kata’ and how to ‘best run a kata’ and leave the actual kata sessions to usergroups meetings.

Error –4002 on Access services on Sharepoint 2010

Richard Fennell — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 09:45:38 +0000

We have had an internal timesheeting system written in Access services running without any problems for the past through months. At the end of last week, when people tried to submit their timesheets they started getting a -4002 error saying the macro (that saves the weekly sheet) could not be started.

Checking the server event logs, Sharepoint logs and Access services log tables showed nothing. So as all good IT staff do we tried the traditional IISRESET command (on both our Sharepoint web servers) and it all leapt back into life. The only change on our server in the past week has been been the ASP.NET security fix, and associated reboot, but I cannot see why this should effect Access Services, it looked as if it had basically Access services just failed to restart fully after the server reboot.

Community Community Community

Linda Hogg — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 09:46:00 +0000

This is a great time of year for events – as well as our own (see previous post: A Series of Fortunate Events), there are the following great community events to look forward to:

First up is SQL Bits in York – taking place from 30th September to 2nd October at York University – a three day event, with a community focus on the Saturday. The largest SQL Server conference in Europe, and must-attend event for DBAs.

DDD Dublin 2010 Sessions published

Richard Fennell — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 08:53:20 +0000

The results of the DDD Dublin vote is in, and I am sorry to say I did not make it through the selection process. I must come up with at least some more interesting titles and abstracts (of course I can leave the sessions as dull as ever as you have voted for them by then, just like politicians and general elections really).

The schedule looks really good, but after a bit of thought I have decided not to attend the event; I am speaking or attending events both the week before and the week after DDD Dublin so I am going to take the chance to reduce my carbon footprint and have a weekend at home.

DDD9 Announced

Richard Fennell — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 11:41:34 +0000

DDD9 will be on the 29th Jan 2011 at TVP, for more details and to submit sessions see http://developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/ddd9/

Upcoming speaking engagements

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:17:50 +0000

21 Sep – [From Express to Ultimate: Improving Productivity with Visual Studio 2010](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=From Express to Ultimate: Improving Productivity with Visual Studio 2010 - 21 Sept) (Black Marble Bradford)
29 Sep – Microsoft ALM day (Microsoft Reading) [Cancelled]
5 Oct – Microsoft ALM day (ICCI London) [Cancelled]
7 Oct - Software Craftsmanship Conference (not speaking but attending and it is workshop based so I doubt I will be silent all day!)
9 Oct - DDD Dublin – The vote is still open so not sure I am presenting here yet or just attending [Did not get though the vote so decided not to attend]
13 Oct - [Mix in the North](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Mix in the North) (Holiday Inn, Tong)
14 Oct – Integrating Java Developers into TFS with Team explorer Everywhere (Black Marble Bradford)
20 Oct - [The Developers Group Meeting](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=The Developers Group Meeting "The Developers Group Meeting") Using Typemock Isolator (EMC Office London)
28 Oct - [VBug Autumn Conference – The Step Up to ALM](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=VBug Autumn Conference – The Step Up to ALM) (Loughborough) Postponed to the spring
16 Nov - [From Express to Ultimate: Improving Productivity with Visual Studio 2010](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=From Express to Ultimate: Improving Productivity with Visual Studio 2010 - 16 Nov) (Black Marble Bradford)
17 Nov - Provisionally booked for a session on using Typemock Isolator (NEBtyes Newcastle)
8 Dec 2010 - [Architecture Forum in the North 2010](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Architecture Forum in the North 2010) (Holiday Inn, Tong)

and that is just this year

Upcoming speaking engagements

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:17:50 +0000

21 Sep – [From Express to Ultimate: Improving Productivity with Visual Studio 2010](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=From Express to Ultimate: Improving Productivity with Visual Studio 2010 - 21 Sept) (Black Marble Bradford)
29 Sep – Microsoft ALM day (Microsoft Reading) [Cancelled]
5 Oct – Microsoft ALM day (ICCI London) [Cancelled]
7 Oct - Software Craftsmanship Conference (not speaking but attending and it is workshop based so I doubt I will be silent all day!)
9 Oct - DDD Dublin – The vote is still open so not sure I am presenting here yet or just attending [Did not get though the vote so decided not to attend]
13 Oct - [Mix in the North](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Mix in the North) (Holiday Inn, Tong)
14 Oct – Integrating Java Developers into TFS with Team explorer Everywhere (Black Marble Bradford)
20 Oct - [The Developers Group Meeting](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=The Developers Group Meeting "The Developers Group Meeting") Using Typemock Isolator (EMC Office London)
28 Oct - [VBug Autumn Conference – The Step Up to ALM](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=VBug Autumn Conference – The Step Up to ALM) (Loughborough) Postponed to the spring
16 Nov - [From Express to Ultimate: Improving Productivity with Visual Studio 2010](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=From Express to Ultimate: Improving Productivity with Visual Studio 2010 - 16 Nov) (Black Marble Bradford)
17 Nov - Provisionally booked for a session on using Typemock Isolator (NEBtyes Newcastle)
8 Dec 2010 - [Architecture Forum in the North 2010](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Architecture Forum in the North 2010) (Holiday Inn, Tong)

and that is just this year

DDD Dublin voting as opened

Richard Fennell — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:05:00 +0000

The vote has opened for DDD Ireland, get in there an vote for the sessions you would like to see, there is a nice selection.

May I draw your attention to the two I have submitted

How can I add my own custom step to a TFS 2010 build, or do I even need to try? (Oooh a new one!)
Developing Testable Web Parts for SharePoint (Could also be called Using Typemock with SharePoint)

No pressure…….

Experiences running multiple instances of 2010 build service on a single VM

Richard Fennell — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 11:50:00 +0000

I think my biggest issue with TFS2010 is the problem that a build controller is tied to a single Team Project Collection (TPC). For a company like mine where we run a TPC for each client this means we have had to start to generate a good number of virtualised build controller/agents. It is especially irritating as I know that the volume of builds on any given controller is low.

Talking about mocking with Typemock a The of The Developers Group in October

Richard Fennell — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 08:40:30 +0000

On the 20th October I will be speaking at an afternoon event hosted by The Developer Group at EMC offices in London. My subject will be using Typemock Isolator to address testing problems in both well designed code (nice IoC patterns etc) and in nasty legacy code where you have to use all the trick Isolator allows.

Hope to see you there

A Series of Fortunate Events

Linda Hogg — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 19:47:00 +0000

We are delighted at Black Marble to announce a great series of events to brighten your days through the darkness of Autumn and Winter.

Kicking off in September with the first of four Visual Studio events exploring the different products available – from Express to Ultimate – to help you determine which is best for you and your business.

Thoughts on Kodu

Robert Hogg — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 20:17:30 +0000

The Kodu team have an introductory video on teaching children to program with Kodu see it here

The Consolarium have released a set of videos as an introduction to Kodu , see them here. They are a Centre for Games and Learning, established by Learning and Teaching Scotland to explore the world of computer games and help teach programming. It is great to see centralised generation of quality teaching material for consumption across all the schools in a region, inspired. Just a shame we don't have this in England, luckily they are happy to share.

Stupid mistake over Javascript parameters

Richard Fennell — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 16:19:14 +0000

I have been using the Google Maps JavaScript API today. I lost too much time over a really stupid error. I was trying to set the zoom level on a map using the call

map.setZoom();

I had set my initial zoom level to 5 (the scale is 1-17 I think) in the map load, when I called setZoom to 11 all was fine, but if I set it to any other number is reverted to 5. This different effect for different numbers was a real red herring. The problem was down to how I was handling the variable containing the zoom level prior to passing it to setZoom method. When it was set to 11 it was set explicitly e.g.

Problem faking multiple SPLists with Typemock Isolator in a single test

Richard Fennell — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 15:20:05 +0000

I have found a problem with repeated calls to indexed SharePoint Lists with Typemock Isolator 6.0.3. This what I am trying to do…

The Problem

I am using Typemock Isolator to allow me to develop a SharePoint Webpart outside of the SharePoint environment (there is a video about this on the Typemock site). My SharePoint Webpart uses data drawn from a pair of SharePoint lists to draw a map using Google maps API; so in my test harness web site page I have the following code in the constructor that fakes out the two SPLists and populates them with test content.

My Typemock video have been published

Richard Fennell — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:36:10 +0000

I have a couple of new video’s on on the Typepmock Experts site, why not take a look, the titles are

Using Typemock Isolator to enable rapid development
Using Typemock Isolator and Ivonna for unit testing the UI

I am speaking at the VBug Autumn Conference

Richard Fennell — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 11:29:19 +0000

The VBug Autumn Conference is on the Wed 27th & Thurs 28th October at Holywell Park, Loughborough. The published agenda this far is

**Day One (Wed 27th Oct):**Top of the Pops with Sharepoint 2010 – Dave McMahon
Cache Out with Windows Server AppFabric – Phil Pursglove
Mapping the Cloud – How far can we stretch it? Johannes Kebeck
Silverlight Development on Windows Phone 7 – Andy Wigley

**Day Two (Thurs 28th Oct):
**TFS (actual title TBC) – Richard Fennell
Silverlight 4 (actual title TBC) – Richard Costall
Others to be confirmed…including Azure, Expression Blend & BI

Running Android on my HTC Diamond2

Richard Fennell — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 09:09:36 +0000

I have posted in the past that I am not a huge fan of my phone, so I read Martin Hinshelwood’s experiences with putting Android on his HTC HD with interest. I have tended to leave my phone as a consumer device i.e. it does what it does, I tend to not fiddle too much as long as it will make calls, sync email and allow me to get the cricket scores on the BBC website, the essentials of life. However, I had a spare SD card and a bit of time. So it was off to the Diamond2(Topaz) XDADevelopers forums to see what I needed.

Does anyone need a VS2010 Custom Build Activity for StyleCop?

Richard Fennell — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 13:49:27 +0000

There is a noticeable omission form the tooling for StyleCop that you cannot integrate it into a TFS 2010 Build directly. There is a custom task to do it as part of MSBuild Extension pack, but this is designed for TFS 2008.

So when I had to wire in StyleCop to our 2010 build process I hit a problem, I could

Edit the .csproj files for each project to wire in StyleCop
Use an MSBuild activity in my 2010 build
Write my own custom activity.

I decided to follow the final option, it did not look too bad as the source needed is provided in the StyleCop SDK. Well after a good deal of fiddling I have it basically working. Again I found the process of developing a custom activity a little irritating.

New book on Refactoring with Visual Studio 2010 from Packt Publishing

Richard Fennell — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 08:43:22 +0000

Recently Packt Publishing sent me a copy of ‘Refactoring with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010’ by Peter Ritchie, I have to say I have rather impressed by it.

My only major issue with it is that of the title, this book covers much more than the refactoring features of 2010. It provides a very clear example driven discussion of the use and application of both refactoring patterns and design patterns. I think this would be an excellent book for a developer who want to start to apply design patterns to their C# code. The examples being more real world than Head First’s ‘Design Patterns’ (and the examples are in C# as opposed to Java) and the book being a far easier read than the classic ‘Design patterns : elements of reusable object-oriented software’

DDD Dublin call for speakers is open

Richard Fennell — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:52:11 +0000

There is a call for speaker for DDD in Dublin on the 9th of October, that is not that far away is it!

[Updated 1 Sep 2010] The link would help http://developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/dddie10/

What is an .xesc file?

Richard Fennell — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:10:22 +0000

Test Professional, after the Lab Management update, now uses Expression Encoder 4.0 to create it video of screen activity. This means that when you run a test and record a video you end up with an attachment called ScreenCapture.xesc.

Now my PC did not have the Expression Encoder 4.0 installed, so did not know what to do with an .xesc file created within our Lab Management environment. To address this the answer is simple. On any PC that might want to view the video either:

Cannot run CodeUI tests in Lab Management – getting a ’Build directory of the test run is not specified or does not exist’

Richard Fennell — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:33:03 +0000

Interesting user too stupid error today whist adding some CodeUI tests to a Lab Management deployment scenario.

I added the Test Case and associated it with Coded UI test in Visual Studio

I made sure my deployment build had the tests selected

I then ran my Lab Deployment build, but got the error

Build directory of the test run is not specified or does not exist.

Don’t hardcode that build option

Richard Fennell — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:56:19 +0000

I have been using the ExternalTestRunner 2010 Build activity I wrote. I realised that at least one of the parameters I need to set, the ProjectCollection used to publish the test results, was hard coded in my sample. It was set in the form

http://myserver:8080/tfs/MyCollection

This is not that sensible, as this value is available using the build API as

BuildDetail.BuildServer.TeamProjectCollection.Uri.ToString()

It makes no sense to hard code the name of the server if the build system already knows it.

Detailed posted on using Access Services and Event Receivers

Richard Fennell — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 08:26:44 +0000

Access MVP Ben Clothier has posted an article and video on Going beyond Web Macros: Using Event Receivers & .NET with Access Services. This takes some of the techniques I was proposing for .NET/Access integration and added to them using Ben’s extensive experience in the Access space.

Well worth a look if you want to make Access a RAD front end to legacy systems.

"Program too big to fit in memory" when installing a TFS 2010 Test Controller

Richard Fennell — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:43:23 +0000

Just spent a while battling a problem whilst install the TFS 2010 Test Controller. When I launched the install setup program off the .ISO I could select the Test Controller installer, but then a command prompt flashed up and exited with no obvious error. If I went into the TestControllers directory on the mounted .ISO and ran the setup from a command prompt I saw the error "program too big to fit in memory".

Great iPlayer Media Center Plugin

Richard Fennell — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:25:53 +0000

I am very impressed with the iPlayer Media Center Plugin I found on the Australian Media Center Community, I like most people found it installed fine but that it failed to add itself to the start menu. However this was easily fixed using Media Center Studio once I got my head around the Media Center Studio’s user interface. The basic process is:

Load Media Center Studio
Go onto the Start Menu tab
At the bottom of the screen look for the entry points section (needs expanding usually)
In here you should find the iPlayer application (has a red’ish pay button logo)
Drag it onto whichever part of the start menu you want, but be aware there are some limitation as to where it can go, Extensions worked fine for me
Save the changes
Restart Media Center

Once this is done you should be able to view WMV based iPlayer content from within Media Center. I have seen it take a while to start buffering content, but other than that it seems to work well and certainly looks the part.

Dublin-bound

Robert Hogg — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 23:39:44 +0000

I am all packed and ready to head off to sunny Dublin with some of the Black Marble Design group to see the good folks at Microsoft Ireland and present on some of the great things Black Marble and Microsoft are up to. Expect two days of Expression, Phone 7 and Windows 7 goodness with Black Marble flair

EPICenter 2010 : Software Development War Stories

Robert Hogg — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:19:46 +0000

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking at EPICenter Ireland at Trinity College Dublin with my great friend and colleague Steve Spencer on our experiences over the last few decades

This blog contains many of the links and subject information from this talk however here is a useful quick summary of some of the resources mentioned.

I think the summary I would like to pass on is, treat people well, don’ let them take advantage, provide good opportunities for training. One person what is the killer sign to watch out for, my answer “we will have to start from scratch”.

EPICenter 2010 : Microsoft Phone 7 Summary

Robert Hogg — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 18:29:19 +0000

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking at EPICenter Ireland at Trinity College Dublin

This blog contains many of the links and subject information from this talk however here is a useful quick summary

The Tools for developing Microsoft Phone 7 applications are free (see below), Applications are either built as Silverlight or XNA however a lot of the components are common. The phone chassis is set by Microsoft allowing us all to receive updates and have a consistent platform. The phone screen size is 800x480 or 480x320, Capacitive touch:4 or more contact points,Sensors: A-GPS, Accelerometer, Compass, Light, Proximity, GPU: DirectX 9 acceleration, Camera 5 mega pixels or more.

EPICenter 2010 : SQL Modelling Service Summary

Robert Hogg — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 17:27:55 +0000

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking at EPICenter Ireland at Trinity College Dublin

This blog contains many of the links and subject information from this talk however here is a useful quick summary

Repository Database

Built on SQL Server 2008

Stores model definitions (structure)

Stores model instances (data)

“M” language

Declarative text-based modelling language

Aimed at “curly-brace” programmers

Can be used to define models for repository database

Speaking at SQLBits The 7 Wonders of SQL

Robert Hogg — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:04:28 +0000

I am really pleased that I will be speaking at SQL Bits The 7 Wonders of SQL on SQL Modelling Services. SQL bits 7 is running from 30th September - 2nd October 2010 at the Heslington Campus of York University

You will have the first chance to see features from the next release of SQL Server – Denali. The first two days have a nominal charge and day three is free.

Running MSDeploy to a remote box from inside a TFS 2010 Build (Part 2)

Richard Fennell — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 14:36:16 +0000

Another follow up post, this time to the one on MSDeploy. As I said in that post a better way to trigger the MSDeploy PowerShell script would be as part of the build workflow, as opposed to a post build action in the MSBuild phase. Doing it this way means if the build failed testing, after MSBuild complete, you can still choose not to run MSDeploy.

I have implemented this using an InvokeProcess call in my build workflow, which I have placed just before Gated checking logic at the end of the process template.

How to edit a TFS 2010 build template when it contains custom activities.

Richard Fennell — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:29:21 +0000

I posted a while ago on using my Typemock TMockRunner Custom Activity for Team Build 2010. I left that post with the problem that if you wished to customise a template after you a had added the custom activity you had to use the somewhat complex branching model edit the XAML.

If you just followed the process in my post to put the build template in a new team project and tried to edit the XAML you got the following errors, an import namespace error and the associated inability to render part of the workflow

And the first official release of the TFS Integration Platform

Richard Fennell — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 10:39:02 +0000

The last of the recent batch of announcements is that of the first official release of the TFS Integration Platform. This provides tools to allow synchronisation between TFS 2010 and …..

TFS 2008
TFS 2010
ClearCase
ClearQuest
File System

Again more details on Brian Harry’s blog.

New tool for configuring Sharepoint MOSS for TFS dashboards

Richard Fennell — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 10:33:24 +0000

Another recent announcement from Brian Harry’s blog was about the release of the Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 MOSS Configuration Tool. I had a look at this tool during it’s beta testing and it certainly can help to get all the setting right to allow Excel Services to provide your charting for TFS projects, it worked for us.

Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management released announced

Richard Fennell — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 09:49:11 +0000

In the VSLive! keynote Microsoft made announcements about Lab Management, it will be RTM’d later this month and best of all it will be included as part of the benefits of the Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN and Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 with MSDN SKUs. You can read more detail on Brian Keller’s blog

I think this is a great move on licensing, we had expect it to be purchasable addition to Visual Studio. With this change it now is consistent with TFS i.e. if you have the right SKU of Visual Studio and MSDN you get the feature. This greatly removes the barrier to entry for this technology.

Running MSDeploy to a remote box from inside a TFS 2010 Build

Richard Fennell — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 13:27:00 +0000

[Also see Running MSDeploy to a remote box from inside a TFS 2010 Build (Part 2)]

A fellow MVP Ewald Hofman wrote a great post on getting an Web Application to deploy as part of a TFS 2010 build. I have been using this technique but found a few points that were not right in the original post, I assume these are down to RC/RTM issues and the fact I was trying to access a remote system.

Getting a ,NET 4 WCF service running on IIS7

Richard Fennell — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 11:33:28 +0000

Now I know this should be simple and obvious but I had a few problems today publishing a web service to a new IIS7 host. These are the steps I had to follow to get around all my errors:

Take a patched Windows Server 2008 R2, this had the File Server and IIS roles installed.
I install MSDeploy (http://blog.iis.net/msdeploy) onto the server to manage my deployment, this is a tool I am becoming a big fan of lately.

Outlook Social Connector

Robert Hogg — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 22:08:27 +0000

Earlier today I was trying to use the Outlook Social Connector for Linked-in Facebook and live but it would not display the View/People Pane

the answer was odd after ensuring the add in was selected in File/Options/Addins, I changed the registry

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOfficeOutlookSocialConnector key=RunOSC, from the value 0 to 1

after some checking on the web it looks like this is a problem a lot of PDC Acer users are having.

hope this helps

Getting code coverage working on Team Build 2010

Richard Fennell — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 16:08:00 +0000

If you have VS2010 Premium or Ultimate [Professional corrected error in orginal post] you have code coverage built into the test system. When you look at your test results there is a button to see the code coverage

You would think that there is easy way to use the code coverage in your automated build process using Team Build 2010, well it can done but you have to do a bit of work.

Next weeks Agile Yorkshire meeting: Some things about testing that everyone should know, ...... but were afraid to ask, in case somebody told them.

Richard Fennell — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 08:10:45 +0000

It is Agile Yorkshire time again, it is a real shame that due to the move of the meeting from the 2nd Wednesday to the 2nd Tuesday I really struggle to make the events. Particularly irritating this month as this one look really interesting and the speaker, Ralph Williams, from past evidence always is entertaining. To quote the Agile Yorkshire site the session will..

“The presentation will focus on the techniques that testers use to identify their tests, whether working from a requirements specification or on agile teams.

Powershell script to rename files for use as SharePoint 2010 User Profile thumbnails

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:55:32 +0000

User profile photos have changed in SharePoint 2010 in that they are now stored in a single image library in the MySite Host root site collection. They have also changed in that when you change the profile photo, SharePoint takes the file and creates three new images at specific sizes, then discards the file you gave it. These files have specific names to link them to the user account and come in small, medium and large flavours.

Scale out TFS2010 issues and fixes

Richard Fennell — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:55:03 +0000

One of our clients has been working on a nice scale out implementation of TFS2010 (migrating from an existing TFS2005). They are using AT load balancing, failover SQL cluster and Search Server Express to unify search. As you might expect this has been a interesting learning experience for all.

You can find out about some of the problems they have had and their solutions are http://www.rancidswan.com/?cat=19

Can you guess what our great freebie is?

Linda Hogg — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 23:32:00 +0000

During our current season of events we’ve just started to give away some great Black Marble – Microsoft freebies … you might be able to guess from the pictures what they are!

Thanks to all who contributed to producing a great product, our team at Black Marble and the great people at Mountain Goat Software who produce the original Planning Poker cards for providing us with license to create our own.

Once more with feeling…watching yourself on video

Richard Fennell — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 10:11:47 +0000

I have been meaning to watch back the video taken of my recent presentation for a while. This weekend I have had the chance to sample the highlights! In the past I have always found it hard to watch myself on recordings, though after the initial cringe this time it was not too bad. I must be getting used to the critical process.

So what have I learnt

I say ‘err’ to ‘err’ much ‘err’
I move my hands about much like Magnus Pike, a childhood 1970/80s TV popular science reference as seen in this Thomas Dolby video and this Mitchell and Web sketch, for those not old enough to remember. I don’t think it is too irritating do you? But to carry it off fully I do need madder hair.
I tend to wander about the stage, I know it is consider good presenting practice not to talk and walk at the same time. But does this actually get on the audiences nerves? It certainly does me when watching when I jump up and down during a demo. I think I know why I am doing it, I heard about an idea from NLP for presenting/teaching to always deliver specific types of information from the same physical location e.g. funny anecdote by the windows, summary points by the lectern etc. The idea is it subconsciously primes the audience what to expect and how to treat it e.g. oh here he is by the lectern I must remember this as it is important. I guess I need to just be a bit more sparing in the application of this technique.
I still use too many slides, I especially need to focus on less bullet pointed ones. When presenting at the BCS recently the projector broke 5 minutes into my session and I did the rest of the session without slides (that the audience could see). All I missed was a couple of images of Scrum and Kanban (and wild hand waving an pointing at a white wall got me round the problems). I the feedback I got was good. However a key factor was I could see my bullet pointed slides on my laptop. I realised the slides are my speaker notes. So next time I intend to try very few audience slides but have a stack much like my normal one running on PowerPoint on my phone. Lets see how that works.
…..Oh and I have a Birmingham accent, someone could have mentioned it!

I would heartily recommend anyone presenting to have a look at videos of your sessions, even if they are just ones taken with a camcorder or phone from the back of the room. You may be surprised how you appear, sessions often look very different to the audience as opposed to how you felt it went from the stage.

Managing SQL Azure Databases with Houston

Robert Hogg — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 18:37:03 +0000

SQL Azure Labs have released Project Houston a lightweight web based Database management tool for SQL Azure. Houston allows you to develop, deploy, and manage SQL Azure and includes support for basic database management tasks like authoring and executing queries, designing and editing a database schema, and editing table data.

Software Craftsmanship 2010

Richard Fennell — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:34:14 +0000

The Software Craftsmanship 2010 conference has been announced and is open for registration. The last Software Craftsmanship conference was one of the most useful events I have ever attended, so this years should be well worth attending, even though it has gone from being a free event to having a small charge.

As a bonus it is at Bletchley Park, in itself worth a trip.

Get in quick spaces are very limited.

All Leds flashing on a Netgear GS108 Switch

Richard Fennell — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:52:10 +0000

I came back form holiday to find a Netgear GS108 switch with all it leds flashing and it passing no data. This is exactly the same symptoms as this post. My fix did not involve the use of a soldering iron as detailed in the post, I just swapped the PSU and it started working fine. I have seen this before, the PSU shows it’s age before the device itself. Good job I have a big box of misc PSU from devices down the years

Bill Clinton@WWPC

Robert Hogg — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:18:28 +0000

It must be said that Microsoft has provided me with some of the most memorable and sometimes surreal opportunities in my life. Today was most certainly one of those occasions. I was privileged to see former President Bill Clinton deliver a powerful and passionate speech about the world in which we live and the work that he is doing to help. His message was one of realism and hope, kindness and practicality, stark warning and insight. A portion of Bill’s speech focused on partnering by encouraging businesses to help people and other business, even though helping other businesses grow might not always make immediate sense to a hard nosed business leader.

Running SPDisposeCheck as part of a 2010 CI Build

Richard Fennell — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 19:47:32 +0000

SPDisposeCheck is a great tool for SharePoint developers to make sure that they are disposing of resources correctly. The problem is it is a bit slow to run, a problem as this will mean developers will tend not to run it as often as they should. A good solution to the problem is to run it as part of the continuous integration process. There is are posts on how to do this via unit tests and as a MSBuild task, but I wanted to use a TFS 2010 style build. Turns out this is reasonably straight forward without the need to write a custom activity.

Survey on what you think of the Visual Studio web site

Richard Fennell — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 18:24:57 +0000

Do you use the Visual Studio web site? If you do or you don’t Microsoft are interested to find the reasons why via a quick survey.

BCS EGM results

Richard Fennell — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:46:22 +0000

The BCS has had its EGM today and the results are out. Basically the vote is about 75% in support of the status quo, which I am not surprised by. What I am really pleased to see is that the Trustees withdrew the special resolution the change the number of people to required to call an EGM from 50 people to 2% of the membership.

I really do hope that this whole EGM process has been a warning to the Trustee and board that they must be more open, and help promote and continue the dialog that EGM has created.

Re-awarded as a Visual Studio ALM MVP

Richard Fennell — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:58:27 +0000

I have just found out I have been re-awarded as a Visual Studio ALM MVP for the third year (though it was called Team System the first two times). It is a privilege to get to work with such a great group of people as a have met via the MVP programme.

Using my Typemock TMockRunner Custom Activity for Team Build 2010

Richard Fennell — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 10:25:00 +0000

[Also see http://blogs.blackmarble.co.uk/blogs/rfennell/archive/2010/08/13/how-to-edit-a-tfs-2010-build-template-when-it-contains-custom-activities.aspx ]

A couple of months ago I wrote and published a custom activity for Team Build 2010 to allow Typemock tests to be run within the build process. Whilst setting up a new build need to use this activity so I though I would see if there was an easier way to use it in a build without all the branch and fuss required for development.

This is what I had to do

Fun presenting last night at BCS

Richard Fennell — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 09:00:48 +0000

Thanks to everyone who attended my session last night at the West Yorkshire BCS on Agile and Lean development process. The projector failing after only a few minutes meant I had to adopt a good agile approach to the session. It was nice that so many people came up afterwards to say they enjoyed the lack of PowerPoint.

This got me thinking, as I enjoyed not having it as well. All I really missed was a couple of slides one that showed a Kanban board and another that diagrammatically showed the Scrum process, I got round the lack of both of these by pointing wildly at the blank projector screen and asking people to imagine. So if I run that session again I think I will just have that pair of slides and lose the rest. I just need to find a nice means to let me see the text slides, which I used as my speaking notes. I have never been a fan of postcard style notes when presenting, too much to drop, and when I tried using my phone in the past it was awkward, but maybe time to try again now my phone has a larger screen.

Speaking at the BCS this week on Agile

Richard Fennell — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 21:12:54 +0000

Just a reminder I am speaking at the West Yorkshire BCS meeting this Wednesday on the subject ‘Agile is so old hat all the cool kids are doing lean now’.

The meeting starts a 5:45 for refreshments, and 6:30 for my session. The venue is the Old Broadcasting House, 148 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS2 9EN (www.ntileeds.co.uk)

Hope to see you there

Professional Scrum Developer with TFS course in the UK

Richard Fennell — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:16:57 +0000

My fellow UK ALM MVP, Martin Hinshelwood, is running a Professional Scrum Developer course in London at the end of next month. I understand there are still some places left, and some good discounts available. So if you was looking at wanting to implement a Scrum process on TFS it could be well worth a look

If you want to know more about the whole PSD programme have a look at the Microsoft site

TF246062: Two or more database are in conflict when upgrading to TFS 2010

Richard Fennell — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 10:21:01 +0000

Whist upgrading a TFS2010 Beta2 server to RTM I saw the following error when I ran the verify step of the upgrade.

TF246062: Two or more databases are in conflict because they are each designated as the owners of the following schema: Framework. The schema is for the host with the following name and ID: CollectionName, 8aace481-2471-49c8-da74-77ee3da4ce29. The databases with this conflict are: Data Source=SQLInstance1;Initial Catalog=Tfs_CollectionName;Integrated Security=True, Data Source=SQLInstance1;Initial Catalog=Tfs_Production_CollectionName;Integrated Security=True. You must specify one and only one database owner for the schema in the searchable SQL Server instances for this deployment of Team Foundation Server.

Teaching Programming with Kodu

Robert Hogg — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:23:43 +0000

The awesome team at Microsoft responsible for Kodu have now now released a new technical preview which has a load of enhancements including save and publish for games

get it here

They have also released a Classroom kit which is VERY VERY good, it would be great if there was an update for UK Teaching but I am sure they will do that at some point.

get it here

also recently a new version of Small Basic (0.9) is out

IDD Building a breakfast comment to a become process – now there is a leap

Richard Fennell — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 07:48:57 +0000

Gil at Typemock has been posting about some ideas we discussed over breakfast at the Typemock Partner conference a while ago, I have been a bit slow at commenting, so I though I better add to the conversation. Though Typemock is an excellent mocking framework, for me basic mocking is not its biggest win. All the ‘classic auto mocking’ of interfaces to speed TDD style working is great, but I can do that with any of the .NET mocking frameworks. All they do is mean I don’t have to write my own test stubs and mocks, so saving me time, which is good but not the keep win I was looking for.

Post NDC2010 thoughts – a great event

Richard Fennell — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 07:33:00 +0000

What a great event the Norwegian Developers conference is. It is a nice size so there is a good selection of tracks, but no so big you feel lost, also the speakers and attendees were all mixing freely which I think always makes for a good atmosphere. This was all enhanced by the excellent organisation of the event, what can I say the wifi worked faultlessly, the food was good and the overflow screens (so from one place you could view the video and audio of any current sessions) was a brilliant idea, so much I know some people took to using this in preference to going to the actual session. You can see the overflow screens at the top of the photo below.

Want a free great book on Windows Azure

Robert Hogg — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:10:02 +0000

Well in that case the ever fantastic Eric Nelson is your man, if you join the fans of Windows Azure http://ukazure.ning.com/profiles/blogs/free-100-page-windows-azure

I am sure Eric will find it in his heart to send you the password to download this masterpiece.

When roving what I hate most about windows mobile 6 is not knowing what connection it will try to use.

Richard Fennell — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 09:50:23 +0000

When travelling aboard what I hate most about Windows Mobile 6 is that I have no idea if the phone is going to trying to use a local WiFi or 3G. Mobile Outlook seems the worst culprit, it loves 3G over everything else!.

On mobile 6.5 there are just too many places where you might need set which data connection to use. This means, for fear if a nightmare phone bill, I tend not use us my phone for data. And just just don’t realise how much you use it at home until you are away.

All set for Olso – Off to NDC 2010

Richard Fennell — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:43:38 +0000

I have sorted all the bits for my presentations so am ready for my trip to NDC 2010 in Olso tomorrow. Really looking forward to it, the agenda looks great.

Video of my Microsoft Techdays session on Lab Management

Richard Fennell — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 15:15:00 +0000

I had not checked the site for a while, but my Microsoft Techdays session on Lab Management is now available as a video

I cannt make it embed here, some Community Server issue I assume, so look for it on the developer track on the second day. It is called 'Putting some testing in your TFS build process"

How little do you have to do to run a VS/TFS2008 build on a TFS2010 server?

Richard Fennell — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:10:09 +0000

As do many people I have a good number of TFS2008 style builds for legacy applications. I will, in the end, move these over to VS2010 and hence upgrade their build formats to the new 2010 workflow based one, but for now it would be nice to be able to run them with the minimum of effort. To this end I have done some work to see the minimum I can get away with to allow these builds to run, the aim being to leave the build box as close to a virgin TFS2010 one as possible.

Visual Studio 2010 is just out the door and there is more

Robert Hogg — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 12:03:15 +0000

The Visualization and Modelling Feature Pack for VS2010 Ultimate is now available from here it is only available for MSDN subscribers.

The Feature pack allows you to generate code from UML class diagrams,create UML class diagrams from code,Generate dependency graphs and layer diagrams for C, and C++ projects and more.

The Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power tools are also now available here.

TF31002: Altering the URL that your TFS 2010 Web Client uses to talk to the AT

Richard Fennell — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 10:34:37 +0000

The Web Client for TFS 2010 (what was called Team System Web Access TSWA) is now installed as a core part of the Application Tier. It is no longer a separate install as it was in previous versions. This means it is easy to implement, it is just there by default. However, this can raise some problems if intend to expose to TFS AT via a firewall to the Internet, or use an alias for your TFS AT. This is because, by default, the Web Client uses it’s host server name as the AT name to connect to, it assumes the AT is local.

Thoughts on the BCS EGM

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 09:16:01 +0000

Stepping along the path ploughed by Richard and Robert, I thought I’d try to order my thoughts on the BCS EGM through a blog post. Like Richard, I am (as I begin writing) uncertain as to my final leaning on this, although I have clear views on some of the issues.

Democracy In Action

One of the most important, in my view, is one which might be missed by many. Should the membership vote in favour of the Board of Trustees they are also strongly encouraged to change the bye-laws of the Royal Charter to stop this happening again.

It works! 8Gb RAM in my Acer TravelMate 6593

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 08:14:45 +0000

I thought I’d post this because so many like me might benefit from my experiment. We have a number of Acer TravelMate 6593 laptops here at Black Marble. They’re great machines – plenty of grunt, a lovely screen and most of the toys you could need in a laptop that’s used for a mix of IT admin, dev and technical sales (including demos). The only downside is that they only ship with up to 4Gb of memory, and Acer say it won’t take more.

Windows Server App Fabric RTM’s Hurrah

Robert Hogg — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 21:13:20 +0000

At TechED one of the many important announcements is the release to manufacture of Windows Server App Fabric

I will be running some events on App Fabric later in the year so keep watching.

get App Fabric from here

BCS EGM

Robert Hogg — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 23:30:24 +0000

Following Richards lead, I have decided to post on my thoughts about the BCS AGM. While I don’t quite agree on some of Richards points. I think that the reasons behind the call EGM are valid. It certainly seems to me that the governing body has thrown a funded PR machine against the EGM and has not spent anytime listening to the members on the issues raised.

The actions of Len who has as far as I can tell used the skills we treasure as a part of the computing community namely of asking questions and analysis to look at our society and conclude in my opinion correctly that there are massive flaws, this “thinking” of the membership seems to have come as a bit of a surprise to the BCS management and their response of “PR flannel” has not made me any happier.

Thoughts on the BCS EGM

Richard Fennell — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 20:54:34 +0000

I got the paperwork for the British Computer Society EGM this week. This EGA raises some interesting issues, the best overview of the issue I have found seems to be on the Computer Weekly site.

So has supporters of the EGM motion argument, led by former BCS trustee Len Keighley, any merit? Yes, it does. Enough to vote out the current BCS management and trustees? Well I am not so sure.

I was a student member of the BCS in the late 80s, when I was working for a small PC and LAN dealership. It was not good experience, I left the BCS with a feeling they did not care for anything bar old mainframe style IT and had no interest in anything newer than the late 70’s.

Black Marble in Dublin and Oslo

Linda Hogg — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 20:41:23 +0000

Black Marble returns to Dublin for Epicenter 2010: the second annual Irish Software Show. This is a great conference on your doorstep, and this year we have …

Robert Hogg speaking on SQL Modelling Services (8 June)
Steve Spencer on Visual Studio 2010 (8 June)
Iain Angus on Application Lifecycle Management (8 June)
Robert and Steve are joining forces to expound upon Project Management War Stories (8 June)
Robert on Windows Phone 7 (11 June)

A week later, Richard Fennell speaks at the Norwegian Developer’s Conference (NDC2010) in Oslo. He will be covering:

Hanging Humax PVT9200T PVR

Richard Fennell — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 20:46:52 +0000

Recently my Humax PVT9200T has started to hang. When I started it up, within a minute or two (usually much less) the picture froze. Prior to this it had been working fine for the six months I had owned it. This seems to be a common problem for the PVT9200T of late, there is much talk of a patch on the way.

For me the immediate solution seems to have been simpler; I just reset it to factory defaults and let it rescan the channels. It has now been working fine for a couple of days. Maybe this simple solution will help other owners of the PVT9200T

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

Richard Fennell — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 19:54:29 +0000

In Kevin Jones’ session at today’s DDD South West on ‘Testing ASP.NET MVC Applications’ the question was asked it it was possible to mock out .NET extension methods using any mocking frameworks. Kevin said did not think it could be done with Rhino Mocks, but thought it might be possible with Typemock.

Given my experience with Typemock I could see no reason why you would not be able to fake an extension method with Typemock, though I had never had need to do it. A quick search when I got home provided this post by Dennis van der Stelt which explains how to do it. t is just as easy as you would expect.

Today’s DDD South West

Richard Fennell — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 18:32:09 +0000

Thanks to everyone who turned up for my session at DDD South West, and to the organisers for putting the event on so well.

As my session was basically a 1 hour demo of the testing tools in VS2010 there are no slides for me to upload, but if you have any questions ping me an email. I would say that for a good overview of the subject have a look at the book ‘Professional Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2010: with Team Foundation Server 2010’

TF50609 error when creating a new team project in TFS 2010

Richard Fennell — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 11:23:00 +0000

After upgrading a TFS 2010 RC server (which was previously upgraded from Beta1 to Beta2) to RTM I hit a problem when trying to create a new team project. The error I saw was

Event Description: TF30162: Task "GroupCreation1" from Group "Groups" failed
Exception Type: Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.PcwException
Exception Message: TF50609: Unable to retrieve information for action ADMINISTER_TEST_ENVIRONMENTS, it does not exist.

A quick search shows this is a known problem with TFS 2010 Beta 1 to Beta 2 upgrades, strange it did not show itself on our servers until we when to RTM. Grant Holiday provides the solution for Beta 1 to Beta 2, but the command line required for RTM is slightly different to the one he had to use. The fix involves using both the parts of this post, the TF50660 is a symptom of the underling TF237091 error

TF261007 error message when attaching a collection

Richard Fennell — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 09:22:16 +0000

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

tfsconfig lab /delete /collectionName:MyCollection /External

re-detach and all would be OK.

Speaking at the West Yorkshire BCS meeting on Agile Methods

Richard Fennell — Sat, 29 May 2010 09:56:11 +0000

After my comments on the QDD session at a past BCS meeting I have been asked to return and speak at the West Yorkshire BCS meeting on the 30th of June to give an overview about Agile methods.

This will be very much a management overview for people who are unaware of Agile methods, hence I will touch on XP, Scrum, Crystal Clear and Kanban and try to compare and contrast.

Great book on Kanban

Richard Fennell — Sat, 29 May 2010 09:45:23 +0000

I won’t bother to repeat what Gojko has said on David J, Anderson’s book on Kanban, other than to say I agree wholeheartedly.

I too have been looking for a good introduction book on Kanban as applied to software development (so Kanban as opposed to kanban, not the capital K). This is exactly what with book does. OK I know that this information is out there on the web (http://www.limitedwipsociety.org/); but there times, especially for introducing potentially non technical people to development methodologies, where you want to point people at an easily accessible introduction they can dip into. This is that book, have a look it is worth it

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

Richard Fennell — Wed, 26 May 2010 11:22:27 +0000

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

For more details check out the Agile Yorkshire site

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

Richard Fennell — Fri, 21 May 2010 10:13:16 +0000

When you drop a combo box on a Access 2010 web form and databind to a query or table with a value column and display column (e.g. the query select id, description from table1) you don’t get what you would expect. It shows just the value e.g. a set of integers in the combo.

This is not the case if you are using a standard Access client form. the wizard that gets run sort it all out for you, and if it does not, you just set the ‘Bound Column’ property to sort it out.

More on my Vodafone 403 errors – an explanation at least

Richard Fennell — Fri, 21 May 2010 09:51:40 +0000

The next chapter of the ongoing saga. I had the 403 errors again today when using my phone as a modem to test out firewall. As I was in the office I had time to call Vodafone support. As expect I had to speak to a succession of people:

Person 1 – call centre advisor, passed me straight onto ‘support’
Person 2 – support advisor but seem lost when I spoke about web protocols, I think it was more ‘making a phone ring’ support
Person 3 – 2nd line support, success, as soon as I explained my problem they said ‘yes that happens’.

The problem is down, as I had suspected, to congestion in their WAN network (not the 3G network, though the density of cells is a factor). When you try to use HTTP Vodafone route a request to their authentication server to see if your account is allow to connect to the site. By default they block a list of adult/premium web sites (this is service you have switched on or off with your account). The problem is at busy times this validation service is overloaded and so their systems get no response as to whether the site is allowed, so assume the site you asked for is restricted and gives the 403 error. Once this happens you seem to have to make new 3G data connection (reset the phone, move cell or let the connection time out) to get it to try again.

Agile Yorkshire moves to the 2nd Tuesday in the month

Richard Fennell — Wed, 19 May 2010 14:38:29 +0000

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

Bit of a pain for me as I struggle to make Tuesdays.

Upgrading from Office 2010 RC to RTM

Richard Fennell — Wed, 19 May 2010 09:25:23 +0000

I got this commonly seen version error when I tried to upgrade my RC version of Office 2010 to RTM

Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s):
Microsoft Office 2010 does not support upgrading from a prerelease version of Microsoft Office 2010. You must first install any prerelease versions of Microsoft Office 2010 products and associated technologies. Correct the issue(s) listed above and re-run setup.

I had already removed by RC Office and Visio. Turns out the problem was I had the Outlook Hotmail Connector (Beta) installed too. Once this was removed the install worked fine.

DevExpress and Microsoft do it again

Robert Hogg — Wed, 19 May 2010 08:04:30 +0000

This time for Visual Studio 2010, CodeRush Xpress is a great developer productivity tool from DevExpress. Microsoft has made arrangements with Developer Express to make its CodeRush Xpress product available as a free download to any customer with a full Visual Studio license (i.e. not express). CodeRush Xpress includes a sub set of the full CodeRush features, CodeRush Xpress fully supports all language features of Visual Basic and C#

download it here

Silverlight tools for VS 2010

Robert Hogg — Mon, 17 May 2010 19:34:46 +0000

The new Silverlight 4 tools are now baked and fresh out of the oven get them here

Looking for a good overview of Visual Studio 2010 and ALM?

Richard Fennell — Mon, 17 May 2010 19:09:35 +0000

Visual Studio 2010 provides many new features to aid Application Lifecycle Management. Learning its capabilities can be a bit daunting, especially if you are new to Team Foundation Server.

So enter the new book ‘Professional Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2010: with Team Foundation Server 2010’ by Mickey Gousset, Brian Keller, Ajoy Krishnamoorthy and Martin Woodward. This provides a great overview of all the the key features of Visual Studio and TFS 2010, presented with a view as to how TFS gives an end to end delivery of an ALM process.

Notes from our TFS 2010 upgrade

Richard Fennell — Mon, 17 May 2010 17:39:24 +0000

Got time today to start our proper internal TFS 2010 rollout. This involves linking up the new TFS to our SharePoint 2010 farm and merging in the contents from 2008 TFS and 2010 RC servers.

All went fairly well, our SharePoint farm caused a few problems with its rather nice redirection feature. This allows you to gradually move SharePoint content from an older server to a new one. A page is requested from the new server, if it is there it is used, if it is not the content on the old server is used. This caused a couple of problems during the install of TFS that content was not on the new SharePoint server so it redirected to the old one. However, the correct response was that the content was not there and TFS need to install or configure it. Once we realised this was going on there were no major issues with the TFS 2010 installation.

Stupid support suggestions from Vodafone about 403 server proxy errors

Richard Fennell — Thu, 13 May 2010 19:45:52 +0000

A while ago I blogged about the problems I was having with 403 error when trying to use my HTC phone as a 3G modem or using Opera or IE on the phone itself. When I initially complained Vodafone refunded my data fee for the month and said engineers were onto this known intermittent issue. No grief, Ok I did not want to see 403 errors but I was happy with the customer service, fast and no quibble.

TF237195 error when creating a new team project

Richard Fennell — Thu, 13 May 2010 19:14:07 +0000

After upgrade TFS 2010 RC to RTM you might see a problem when you try to create a new team project. The creation fails with error:

Module: Engine
Event Description: TF30162: Task "Queries" from Group "WorkItemTracking" failed
Exception Type: Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.PcwException
Exception Message: TF237195: The following user name is not supported: [SERVER]$$PROJECTCOLLECTIONADMINGROUP$$

The answer is simple, but I had missed it!

Make sure that you are creating your new team project from a copy of the 2010 RTM version of Team Explorer. If you use the RC version you will see the error.

My article on Typemock Insider Blog

Richard Fennell — Tue, 11 May 2010 09:32:11 +0000

I have an article posted on the Typemock Insider blog about the Typemock Academy I attended.

TFS 2010 RC –> RTM upgrade problem with the warehouse

Richard Fennell — Mon, 10 May 2010 12:46:00 +0000

I recently did an in-place upgrade of a TFS 2010 RC to RTM box. All appeared to be going fine, all the verification in the upgrade wizard passed, but when I hit configure the first step failed. It said there was a missing dbo.sysobjects in the warehouse DB. I then had to resort the configuration DB as it was partly upgraded to try again as the DB was left partially upgraded.

StyleCop 4.4 Beta 1

Robert Hogg — Fri, 07 May 2010 12:37:58 +0000

As noted a while ago, StyleCop 4.4 was due about now and many of you know I am a huge fan of StyleCop which has become open source under the MS-PL license, by means of a CodePlex project. Microsoft will continue to manage the StyleCop project, and Microsoft will be responsible for creating and releasing official signed builds. However, they will also take code submissions from the community.

So StyleCop 4.4 Beta 1 is now available as an installer and source code for download from here. This release provides full support for C# 4.0 syntax, and also provides integration into VS2008 and VS2010. StyleCop 4.4 comes with a number of improvements over 4.3, but also introduces a few breaking changes. Please NOTE all existing custom rules will need to be redone for 4.4.

TF246064 upgrading TFS 2010RC to RTM

Richard Fennell — Tue, 04 May 2010 10:53:00 +0000

I have a basic installation of TFS 2010 running on my Windows 7 laptop. This is really useful for testing build customisation and the like, a great new feature for 2010. Today I got around to trying to upgrade it from RC to RTM, but on the verification test I got the error

[ Configuration Database ] TF255407: An error occurred while attempting to validate the configuration database. Error message: TF246064: No database could be found for the following host: TestCollection. The host has the following ID: eaf3c572-8657-4268-9852-3d73a799cdf5. To fix this problem, use the TFSConfig RemapDBs command-line tool and make sure that you specify the SQL Server instance that contains this database.

Solving a mystery: Windows 7 games won’t work on HP TouchSmart TX2

Rik Hepworth — Sat, 01 May 2010 20:41:46 +0000

This one has been nagging at me for a long time. My grandmother has an HP TouchSmart TX2 tablet. It was bought with Windows Vista, but as with her main computer, I upgraded it to Windows 7.

It was a good plan – Windows 7 should make it perform better, and the touch capabilities of 7 are better than Vista. There was, however, a small matter of the N-Trig digitiser drivers not being great at point of release – something which would lead me down the wrong path over the problems I encountered.

Unable to remote control Hyper-V VM after installing SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:36:20 +0000

True to form, you only discover something isn’t working when you’re in a desperate hurry. We use lots of Hyper-V VMs here at Black Marble and they are mostly running on our four node cluster. I use Failover Cluster Manager and this morning I couldn’t connect remotely to any of the Hyper-V VMs. I kept getting an error:

Virtual Machine Connection:
A connection will not be made because credentials may not be sent to the remote computer. For assistance, contact your system administrator.
Would you like to try connecting again?

Windows Phone 7 bits are ready for Visual Studio 2010 RTM[UPDATE]

Robert Hogg — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:13:33 +0000

get them here , there is also a slight update to the Expression Blend 4 RC here which is needed to stop problems with the Expression Blend Add-in Preview for Windows Phone (April Refresh) . I would suggest also installing the Blend SDK for phone get it here

Slides from my Typemock Academy session

Richard Fennell — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:34:00 +0000

A PDF version of my slides for my session at the Typemock Academy on SharePoint testing with Typemock are available on the Black Marble site.

Windows Server AppFabric Beta 2 Refresh for VS 2010 RTM

Robert Hogg — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 23:44:55 +0000

for everybody who is now steeped in the last leg of the upgrade trail here is AppFabric for 2010 RTM

get it here

Busy week, off to see Typemock in Oslo

Richard Fennell — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 19:47:21 +0000

I am off to Oslo, for the first time, for the Typemock Academy this week. The event has managed to survive the disruption of the Icelandic volcano.

A great chance to meet a pile of people I have only spoken toon the phone or via email in the past. Looking forward to it.

StyleCop for C# 4 and the move to CodePlex

Robert Hogg — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 12:06:34 +0000

As many of you know I am a huge fan of StyleCop and so when Microsoft announced that StyleCop will soon have a C# 4.0 version (StyleCop version 4.4) but that it will also become open source under the MS-PL license, by means of a CodePlex project, and all future development on StyleCop will be done from that CodePlex site. Microsoft will continue to manage the StyleCop project, and Microsoft will be responsible for creating and releasing official signed builds. However, they will also take code submissions from the community.

Mocking Sharepoint for Testing

Richard Fennell — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 10:47:32 +0000

In my previous post I talked about using Isolator to mock Sharepoint to aid the speed of the development process. I find this a productive way of working, but it does not really help in the realm of automated testing. You need a way to programmatically explore a webpart, preferably outside of SharePoint to check its correctness.

You could use the methods in my previous post and some form of automated web test, but this does mean you need to spin up a web server of some descriptions (IIS, Cassini etc. and deploy to it) An alternative is look at the Typmock addin Ivonna. This a creates a fake web server to load you page and tools to explore it.

Mocking Sharepoint for Design with Typemock Isolator

Richard Fennell — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 09:39:16 +0000

I have found the most productive use of Typemock Isolator with SharePoint is to use it to reduce the time of the F5 cycle (build/deploy/use). If you are using a VPC of some type to do your SharePoint development, as many do, this process can easily take a couple minutes, and these minutes add up.

In my experience webparts usually make fairly simple use of the underlying SharePoint site, by this I mean that they get some data from an SPList(s) or remote data source and render in some way. Or the reverse, they gather data that they drop to an SPLits(s) or remote data source.

Post SharePoint Evolution thoughts

Richard Fennell — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:01:36 +0000

I am on the way home from my whistle stop visit to the SharePoint Evolution conference. I must say congratulations to the organisers for putting on such a successful event given all the problems they have had related to speakers and air travel, well done.

My slides, on Testing Webparts with Typemock, will appear on the conference site soon, but I thought it a good idea to link here to previous posts I have done on the subject. Imaging how surprised I was to realise to find I never wrote them! If you search my blog you will find links to older versions of today's slide stack, but no coding samples.

The Taste of Coca Cola

Robert Hogg — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 21:58:35 +0000

I am nearly back up and running after Mix in Vegas, I managed to dislocate my shoulder at the end of the trips (show girls are heavier than they look). During the visit, Lauren and I revisited the Coca Cola shop/bottle on the strip to retry the taste of Coca Cola.

The Winners were:

Inca Cola – Peru

Sunfill Mint – India

Stoney Ginger Beer – Africa

Sunfill Blackcurrent – Mauritius

Speaking at Developer Day South West

Richard Fennell — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 14:03:22 +0000

I have just heard I will be speaking at Developer Day South West on June the 5th. My subject is Using the new Developer and Test features of VS 2010 to track down and fix bugs, this is basically the same session as I have at our TechDays fringe event yesterday.

Hope to see you there

Todays #UKTechDays Leeds Fringe event

Richard Fennell — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 13:28:30 +0000

Thanks to everyone who turned up for Matt Nunn’s and my sessions in Leeds today. All seemed to go well and were well received.

As my slide stack consisted of a a welcome screen and an agenda I don’t really see the point of posting them on web. If you want to see the end to end story of VS2010 ALM I would suggest looking at the video’s on Channel 9.

Video of MVP at Microsoft Techdays events

Richard Fennell — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 13:19:52 +0000

Whist at the the UK Techdays I did a video with Rob Miles. You an see the results here, we are near the end.

A full video of my session should be available on the Microsoft UK Techdays site soon

Useful tool to move Reporting Services reports between servers

Richard Fennell — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 13:44:47 +0000

When you are moving TFS contents around between servers, as many people will be doing as they implement new 2010 servers and want to make use of Team Project Collections; you often have to move Reporting Services reports. In many cases you find people have lost their customised .RDL files they uploaded in the first place, and don’t want to restore the whole Reporting Services DB.

So how to extract an RDL file from a Reporting Services instance and moving it to a new Reporting Services instance?

Speaking at the Typemock Academy in Olso in a couple of weeks

Richard Fennell — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 11:54:47 +0000

I am really pleased to say I will be speaking at the first Typemock Partner Academy in Olso the week after next. I will be talking about using how we at Black Marble have used Isolator to improve the speed and quality of our SharePoint development.

Follow up on my TechDays Lab Management session about the cost.

Richard Fennell — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 20:09:02 +0000

I have seen a few tweets after my Techdays session on Lab Management that it sounded expensive. It is true that Lab Management is an extra license to purchase over and above Visual Studio. However under the new licensing model for VS you have to remember that as an MSDN subscriber you are already licensed for a TFS CAL and Server and if you have VS2010 Ultimate you are licensed for the Test Professional tools. With this collection of tools you can do much of the bits I showed in my session:

Goodbye Team System hello Visual Studio ALM

Richard Fennell — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 08:44:01 +0000

Now that VS2010 has launched the branding of ‘Team System’ has gone; so I am no longer a MVP (Team System) but a MVP (Visual Studio ALM).

Down in London for TechDays

Richard Fennell — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:42:44 +0000

I am down in London for the first two days of the Microsoft TechDays event. First day has been very interesting, there seems to be a good buzz over the new testing features. So it looks good for my session tomorrow when I will be presenting on Lab Manager hope to see you there.

Error running Ivonna tests with ASP.NET 4

Richard Fennell — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:26:19 +0000

When I tried to run a working Ivonna test, previously targeted at .NET 3.5, against .NET 4 I found my test failing with the error

------ Test started: Assembly: Webpart.Tests.dll ------

Bad Request Setup information Physical Web path: C:ProjectsTestTypeMockSampleTestWebSite Actual path: C:UsersfezAppDataLocalTempTemporary ASP.NET Filesroot156567f2

Turns out that the fix to simple, you have to use an absolute path i.e. the / in front of the BasicTest.aspx is vital

1\[TestMethod, Isolated\]

 public void LoadWebPage\_HelloWorldWebPart\_NoError()

1 {

 TestSession session = new TestSession(); //Start each test with this

1 WebRequest request = new WebRequest("/BasicTest.aspx"); //Create a WebRequest object

 WebResponse response = session.ProcessRequest(request); //Process the request

1 System.Web.UI.Page page = response.Page;

 //Check the page loaded

1 Assert.IsNotNull(page);

1
2So this is a temporary work around for now, for me it is not an issue having to use a absolute path. I understand from the [writer of Ivonna](http://www.sm-art.biz/Ivonna.aspx) that this issue will be further investigated now that .NET 4.0 has RTM’d

Experiences upgrading to Lab Manager 2010 RC

Richard Fennell — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:49:31 +0000

Whilst preparing for my session at Techdays I have upgraded my 2010 Beta2 Lab Manager to RC. I am pleased to say the process is far more straight forward than the initial install. Again I used the Lab Manager team blog as my guide, they have revised ‘Getting started with Lab Management 2010 RC’ Parts 1, 2 ,3 and 4 posts to help.

I was able to skip through the initial OS/VMM setup as this has not altered. I chose to throw away my TestVM (with its Beta agents) and create a new one. I upgraded my TFS 2010 instance to RC. The only awkward bit was that I had to extract the RC version of the Lab Build Template from a newly created RC Team Project Collection and load it over my existing Beta2 version. I then recreated the Lab E2E build – and it just worked. My basic sample created for Beta2 build and tested OK.

Post AIC 2010 Thoughts

Richard Fennell — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 17:52:36 +0000

I was at the AIC 2010 conference yesterday, which I enjoyed more than last year. The most interesting session was Ivar Jacobson. He discussed how immature our industry is, with its disjoint between software engineers and academic computer scientists. Something I have commented on before when discussing if our industry should be licensed.

He discussed how we need to build our industry upon commonly agreed kernel of simple best practice activities, not upon some currently fashionable process whether it be Waterfall, CMMI, Agile, Lean etc. We must identify what are the best practices from all process (and all processes have something to offer) and teach them to students at University as this kernel of activities, as well as teaching how to compose them into more complex practices and hence whole development processes. Thus providing new entries to our industry with the base of reusable techniques that the can use for their whole career, irrespective of fashion. The key idea being that any current process model can be build by composing these kernel of basic activity.

Soylent#.NET the new multipurpose language from Microsoft

Robert Hogg — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:25:12 +0000

Today Scott Guthrie VP in the developer division at Microsoft announced Soylent# the new "composite" language from Microsoft. Scott said in his announcement that developers were tired of a wide choice of languages that allowed them to tackle a wide variety of problems and instead wanted a single development surface that allowed them to write what they wanted when they wanted it.

Microsoft Technical Fellow H.Harrison who has led the Soylent# project from its inception said that the other languages must Make Room, Make Room for the future of Poly-lingual languages such as Soylent#

Running Fitnesse.NET tests using MSTest - Revisited

Richard Fennell — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 21:35:41 +0000

In 2008 I wrote a post Running Fitnesse.NET tests using MSTest. Recently I had need to us this technique on a VS2010 project, and as is so often the issue the code that worked then does not seem to work now. All I can assume is that the Fitnesse API had altered, but I thought I was using the same assemblies!

So I pulled down the code from http://sourceforge.net/projects/fitnessedotnet/ and had a poke about. Basically I seemed to be using the command line switches wrong. The listing below shows what I found is the working usage:

TF30046 Error when trying to create new team project collection using an existing empty DB

Richard Fennell — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:05:43 +0000

I my previous post I discussed how the DB label was not used for TPC Dbs in 2010. As I was working on a setup where a central SQL box was the DT for two virtualised TFS AT instances, I therefore needed to create my TPC databases manually if I wanted TPCs of the same name on each TFS instance.

I won’t go over the [old post again](I had to create a TPC Dbs manually ), but in essence I was trying to create a TPC with the name ABC on a TFS instance with a database label of RC. So I tried to create the DB TFS_RC_ABC manually and pointed the TPC create process at this. It passed the verify but I then got a

And finally my personal domains

Richard Fennell — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:59:10 +0000

When I said will our internet bits were back I was not quite right. I had forgotten that I had not re-pointed m own richardfennell domains to put to my blog. These are now done, so I hope all search results to my blog should resolve OK.

Mixed mode assembly is built against version 'v2.0.50727' error using .NET 4 Development Web Server

Richard Fennell — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 12:38:45 +0000

If your application has a dependency on an assembly built in .NET 2 you will see the error below if you try to run your application when it has been built in.NET 4.

Mixed mode assembly is built against version 'v2.0.50727' of the runtime and cannot be loaded in the 4.0 runtime without additional configuration information.

This can be important in VS2010 testing, as test projects must be built as .NET 4, there is no option to build with an older runtime. I suffered this problem when trying to do some development where I hosted a webpart that make calls into SharePoint (that was faked out with Typemock Isolator) inside a ASP.NET 4.0 test harness

TFS 2010 Database Label not use for Team Project Collection DBs

Richard Fennell — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 17:54:00 +0000

Found out something I did not know today, the TFS 2010 database label is only used for the server’s own primary configuration databases not for the DBs for the TPC it creates.

For example on a 2010 RC install with the database label was set to RC during the installation. When I try to create a new TPC (called ABC) it tries to create a Db named TFS_ABC, even though the database label for TFS server can be seen to TFS_RC_ on the admin console and the instance’s primary databases are called TFS_RC_Configuration, TFS_RC_Warehouse and TFS_RC_Analysis.

Announcing Typemock TMockRunner Custom Activity for Team Build 2010

Richard Fennell — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 17:18:00 +0000

My Team Build 2010 custom activity for Typemock Isolator is now available at http://site.typemock.com/add-ons/.

It is packaged as a zip which include all the source and a compiled assembly as well a document detailing usage and why the solution is constructed as it is.

Hope you find it useful

A fix to run Typemock Isolator inside the Page_Load for an ASPX page on VS2010/.NET4

Richard Fennell — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 15:23:29 +0000

I recently tried to use Typemock Isolator inside a ASP.NET page load event, to fake out some SharePoint SPLists e.g.

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
SPSite fakeSite = Isolate.Fake.Instance();
……..
}

This has worked in the past but using VS2010RC and Isolator 6.0.1.0 it failed.

If running VS2010 as Admin I got the error "Could not load file or assembly 'TypeMock, Version=0.12900.25133.13153, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=37342d316331342d' or one of its dependencies. The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131040)":"TypeMock, Version=0.12900.25133.13153, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=37342d316331342d"}"
If running as a non admin user I got the error "Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt."

Typemock Support told me that I needed to edit the Typemock Isolator’s namespaces.dat file (in its programs directory), this is the file that lists valid test runners. I needed to add WebDev.WebServer40.exe to this file as this is program that makes the call to Isolator to do the faking.

Internet problems should be over

Richard Fennell — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 07:10:29 +0000

Our new Internet line has now been commissioned fully and hopefully any problems you may have had accessing my blog via the blackmarble.com or co.uk domains should be over.

TF254024 error when upgrading TFS 2010 Beta2 to RC

Richard Fennell — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:04:43 +0000

Whilst upgrading a single server instance of TFS 2010 Beta2 to the RC I got a TF254024 error. This occurred at the point in the upgrade wizard where it tries to list the databases available to upgrade.

The reason for the error was the account I was logged in as (the domain administrator in my case) did not have rights on the SQL instance to see any TFS DBs. Once this was sorted, by granting owner rights to all the TFS DBs, all was OK.

Virtual PC for all

Robert Hogg — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:03:08 +0000

Windows 7 is a great bit of software, the only major downside was the support for virtual PC which until now only ran on a hardware assisted virtualisation (HAV) processor and supported hardware that is also enabled in the BIOS ( like the PDC tablet I am typing this on ). However for people without this blessing virtual pc and XP mode are out of reach UNTIL NOW

Microsoft have released an update to remove the prerequisites required to run Windows Virtual PC and XP mode. The prerequisites include a processor which supports hardware assisted virtualization (HAV) which is also enabled in the BIOS. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

Windows Phone Series 7 Resources [Updated June 12th]

Robert Hogg — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 11:19:18 +0000

At last Microsoft has released a new generation of phone for a new generation of applications, This post is my up-to-date resource list for Windows Phone 7, I will keep this list up-to-date with new and interesting pieces of Information.

Resources

The Developer pages for Windows Phone 7 here

The Windows Phone application icons are available here

Toolkits

The Phone team have arranged that everything you need is available in one download free of charge, I would advise installing components such as visual studio and blend first and then running the phone install as it will download will be smaller and more reliable.If you just want an easy install jump to step d and continue on.

Visual Studio 2010 pre order offer

Robert Hogg — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 10:45:41 +0000

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional will launch on April 12 for an estimated retail price of £484.99.

If you use a previous version of Visual Studio or any other development tool then you are eligible for this upgrade. Along with all the great new features in Visual Studio 2010 (see www.microsoft.com/visualstudio) Visual Studio 2010 Professional includes a 12-month MSDN Essentials subscription which gives you access to core Microsoft platforms: Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Datacenter.

Speaking at NDC in Oslo in June

Richard Fennell — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:55:01 +0000

Updated 25th Mar when I found I have three sessions

I have just heard that I had two three sessions accepted for the Norwegian Developers Conference. They are:

Putting Some Testing Into Your TFS Build
Making Manual Testing a Part of Your Development Process
Developing Testable Web Parts for SharePoint.

So off to Oslo, never been there before, looking forward to it already

VHD boot and c00002e2 Errors

Richard Fennell — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:58:00 +0000

For some reason that is beyond me now I did not setup my Lab Manager test system to be a VHD boot. So before installing the 2010 RC version I decided to P2V this system (on the same hardware) to make backups easier whilst testing. All seemed to go well

I used IMAGEX to create a WIM of the disk
Created an empty VHD
Used IMAGEX to apply the WIM to the VHD
Formatted the PC with a default Windows 7 install
Added a VHD boot Windows Server 2008R2 to the PC, tested this all booted OK
Replaced the test VHD with my own and rebooted

…. and it just went into a reboot cycle. Pressing F8 and stopping the reboot on error I saw I had a “c00002e2 Directory Services could not start” error. I managed to get into the PC by pressing F8 and using the AD recovery mode (safe mode did not work). After much fiddling around I eventually noticed that my boot drive was drive D: not C: as I would have expected. My VHD and parent drive had reversed letter assignments. So when the AD services tried to start they look on the parent Windows 7 partition (C:) for their data and hence failed.

Ready for our Close Up Now

Linda Hogg — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:29:08 +0000

Recently, Black Marble took part in a Video Case Study for Microsoft, extolling the virtues of how we use SharePoint and the Microsoft platform for working with our customers. It was an interesting experience – we usually prefer to let the technology do the talking – but the company (CredComms) putting it together were great, very professional, and soon put us at our ease.

NEBytes last night

Richard Fennell — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:24:00 +0000

Hope everyone enjoyed my session VS2010 at NEBytes last night. I don't now about you but I think that quick end to end demo of build, manual test and Intellitrace debug work very nicely. That was the first time I have done it as a single demo and I think it works better than three smaller ones. Truely shows the intergrated team store for VS2010

Anyway as the session was demo lead there are no slides to download, but if you have follow up questions post a comment on this post or email me

Speaking at NEBytes tomorrow

Richard Fennell — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:43:48 +0000

Just a reminder I am speaking at NEBytes in Newcastle tomorrow on the new features of VS2010. I will be covering project management, architect, dev and test features so something there for everyone.

Cannot access TFS over HTTPS after upgrade from 2010 Beta 2 to RC

Richard Fennell — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:13:02 +0000

I upgraded our Beta2 2010 TFS last week, and after a quick local test all appeared to be working OK, so I rushed out the office like you do. However, whilst I have been out the office it was spotted that though it was working within the office using HTTP and the NETBIOSDomain server name (TFSSERVER) it could not be accessed outside the firewall or over HTTPS inside the office, so https://tfsserver.mydomain.com:8443/tfs did not work

Post QCon thoughts

Richard Fennell — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 12:10:00 +0000

Interesting time at QCon yesterday, shame I was only there one day, I do like the events that are not limited to a single vendor or technology. The multi presenter session I was involved in on Microsoft interoperability seemed to go well, there is talk of repeating at other events or podcasting. It is a nice format if you can get the sub-sessions linking nicely, like themed grok talks.

Due to chatting to people (but that why you go really isn't it?), I only managed to get to one other session, but I was the one I wanted to see, Roy Osherove’s on using CThru to enable testing of monolithic frameworks such as Silverlight. It got a few things clearer in my mind over using CThu, a tool I have tried to use in the past but not had as much success as I hoped. So I think I will have another go at trying to build a SharePoint workflow testing framework, the problem has rested on the back burner too long. I think I just need to persist longer in digging to the eventing model to see why my workflows under test do not start. Roy’s comment that there is no short cut for this type of problem to avoid an archaeological excavation into the framework under test, I think is the key here.

Speaking at SharePoint Evolution Conference

Richard Fennell — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:35:00 +0000

I am please to be able to announce that I am speaking at the SharePoint 2010 Evolution Conference in London on the 21st of April.

I will be talking about my experiences during the [Prontaprint project](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/CaseStudy.aspx?study=Prontaprint's Website with SharePoint 2007) developing testable components for SharePoint using TypeMock Isolator and other techniques to speed development and improve quality.

Oslo also gets a new name SQL Modelling Services

Robert Hogg — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:06:46 +0000

At the PDC uncle Doug gave birth to a new name for the product formally called Oslo, SQL Modelling Services.

While we have all knew the relation to SQL was strong, I do get the feeling that all products will at some point will be a part of SQL. I am now looking forward to Microsoft SQL Server flight simulator.

NOTE, in all the documentation there are notes about the sample data being in the download directory where you downloaded the CTP , this is incorrect

Kodu for the PC

Robert Hogg — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:02:27 +0000

The amazing Kodu Game Lab from Microsoft is now available on the PC for trial download, get it here

Agile Yorkshire Martin Fowler event is full

Richard Fennell — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:57:26 +0000

Next weeks Agile Yorkshire meeting with Martin Fowler is now full (and the venue is twice the size of our usual one!). I said it would be popular.

There is a reserve list but I would not hold out too much hope.

Lessons learnt building a custom activity to run Typemock Isolator in VS2010 Team Build

Richard Fennell — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:46:00 +0000

Updated 25th March 2010 - All the source is now available at the Typemock Add-in site
Updated 2nd July 2010 - Some usage notes posted
Updated 26th July 2011 - More usage notes
Updated 21st Nov 2011 - Typemock Isolator now has direct support for TFS 2010 Build, see usage notes

I have previously posted on how you can run Typemock Isolator based tests within a VS2010 using the InvokeMethod activity. After this post Gian Maria Ricci, a fellow Team System MVP suggested it would be better to put this functionality in a custom code activity, and provided the basis of the solution. I have taken this base sample and worked it up to be a functional activity, and boy have I learnt a few things doing it.

Getting sick of seeing the Vodafone error “HTTP Error 403: The service you requested is restricted”

Richard Fennell — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:26:08 +0000

Of late I keep getting ‘HTTP Error 403: The service you requested is restricted’ when I try to use my HTC Diamond2 mobile phone on Vodafone. I see the problem whether browsing the internet with mobile IE or Opera and also when using the phone as a 3G modem from my Windows 7 laptop. Seems to happen every other day of late.

Interestingly, when I got the error shown above whilst trying to browse to Bing, a connection, on the same 3G link, from my PC to our Exchange server was working fine.

The Teamprise Eclipse plug in for TFS gets a new name

Richard Fennell — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:22:00 +0000

As I am sure you remember a few months ago Microsoft bought Teamprise and their Java clients for TFS. Well the team has got out their first Microsoft branded release, details can be found on Martin Woodward’s and Brian Harry’s blogs. This beta provides the first support for TFS2010

This release is very timely as I will be talking on the Java integration via the Eclipse plug-in at QCON next week and at the Architect Insight Conference at the end of the month. This “Eaglestone” release means I can hopefully do my demos against TFS2010.

Black Marble presents Microsoft TechDays in the North

Linda Hogg — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:18:05 +0000

Following our popular Architect Insight Forum in the North, Black Marble is delighted to bring you Microsoft TechDays in the North

Microsoft are celebrating a number of product launches and innovations during TechDays: a week of technology and social events. Black Marble is joining in with a Northern event exploring how you can get the most from the latest technology releases including Visual Studio 2010 and SilverLight4 and explore how Microsoft's platform and tools bring together the clients, servers and services needed to build rich engaging applications.

BizTalk 2006 R2 SP1

Robert Hogg — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:28:40 +0000

Microsoft has released Service Pack 1 for BizTalk 2006R2, it includes a rollup of all of the hotfixes issued so far as well as

Get it Here

ESB 2.0 White Paper

Robert Hogg — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:18:36 +0000

I recently had the great pleasure in reviewing Jon Flanders great white paper on ESB 2.0. Jon has a knack of nailing things down and ignoring the fact I am a fan of ESB 2.0 I think you should read this as soon as possible,better still print a copy off and give it a gift to a loved one who has not had the joy of knowing ESB

Get it here.

Martin Fowler is speaking at Agile Yorkshire this month

Richard Fennell — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:56:00 +0000

A slight change to the usually arrangement this month at Agile Yorkshire. The speaker will Martin Fowler who will be talking on “Software Design in the 21st Century”, but the meeting will be on the 17th March (which is a week later than usual) and at a new venue The Adelphi in Leeds.

This promises to be a very interesting session. I saw Martin speak at a JavaOne conference, a good few years ago now, and it is still one of the best presentations I have seen at any conference. He is an engaging speaker with much to say about our industry.

GiveWithBing.Com

Linda Hogg — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:37:05 +0000

Black Marble is delighted to support the Microsoft campaign for Sport Relief – GiveWithBing.com.

For every 10 searches made, Bing.com will donate 5p to Sport Relief 2010 raising money just by searching with Bing until the end of March.

If you have any questions: Read the FAQ

DDD Community Events News

Richard Fennell — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:33:56 +0000

Some DDD event news

Registration has opened for DDD Scotland
There is a call for speakers at DDD South West
There is a call for speakers at SQLBits

If you have never been to a DDD style event before why not give it a try; they are free and you are sure to learn something. Unlike the DDD events in Reading these ones don’t fill up so fast that you cannot register because you stupidly went to make a up of tea just before they opened registration and it was full before you got back.

The importance of using parameters in vs2010 build workflows

Richard Fennell — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:13:19 +0000

I have been doing some more work integrating Typemock and VS 2010 Team Build. I have just wasted a good few hours wondering why my test results are not being published.

If I looked at the build log I saw my tests ran (and pass or failed as expected) and then were published without error.

But when I checked the build summary it said there were no tests associated with the build, it reporting “No Test Results”

Do you use a Symbol Server?

Richard Fennell — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:56:01 +0000

I find one of the most often overlooked new features of 2010 is the Symbol Server. This is a file share where the .PDB symbol files are stored for any given build (generated by a build server, see Jim Lamb’s post on the setup). If you look on the symbol server share you will see directories for each built assembly with a GUID named subdirectory containing the PDB files for each unique build.

This year’s DDD South West announced

Richard Fennell — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:34:06 +0000

This year’s DDD South West has been announced for the 5th of June in Bristol, for details see the dddsouthwest.com site

Speaking at QCon on TFS and Java Integration

Richard Fennell — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:11:12 +0000

Week after next I will be speaking at QCon London with Simon Thurman of Microsoft on “The Interoperable Platform”.

So what does that title mean? Well for me, for this session, it will be about how you can use the ALM features of TFS even when using Eclipse for Java development. So it will be a demo led session on the Teamprise tools for Eclipse and how they can allow you to build a unified development team that works in both .NET and Java.

Logging results from InvokeProcess in a VS2010 Team Build

Richard Fennell — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:48:43 +0000

When you use the InvokeProcess activity, as I did in my Typemock post, you really need to setup the logging. This is because by default nothing will be logged other than the command line invoked, not usually the best option. There are a couple of gotta’s here that initially caused me a problem and I suspect could cause a new user of the 2010 build process a problem too.

The first is that you need to declare the variable names for the InvokeProcess to drop the output and errors into. This is done in the workflow designer putting the variable names in the relevant textboxes (there is no need to declare the variable names anywhere else) as shown below. Use any name you fancy, I used stdOutput and stdError.

MTLM becomes MTM

Richard Fennell — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:00:47 +0000

You may have noticed that Microsoft have had another burst of renaming. The tester’s tool in VS2010 started with the codename of Camaro during the CTP phase, this became Microsoft Test & Lab Manager (MTLM) in the Beta 1 and 2 and now in the RC it is call Microsoft Test Manager (MTM).

Other than me constantly referring to things by the wrong name, the main effect of this is to make searching on the Internet a bit awkward, you have to try all three names to get good coverage. In my small corner of the Internet, I will try to help by updating my existing MTLM tag to MTM and update the description appropriately.

So where have I been all week?

Richard Fennell — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:28:39 +0000

A bit a a double question here, physically I have been at the the MVP Summit in Redmond, having a great time with my fellow “Team System” MVPs and the Microsoft product group members.

But my blog has also been on and off all week, so I guess you could say my online presence has been away. This is because [Black Marble has moved office](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/SectionDisplay.aspx?name=News&title=Black Marble has relocated to Woodland Park) and our blog server has had intermittent connectivity, which hopefully should be resolved soon.

Speaking in Edinburgh on VS2010 and ALM

Richard Fennell — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:27:26 +0000

I will be joining Iain Angus (Black Marble) and Giles Davies (Microsoft) this week at Microsoft’s Offices in Edinburgh to [present on Application Life Cycle Management](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Microsoft and Black Marble present Visual Studio 2010 and Managing the Application Lifecycle with Team Foundation Server). We will be looking at how VS2010 can help project managers, architects, developers and testers to build better solutions.

There are [still a few places left](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Microsoft and Black Marble present Visual Studio 2010 and Managing the Application Lifecycle with Team Foundation Server),I hope to see you there if you are in the area.

New ‘ALTdotNet Beers North’ group starting

Richard Fennell — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:24:55 +0000

If you look on Google Groups you will find the start of a thread trying to organise some AltNet Beers session in Leeds, only the same lines as the London, Bristol etc. events. There appears to be no date set as yet, but keep an eye open, they are a great way to meet like minded people.

Tonight is Agile Yorkshire

Richard Fennell — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:39:19 +0000

A late reminder but tonight is the monthly Agile Yorkshire meeting. This month is an open floor meeting with short presentations from members. Currently the planned subjects are:

REST and OpenRasta
Silverlight
F#
Thoughts on Test Driven Development practices
Behaviour Driven Development

Hope to see you there, usual place usual time (Victoria Hotel, 28 Great George St, Leeds. See here for directions, 7pm)

Is Pex and Moles the answer to Sharepoint testing?

Richard Fennell — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:08:42 +0000

I have got round to watching Peli de Halleux’s presentation on testing SharePoint with moles from the SharePoint Connections 2010 event in Amsterdam, very interesting. This brings a whole new set of tools to the testing of Sharepoint. I think it is best to view the subject of this presentation in two parts Pex and Moles, even though they are from the same stable; Moles being produced to enable Pex. But rather than me explaining how it all works just watch the video.

Errors Faking Sharepoint with Typemock due to assembly versions

Richard Fennell — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:43:31 +0000

I was doing some work today where I needed to fake out a SPWeb object. No problem you think, I am using Typemock Isolator so I just use the line

var fakeWeb = Isolate.Fake.Instance();

But I got the error

Microsoft.SharePoint.SPWeb.SPWebConstructor(SPSite site, String url, Boolean bExactWebUrl, SPRequest request)
Microsoft.SharePoint.SPWeb..ctor(SPSite, site, String url)
eo.CreateFakeInstance[T](Members behavior, Constructor constructorFlag, Constructor baseConstructorFlag, Type baseType, Object[] ctorArgs)
eo.Instance[T](Members behavior)
(Points to the SPWeb web line as source of error)
TypeMock.MockManager.a(String A_0, String A_1, Object A_2, Object A_3, Boolean A_4, Object[] A_5)
TypeMock.InternalMockManager.getReturn(Object that, String typeName, String methodNAme, Object methodParameters, Boolean isInjected)
(Points to line 0 of my test class)

Fixing SharePoint 2007 IIS WAMREG DCOM 10016 activation errors on Server 2008 R2

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:36:24 +0000

Anybody who works will SharePoint will grumble if you mention DCOM activation permissions. No matter how hard we try, how many patches we install (or how hard we try to ignore it), granting activation and launch permissions to the SharePoint service accounts is like plugging a dike with water-soluble filler.

On Server 2008 R2 our job is made that much harder by the fact that, by default, even administrators can’t edit the security settings for the IIS WAMREG service (GUID {61738644-F196-11D0-9953-00C04FD919C1}, for when you see it in your application event log).

At last, my creature it lives……..

Richard Fennell — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:32:09 +0000

I have at last worked all the way through setting up my portable end to end demo of testing using Windows Test and Lab Manager. The last error I had to resolve was the tests not running in the lab environment (though working locally on the development PC). My the Lab Workflow build was recorded as a partial success i.e. it built, it deployed but all the tests failed.

I have not found a way to see the detail of why the tests failed in VS2010 Build Explorer. However, if you:

ASPNETCOMPILER: error 1003 with TFS2010 Team build

Richard Fennell — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:56:54 +0000

I have been looking at TFS 2010 Lab Manager recently. One problem I had was that using the sample code from the Lab Manager Blog Walkthru the building of the CALC ASP.NET web site failed on the build server, I got an error

ASPNETCOMPILER: error 1003 The directory ‘c:build1LabWalkthruCalculator –BuildCalc’ does not exist.

and the build service was right it didn’t exist; it should have been ‘c:build1LabWalkthruCalculator –BuildSourceCalc’.

This was due to a problem detailed here. The Solution file had the wrong path in the Debug.AspNetCompiler.PhysicalPath property. It was set to “..Calc” when it should have been “.Calc”. Once this was altered the build could find the files.

Problem creating workitems on TFS2010 in the morning

Richard Fennell — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:15:13 +0000

I recently been working with a client who has been seeing strange problems when they try to create new workitems via a SharePoint portal site on a TFS2010 Beta2 installation. They appeared to have a fully working TFS2010 installation, but when they came in on a morning they found that even though they could login to the TFS created SharePoint team site they could not create a new workitems, they got an “Error 403 Access Forbidden”.

Social Networking: The double-edged sword of maintaining an online presence

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:04:07 +0000

Exploring the new frontier

I’m writing this post whilst watching my Windows Home Server slowly copy data onto an external drive. I mention that not because of its pertinence, but to indicate why I found myself having time to join Facebook.

The other reason was the excellent session given by Eileen Brown at our most recent event. After Eileen had finished admonishing me for not taking my online presence (and therefore reputation) seriously enough I took the step of installing the Twitter Notify plugin for Live Writer so I could connect two of my online personas together.

The Barry Dorrans’ farewell DDD performance

Richard Fennell — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 09:06:31 +0000

Seems I missed an interesting at session at DDD8, Barry Dorrans’ final DDD performance, with assistance with of other speakers.

Barry you will be missed

Update 5 Feb, links to the interruptions

Plip's Book Advert.
Liam's Eulogy.
Colin Mackay's new source of presentations.
Craig Murphy insulting not one but two ex-UK community folks.

A call for speaker at next month Agile Yorkshire meeting

Richard Fennell — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:11:46 +0000

Next months Agile Yorkshire meeting (10th Feb) is an open floor meeting - any subject, any format, 10 minute maximum.

If you fancy doing something in one of the 10 minute slots - whether it is a presentation, a demonstration, a discussion around a problem area - then visit

http://www.agileyorkshire.org/event-announcements/10Feb2010 to register your idea.

Presentations can be marked as provisional if you like the idea but are unsure until later whether you will be ready, available, etc.

Empty page being show for Silverlight application running out of browser

Richard Fennell — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:10:00 +0000

Whilst preparing demo’s for [our design event next week](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Understanding the Microsoft Design and Digital Agency Proposition) I hit a problem with the out of browser experience in Silverlight 3. I had decided to add the out of browser settings to our 2009 Christmas Card Silverlight application. To do this all you need to do is check a box on the project settings

I ran the application in the browser and all was OK, I right clicked to installed it to the desktop and it ran OK but I got an empty white screen

Giving Twitter Notify a try

Richard Fennell — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:08:28 +0000

After attending Eileen Brown’s session on [Social networking last night](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Using Digital Marketing and Social Media to Build and Maintain your Online Brand&Code=), I though I should make more of an effort. So I am giving Twitter Notify a try, so at least there is some activity on my Twitter account when I blog.

Tech Update Wows the Crowd

Linda Hogg — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:33:10 +0000

Our Annual Tech Update went well – a good turnout, asking intelligent questions over a great lunch and soaking up our view of the Microsoft Roadmap for 2009, 2010 and beyond.

Feedback was positive as ever, with comments that it exceeded expectations which were already high! Rik Hepworth has blogged on the key Microsoft technologies to look out for.

New and coming Microsoft technologies you need to look at

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:35:29 +0000

Yesterday was the annual Black Marble Tech Update event, where we try to cover every product in the Microsoft arsenal in half a day, telling local businesses what’s coming and what deserves attention.

Writing up the content of the presentations would be almost as exhausting as the research required for create them, but following a few conversations during breaks yesterday I decided that a short blog post on some of the technologies that deserve a closer look was merited.

So you want to demo VS2010 Lab Manager…….

Richard Fennell — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:50:00 +0000

I recently decided to build a demo system for VS2010 Lab Manager. This was for a number of reasons, not least I just wanted to have a proper play with it, but also that I was hoping to do a session on Microsoft Test and Lab Manager at DDD8 (as it turns out my session did not get voted for, maybe better luck for DDS, you can still vote for that conference’s sessions).

The uptake of Agile and Alt.Net practices in places a bit away from the major development hotspots

Richard Fennell — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:03:23 +0000

Last week I got into an interesting discussion via email with Nieve a developer from Lille, France.The chat was on the uptake of Agile and Alt.Net practices in places a bit away from the major development hotspots. We both thought it could make an interesting post so, here goes, starting with Nieve’s first post…..

Hello there,I've stumbled upon your blog while googling for the terms alt.net yorkshire.I'm a .NET developer working in Paris and living in the north of France (Lille area). Now, the reason I'm writing is that we're having an alt.net lunch next month, and I would like to talk a bit about the differences between the (alt).net communities in france and england. Now since I did my studies in Leeds, the fact that yorkshire and la région du nord are (surprise surprise) in the north (plus a shared history of mines) brought me to google for alt.net and yorkshire.Over here in Lille/the north of France the situation is rather grim. job offers that entail agile practices and or tools in .NET environment are as rare as an eclipse, managers and developers alike are literally afraid of any framework/tool that isn't microsoft yet somehow miraculously written in a .net language. I suppose you get the picture. I was wondering if you would mind sharing with me (and/or others, on your blog) your thoughts on the situation in yorkshire.

Remote working solutions (or how I learned to stop worrying and love the snow)

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 20:37:41 +0000

We lost remarkably few days of productivity to the bad weather at Black Marble. That wasn’t because we were all intrepid, hardy types and all made it into the office. Far from it – some of us live in areas where they don’t grit very often and can’t make it to the main roads.

As you guessed from the title, the reason we came through the bad weather so well was because of our ability to work remotely. I thought I’d write a post about what we do – not because we have any wonderfully clever solution, but because lost time is lost money, and many people discard remote access out of hand.

Running Typemock Isolator based tests in TFS 2010 Team Build

Richard Fennell — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:29:00 +0000

Updated 2nd March 2010: Altered the sample arguments see this post for more details

Updated 27th Jan 2010: Gian Maria Ricci, another Team System MVP has done some more work on this problems and posted on how to create a custom activity to address the problem.

I have been looking at getting automated builds running on TFS2010 that make use of Typemock Isolator. This is not as straight forward as you would expect.

The issue is that you have start Isolator’s mocking interceptor before you run any tests that use Typemock (and stop it afterwards). If you are running in the VS IDE this is all done automatically, but is not done as part of an MSBuild Team Build Process by default.

Time to exercise your prerogative again

Richard Fennell — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:55:26 +0000

The voting has opened for DDS, time to make your voice heard as what sessions you would like to see

Problems installing TFS Proxy

Richard Fennell — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:25:50 +0000

I recently saw an interesting problem install a TFS proxy (in my case it was on an existing TFS 2005 system using Window Server 2003 for the proxy host, but the problem could be seen on any version f TFS). The installation appeared to go fine, and when a Visual Studio client requested files, via the proxy, files appeared in the cache directory, however the client reported it was not using the proxy.

Typemock Isolator 2010 released

Richard Fennell — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:08:20 +0000

Today Typemock released their Isolator 6.0 version with full support for VS2010. Check out the full announcement at their site, there some nice new features there.

DDD8 is full

Richard Fennell — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 21:54:13 +0000

I have been on a customer site today, locked in a machine room, and so have managed to miss the opening and closing of registration for DDD8. So, as neither of my session’s got enough votes (too test based I guess for the developer mainstream) to be on the schedule I guess I will not be attending.

Maybe I will have more luck on both the vote and registration fronts and see some of you a DDS

Visual Studio Tip of the Day (NextGen)

Robert Hogg — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 20:14:36 +0000

The next generation of visual studio tips of the day are here courtesy of Zain Naboulsi, a Developer Evangelist at Microsoft who is stepping into some very big shoes (metaphorically,eep) of Sara Ford.

read Zain’s posts here, but wait there's more he is also providing videos as well :)

TFS 2010 Build Service Configuration Wizard fails with TF255425 error

Richard Fennell — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:25:33 +0000

I have at last got round to setting up a full installation VS 2010 Test and Lab Manager using the excellent notes from the Lab Management Team. Whist installing the build server portion I got a strange set of errors.

TF255425: An error occurred while installing the following Windows service: TFSBuildServiceHost.exe. For more information, open Event Viewer and review the application log.

Error

TF255070: Configuring services for Team Foundation Build failed with the following exception: TF255425: An error occurred while installing the following Windows service: TFSBuildServiceHost.exe. For more information, open Event Viewer and review the application log..

New UK ALM User Group Formed

Richard Fennell — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 12:14:42 +0000

Stuart Preston has just started an new UK ALM User Group, to quotes its blurb…

The UK ALM User Group is for practitioners of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) in the UK to get together and discuss and share ideas tools and techniques, as well as to socialise somewhere other than Agile and Software Development conferences!

Practitioners and enthusiasts from all disciplines are welcome. Membership is free. Please feel free to invite your UK based ALM network.

Voting has opened for DDD8

Richard Fennell — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:21:02 +0000

You can now vote for the proposed sessions at the upcoming DDD8 conference, and what a good selection there is to choose from this time.

Why don’t I love my phone?

Richard Fennell — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:26:32 +0000

There seams to be loads of coverage at present over mobile platforms. Maybe I am just noticing it due to coverage of the CES show and the launch of the Nexus One, but the more mainstream media does seems to be taking a good deal of interest in the future of smartphones (or superphone as Google are calling their new one).

All the articles seems to Apple Vs. Android (and moving rapidly towards Apple Vs. Google). There is also usually a passing mention of Blackberry, then a ‘wonder where Nokia are?’ but usually very little on Microsoft. The article in this months UK edition of Wired is a classic example.

Twitter clients: Twinbox and Tweetz

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:29:31 +0000

Anybody who follows me on twitter will know that @rikhepworth is by no means a prolific tweeter. However, I do follow a number of people around the planet, and in addition to the ubiquitous Tweetie2 on my iPhone, I have found two clients to be useful and reliable.

The first is Tweetz, from Blue Onion Software. This is a great gadget for the Windows 7 desktop (or Vista Sidebar). The UI is simple and extremely usable (I love the way I can scroll the history for older tweets) and it makes posting a breeze.

Solve ‘pending reboot’ setup show stopper for CRM 4 Client (with Update Rollup 7)

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:11:02 +0000

I’ve been extremely busy over the past week creating demo systems and updating our own internal Black Marble systems. Part of that long list of tasks was to get around to testing the CRM 4 Outlook client with Outlook 2010.

For those who don’t know, you need the Update Rollup7 client if you want to use Outlook 2010 (and x86 Office only need apply). You can download a slipstreamed client installer from Microsoft.

The Agile Yorkshire AGM is this week

Richard Fennell — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 12:23:51 +0000

The AGM is on the 14th Jan at the Victoria Hotel, 28 Great George St, Leeds. See here for directions. Come along and let us know the direction you would like the user group to follow.

StyleCop Beta for Visual Studio 2010

Robert Hogg — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 23:29:33 +0000

A Beta version of Stylecop for Visual Studio 2010 is now available here, the only change is the integration with the Visual Studio 2010 shell.

obviously not for “Real Programmers” but for us mortals it is a great new year gift.

Real Software Engineers don’t eat Quiche

Robert Hogg — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:10:32 +0000

Michael Stal has written an excellent post on why Real Software Engineers don’t eat Quiche ( I added the eating Quiche, but you get the drift of the article )

he did miss out a few important facts on Real Software Engineers,

i) They always have a new type of hammer that they are looking to try out after hearing about it at a conference and any project nail is suitable for the task of finding out how hard the hammer can be used. Strangely the hammer always resembles a silver bullet!

Teaching Children to Program with Small Basic[Updated Feb 2010]

Robert Hogg — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 17:26:32 +0000

As hopefully many of you know I am a huge advocate of teaching children to program, not to turn them over to the geek side but to teach them the life skills of problem solving and analysis. On a personal side I have been championing My First Programming Language a tool to get children a step up to programming in Basic by providing graphical tools as a precursor to coding.

mmmmm new keyboard

Robert Hogg — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 16:46:29 +0000

most people know I am a bit of a sucker for a new mouse or keyboard, the new Arc keyboard while not being ergo is still quite cute

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=120&active_tab=overview

I am hoping nobody will notice if a new/second keyboard is added to my desk with the scant number of mice I have.

A new user group - North East Bytes

Richard Fennell — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:51:40 +0000

There is a new user group starting up in the North East. It is taking an interestingly route of having meetings with two one hour sessions, one targeted at developers and the other for IT pros. The user group is free and there will be food and giveaways,

I like this idea, the danger with too many user groups is that they focus too much on their own little area; getting in some cross fertilisation between people with different views on problems is a great way to learn more.

Successful Visual Studio/ALM Event now in Edinburgh

Linda Hogg — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:36:37 +0000

REGISTER ONLINE

Following the success of our Visual Studio 2010/ALM with TFS events in Yorkshire and London, we are now taking it to Microsoft in Edinburgh. MVP for Team Foundation Server Richard Fennell and Microsoft’s Giles Davies return with an exploration of developer tools and application lifecycle management.

DATE: 25 February. Location – Microsoft, Waverley Gate, Edinburgh.

Visual Studio 2010 is being designed inside and out to give developers and development teams every advantage in getting the next ground-breaking application to market – quickly. The upshot is that your business gets to reap the rewards of tomorrow's efficiency today.

Reassigning the correct SSL certificate to SharePoint 2010 Web Services IIS Site

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:48:21 +0000

Prologue

This post is about assigning an SSL certificate to an IIS 7.5-hosted website which is not located in the Personal Certificate store. The steps shown are not SharePoint-specific, however. Hopefully this post will save you the large amount of time I spent hunting down the information on how to do this.

The usual background

I’ve been installing and configuring a SharePoint 2010 system that we can use here at Black Marble for our demo sessions. I hit a nasty wall just after lunch which turned out to be caused by the SSL certificate being used by the ISS web site hosting the SharePoint web services.

New Year … More Free Events

Linda Hogg — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:08:06 +0000

Welcome to 2010 … and more great events from Black Marble! The 27th January kicks off with our Annual Tech Update – a complete roadmap of all things Microsoft. We will shine a light on the big releases of 2009, the highlights of Office and Visual Studio 2010, as well as the releases you might have missed.

The afternoon tackles Azure for the IT Manager and Decision Maker – what is the business value of Microsoft’s cloud offering? Is it the way forward for your business? Black Marble will be joined by Microsoft’s Simon Davies to explore how your business can benefit, and how the model will work for you.

My Christmas Message to the world

Richard Fennell — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 10:35:34 +0000

Like the Queen, I have recorded a Christmas message this year. Now I have no prior knowledge of what her Majesty will speak about this year, but I will lay good odds it is not about using Typemock Isolator.

On the Typemock site you will find a short video on how we at Black Marble make use of Isolator to tackle testing problems that do no lean themselves to traditional mocking patterns.

Final Part of the BM Brigade’s Yule Time Adventure!

Linda Hogg — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 11:44:53 +0000

The Black Marble Brigade have finally foiled Professor iNfamy’s nefarious schemes … time to kick back and relax!

We at Black Marble wish you all a very merry Christmas and happy New Year!

This year, Black Marble are making a donation The Bletchley Park Trust and The National Museum of Computing for every card sent … these organisations need your support to maintain our industry’s heritage.

Virtual Labs for AppFabric and .Net 4

Robert Hogg — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:57:25 +0000

Ten labs for AppFabric and .Net 4 are available on MSDN virtual labs.

These labs cover .Net 4 Beta 2 and AppFabric Beta 1.

Simple Console Workflow

Introduction to Workflow Services and AppFabric

Implementing More Complex Control Flow and Logic with WF4

Activity Designers and Designer Re Hosting in WF4

Building a Complex Workflow Service-based Business Process

Managing Your Workflow Service with AppFabric

Introduction to the Windows Server AppFabric Cache

AppFabric 1.0

Robert Hogg — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:42:20 +0000

AppFabric has a release today, get it here

Making a TFS2010 Beta2 server use SSL Ports

Richard Fennell — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:34:18 +0000

There any many good document on how to migrate a TFS server from it’s default ports of 8080 (tfs) and 80 (Sharepoint/Reports) to 8443 and 443, usuall to allow Internet access. A good place to start is Aaron Block’s post on the subject

I did find a problem whist sorting this on a system today, this was that although we had modified all the services to operate on the SSL secured ports the vaious TFS team project WSS sites were still trying to access reports on http://servername/reports not the new https://tfs.mydoman.com/reports url. The reason for this was that the tfsredirect.aspx cache needed to be cleared, WSS did not know we had updated the server.

Yule Time Travel Part V – How can Professor iNfamy’s nefarious schemes be undone?

Linda Hogg — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 12:49:04 +0000

Episode Five of Yule Time Travel is now available … can the Black Marble Brigade stop Professor iNfamy from wiping out Operating Systems as we know them?

Xmas Adventure Part IV – Can the Black Marble Brigade save Desktop Software as we know it?

Linda Hogg — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:09:00 +0000

Now the Black Marble Brigade have saved computing in the 1940s … can they save it in the 1980s??

Part IV of the Black Marble Brigade Yule Time Travel Adventure is now live … find out what nefarious plans Professor iNfamy has in store for desktop operating systems, and can our heroes thwart his scheme?

Part V coming this Thursday (17 December).

This year, Black Marble are making a donation The Bletchley Park Trust and The National Museum of Computing for every card sent … this organisations need your support to maintain our industry’s heritage.

Windows 7 and Office 2010 Overview and Tips

Robert Hogg — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:11:29 +0000

VJ has released a free book with hints and tips for Windows 7, it is full of useful information and a must read for any windows 7 geek user.

Microsoft Press have made First Look: Microsoft Office 2010, by Katherine Murray free for a LIMITED time get it Here

When in Edinburgh

Robert Hogg — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 19:33:26 +0000

Over the weekend the family where in Edinburgh we stumbled into an extraordinary Kurdish and Iranian restaurant called Hanams it just off the royal mile near the castle.

if you are near, just go in and try it, my recommendation is the Kulicha

Upcoming Community Conferences

Richard Fennell — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 20:16:21 +0000

I am a bit behind the curve here but if you have not noticed DDD8 is planed for January in Reading and DDD Scotland in Glasgow for May.

Both conferences have open calls for speakers, so get your sessions in quick.

Xmas Adventure Part III …. Can the Black Marble Brigade save Colossus??

Linda Hogg — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:55:31 +0000

The Black Marble Brigade are at Bletchley Park in the 1940s … can they save Colossus from Professor iNfamy’s evil plan?

And why not visit the real WORKING Colossus at The National Museum of Computing?

Plus, like Black Marble, you can donate to keep Colossus working for all future generations.

Agile Yorkshire meeting - Kaban For Software Engineering

Richard Fennell — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:33:00 +0000

It is time again for Agile Yorkshire. This month the meeting is a usual the second wednesday in the month, but at a different venue - Old Broadcasting House (http://www.ntileeds.co.uk/old-broadcasting-house/)

The session is on Kaban For Software Engineering by David Joyce and Peter Camfield from BBC Worldwide, as lean seems all the rage at present this should be very interesting. Hope to see you there

Black Marble Brigade Christmas Adventure Yule Time Travel – Part II now available!

Linda Hogg — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:43:38 +0000

After a hiatus in 2008, the Black Marble Brigade return this year caught up in the machinations of the mysterious Professor iNfamy!

Part I (left) on our website and on every desk with a Black Marble Xmas Card!

Find out in Part II (right) where iNfamy’s time travelling scheme has taken them … that mansion looks familiar …

Dublin gets a cool new Name App Fabric

Robert Hogg — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 02:02:31 +0000

Microsoft’s WF/WCF host server codename “Dublin” now has a new cool name and a promise of a great future.

Windows Server App Fabric as it is now known since it has been merged with the product formally known as “Velocity” is to be the foundation for internal hosted scalable application farms, with the ability to migrate projects (Hinted, not yet promised) to the cloud (Azure)

I have been waiting a long time for Microsoft to see the light over service hosting, what makes this step so good is the tooling and monitoring provided.

The Second Architecture Forum in the North was a Big Success

Linda Hogg — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 20:12:56 +0000

Black Marble hosted the Second Architecture Forum in the North, and was delighted to welcome back Matt Deacon, Simon Thurman and Simon Davies from Microsoft. this time they were joined by Mark Richardson and Giles Davies from the Developer Tools team.

The theme of this year’s Forum was the Professional Developer’s Conference (PDC) that took place just two weeks before in Los Angeles. Matt Deacon, Chief Architectural Advisor from Microsoft opened with the State of Nation. Simon Davies was next up, exploring Azure – Past, Present and Future. Simon was then joined by Black Marble’s Robert Hogg to discuss AppFabric. Finally before lunch, Simon Thurman MC’d the Web Session introducing Black Marble’s Leon Nightingale (SilverLight 4), Barry Wimlett (MVC) and Rik Hepworth (SharePoint 2010).

Black Marble join with Microsoft to run a FREE Visual Studio/ALM Event in LONDON

Linda Hogg — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:43:29 +0000

DATE: 17 December. Location - Royal College of Physicians, 11 St Andrews Place, London NW1 4LE

Welcome to the Microsoft/Black Marble exploration of developer tools and application lifecycle management, now taking place in London for your convenience.

A busy week of presenting

Richard Fennell — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:02:48 +0000

The interest in Visual Studio 2010 is growing, I am presenting at two events this week and have another day of less formal meetings on the subject.

The event on Thursday is the [Architecture Forum in the North](Architecture Forum in the North) we are hosting with Microsoft, there are still a few spaces available is if you are interested in the learning more about new techniques and tools why not come along. You even get to hear me talking about using TFS as a Java developers via Teamprise.

Post PDC Thoughts

Richard Fennell — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:43:23 +0000

I realised I never did another post after my first at the PDC, now what does that tell you?

One thing it tells me is that blogs are not they primary news form for events now, it has moved onto [Twitter](RefName – Enter a unique Identifier for the field in TFS. The identifier must have at least one period in the name; for example, Test.Test1.). Though as yet I am still lagging behind on this one, I have an account but no tweets as yet. I find there is too much noise most of the on Twitter, it is useful when at an event like PDC to get the buzz, but for me not day to day (though I know I am missing stuff because of this view)

PDC Keynote Day 1 thoughts

Richard Fennell — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:39:06 +0000

So the PDC2009 day 1 keynote is over and what was the story? Well it is more of a vision thing, but then again this is a PDC not a TechEd so what do you expect. For me the two major themes were

Dallas – a centralised data service that allows unified access to both public and private via subscriptions. Thus allowing core data being used for any purpose the user requires within the EULA of the data in question. It will be interesting what will be published in this manner, is there a market for a centralised data clearing house? only time will tell.
AppFabric – Basically taking the operating model for the Azure services and allow a company to have a similar model in their own IT system. Thus allowing code to be written that can work on the corporate system or Azure cloud without alteration. This I see as being big.,

So what was not mentioned, well it was mobile. The only comment was a ‘come to Mix in the spring for stuff about the next mobile offering. Whatever is shown there is going to have to very good to address the momentum of the iPhone. I think a good bet is that leveraging the Azure fabric might be important for the mobile offering

The Joy of Access

Robert Hogg — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:35:19 +0000

Well the title says it all, a sentence I thought I would never utter but its true, Access is great, specifically Access Services in SharePoint. We have been deep and dirty with Access Services in SharePoint for sometime, before it was announced getting some demo’s built of our planned release products based on SharePoint 2010.

When Andy and I were at the SharePoint 2009 conference and we had a chat with Ryan McMinn and you can see some of it here on Channel9’s The Access Show.

Berlin: Legoland Experience

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:56:27 +0000

I’d love to say that I enjoyed the Legoland Experience in Berlin, located beneath the Sony Centre in Potzdamer Platz. I’d love to, but I can’t – I’ve been to a conference you know; none of this sightseeing malarky for me.

Having said that, whilst visiting the Mauerfall celebrations I stumbled upon the entrance, and I don’t often get the chance to post gratuitous pictures of Lego…

Places to eat in Berlin: Grenander

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:55:29 +0000

Lets get this straight right of the bat: Grenander is not a restaurant. Sure, it’s open in the evening and it does light meals (think: soup and a roll). However, it’s really a cafe (‘cafehaus and icecream’, says my receipt).

Coffee and cake is a deep-seated German tradition. You really must indulge, but beware that this is no piffling, tiny piece of sponge cake we’re talking about – oh no. Coffee and cakes demands a huge, sumptuous piece of one of a range of marvellous gateaux. Picture a huge Black Forest Gateau (Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte) and you’re in the right place.

Places to eat in Berlin: Mola

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:55:14 +0000

Mola is opposite the Wittenbergplatz U-bahn station, just along the Ku’damme from KaDeWe. It’s not the most sophisticated restaurant you’ll find, but it’s a wonderfully authentic Italian restaurant.

The first thing you’ll notice is the marvellously jovial owner (at least I think he was the owner) who welcomes you in Italian. The next thing that you’ll notice is the large traditional pizza oven, with the pizza chef making fresh pizza by hand right in front of you.

Places to eat in Berlin: La Sepia

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:54:15 +0000

Anybody who knows me well will tell you that I am prone to waxing lyrical about Portugal. Whilst I haven’t been there for a good few years now, it was a regular destination for my family when I was younger and I have strong, fond memories of the place and its food.

Imagine my surprise then, when we found a Portuguese/Spanish restaurant just a few minutes away from our hotel. La Sepia is on Marburger Strasse, just off Ku’damme.

Places to eat in Berlin: Coa

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:53:52 +0000

It’s becoming a tradition that every time I attend a conference or travel anywhere interesting I post at least a couple of places to eat. Perhaps ironically, none of the places I am about to post about serve cuisine that you could reasonable call German.

It’s true – we’ve done coffee and cake – that well known German tradition. In an evening, however, besides our hotel we have been to a Chinese, an oriental fusion place and a Portuguese and Spanish restaurant.

Berlin: Four storeys of Windows 7 goodness

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:53:20 +0000

As you walk out of the U-bahn at Potzdamer Platz right now, you are faced with the most enormous advertisement you have ever seen. Well done HP and Windows 7 – subtle it most certainly is not!

TechEd 2009: Finding technical content

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:44:50 +0000

Whilst TechEd this year has been rich with interesting content, most notably on SharePoint 2010, I’ve found it sadly thin on the ground when it comes to deep technical sessions. What exceptions to this rule there have been, however, were excellent and worthy of mention.

Mark Minasi delivered an explanation of Kerberos and its usage in Windows which was both extremely informative and wildly funny. His engaging delivery and use of cartoons, animations and humour made what could have been a dry subject all the more informative and memorable. If you can get hold of the recording, I would strongly urge you to watch.

20 Jahre Mauerfall

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:16:03 +0000

Monday night saw the official celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the historic events which saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and paved the way for German reunification.

Sadly, the night was cold and wet – the rain was falling in torrents as we made our way to Potsdamer Platz and walked towards the Brandenburg Gate. We managed to stand right next to one of the large screens on which proceedings were to be shown – next to the gate and near the dominoes which were to topple during the night.

November Agile Yorkshire Meeting

Richard Fennell — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:00:06 +0000

Time for the usual reminder for the next Agile Yorkshire meeting. This month it is by Mark Stringer on ‘Techniques for dealing with difficult conversations & negotiations in software development’. Usual time, usual place, usual free beer.

….and just a heads up for the December meeting, as this is at a different venue, Old Broadcasting House (http://www.ntileeds.co.uk/old-broadcasting-house/), it is going to be by David Joyce of the BBC on ‘Kanban for Software Engineering’

TechEd Europe has real Coke

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:05:04 +0000

For those of you who are confused by the title, Robert, our MD complained bitterly that the SharePoint Conference 2009 in Las Vegas only had Pepsi. I don’t know any geeks who like Pepsi, and a quick poll on twitter seemed to suggest that Robert and I aren’t alone. I just want to report that Berlin has restored my faith and has large fridges full of bottles of Coke. No Cherry Coke, however, so they don’t quite make a gold star.

Ich bin ein Berliner

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:47:24 +0000

As you may know, TechE d 2009 EMEA is in Berlin this year. You may also know that this year is the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I’m here in Berlin, which means that I’ll try to blog what’s going on at TechEd. However, this post is all about the really cool idea Berlin has for the celebrations!

We arrived on Saturday and went out to Potsdamer Platz, not far from the Brandenburg Gate and German Parliament. We hadn’t heard about the 1000 dominoes, so we were really surprised and impressed.

Snippet Editor

Robert Hogg — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:59:54 +0000

The new version of the Snippet Editor now supports Visual Studio 2010, if you are doing demo’s or like snippets get it here

Notes on TFS2010 Beta1 to Beta 2 Upgrade

Richard Fennell — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:54:47 +0000

I have recently upgraded my dual tier TFS 2010 Beta1 instance to Beta2. This is not an officially supported migration but it is certainly possible. The basic process of the update is straight forward:

Remove Beta1 from the AT
Install Beta2
Run the configuration wizard in upgrade mode (this took a few hours for DB upgrades)

Once this was complete I had what I thought was a working Beta2 server (I saw no errors), but there were problems.

Find out what went down in Vegas …

Linda Hogg — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:52:34 +0000

… at the SharePoint Conference 2009.

Black Marble can bring you the latest news on SharePoint 2010 … want to know what SharePoint Foundation Server is? We can tell you … what did Microsoft announce that will effect your business … come along and find out! Register for our preview of SharePoint 2010 and find out why there is a such a buzz around SharePoint 2010.

Plus don’t forget to register here for our preview of Office 2010 and here for Richard Costall’s SilverLight 3 presentation.

IRON*.NET (CTP) for .NET 4.0(Beta2)

Robert Hogg — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:39:25 +0000

Those good people at Microsoft have just released updated versions of IronPython and IronRuby CTP’s for .NET 4.0 ( Beta 2 ) to sync up with the Visual Studio release last week

IronPython 2.6 CTP for .NET 4.0 Beta 2.

IronRuby (no rev number so lets say 1.0) CTP for .NET 4.0 Beta 2

enjoy

SDL lifecycle tools

Robert Hogg — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:39:19 +0000

have been built in compliance with requirements and recommendations

Microsoft has a link to a set of Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) Tools, get them here. The tool set includes great products such as FxCop. A SDL Thread Modelling Tool allows non-security specialists to enter already known information, including business requirements and application architecture , the tool then produces a threat model, A SDL process template for integrating SDL into VSTS. The tool set also includes an Anti-XSS .NET library.

TF53010 error and no TFS Warehouse updates after a SQL migrate

Richard Fennell — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:53:14 +0000

We recently moved our central SQL server to new SAN hardware and at the same time upgraded from SQL2005 to SQL2008. Once this was done we noticed that our TFS Reports were running against old Warehouse data.

Checking the TFS Application Tier event log we saw:

TF53010: The following error has occurred in a Team Foundation component or extension:
Date (UTC): 21/10/2009 10:27:25
Machine: TFSAT
Application Domain: /LM/W3SVC/287244640/Root/Warehouse-2-129005451884971104
Assembly: Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Warehouse, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a; v2.0.50727
Process Details:
Process Name: w3wp
Process Id: 2716
Thread Id: 2848
Account name: MYDOMAINTFSSERVICE

A video on Access 2010

Richard Fennell — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:04:02 +0000

I recently posted on my experiences of Access 2010, well if you want to know more have a look at the video by Clint Covington and Ryan McMinn on Channel 9

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 release and a new licensing model

Richard Fennell — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:34:14 +0000

About 2 hours ago Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 was released to MSDN subscribers, the usual wait for the download now start!

Also the revised SKU and licensing model for 2010 was made public by Brian Harry. This is meant to be simplification, but still remains fairly complex with the usually questions over ‘is that in this SKU or that?’

The key point for me is that the cost of entry for TFS is going to drop significantly, as the TFS server and a client CAL is included in the MSDN subscriptions with the VS Pro, Premium and Ultimate SKUs. Should break down a few barriers

Access Services in SharePoint 2010 or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Access 2010

Richard Fennell — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:52:44 +0000

So what I have I been doing of late? The blog has been a bit quiet. Well I have been having a good look at Access Services in SharePoint 2010. This has been an interesting experience, as I am not historically what you might call an avid Access developer.

Like most .NET developers I had looked as Access as more of a file format than an application, something from the past. Something that I might use for a small data store, maybe in a web application hosted on a cheaper ISP that does not provide ‘a real’ SQL DB, or where an XML data files don’t seem right, often because I just can’t be bothered to work out the XPATH. When using Access as a data format it seems easier to get at my data using basic hand crafted SQL commands or maybe at most via a OLEDB Data Adaptor/DataSet. All very old old school. Thinking about Access in this way just seems an easy way out, playing it safe with the knowledge I have. I don’t for a second propose that this a good idea, you should not be looking at using any technology just because it is there and you already know it. There are obvious downsides, using Access in this manner meant that from the ADO.NET developer side I could not:

I'm off to Ireland this week

Richard Fennell — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 17:22:00 +0000

I am off to present in Ireland this week in a double header with another of Black Marble's test team, Robert Hancock. We will be appearing at the Microsoft Ireland Visual Studio Academy. Our subject is Improved efficiency throughout the test cycle. As registration is still open I guess there are still spaces, so if it is of interest to you why not sign up (and who is not interested in testing?)

Local events reminder

Richard Fennell — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:27:07 +0000

Wednesday this week is the next Agile Yorkshire meeting, there are 2 presentations and a discussion planned:

Agile War Stories: A Project Managers Perspective. Ian Carroll
User Story Estimation: Alan Williams
An open discussion about Lean and Kanban in software development.

As usual the meeting is at The Victoria Hotel, Leeds from 6:30 onwards for a 7:00 start. See www.agileyorkshire.org for more details.

On Tuesday next week there is the West Yorkshire BCS meeting on ‘The World of Ubuntu and Open Source’ by Matthew Barker of Canonical Ltd. As usual the venue is the The Met, King Street, Leeds, LS1 2HQ

TF252005 Error when creating new collections on TFS 2010 Beta1

Richard Fennell — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:26:21 +0000

This week I tried to add a new project collection to our TFS 2010 Beta1 test system. All seemed to be going OK, the settings verified without issue but I got the error TF252005 when it tried to create the associated SharePoint site (on the WSS 3.0 instance on the TFS application tier).

Now unlike TFS 2008 this was not a blocking problem. On 2008 if any team project step failed, such as the team WSS site creation, then the team project was rolled back. It is a really nice feature of 2010 that if there is an error it does try to do as much as it can. So in my case, I ended up with TFS collection with no associated SharePoint site collections, not what I wanted but usable.

Black Marble Events – Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 and SilverLight 3

Linda Hogg — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:12:56 +0000

The second day of Black Marble events is an exploration of the forthcoming Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. Black Marble’s presenters will be fresh from the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, bringing you what’s new and exciting. With everyone keeping tightlipped about the features of these new releases, be among the first in the UK to hear what’s coming … from our speakers’ own hands-on experience.

Plus, the evening session sees the return of Richard Costall presenting on SilverLight 3. Always entertaining and educational!

(Free) Microsoft Security Essentials

Robert Hogg — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:40:51 +0000

Microsoft has released its Security Essentials package of free Virus,Spyware and Malware tools.

Get it here

OOMPH2

Robert Hogg — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 20:14:28 +0000

The chaps at M$ have released a new version of OOMPH, imagintivly titled OOMPH2.

OOMPH is designed to make micro formats more accessible to dev’s and designers, but is is just a great tool to have installed in IE, try it and see.

get it here

Sharepoint

Robert Hogg — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:32:32 +0000

A contingent of the Black Marble staff will be heading to Las Vegas in less than two weeks to attend the Microsoft SharePoint 2009 Conference. if you are going please look us up, I will be presenting on a subject jet to be announced so keep tuned.

TFS for the small team

Richard Fennell — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 17:56:44 +0000

Over the weekend Brian Harry posted on this blog about a new ‘Basic’ edition of TFS. This is aimed squarely small team currently using Visual SourceSafe. It will provide version control with work item tracking and can be run on SQLExpress. The key difference for the ‘Standard ‘ edition is that it will not have SharePoint or Reporting Services integration. For far fuller details check the blog post.

I think this is going to be a really interesting addition to TFS. This announcement answers a question I was repeated asked at our [TFS2010 event last week](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Managing the Application Lifecycle&Code=), ‘we are a small team with VSS, I want something simple to move us forward, what should I use? TFS seems a bit complex and expensive’ So for me it is well timed and well placed within the marketplace.

BizSpark

Robert Hogg — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 13:05:13 +0000

I would like to thank everybody who came to our first BizSpark event, I understand that everybody enjoyed themselves and are signing up to either Biz or Website Spark. I would also like to thank Business Link Yorkshire for attending and offering solid business advice.

We will be announcing follow-up BizSpark events soon including a quarterly Technical / Business all-in Q&A session.

once again thanks for all those who attended.

A Lively Day around Visual Studio 2010 and Managing the Application Lifecycle …

Linda Hogg — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:30:38 +0000

We were delighted at how our first event of the season went – high turnout, lively crowd and good food all combined to bring Visual Studio 2010 and the Application Lifecycle to Yorkshire Devs. Feedback was positive, and Black Marble’s Richard Fennell and Iain Angus were a great double act for the day.

More Visual Studio events will be coming … watch this space.

In addition, Boss from Black Marble outlined Microsoft’s new program for Software Startups – BizSpark. Black Marble is a Network Partner and is keen to ensure Software Technology Startups receive good advice, as well as access to Professional Software products. We will be running more events just for BizSpark startups, so again, watch this space!

Some good new for Bletchley Park

Richard Fennell — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:36:43 +0000

Bletchley Park have announced that they have got some Lottery Grant funding, which is great news. Again I you urge you to visit if you are interested in the history of our trade.

SDL Verification Tool

Robert Hogg — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:51:11 +0000

Everybody knows I like a verification tool as I think they are a solid way to enable a solid basis for quality, the argument against is that they do not get every case and so the argument goes we should settle for 20% MK1 human eyeball standards. I am a firm believer in both and so I was made up when Microsoft released the BinScope Binary Analyzer which analyzes binaries to check that they are in compliance with Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) requirements and recommendations.

Agile Yorkshire Twitter feeds

Richard Fennell — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 18:02:04 +0000

You can now get updates on Agile Yorkshire events via twitter @agileyorkshire

SharePoint Search Gatherer Error 10032

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:59:12 +0000

We encountered a problem recently with a two server farm. One server was configured as index and query server. Both servers were delivering pages to users. If a user executed a search on the server which did not run the search services, the Search page returned an error, and we saw the following in the application log and SharePoint logs:

Event Type: Error Event Source: Office Server Search Event Category: Gatherer Event ID: 10032 Description: Could not create a database session. Context: Application '2bee214b-e0b9-413b-8d85-c71002287e99' Details: The database connection string is not available. (0xc0041228)

Licensing kicks off again

Richard Fennell — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:55:54 +0000

Must be that time of year, I see we are looking at an exam for Scrum Masters

I don’t see any point in my repeating myself, especially when Gojko has covered essence of the subject so well

TF21508 Error, cannot see build server after moving a Hyper-V image

Richard Fennell — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:18:47 +0000

We have been consolidating our Hyper-V system of late, moving various older systems onto a new SAN based cluster. This has meant we have just moved our virtual TFS2008 build machines. After the move I started seeing the following error on all the builds using that server, re-enabling the build machine had no effect.

I restarted the build VM but this did not fix the problem; I had to also restart the TFS2008 AT, once this was done all was fine. I guess that there was a cached IP/ARP table somewhere routing packets the wrong way.

Windows 7 Boot from VHD

Richard Fennell — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:47:12 +0000

I have been having a play with the boot from VHD functions in Windows 7, it seems like a really useful feature when you need the raw power of your PC, but would like the ease of management of Virtual PCs (i.e. can copy them around and archive them), There are many posts on the steps that are required to add a boot from VHD partition to an existing standard install (remember the VHD must be for a Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 operating system), I followed notes on knom’s developer corner. Just a couple of things that got me:

Black Marble Events – Visual Studio 2010, ALM and BizSpark

Linda Hogg — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:39:02 +0000

The Autumn/Winter 2009 Series of Black Marble events kicks off with a day to delight software developers!

The morning session is an early-access view of Visual Studio 2010 which is being designed inside and out to give developers and development teams every advantage in getting the next ground-breaking application to market – quickly. The upshot is that your business gets to reap the rewards of tomorrow's efficiency today. Black Marble's Richard Fennell, MVP in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, demonstrate what's new and exciting for this developer family of products.

New free tools to help manager or TFS based projects from Telerik

Richard Fennell — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:51:02 +0000

Telerik have just release a new work item manager and dashboard application for TFS, first impressions are very good. Why not download your copy and have a look?

The History of Computing

Linda Hogg — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:20:38 +0000

Black Marble took a trip down technology memory lane with a visit to the National Museum of Computing. Black Marble proudly sponsor this important organisation – which is showcasing the pioneering work of the first computer developers who cracked the Enigma codes right through the growth of the personal computer to the present day technology boom.

During our visit to the museum, volunteers Kevin Murrell (far left) and Bob Jones were kind enough to give us a behind the scenes tour, as well as an account of Colossus (right) – one of which is now operating in the world’s first computer centre.

Breaking the Code

Linda Hogg — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:18:50 +0000

As part of Black Marble’s day of celebrating our computing history, we visited Bletchley Park – home of the historic site of Station X , the base of British codebreaking activities during World War II and birthplace of the modern computer.

A conservation area since the early nineties, the Park was saved just in time from demolition as the secret story of Britain’s codebreakers was finally made public.

Your support can keep our industry's history alive

Richard Fennell — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 10:38:00 +0000

We had a company outing at the weekend to Bletchley Park for their Annual Enigma Reunion event. A great chance to see the place where Enigma was cracked and some of the equipment they used to do it, such as the working rebuild of a Turing Bombe

Whilst down there we also took the chance to have a good look around the National Museum of Computing, which shares the site; you know are are getting old when a third of a museum is devoted to equipment you have worked on!

September’s Agile Yorkshire meeting

Richard Fennell — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 10:09:36 +0000

This Wednesday is the night for the regular Agile Yorkshire meeting, It was meant to be on Pex but the speaker has had to cancel (but you can see a video he did on the subject at DDD online).

So in Ben’s place we are doing some Grok Talks, short ad hoc open mike talks. It should make for lively discussions, and is that not the key purpose of any user group?

So, free beer usual place, Wednesday night, hope to see you there

TF250020 error creating new Team Projects

Richard Fennell — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:00:27 +0000

Whilst working on our TFS2010 Beta 1 test server today I got the following error when I tried to create a new team project

TF250020: The following SharePoint Web application is not valid: http://vs2010.mydomain.com. Verify that you have the correct URL.

I thought this strange, as I was doing nothing I had not done before, creating a MSF Agile team project with default settings. What I did notice was that in the new project wizard I had the server URL as http://vs2010 but the error message said http://vs2010.mydomain.com. So I checked the alternate access mappings in the WSS central admin, only vs2010 was listed, so I added vs2010.mydomain.com as the Internet alias and it all leapt into life when I tried the wizard again.

BizTalk 2009 Performance Webcast

Robert Hogg — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:57:31 +0000

At 9.00pm GMT, Ewan Fairweather will be running a webcast on Performance of BizTalk 2009 both on Hyper-V and Physical Deployments.

Register for the upcoming TechNet Webcast: BizTalk Server 2009 Performance on Hyper-V and Physical Deployments (Level 300)

for those of you who don’t know Ewan he co-authored the successful Professional BizTalk Server 2006 (Wrox,Press 2007) and has written many white papers for Microsoft including the "Microsoft BizTalk Server Performance Optimization Guide and has been the technical editor on other fine Wrox Press books.

And another nice feature for Windows 7

Richard Fennell — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:17:17 +0000

Homegroup certainly make home networking easier, especially when the PC is part of a domain as well, it just works. No more fiddling with rights between home accounts and domain users.

Update on Media Center on Windows 7

Richard Fennell — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:36:51 +0000

Since the upgrade of my Media Center PC to Windows 7 I have had a few problems with fast forward on recorded TV and DVDs (which I had not seen on Vista). It was as if the fast forward button on my remote got jammed on and I could not go back to standard playback easily, it took a few seconds for the message to get through, then you ended up back where you started.

Recording of my SQLBits Session on Visual Studio 2008

Richard Fennell — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:16:46 +0000

A webcast recording of SQLBits IV session ‘Making the SQL developer one of the family with Visual Studio Team System’ is now available on the SQLBits site. This discusses the features of the VS2008 Database GDR Edition.

Unfortunately I will not be proposing a session for this years SQLBits community event on the 21st of November 2009 at Celtic Manor in Newport, as I will be travelling back from the Microsoft PDC in LA

Epicenter follow up

Richard Fennell — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:45:03 +0000

Thanks to those people who attended my sessions at Epicenter yesterday in Dublin. For hose who asked you can find [copies of the presentation at the Black Marble web site](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/SectionDisplay.aspx?name=Publications&subsection=Conference Papers).

Welcome to the past of software development

Richard Fennell — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:56:17 +0000

I was at an interesting meeting at my local BCS branch tonight ‘Opening The Black Box: An Introduction to Quality Driven Development’ by Tim Hunter. I had heard of TDD and DDD etal. but QDD was new to me.

What we got was a hour framed by the basic premise that ‘Waterfall is good - Agile is bad’ (or progressive methods as the speaker called anything that was not waterfall). As another attendee pointed out in the Q&A, this tone in the presentation tended to cloud the more balanced points, managing to get the backs up of a good few attendees by the speaker’s seeming lack of understanding of god agile practices. He seemed to see agile as developers messing around, no documentation, testing or general engineering discipline. He argued that without waterfall, and specifically quality gates, we could not write quality systems. This is not the Agile I know.

Webcast on ASP.NET testing

Richard Fennell — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:02:57 +0000

I have just attended an excellent free webinar session on ASP.NET testing with Ivonna and Typemock by Gil Zilberfeld of Typemock and Artem Smirnov creator of Ivonna a Typemock add-on for unit testing ASP.NET

The session is being repeated today at 2pm GMT and I understand a recording will appear on the Typemock site in due course.

So if you get a chance this afternoon have look, it is well worth your time if you work in the ASP.NET space. Personally I have also found Ivonna useful for Sharepoint testing too, watch the session it might give you some ideas.

Nice explanation of using Kanban for support

Richard Fennell — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 08:45:50 +0000

Doron at Typemock has posted a nice description of how they use Kanban for managing support. A good introduction for those unfamiliar with lean

This past week’s Nxtgen events

Richard Fennell — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:21:38 +0000

Thanks to everyone who attended my two Nxtgen session on Sharepoint and Typemock in Birmingham and Manchester. You can find copies of the slide on the Black Marble site.

There was a good deal of chat in how Typemock could be used for more general ASP.NET testing; if this is of interest to you I would strongly recommended Typemock’s next webinar on the 25th of August on Unit testing ASP.NET with Isolator and Ivonna

Red button works in the BBC Interactive

Richard Fennell — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 15:28:20 +0000

Cool, I just noticed that on Windows 7 Media Center with a Hauppauge Nova 500 T Tuner card the red button works; so at last I can get Digital Teletext and interactive channels on the BBC without having to know their actual channel numbers (and as I remember they were actually ignored by previous versions of Media Center without a registry hack anyway).

This makes using MCE just like a standard Digital TV – should help general acceptance. This has certainly improved since the older versions.

Nxtgen UK tour reminder

Richard Fennell — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 09:21:42 +0000

A reminder that next week I will be speaking on ‘Developer testing of SharePoint projects using Typemock’ at two Nxtgen user groups:

Hope to see you there.

Speaking at Epicenter 2009, the Irish Software Show

Richard Fennell — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 09:17:21 +0000

I am speaking at Epicenter 2009, the Irish Software Show at the end of the month. The conference runs from the Wednesday the 26th to Friday the 28th. My sessions on TFS 2010 are both on the Thursday the 27th as part of the ‘Microsoft zone’

Application Lifecycle Management - Moving beyond source control
Making Testers Part of the Development Team

This is an interesting conference as it aims to address a wide variety of technologies i.e. not just Microsoft or Open Source. I find this type of conference a great way to catch up on technology I am not usually that exposed to; just the same ethos as Agile Yorkshire where Java and .Net developers can constructively compare their worlds.

Upgrading my Media Center to Windows 7

Richard Fennell — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 22:29:11 +0000

Over the past couple of days I have upgraded my Vista based Media Center to Windows 7. After my previous experiences upgrading from XP here, here and here I decided to do a new install onto a new 1Tb disk as opposed to an in place upgrade. This all went OK, there was nothing major to note, Windows 7 shipped with a driver for everything in my 3 year old AMD/ASUS based PC bar the sound card built into my motherboard, but that was easily downloaded. It is worth commenting that my Hauppauge Nova 500 T digital TV turner was found OK, but I had to get it to scan for channels three times before it got a signal. Why it worked the third time I don’t know as I did not change anything.

Slides from yesterdays presentation at VBUG

Richard Fennell — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 22:28:37 +0000

Thanks to everyone who attended my VBUG session yesterday on ‘Enabling agile development with Visual Studio Team System 2010’. I have just posted the slides on Black Marble’s web site

Expression Suite Version 3 and Source Control

Richard Fennell — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:08:54 +0000

It is good to see that at last Expression Web and Blend have got source control integrated into their IDEs. This is a vital feature if developers and designers are to work together effectively on the same code. It is a shame that the integration is just for TFS, it would be nice to support other source repositories to get an even wider reach, but TFS is enough for me now.

Isn’t the new Paste preview in Office 2010 cools

Richard Fennell — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 20:54:22 +0000

I love the new paste preview selection in Word 2010

This really is cutting down the number of paste, undo, paste special, damn undo again that failed so paste into paint or notepad, reselect and copy try again sequences I am going through.

Tuva – Feynman Lectures for all.

Robert Hogg — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 13:47:42 +0000

I have been a long standing fan of Richard Feynman and so I have spent the last few days watching some of his best lectures, Uncle Bill in conjunction with Microsoft Research has made ( both technically and financially ) the Messenger Feynman lectures available under the banner Project Tuva

The MSR team has spent a lot of time and effort to make Project Tuva special, adding timelines , extra information and connections out to external sites, with an end result of a fitting tribute to a great man.

Outlook 2010 email searching

Richard Fennell — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 07:28:10 +0000

Since I installed Outlook 2010 technical preview I have not been able to search emails using the ‘search mail’ boxes in Outlook (which links into Windows desktop search). I had not realised how much I used the feature until it did not work. When I tried a search I was shown a dialog saying there was 40000+ items waiting to be indexed, and this number was not changing. It seemed that the indexing of Outlook contents had stopped.

Visual Studio 2008 connecting to TFS 2010

Richard Fennell — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:54:44 +0000

You can connect a Visual Studio 2008 IDE instance to a TFS 2010 server, as detailed in Martin Hinshelwood’s blog, but I cannot stress enough you have to have VS2008 SP1 installed. If you don’t, you get an error dialog when you enter the URL for the TFS server saying the URL contains invalid characters.

This seems a simple rule, but as I found today it is easy to not realise your PC is not patched. You look in the about dialog for Visual Studio and it says SP1 installed, but the Team Foundation Client has not been. This was because the following installation order was followed:

A major day in history

Richard Fennell — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:27:50 +0000

With all this coverage of the moon landings I am surprised that the other major news item of 40 years ago today has not been covered – the Fennell family moved house. I ask you just what are the priorities of the news media?

Outlook 2010 crashing after in place upgrade

Richard Fennell — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:51:27 +0000

I downloaded and installed the Office 2010 technical preview today. All seemed to go OK (after I realised I could only do an in place upgrade from 32bit Office 2007 –> 32bit Office 2010), once the upgrade was done I could load Word and using our VSTO based document templates all seemed to work fine. However when I tried Outlook I got a problem.

On the first loading it took a while, telling me it was doing something to 40K+ items, presumably checking the local OST file, but then seemed to load OK. However after about 30 seconds it crashed, and continued to do this every time I rebooted Outlook even when I was tried safe mode, add-ins switched off and/or offline working. It all had no effect. Checking the event log I saw I had the error:

My Glasgow presentation last night.

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:04:17 +0000

Thanks to everyone who turned up for my presentation on Typemock and Sharepoint in Glasgow last night. I have just upload my slides onto the Black Marble site. As the session was quite demo driven the slides don’t offer the best code samples. If you want to experiment yourselves I would suggest you look at my related posts on this blog and remember if you don’t have Typemock you can download trial versions of all the products I used from www.typemock.com

Speaking at Scottish Developers on Typemock

Richard Fennell — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 12:19:06 +0000

On Wednesday the 15th this week I will be speaking at Scottish Developers on developer testing of SharePoint. This is a free event so please come along if you are interested and in the area.

If you are not able to make it to Glasgow but are interested in the subject then why not check out Typemock’s free live webinars also on the 15th.

Video recording gotta for VS2010 Test Runner

Richard Fennell — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 11:00:40 +0000

VS2010 has excellent new features to assist the tester in general, and specifically in the area of manual testing. One of these is the ability to video a manual test run; to get this to work you have to have the Windows Media Encoder 9 installed as well as the VS2010 Test Runner . If you don’t have it installed and try to use the video feature you get a dialog that warns you this component is missing and would you like to either download it or disable video recording feature for this test run.

Grow your own testing framework

Richard Fennell — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:48:34 +0000

Ben Hall has written an interesting post on creating a testing framework with MEF. As Ben said it is more a learning exercise for MEF than a useful product but it certainly show show the ease you can add meta data and reflection like functionality to your codebase. Wish it had been about when I wrote GUITester

And eScrum is no more

Richard Fennell — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:05:46 +0000

I have posted in the past about the TFS 2005 and 2008 Process Template eScrum from Microsoft; a template we use internally for a number of Agile projects. Well today it has been removed from the Microsoft download sites.

It was decided a while ago that it would not be updated to support TFS2010 and has been removed to avoid any confusion over whether it is support or not by Microsoft (FYI it was never officially supported anyway as it did not originate inside the TFS team)

Fun with a SQLExpress 2005 upgrade 2008

Richard Fennell — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:33:33 +0000

On my development PC I had a 2005 instance of SQLExpress that was installed as part of the VS2008 setup. I thought I had upgraded it when I put on the SQL 2008 Management tools and/or VS2010 beta, but it seems I didn’t. I thought I would try the new Microsoft Web Platform Installer, but this also thought I had done the upgrade to 2008, I suspect due to the fact I had the 2008 management tools.

Kerberos for SharePoint on Server 2008 with IIS 7

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:16:19 +0000

UPDATE: Spence posted a great comment pointing out some issues with this post. Richard then restored our Community Server DB to a point in time before the post, so it’s been wiped. Post again, Spence, please, as I didn’t get chance to copy the text of the comment, I’m afraid.

I’ve not been doing so well with blog posts lately. I have more than one currently in process but unposted, and I just can’t seem to get the time to finish them – so apologies, CSW, for not getting the article I promised up yet, but I am working on it.

July Agile Yorkshire meeting

Richard Fennell — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:12:42 +0000

Don’t forget this month’s Agile Yorkshire meeting is this Wednesday at the Victoria Hotel in Leeds. It is the usual mix of free beer, great conversation and an excellent speaker (note: you can assign your own ranking order as these factors, using a suitable Agile planning model).

This month the speaker is Nancy Van Schooenderwoert on ‘Seven Paradoxes of Agile Software Development’.

Hope to see you there.

Remember the new URL format for the TFS2010 web services have changed

Richard Fennell — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:25:37 +0000

To have a good look at TFS2010 I have migrated some existing VS2008 projects to VS2010. This has meant they are now being built using a new TFS 2010 build server. Now I wanted to make sure everyone still knew what was building and what was not, so I updated the configuration on our build wallboard to get the status from both the older 2008 and the new 2010 server – and it did not work. I fiddled around, upgraded the build wallboard to use the TFS2010 assemblies, all to no avail, the application just exited when I tried to get a reference to the build service.

Visual Studio 2010 project upgrade bug; test assemblies being copied to release folders in error

Richard Fennell — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:08:21 +0000

After I upgraded an ASP.NET Web Application VS2008 solution to VS2010 I found a strange problem. When I build either the whole solution or the test project in the solution the test assembly gets copies to Web Applications bin directory. However if I build the solution from the command line with MSBUILD they are not copied (so MSBUILD behaves as VS2008 used to).

Turns out it is easy to repeat, the process is as follows:

Re-awarded MVP

Richard Fennell — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:32:13 +0000

I am really happy to say that I have had my MVP for Team System Re-awarded, it is a privilege to get to work with such a great group of people as a have met via the MVP programme.

Problems with uplink on an 8 port Netgear Gigabit switch

Richard Fennell — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:39:06 +0000

All the ports on the Netgear GS608 I think are meant to be auto speed and uplink sensing, I have found this not to be true. I had the 1Gb uplink to our central switches in Port 8 and a 100Mb Ethernet workstation in port 2 could not get an IP address via DHCP. When I moved the uplink to Port 1 it all leapt into life. Interestingly other 1Gb PCs in other ports had no problem with the uplink in either port 1 or 8.

.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 issue on Windows SharePoint Services v2.0

Richard Fennell — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:02:52 +0000

If you apply the TFS2008 SP1 to a system that has been upgraded from TFS 2005, but the WSS was not upgraded from 2.0 to 3.0 you can get a problem that you cannot access the SharePoint portal sites due to WebPart load errors (you get an Event ID: 1000 error in the Windows event logs). This is because the TFS 2008 SP1 installs .NET framework 3.5 SP1 which causes some problems for WSS 2.0. Note this is not usually a problem for new installs of TFS 2008 as these use WSS 3.0 by default, but the upgrade of TFS from 2005 to 2008 does not force the upgrade of WSS 2.0 to 3.0 so sites that upgraded are susceptible.

Places to eat on the South Bank in London

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:28:17 +0000

A set of conference posts wouldn’t be complete without a run down of the local culinary delights. We haven’t strayed far from the South Bank Centre for the past few days, but we’ve had a great variety of meals.

Wednesday night and Thursday lunchtime was Wagamamas. I love Wagamamas. There’s one in Leeds as well, and whilst Fuji Hero is perhaps more authentic, I just love the deserts at Wagamamas. I also have at least one of their recipe books, so I can try it at home! Busy though – we arrived just shy of seven in the evening of our arrival and the queue to get in didn’t really die down until after nine. The new teppanyaki soba is to be recommended.

@media Day 2 - Afternoon

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:29:07 +0000

I hadn’t really thought about it before, but Andy Budd has a very similar presentation style to my own. He’s incredibly enthusiastic and passionate about what he’s speaking about, and he wanders around waving his arms in an extremely animated way. Snap!

The topic of usability testing is an important one. I always try to impress upon our clients the need to see how the systems we build for them are used and tweak and fix accordingly. Andy’s approach to low-budget, formative testing to identify and solve usability issues during development as part of an agile approach struck a chord with me. I think that it’s important to have a dialog with ‘average’ users (i.e. not involved directly with development and therefore too close to a project to notice the problems) and to feed back into the development process what you find and the pain points you identify. Far better to find and fix during development than to force your product to fail testing or, even worse, to hit issues during rollout that hinder adoption.

@media Day 2 - Morning

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:28:51 +0000

It’s a muggy day today. With thunderstorms expected, the morning air was thick as we walked over to the South Bank Centre.

I found Douglas Crockford’s opening session thoughtful. It wasn’t what I was expecting – I had anticipated a focus more on methodologies and approaches to improving quality. instead, it was an interesting and sometimes humorous examination as to why quality in software is such a difficult area, with an informative walk through the history of software thrown in.

Joining in the background noise: I am now on Twitter

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 07:42:39 +0000

One of the reasons I enjoy conferences like @media is that I can be persuaded to change my mind on things. After a persuasive argument from Nick I’ve decided to alter my stance on twitter and give it a go for a while.

A few others recently have suggested that I should sign up to the microblogging system even if I didn’t plan to use it, just to make sure I got the nickname I wanted and nobody else could use it. I’ve never really bought into that kind of approach, and sometimes I wonder if that is as key an indicator as to the lack of importance I have personally come to place in social networking tools. I’m old enough that my first instinct if I want to socialise is to pick up the phone and arrange a pint with a mate.

@media 2009 Day 1 - Afternoon

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:29:38 +0000

Not providing lunch at the conference was perhaps a bit of a double edged sword. On the one hand, Wagamamas is just so close (mmm… chicken katsu curry); on the other hand, lots of people were nodding off in the warmth of the first session.

Which is a great shame, because Dan Rubin is a really good speaker (and singer, as it happens). His session was all about reflecting the real world in our user interfaces in order to make them much more usable. It was also about taking real items and using them in designs (such as real textures from scanned objects) because of the much better emotive affect that has with our users. It was pretty inspiring, even though at the end of the day everything he talked about should be common sense.

@media 2009 Day 1 - Morning

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:45:06 +0000

It’s good to see familiar faces once again here at @media. This year’s conference is around the same size as the first one in 2005 and it has a strangely familial feeling. Nick’s here as a volunteer ‘@mediator’ so he was manning the desk as we registered.

A note at this point about the conference swag: aside from the very nice T-shirt, which strangely matches my normal style (Andy often refers to me as ‘Mister Taupe’), the conference bag is excellent! Made from coconut fibre, it hits all the marks for eco-friendliness, but it’s a very practical, messenger-style durable bag, and perfect for my Dell Mini, upon the keyboard of which I currently type. A bag I shall no doubt use a great deal in the future – no doubt the original aim. The whole look and feel of the conference this year is really good – sophisticated and earthy.

See you at @media09? Tickets are still available

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:28:51 +0000

Lauren and I set off for London later to today. It’s @media time again and I’ve been looking forward to this for a while. As usual Patrick Griffiths has lined up a fantastic group of really inspirational speakers and, whilst smaller in the light of the current climate, I have no doubts that it will be useful.

I’ve been to every @media since it started and I’ve always had a great time. If you have the time, I’d urge you to make this year the sell-out it’s been in the past!

Logging everything that is going on when an assembly loads using CThru

Richard Fennell — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:33:01 +0000

Whist trying to work out if there is any way to get around the problem I am suffering with Sharepoint workflows idling inside a Typemock Isolator test harness I have been having a good look at CThru; a set if libraries for Typemock that, and I quote Codeplex here, ‘… allows creating interception and isolation frameworks for logging, testing and many other things very simply’. This is the framework is used to create the Silverlight mocking frame work on the same Codeplex site.

0x800106ba Windows Defender error in Windows Vista

Richard Fennell — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 12:24:03 +0000

I was installing a new PC for a friend yesterday; after using the Easy Transfer Wizard (first time I used this and I can heartily recommend) to move their settings from their old XP system to their new Vista one I got the 0x800106ba Windows Defender error on start-up. Now there is a lot of frankly useless comments on this error on various forums, strange as the solution is simple. I suspect this is down to this issue being predominantly a problem that hits home user who are not a familiar with the internal workings of services etc. in Windows.

Speaking at VBUG Newcastle in July

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:53:40 +0000

Andy Westgarth and the guys at VBUG Newcastle very kindly invited me to speak about and demo some of what I consider to be key features in Windows 7 and Server 2008. If you read the blog and would like to see what I really look like, are interested in the topic of the talk or interested in VBUG in general, come along!

The venue is Newcastle University (a campus I’ve never visited before so I’m quite looking forward to that). For more information Andy has details on the VBUG site. In order to make sure the event doesn’t wither through lack of interest, please register yours on the VBUG site. To copy some of it here, however:

29109 error when installing the quiescence GDR patch for TFS 2005

Richard Fennell — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:03:54 +0000

Whilst upgrading a single server TFS 2005 to a dual server 2008 install I hit a problem. I had installed the new 2005 Data Tier (DT) and patched it without issue. However then I tried to apply the patch VS80-KB19156-v2-x86, the Quiescence GDR patch, on the Application Tier (AT) I got the 29109 error: SQL Reporting Services configuration encountered an unknown problem. A search on the web found this is a common issue usually fixed by repeated retries! This did not work for me.

TFS Sharepoint Extensions on a Load Balanced Sharepoint farm

Richard Fennell — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:51:39 +0000

I posted yesterday about problem creating a new team project if you had missing templates on your Sharepoint server. This problem could of course be avoided if you had installed the TFS Sharepoint Extensions onto your Sharepoint server as your are meant to. However, as I have discovered it is not that easy to do if your chosen Sharepoint system has network load balanced front ends.

The problem is that Sharepoint will replicate your MSFAGILE30.STP template between the various servers, but it will not move other TFS artefacts such as the TFSREDIRECT.ASPX in the 12 hive or setting to point to the reporting service instance in the registry. To add these other items you need to install the extensions an then run the TFSConfigwss.exe tool to edit the registry. The problem is the Extensions MSI will not complete if it detects the STP already in place (which as I said will that have been replicated by Sharepoint). The only solution I found was to cheat a bit:

TF30227 error when creating team projects on TFS 2008

Richard Fennell — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:25:27 +0000

Historically we have used the eScrum process template for our TFS team projects. However, with a view to the TFS 2010 future we have decided to moved back to the MSF Agile template. We used eScrum to provide an easy to use web based project dashboard; we now think that we can achieve the same or better in TFS 2010 using Excel’s enhanced links to TFS and Excel Services in Sharepoint.

Two great places to eat

Linda Hogg — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:58:42 +0000

Want to know where to eat if you happen to be in the Reading area? A recent Black Marble visit to Microsoft at Thames Valley Park led us to try out two great restaurants. The first, the London Street Brasserie came recommended by a couple of ‘Softies and provided wonderful food right in the heart of Reading. Pleasant atmosphere, friendly staff, good location.

On our way out of Reading on our journey home, we came to another eatery that I can wholeheartedly recommend – The Hind’s Head at Bray, one of Heston Blumenthal’s places, and I am a big fan of his work. This time we persuaded another couple of ‘Softies to join us … the hardship of working with Black Marble!

Things to do in Seattle: Gameworks

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:08:27 +0000

As you probably guess, Richard and myself were in Seattle for a short conference last week. The evening entertainment on one night was a trip to Gameworks. If you like playing video games with your mates, going head-to-head at things like Sega Rally, then you’ll have a good time in Gameworks.

I’m not the worlds greatest gamer, and I tend to struggle when it’s games that don’t use keyboard and mouse. Richard and I seemed to do best at the stand-up shooting games, the first of which was (to a non-hunting Brit) a hilarious hunting game where you had to blast moose with a pump action shotgun and avoid shooting cows.

Places to eat in Seattle: Etta’s Seafood

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:21:32 +0000

On our arrival in Seattle, Richard and I had a great meal in Etta’s Seafood, which is not far along the road from Pike’s Market, heading out with the bay on your left. The food was excellent – fantastic chowder and a burger cooked just to your taste. A warning though – if you’re a wee slip of a lad like I am you may find the portions daunting. It was a friendly, charming place and great welcome to the city.

Places to eat in Seattle: Marcella’s Cookery

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:21:10 +0000

Tonight we ate in a place we’d seen recommended by Sara Ford in her blog: Marcella’s Cookery. A fantastic little New Orleans-style eatery run by the eponymous (and very friendly) Marcella and her husband, Anthony. The food was fabulous, well cooked and happily discussed by the chef himself. Between us we tried a number of dishes and all were excellent. Anthony (the chef) told us that he moved to Seattle after Hurricane Katrina and I think it’s Seattle’s gain – we had a great time and I can wholeheartedly recommend the place.

Things to do in Seattle: Baseball

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 06:41:39 +0000

We had a great night tonight. Our visit to Seattle coincided with three home games for the Mariners, and I went to my first baseball game tonight. Not only was it a fantastic match, going right down to the last pitch, but one of the batters obviously realised I was a baseball newbie and kindly hit me a ball as keepsake!

Places to eat in Seattle: Lowell’s

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:55:04 +0000

Richard’s an old hand in Seattle, so he suggested we ate breakfast at Lowell’s down at the Pike Place Market. I’m really glad he did – the eggs benedict were fantastic. We ate great food with a fantastic view of the bay. If you’re ever in Seattle I can wholeheartedly recommend that you try Lowell’s while you’re here.

UK Hotels take note – this how to do coffee in my room!

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:29:53 +0000

I’m in Seattle this week (just as a big heatwave has rolled in). As I type this I’m looking out from my room at the Westin over a great view of the bay. In the corner I hear my coffee brewing. None of your little kettles and sachets of instant coffee here. Look what I got:

Addressing binding issues with with Ivonna 2.0.0 using <dependentAssembly> in web.config

Richard Fennell — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:28:09 +0000

I have been having some binding problems when trying to use Ivonna 2.0.0 against a version of Typemock Isolator other than the 5.3.0 build it was built to run against. This is a know issue, if your version of Ivonna and Typemock don’t match then you have to use .Net Binding redirection to get around the problem.

So to track down the exact problem I used the Fusion logger shipped with the .NET SDK (via fuslogvw.exe). This in itself has been an interesting experience. A few points are worth noting:

The setup story for TFS 2010

Richard Fennell — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:09:59 +0000

I have been looking at the various install and upgrade stories for the TFS 2010 Beta. I have to say they are very nice compared to the older TFS versions. You now have a SharePoint like model where you install the product then use a separate configuration tool to upgrade or setup the features required. There are plenty of places to verify your setting as you go along to greatly reducing the potential mistakes.

Configuring IIS Bindings to include host headers with https on Windows Server 2008 (for SharePoint)

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:34:00 +0000

NOTE: We use a wildcard SSL certificate which makes our life much easier when dealing with multiple hostnames. I have not tested this approach with multiple SSL certificates for specific sites.

We’ve been reconfiguring our SharePoint 2007 farm over the past couple of days and it’s now hosted on Windows Server 2008 and using NLB (network load balancing). The load balancer has been configured with a single public IP address and all our previous DNS CNAME registrations have been replaced with hostname A registrations pointing at the address. With our previous configuration we had multiple IP addresses on the server, one for each web application. Each IIS web site was then configured with a host header and ip address to allow for secure traffic over HTTPS.

Incoming Email with SharePoint on Windows Server 2008

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 27 May 2009 13:42:08 +0000

I’ve been meaning to write this up for a while, simply because it’s not quite as straightforward as with Server 2005.

To configure incoming email on SharePoint when running on Server 2008 you’ll need to run through the following steps:

Install the SMTP feature
Open Server Manager. Click on Features in the left hand column then click add features in the right hand pane. Tick the SMTP Server check box and click install.
Configure the SMTP Service in IIS Manager (version 7)
Start Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager from Administration tools in the Start Menu. Once open, click the name of the web server to bring up the options in the centre panel. In the centre panel, right-click SMTP E-mail and select Open Feature from the menu.
Click the option to ‘store e-mail in pickup directory’ and set the path to be c:inetpubmailrootDrop (that’s the default).
Configure the SMTP Service in ISS Manager (version 7)
Start Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Manager from Administration tools in the Start Menu. Expand the server to show the SMTP service. In the ‘domains’ section, add any email domain aliases you need in there. Configure the other SMTP service settings just like you did with Server 2005.

SharePoint Service Pack 2 Pains

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 27 May 2009 07:22:20 +0000

I finally bit the bullet and decided to upgrade our SharePoint farm yesterday. I’d been holding off for a while because of time constraints and because of a known issue with Project Server, also part of our farm.

I took careful steps to increment the farm from the SP1+Infrastructure update all the way through each CU up until the service pack. That all worked fine. It was when I tried SP2 I hit problems.

Creating a new Virtual PC using the Virtual Windows XP Base Disk

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:40:57 +0000

One of the most useful elements of the Virtual Windows XP feature in Windows 7 is that the VPC is easily replicated and you can have multiple virtual machines all publishing applications which run in their own sandboxes.

Create a new Virtual Machine
Create a Differencing Hard Disk from the Virtual Windows XP Base
Start the VM and run through the setup wizard:
Accept the Licence Agreement

Everytime I have to use Typemock I need to ask does my code stinks?

Richard Fennell — Sun, 24 May 2009 09:06:01 +0000

Ok a bit sweeping but I think there is truth in this, if you have to resort to a mocking framework (such as Typemock the one I use) I think it is vital to ask ‘why am I using this tool?’ I think there are three possible answers:

I have to mock some back box that is huge and messy that if I don’t mock it will mean any isolated testing is impossible e.g. SharePoint
I have to mock a complex object, I could write it all by hand, but it is quicker to use an auto-mocking framework. Why do loads of typing when a tool can generate it for me? (the same argument as to why using Refactoring tools are good, they are faster than me typing and make less mistakes)
My own code is badly designed and the only way to test it is to use a mocking framework to swap out functional units via ‘magic’ at runtime.

If the bit of code I am testing fails into either of the first two categories it is OK, but if it is in third I know must seriously consider some refactoring. Ok this is not always possible for technical or budgetary reasons, but I should at least consider it. Actually you could consider category 1 as a special case of category 3, a better testable design may be possible, but it is out of your control.

Post Developer Day South West thoughts

Richard Fennell — Sun, 24 May 2009 08:47:08 +0000

DD-SW in Taunton seems to go well, a big thank you to Guy and the rest of the Bristol .NET user group for all their work getting this event up and running. Also it was nice to see new faces, it is certainly a good idea to get the DDD family events out to places beyond Reading, spreading the good works of the community across the country.

Thank you to those who attended my session on Scrum, I hope you all found it useful. You can find a virtually identical set the slides on the Black Marble web site and the actual stack I used will be up on the DD-SW site soon.

Developer Day South West is this weekend

Richard Fennell — Thu, 21 May 2009 09:58:35 +0000

It is Developer Day South West this weekend where I will be speaking on Scrum. I may also do a lunch time grok talk on SharePoint and Typemock Isolator as I did at Developer Day Scotland.

I think there are still spaces at this event, so if you can make your way down to Taunton on Saturday I think it will be well worth the trip.

Timeouts on Bitlocker to go

Richard Fennell — Thu, 21 May 2009 09:51:16 +0000

Since moving to Windows 7 I have encrypted all my USB pen drives and external USB disk drives with Bitlocker to go. This has been working great for me, I have noticed no performance problems and it give nice piece of mind. The only irritation is when you plug the encrypted drive into an XP or Vista PC you can’t read it, but this is meant to be being addressed.

However, I have seen one issue, this is that there seems to be a timeout if the bitlockered to go device is not accessed for a while (well over an hour is my guess, I have not timed it) it relocks itself and the password has to be re-entered. I can’t find any setting anywhere to control this timeout. I suppose the workaround is to set the bitlockered device to always automatically unlock on my PC, but I do like the security of having to enter the key manually.

TF255048 Error when installing TFS 2010 beta 1

Richard Fennell — Thu, 21 May 2009 08:38:09 +0000

When you setup a dual or multi server TFS installation you need to specify the location of the OLAP Analysis service instance that will be used for the reporting warehouse. As with much of the TFS installation and configuration process there is a test button to confirm your setting will work, these are always worth pressing. If there is a problem you could get a TF255048 error, as the text says this hints the server cannot be found or you have no rights to access it, which may well be the case.

Microsoft.AnalysisServices Assemblies missing when configuring Reporting Services on multiple server TFS 2010 Beta1

Richard Fennell — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:23:50 +0000

TFS 2010 provides far more options for the configuration of your server than the previous versions. You now can easily make use of any existing server resources you have such as SharePoint farms or Enterprise SQL installations. Today I was looking at one of these ‘less standard’ setups using some of our test lab equipment (hence the somewhat strange mix of 32bit and 64bit hardware) and hit a problem with the TFS beta 1 release configuration tool.

Getting "failed to start" with a SharePoint workflow

Richard Fennell — Wed, 20 May 2009 10:00:48 +0000

I have been playing around with some workflow code for a demo I am doing. This has meant creating and deleting a workflow project as I refine the demo. Whilst going through the process of a delete and recreate of the workflow (using the same name for the project/workflow but creating a new project from the VS file menu) I hit the problem that when the new version of the workflow was run I got a “failed to start” error.

Visual Studio Team System 2010 Beta 1 has shipped

Richard Fennell — Mon, 18 May 2009 20:52:11 +0000

Today the Visual Studio 2010 Team Suite Beta 1 and Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server Beta 1 became available to download for MSDN subscribers and will be available to the general public on Wednesday.

London Alt.Net Conference is now full

Richard Fennell — Mon, 18 May 2009 17:12:20 +0000

Wow, the Alt.Net conference in London in August certainly filled up fast. On Friday I went into a meeting before registration opened, and by the time I came out the first wave was full. I now see that the second wave of registration is also full.

Unfortunately I can’t make this one, but I am sure it will be a success. I really like the format that is being tried, a bit for everyone.

New bundle from Typemock

Richard Fennell — Mon, 18 May 2009 10:22:41 +0000

I have been blogging for a while now on using Tyepmock & Ivonna for various forms of testing, well you can bow buy both packages as a bundle and here is the blog/press viral marketing release…..

Unit Testing ASP.NET? ASP.NET unit testing has never been this easy.

Typemock is launching a new product for ASP.NET developers – the ASP.NET Bundle - and for the launch will be giving out FREE licenses to bloggers and their readers.

Last nights Agile Yorkshire meeting on Exploratory Testing

Richard Fennell — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:18:10 +0000

I was unable to attend the last Agile Yorkshire meeting, shame it sounds like it was a good one. The slides are up and give a really nice overview of the theory behind exploratory testing, worth a look at http://www.agileyorkshire.org/2009-event-announcements/may13th-exploratorytesting/ExploratoryTesting.ppt

Misleading error message adding a user on Windows 2008

Richard Fennell — Wed, 13 May 2009 11:11:12 +0000

Today I was setting up a new development VPC for SharePoint. When I tried to add a new user via the AD tools wizard I got the error

"Windows cannot set the password for [new user], network path was not found"

Forums suggest the issue is DNS resolution related, but for me it turned out to be the simple fact the password I was using did not meet the domains minimum requirements.

Alt.Net UK Conference 2009

Richard Fennell — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:15:25 +0000

Good news, there will be an Alt.Net UK Conference in London over the first weekend of August. Bit of a different format this time:

Alt.Net Beers _A social opportunity to discuss Alt.Net over a few beers.
__Friday, July 31, 2009 from 6:00 PM until 9:00 PM
_82 Dean Street, London, W1D 3HA, United Kingdom

Open Space Coding Day _A day of hands-on coding where the attendees choose the subjects.
__Saturday, August 01, 2009 from 9:00 AM until 5:00 PM
_36 Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 9EU, United Kingdom

AIC 2009

Robert Hogg — Sun, 10 May 2009 01:30:01 +0000

Black Marble was down at AIC yesterday, not only were we proud to sponsor such an event but we also ran some sessions and breakouts.

Thanks to everybody who attended sessions I was involved in.

For those of you who attended the discussion on Architecting Quality, I thought it was a good session with a set of fairly solid outcomes

i) Good reliable tooling is essential, but it should not be the answer to everything

A day at the Architect Insight Conference

Richard Fennell — Sat, 09 May 2009 16:00:21 +0000

I was at the Architect Insight Conference yesterday, so the big question is do I better know the role of the architect in the development process – I have to say no. Don’t get me wrong the event was interesting, I especially enjoyed the interactive group discussion sessions, one of which I chaired if that is the right term. As I have said about other conference I tend to find I get more from the discussions with other delegates than the more tradition presentation sessions.

Another speaking engagement – Vbug Newcastle on SharePoint Testing

Richard Fennell — Sat, 09 May 2009 15:13:43 +0000

Update 15 May – Date changed due to unexpected overseas trip

I will be doing a session on Testing SharePoint using Typemock Isolator on the 3rd June 17th June in Newcastle. Check the Vbug site for more details.

Virtual PC on Windows 7

Richard Fennell — Sat, 09 May 2009 14:58:54 +0000

You can run Virtual PC 2007 on Windows 7, but Windows 7 does include a new version of Virtual PC as part of the operating system, which is good.

The problem I have, and as will many others, is though my 64Bit Acer 8210’s Intel process has hardware virtualization support, Acer for some bizarre reason chose to disable it in the BIOS; thought it was enabled in the 32bit 8200 series, and is enable in the later Travelmate equivalents. Acer are not alone in this choice. This means that many people with fairly recent PCs will not be able to run the newer version of Virtual PC.

NewSID fails on Windows Server 2008 R2

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:50:36 +0000

The title says it all. I’m currently building a virtual lab to test DirectAccess and every time I run newsid on windows server 2008 R2 the system bluescreens irrevocably on reboot. I’ve now switched to using sysprep to change the SID. Here’s hoping the sysinternals guys update what is undoubtedly one of the most useful tools around!

Insightful Architects

Linda Hogg — Fri, 08 May 2009 11:43:29 +0000

Black Marble are out in force today for the 4th Annual Microsoft Architect Insight Conference in London. Robert and Richard are presenting 3 sessions between them, plus a bus load of our staff are there to support them! Word is the event is full to bursting … should be good. When available, I’ll post some links to what’s been happening … such as this great photo stream provided by Simon Thurman!

Next weeks Agile Yorkshire meeting

Richard Fennell — Wed, 06 May 2009 21:23:57 +0000

Don’t forget the next Agile Yorkshire meeting on the 13th of May about Exploratory testing. Usual time, usual place, usual free pint for everyone thanks to our sponsors.

Updating Windows 7 Beta to RC

Richard Fennell — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:24:24 +0000

The upgrade took about 2 hours following the ‘enable in-place upgrade’ notes. There was a lot of no progress bar movement & percentages not changing whilst the disk light flashed, but we got there in the end.

Thus far all seems OK. so the summary a bit slow but smooth

Channel 9 is 5

Robert Hogg — Mon, 04 May 2009 00:24:57 +0000

no this is not some strange kind of maths statement, a bit late (oops) but it is just that the first social media sites that exited me is now the ripe old age of 5.

if you feel the need to celebrate as well you can hear Don Box and Chris Anderson serenade (in a oh so disturbing way) the Channel 9 Guy here

if developers singing to a foam logo is not your sort of thing, go here to join Channel 9 anyway.

My grok talk on Sharepoint testing with Typemock Isolator and Ivonna at DD Scotland

Richard Fennell — Sun, 03 May 2009 20:50:00 +0000

I had an enjoyable day at Developer Day Scotland in Glasgow yesterday; a big thank you to the organisers and speakers.

I did a short grok talk on ‘Testing Sharepoint using Typemock Isolator and Ivonna’, a few people asked me for more details. Well the session was based on a post I did a while ago. I have updated that post to tidy a couple of issue I found whilst preparing the session. If you need more details of the potential pitfalls in using these tools I suggest you also look at the MVC post I did a few days ago as this details the setup you need to get it going.

Testing access attributes on the Microsoft MVC framework

Richard Fennell — Fri, 01 May 2009 08:56:00 +0000

The MVC framework provides an excellent way to create a testable web site. In fact when you create a new MVC project you are given the option to create an associated test project that contains MSTEST unit tests for all the sample methods in the MVC Controller class; which you can add to as you go along.

Recently whilst working on an MVC project I noticed that the one area that this model does not let you test is that of access control. MVC uses attributes on Controller methods to limit who can access what e.g.

My NxtGen tour in August

Richard Fennell — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:06:04 +0000

I will be speaking on developer testing of SharePoint projects using Typemock at both the Birmingham and Manchester NXtGen user groups in August.

For more details check the NxtGen site.

WCF Champ ( Round 3 now up )

Robert Hogg — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:13:01 +0000

The ever lovely people at the Microsoft CSD have launched a site to promote learning WCF. The site has a couple of overview videos to help you understand why WCF takes producing quality connected services easier and faster. The site also collects a great bunch of material to get you started or improve your existing WCF skills.

Look at the champ web site

Although I have been trying to contact them to complain about using the designs for our remodelled developer pits for the video.

Architect Insight Conference 2009

Robert Hogg — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 22:41:37 +0000

I will be speaking at the AIC on the 8th of May on Modelling with Oslo for Architects. There are some truly great speakers at the event however I have just head that it is already full.

I hope to see some of you there

Brain Burps for the Tech Savvy

Robert Hogg — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:09:50 +0000

Oliver Sturm and Gary Short have recently started their new podcast, called “Sod This”. Only the surface it is Oliver and Gary randomly talking, but underneath is some in depth solid information and insights in interviews from some interesting people. They promise to deliver the podcasts on a fixed timetable of whenever they finish one.

From their own blurb they describe themselves as

not equally sized
lazy
extremely handsome

I would add 1/3 deluded but very tech savvy, my advice is to listen to them.

Licensing exception with Ivonna the Typemock add-in (and any other add-ins I suspect)

Richard Fennell — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 18:51:37 +0000

Like a good developer I have been trying to run Visual Studio with least privilege; with Windows 7 this seems to work well. My main account is not an administrator, but Windows prompts me for elevated rights when needed. I have been developing happily with Visual Studio and Typemock without any need for extra rights.

However, when I have been doing some testing using Ivonna, the Typemock add-in, I hit a problem. When I tried to create an Ivonna.Framework.TestSession() I got a Licensing.LicenseException: This copy has expired. Which it hadn’t as I have a fully licensed product.

System.Web.Abstractions missing on a ASP.NET web site

Richard Fennell — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 08:55:41 +0000

I recently re-enabled feature on a ASP.NET site. This feature (a set of pages) had been running OK about six months ago for an initial pilot project but was disabled until now until a decision was made to develop the feature fully. In intervening time the web site had other modification and had been rebuilt (it was targeted at .NET 3.5) without issue.

When I re-enabled the feature (renamed a .ASPX file) I got the error

Don’t forget … Series of Great Free Events starts next week!

Linda Hogg — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:17:31 +0000

In the next few weeks, Black Marble are hosting a great series of FREE events from SharePoint to Business Process Management through to Windows 7.

First, on 30 April, [Think Small to Win Big with SharePoint](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Think Small to Win Big with SharePoint) is an informative workshop focusing on the gains to be made from working with Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 to solve your collaboration needs. This event takes place at our usual venue, [The Holiday Inn](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/SectionDisplay.aspx?name=Events&subsection=Event Venue Details).

Follow up to my session yesterday at VBug Newcatsle on DataDude GDR

Richard Fennell — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:30:59 +0000

Thanks to everyone who attended my session at VBug Newcastle last night, hope you enjoyed.

As I mentioned in my session, to celebrate my talking at VBug, Microsoft chose to release the Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition GDR R2 yesterday. If you are using DataDude you do need to get this installed, it addresses many know issues.

Slides virtually identical to yesterdays, as used at SQLBits, are on the Black Marble site

Speaking in Newcastle tomorrow

Richard Fennell — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:30:09 +0000

If you are in Newcastle on the evening of the 22nd I will be speaking at Vbug on Visual Studio 2008 Database Edition.

Hope to see you there.

Next Agile Yorkshire Meeting – Exploratory Testing

Richard Fennell — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 21:34:43 +0000

Next months Agile Yorkshire meeting is on the 13th May where Ralph Williams will be talking about Exploratory Testing, the session outline sound interesting.

Alt.Net ‘In the north’ – wrapping it all up

Richard Fennell — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 21:10:46 +0000

Thanks to everyone who was able to attend the Alt.net ‘In the North’ conference today; and also to our sponsors. The event could not happened without you all.

As promised here is the list of blogs, books etc. we had on the whiteboard.

**Books
**Bridging the Communication Gap: Specification by Example and Agile Acceptance Testing Gojko Adzic
User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development (Addison Wesley Signature Series) by Mike Cohn
Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn
Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams by Alistair Cockburn
Domain-driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software by Eric Evans
Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design by Bill Buxton

Alt.net ‘In the North’ starts tonight

Richard Fennell — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:49:02 +0000

Looking forward to seeing everyone at Alt.Net ‘in the North’ over the next two days.

If you cannot make the planning session tonight, but are in Bradford later, we will be in the Titus Salt Pub for a few drinks sponsored by SEED software. We will probably be upstairs from about 8:30pm

Technorati Tags: altnetuk

More Free Book Madness

Robert Hogg — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:50:26 +0000

Microsoft Press have just announced that they have made some books available for free during April

Windows Small Business Server 2008 Administrator's Companion

Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition: Build a Program Now!

Team Build, Code Coverage and MVC

Richard Fennell — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:12:09 +0000

I have been working on some automated build and testing for a project based on the Microsoft MVC framework. The build was working fine, and test were being run, but I was not seeing any code coverage data in the build summary in Visual Studio for the builds done by the Team Build box. However if I ran the test suite locally on a development PC the coverage data was there. Looking on the Team Build drop location I could find the data.coverage file in the TestResultsIn folder, but it was 84Kb in size, which I learnt means ‘contains no data’.

P==NP

Robert Hogg — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:55:07 +0000

I spent too much of my misspent youth looking into optimization techniques and scheduling problems and I would always come up against computationally intractable solutions and then looking for a more practical solution. I think that these experiences have made me the pragmatist I am today (best effort is better than not achieving perfection).

Doron Zeilberger has published a proof that P=NP, you can read his paper here. While on paper this could revolutionise computing and specific areas of optimization, the author has expressed that the solution presented is certainly not practical for the foreseeable future.

Holiday is when you catch up…..

Richard Fennell — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:22:00 +0000

I got round to listening to the latest Radio TFS podcast today whist out for a run, Adopting Team System with Steve Borg. If you are looking at adopting TFS or even just critically looking at your development life cycle with a view to improving (irrespective of the tools you use), then this podcast is well worth the time to listen to. It actually covers a lot of the points I was discussing at the Agile Yorkshire user group this week in my session of Crystal Clear. By now I would usually have put my slide stack up for all to download, but in this case, as my session was a book review in essence I would like you to read the original Crystal Clear by Alistair Cockburn.

Testing SharePoint Workflows using TypeMock Isolator (Part 3)

Richard Fennell — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:42:00 +0000

Updated 12 June 2009 - I have been having problems using this technique of Typemock with Sharepoint Workflows, the workflows keep unexpectedly idling as opposed to activating. If you suffer similar problem please check for later posts as to any solutions I find.

Now I can test a basic workflow it soon becomes obvious that you could end up with many tests for a single workflow, as a workflow can have any number of criteria that could cause branching to occur. Maybe a sensible way to write the tests is using Fit/Fitness to provide the test cases in tabular form?

Visual Studio 2008 DBPRO GDR QFE (wow loads of TLAs there)

Richard Fennell — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 09:48:29 +0000

At my session at SQLBits IV on Visual Studio 2008 DBPro GDR it was mentioned that there was a major patch just about to be released to address some known issues. Well Brian Harry has provided links to the release of the release candidate of the GDR QFE

Testing SharePoint Workflows using TypeMock Isolator (Part 2)

Richard Fennell — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:48:00 +0000

After reading Gil’s blog on writing simpler tests I have done some tidying of the code from my previous post. In this version I have extracted the boiler plate code to run the workflow to a static helper method and modified my tests to incorporate Gil’s comments, they are certainly more readable.

Speaking next week at Agile Yorkshire

Richard Fennell — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 09:45:02 +0000

I am speaking in Wednesday the 8th at Agile Yorkshire, on Crystal Clear and lessons learnt in Agile projects. The user group is meeting at the Victoria Hotel in Leeds as usual, and thanks to our sponsors there is a free drink for all attendees.

Hope to see you there.

Live Writer crashing when adding hyperlinks

Richard Fennell — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 21:52:25 +0000

For a while I have had a problem that when I tried to add a hyperlink via the toolbar in Live Writer I get a dialog that Live Writer has stopped working, it doesn’t exit, it just des not open the modal window for adding a hyperlink. It was irritating, but as I could edit the HTML source and put in the link by hand I could not be bothered to work out how to fix it.

Testing SharePoint Workflows using TypeMock Isolator

Richard Fennell — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:28:00 +0000

Updated 6 April 2009 – Also see Testing SharePoint Workflows using TypeMock Isolator (Part 2)

I have for a while been trying to test SharePoint workflows using TypeMock Isolator to mock out the SharePoint fixtures, I want to remove the dependency of having SharePoint on any test boxes where possible. I have at last got this working after getting a new version of TypeMock Isolator 5.3.0 + a fix from the very helpful team at TypeMock

Book Review 'Software Testing with Visual Studio Team System 2008'

Richard Fennell — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:08:38 +0000

A book arrived recently on my desk 'Software Testing with Visual Studio Team System 2008' by Subashni. S and N Satheesh Kumar. On reading the book it provides a workmanlike coverage of the testing features of Visual Studio 2008 including some of the API options in the testing namespace, but I can't see what it adds to the subject beyond what a user already has access to in the general introductions on MSDN/Help files.

MVP III

Robert Hogg — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:20:06 +0000

I am so pleased to be renewed as a MVP this time for the Connected Systems Division (CSD). My deepest thanks to the great guys in the CSD group and the UK MVP team for making this happen. This is my third year as a MVP and during the last two years (and a day) , I have been a BizTalk MVP twice and an Architect MVP twice and now a CSD MVP. I think it is time to settle down with the CSD group :)

Architect

Robert Hogg — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:37:05 +0000

I am no longer an Architect MVP, I have been an Architect MVP twice now and my passion for architecture is still strong but I am spending more time with M(Oslo) and engineering presentations in my community work than Architecture.

I am still an Architect by day but by night I still fight as an developer.

Install System Center Capacity Planner 2007 on Windows 7

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:42:09 +0000

I’ve been using Windows 7 for a while now, but I’ve never needed to install the System Center Capacity Planner (Andy usually handles that side of our SharePoint engagements). He now has taken the plunge with Microsoft’s shiny OS and hit a problem: SCCP refused to install with an error message saying it was only supported on Windows XP (!)

We tried all sorts, and in the end I resorted to our old friend, Orca – the MSI editor shipped with the Windows SDK. Looking through the tables I found an entry in LaunchCondition specifying ‘VersionNT >=500 AND VersionNT <=600’

SQLBits IV Slides

Richard Fennell — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:54:10 +0000

Thanks to everyone who attended my session at SQLBits IV. My slides on Visual Studio 2008 Database edition GDR release can be downloaded from the Black Marble website.

Also a bit thank you to the organiser for putting on such as successful event, it is really good to not have to travel to the London or Reading for IT events.

Alt.net 'in the north' still has some spaces

Richard Fennell — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:43:32 +0000

As I am sure you noticed there was an unfortunate clash of dates between Alt.net 'in the North' in Bradford and WebDD in Reading on the 18th of April. Well I see that WebDD over the weekend has published it's agenda, opened registrations and is now full.

So if you are disappointed that you can't get a place for the WebDD event have you thought of trying an Open Spaces event like Alt.net? We still have some spaces left. The key difference of this type of event, as opposed to the more traditional lecture format of WebDD, is that the attendees decide the agenda when they arrive and most sessions take the format of an open discussion of peoples real work experiences and opinions.

For I am a jolly good fellow ( twice over )

Robert Hogg — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:30:40 +0000

Today I was told by the BCS that I have been awarded Fellow of the Society (FBCS) , I so very proud of the work the BCS is doing to improve the community and I feel that I am pushing to do my bit in the North of England (and the rest of the country given the opportunity occurs)

I was waiting for some pictures (yet to be taken) to announce that I have also been appointed as a Honorary Fellow at The University of Hull, I am tremendously grateful to the great people at Hull for this honour.

Top Architects , Top Conference , Top Speakers

Robert Hogg — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:12:32 +0000

The 4th annual Architect Insight Conference has just been announced and this year I am happy that Black Marble is helping make it happen.

I will be presenting on Microsoft's Vision of modelling using “M” , I think M has a huge future in architecture and while it is only available in it base level , it is important to understand the potential.

I look forward to seeing everyone down in London.

Speaking on Visual Studio Team System Database Edition GDR

Richard Fennell — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:22:07 +0000

As well as speaking on the GDR release of VSTS Database Edition at SQLbits this weekend I will also be at VBug Newcastle on the 22nd April.

Visual Studio 2008 Database Edition GDR release - Createdeployment

Richard Fennell — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 22:28:37 +0000

Whilst preparing for my session at SQLBits next weekend I was re-watched Gert Drapers' PDC session (TL45) where he used a command tool to deploy a database via a USB pen drive (about 30 minutes into the session). Now it seems that the createdeployment command line tool he used is not currently available outside Microsoft, but the same effect can be achieved use the VSDBCMD command.

Step 1 - get the files onto the distribution device

Want to know more about Business Process Management?

Linda Hogg — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:32:19 +0000

On 12 May, we are hosting a Business Process Management Event here at Black Marble HQ, with PNMSoft. With a practical guide to Business Process Management in the “Real World” this could be the session you need to understand how BPM can aid your business. Great lunch included …

Free hotel internet - if you dare touch it

Richard Fennell — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 10:39:22 +0000

I have been away at the MVP summit and then on holiday for a couple of weeks. On this trip every hotel I stayed in had free internet, though often only wired. Seem many hotels have Wifi contracts with mobile phone companies and they are still charging for.

So top tip make sure you have UTP cable in your bag.

The 'most interesting' system I had was at a hotel in Whistler.

Do you need work item hierarchy in TFS? (Part 2)

Richard Fennell — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 10:33:49 +0000

I did a post before going to the MVC summit called Do you need work item hierarchy in TFS? which mentioned the new tools from Notion for TFS.

Well there are many ways to skin a cat, and also to produce a hierarchy of TFS work items. Also have a look at Artiso Workitem Manager. This product is interesting as it provides tools that work outside of Visual Studio to manage hierarchies of work items. This might be just what you need for people such as project manager who do not live in a development environment. The nicest feature for me is that allows the import and export of work items into Word document, thus allowing production of specification documents from TFS with the click of a button.

Error 1722 when installing MVC 1.0

Richard Fennell — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:09:53 +0000

As I am sure you will have heard the MVC 1.0 has been released. I downloaded this on my Windows 7 and tried to install it but got an Error 1722, the MSI then rolled back.

Turns out the problem was simply that I had Visual Studio open at the time I installed, it needs to be closed. It seems the MSI does not check for this before it attempts the copy.

Great SharePoint Workshop to help you Win Big in your organisation

Linda Hogg — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:46:48 +0000

Black Marble are running a few more exciting and free events for you in April and May. On 30 April, at our usual venue near Leeds, we are hosting an informative SharePoint Workshop (Think Small to Win Big with SharePoint) – looking at how small efficiencies can add to big savings – “Many organisations focus on large projects such as scorecards. By doing so, they overlook the opportunity to make small savings that collectively amount to huge improvements in efficiency and give much greater value to the organisation”. Starting at 9:30am, this event is running until 2pm with a break for lunch, and plenty of opportunities to pick the brains of our experts!

More Bad Apples

Robert Hogg — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:35:33 +0000

Over the last week I have received many comments on my recent post about bad apples, it seems to have resonated with a lot of people in the industry ( many of whom already read the great coding horror blog ). The two common questions have been, i) how do you spot it? , ii) what do you do?

The first is easier than the last, in general people will go dark and that becomes noticeable in communication skills, lack of documentation and general mood of self-despair. the less common variant is the supreme antagonist where the person will constantly pick fights which ironically they loose as their arguments are borne out of frustration with themselves not reality.

Marketing Speak

Robert Hogg — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:27:47 +0000

I love travelling and going to conferences, seeing friends both new and old. Normally the kind events that I attend are technical , architect and developer focused.

Now and again I bump into the wonder that is Marketing and Sales who take our beloved technology and add their own terminology, very occasionally I end up in an off wall non-technical presentation and sometimes a mix of the two.

I was very happy to attend a session on Eco Computing and implications for Architecture, it was deeply interesting (no really) which I hope will be made more generally available to the public.

MVP summit

Robert Hogg — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:25:22 +0000

I am just back from the MVP summit, this is my second time and interestingly I am attending sessions by both the ever lovely Connected Systems Division and the Architects group. it was great to see friends and colleagues both new and old.

Mike Nash has posted a “I’m a PC with MVP video” taken at the summit , if you look real careful in the first shot of MVP’s you can make out Richard, Rob Miles and myself.

Request for help with PhD Research

Richard Fennell — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:34:54 +0000

Whilst at SC2009 today a request was made by Emad Ghoshen for attendees, and any other developers they knew, to assist him in his PhD research into maintainability of web applications.

He asked if people could download some Java/JSP code and answer a few questions on it, don't worry if this is not your usual languages this is one of the questions he is researching.

All the details can be found at http://www.sueblack.co.uk/clarosexp.html,

Intent is the key - thoughts on the way home form Software Craftsmanship 2009

Richard Fennell — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:33:55 +0000

Today has been interesting, I have been to conferences where you sit and listen, such as DDD, TechEd etc. I have been to conferences where everyone is encouraged to talk open spaces style such as Alt.Net, but today has fallen between the two styles.

The Software Craftsmanship 2009 conference has been in more of a workshop style; most sessions have started with a short presentation to set the scene then the attendees split to forms small groups to do some exercise or chat, reporting back later in the session. A sort of lead open spaces feel if you want.

Do you need work item hierarchy in TFS?

Richard Fennell — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:14:36 +0000

Is so have a look at Notion Tools from Team System. This set of tools provides

A timesheet based on works items that you access inside Visual Studio
A work organizer to manage work items and documents allowing creation of hierarchies
A work planner to help schedule resources for future iterations.

Well worth a look as a means to extend the reach of TFS into your Agile projects.

SLExtensions HTMLEditor

Richard Fennell — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:32:37 +0000

I have been looking at porting a old content editor I wrote from WinForm to SilverLight and hit the problem there was no HTML editor control available in the standard Silverlight 2 control set. Roll in the excellent SLExtensions controls on CodePlex, to save the day.....

Now I did hit one problem with the HTMLEditor, that was addressed very quickly in for support forums. The point to watch out for is that for the HTMLEditor control to work the Silverlight object must be loaded into the web page with the setting to be windowless

Alt.Net UK 'In the North' Registration is now open

Richard Fennell — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 12:29:24 +0000

You can now register at http://www.altdotnetuknorth.info/

New URL for Agile Yorkshire (nee XPClub)

Richard Fennell — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:28:50 +0000

agileyorkshire.org is the new home for the Agile Yorkshire user group. If you follow the link you will see that next months subject is Test Doubles: An Introduction To Unit Test Patterns. Unfortunately I won't able able to make this session as I will be out of the country, but sounds interesting.

Excellent selection of speakers at the May Progressive .NET Tutorials

Richard Fennell — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:05:06 +0000

You may have seen on a few blogs that Skills Matter are organising the Progressive .NET Tutorials, a 3 day event in May. I have to say that the selection of speakers is excellent including Hammett, Ayende Rahien, David Laribee, Gojko Adzic, Ian Cooper, Mike Hadlow, Scott Belware and Sebastien Lambla; on subjects such as NHibernate, Castle, Monorail, Agile Testing, Web Testing, DSL's in C#, OpenRasta, Windsor WCF, MEF (Microsoft's Managed Extensions Framework) and more...

Bad Apples

Robert Hogg — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 15:42:16 +0000

One of the interesting pieces of work we get involved in are rescue projects. Rescue projects can be thought of projects that aren’t delivering or won’t deliver either to timescales, feature requirements or quality.

In a rescue project there are many areas that normally need addressing: Project Management, Documentation, Process and Quality. The one common theme in rescue projects is people; when we are brought in to help on a project people start to worry about losing their jobs, but more often than not are un-accepting of the situation they are in.

BizTalk Hotrod

Robert Hogg — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 12:31:31 +0000

If you are in the BizTalk world, I would recommend reading the BizTalk Hotrod. it looks like Todd has stepped down from BizTalk Hotrod , he mentioned he was moving when we were at TechED US last year. Rajinder has taken over and it looks like he is off to a cracking start.

Get it here

Windows 7 on the 8Gb SSD Mini 9: Redux

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:30:00 +0000

You may remember that I ended my previous post with about 1.6Gb free on the 8Gb SSD of the Mini 9 after installing Windows 7.

I still needed to install Office 2007, or at the very least Word and Excel for the ‘book to be useful. I therefore rummaged out another 16Gb SD card and revisited my earlier vista post about installing apps to an SD card. This time I simply let the card allocate a drive letter and installed Office to d:Program Files instead.

Update on Alt.Net 'In the North' Conference

Richard Fennell — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:06:00 +0000

There is a bit more information on the the Alt.Net conference now at http://www.altdotnetuknorth.info/

Registration will open next week at noon on Tuesday the 24th February.

Windows 7 on the Dell Mini 9 with only the 8Gb SSD

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:16:05 +0000

In my previous post about getting Windows 7 onto the fantastic Dell Mini 9 I talked about solving things like the driver issues and antivirus. This time I’m going to cover how I installed Windows 7 onto the 8Gb SSD version of the Mini 9.

Interestingly, Windows 7 will actually install in about 8Gb. However, when I tried to run through my previously documented steps, it told me that it did not recommend installing to a disk of less that 8303Mb. The Dell had about 7.5Gb free for the install as I wanted to leave the Dell system partition alone. When I tried to install the process reset partway through and I could not stop it doing it.

If Alt.Net is not to your taste.....

Richard Fennell — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:58:59 +0000

On the same day as the Alt.Net event I am organising there is a community event at TVP 'WebDD'09 - With all the latest stuff from MIX 09'.

We are spoilt, there is so much choice in the community events at this time of year

Announcing the Alt.Net.UK 'in the North' Conference

Richard Fennell — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:50:45 +0000

I am please to be able to announce that there will be an Alt.net Open Space Conference in Bradford on the 17/18th April this year. I had mentioned my intension of organising such an event at the last London conference, but it has taken a bit longer than expected to get sorted due to problems with getting the venue.

The event will be hosted by Black Marble at their office in Bradford, West Yorkshire, and there will be space for 50 attendees. The format will be the same as previous UK Alt.net conferences.

Buzzword bingo in the cloud

Richard Fennell — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:26:49 +0000

At todays Azure event I heard a new word for my occasional buzz word posts.

Marketechture - an architecture designed by marketing for use in Powerpoint

Save to Gain with Black Marble and Microsoft …

Linda Hogg — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:15:13 +0000

During our recent outing to TVP, Dell Quinn, Partner Programme Manager, took the opportunity to interview Boss for her “Save to Gain” podcast in the “Business Advisor” series. This is a set of podcasts featuring commentary from Microsoft executives, independent experts and partners discussing topical business issues. Boss joins Scott Dodds, general manager of the Small and Medium Solutions and Partners division at Microsoft UK and David Sumner Smith, Programme Director of Telegraph Business Club, to provide some practical guidance on how to cut costs without harming the productivity or efficiency of your business.

SQLBits IV registration is open

Richard Fennell — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:33:24 +0000

You can now register for SQLBits IV in Manchester on the 28th March, hurry if you want to attend as these free conferences do tend to full up quick

Great Free Azure Technical Event … on your doorstep

Linda Hogg — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:56:59 +0000

The Developer & Platform Group at Microsoft are bringing their cloud based Azure Services Platform Roadshow to Black Marble’s HQ here in Bradford. Same great food you get at all our events … as well as great content! Takes place on 13 February (9:30 registration for 10:00 start), here at BIC, Angel Way, Bradford, BD7 1BX.

To register …. http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/InviteOnly.aspx?EventID=EE-AA-39-11-6B-DF-F0-2D-78-12-81-55-03-49-6A-33&Culture=en-GB Invitation code: 5A219E

The briefings will consist of technical discussion, demos and interactive discussion and will focus on what Azure is and how it can be used as a platform for cloud-based development. There will be time after the event for more detailed ‘one to one’ discussions on any topics related to this session.

My session has been selected for SQLBits IV

Richard Fennell — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 20:44:21 +0000

Thanks to everyone who voted for my session 'Making the SQL developer one of the family with Visual Studio Team System', it was successful in the selection process and so will be on the agenda at SQLBits IV on 28th March 2009 in Manchester

Hope to see you there.

Achieving HDMI audio output with ATI hardware on Windows 7 (and Vista)

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 16:06:57 +0000

The steps in this article were figured out with Windows 7. However, they should work just fine with Vista for anybody having the same issues. Note that whilst this is written for ATI hardware, it may be the case that NVidia gear suffers from the same problem and this solution should help.

Background first. I spent a while sorting our AV gear so I could use HDMI as the universal connection standard. At the heart of this is an AV receiver with a number of HDMI inputs and HDMI output to the TV.

Missing .NET framework installing a VSTO application

Richard Fennell — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:36:00 +0000

I have been getting the error "The required version of the .NET Framework is not installed on this computer." (event id 4096 in Event log) when trying to install a VSTO application from both a ClickOnce deployment and a local copy. This is interesting as the .NET framework is installed (on my 64bit Windows 7 PC) and the VSTO application was developed on the self same machine (and works in Visual Studio 2008).

Windows 7: Attempting to install to VHD – an odyssey

Rik Hepworth — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 14:38:25 +0000

One of the things I am most impressed about with Windows 7 is the latest Media Center. As a result, I wanted to install the build 7000 beta release onto our media PC at home. However, I already have that working nicely with Windows Vista and, frankly, I didn’t want to have to repeatedly reinstall if the beta caused problems.

The solution seemed simple: install Windows 7 to a VHD file sitting on the Vista disk. Whilst at TechEd, Mark Russinovich had mentioned that he was running Windows 7 in exactly this way, so I was pretty confident it would work.

Free events in the coming week

Richard Fennell — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 11:51:09 +0000

I know of two free events next week in Yorkshire next week for those interested :

On Wednesday the 11th is the regular meeting of the Agile Yorkshire user group, where we will be enjoying a presentation on Test Driven Development by user group regulars Adam and Neil from Masternaut ThreeX. This will start at 7pm as normal, but some of us are planning to arrive about 6:30 to discuss some administrative issue of the user group. So if you are interested just turn up at the Victoria Hotel.

SharePoint 2007: Following Adobe Instructions Can Cause Problems

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 18:18:54 +0000

Having just spent a long time examining the state of a new farm we’ve been working on for demonstrations, I would like to issue a warning…

The Problem: None of the ‘New…’ menu items in our document libraries would work – we were seeing the error message:

'Edit Document' requires a Windows SharePoint Services-compatible application and Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or greater.

The Solution: Correcting an error in the docicon.xml file which lives in c:program filescommon filesmicrosoft sharedweb server extensions12TEMPLATEXML

Which way to fake an item in Typemock

Richard Fennell — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:22:30 +0000

I raised a question on the Typemock forum concerning a problem I was having mocking Sharepoint SPFarm objects. It was all down to which way to fake items using the various techniques in Isolator. It was interesting enough, I thought, to repeat here as a blog post.

I had written some tests for a method that got a list of SiteCollections that a user had rights to access. The key point being the need to access the static property SPFarm.Local to get a list of Sharepoint services to iterate across. If I ran each test by itself it worked; but if run as a batch in TestDriven.Net or MSTest the first passed and the rest failed.

Developer Day Scotland Voting Opens

Richard Fennell — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 20:46:48 +0000

The voting process has opened for Developer Day Scotland being held on the 2nd of May. I would like to draw you attention to my proposed session on testing for Sharepoint developers where I will show what can be done with Typemock and good use of design patterns to allow the building of complex tests that can be run of build servers that do not require Sharepoint to be installed.

But even if you don't fancy this session please still vote, and when it opens sign up to attend DDS. In my opinion DDS was the best of the DDD events I went to last year. A great venue and atmosphere.

[Resource] Oslo and Dublin

Robert Hogg — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 22:33:34 +0000

As promised in several of my sessions here are a good list of useful resources to use when looking at Oslo and Dublin.

The first port of call should be the Oslo dev centre on MSDN

Microsoft have a Mg resource centre for grammars here

Downloads

The January Oslo CTP can be downloaded from Here

The most current spec can be downloaded from Here

Videos

Models Remixed a set of overview videos on modeling

Old assemblies appearing in the _PublishedWebsites directory with Team Build

Richard Fennell — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:37:28 +0000

I have been having a problem with a new automated CI build under Team Build that I have added to an old Visual Studio solution. The solution is fairly big, but in essence it contains a shared data type assembly, a web site front end and a back end web service. The problem was on the Team Build drop share in the _PublishedWebsitesproduced by team build I was finding a old version of the shared data type assembly. However in the release directory of the same build I found the correct newly built version of the assembly.

PostBuild events not running on TFS Team Build

Richard Fennell — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:46:53 +0000

I have been struggling today with a problem that a PostBuild event on a C# project works fine on my development PC but failed on a Team Build box. The project is based on the Codeplex SharePoint Visual Studio Project Template that uses post build scripts to create a deployment WSP.

It turns out the problem was an unwanted condition on the PostBuildEvent in the projects .csproj file. It was like this:

We are hosting Microsoft's Azure Technical Briefing

Richard Fennell — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:20:00 +0000

Interested in finding out more about Microsoft's Cloud computing strategy and the technology behind Azure? Yes - well you are in luck there are more UK Microsoft road show events in February. They are in Cambridge, Edinburgh and the one we are hosting in Bradford on the 13th.

For more details and links to registration see http://blogs.msdn.com/ukisvdev/archive/2009/01/14/new-dates-for-azure-technical-briefing-announced.aspx

Writing a webpart to work inside and outside Sharepoint when talking to WCF

Richard Fennell — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:02:00 +0000

I have posted in the past on porting our ASP.NET bug tracking systems into Sharepoint and also linking it to TFS. The idea being that the initial customer support contact is tracked in the call tracking system e.g. is it switched on, is there paper in it....., and then escalated to TFS when development effort is required. To do this escalation my webpart calls a WCF service to access the TFS API - why you ask? The TFS API is 32bit only and you cannot call it directly inside a Sharepoint 64bit server farm.

New name for the XP Club and next months event

Richard Fennell — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:22:07 +0000

The details of the February meeting of the Agile Yorkshire User Group (new name, and new web site is on the way, watch out for posts)

The session is on developers experiences of TDD, another view from the coal face. See you there, 2nd Wednesday of the month as usual....

Call for speakers for DDD South West

Richard Fennell — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:38:16 +0000

DDD community events are getting another venue this year, Queen's College in Taunton on the 23rd of May.

It has been decided that some of the speaker will be regulars from other DDD events; including myself speaking on Scrum. However all the other slots will be filled in the usual submission and voting manner, with the added rule the speaker should be new to the conference circuit (speaking to user groups is allowed and encouraged). So is this you? do you fancy speaking? if it is then submit a session.

Voting opens for SQLBits IV

Richard Fennell — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 10:55:43 +0000

You can vote for sessions at SQLBit IV as of today at http://www.sqlbits.com/information/PublicSessions.aspx, you do need to join the site first. Note joining the site is not the same as registering to attend the event which has not opened yet.

Problem hosting WCF using Cassini on Windows 7

Richard Fennell — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 10:41:56 +0000

I have been working on an internal legacy application at our place that is being slowly moved from ASMX to WCF services. At present the services are a mixture of the two and there is a new WCF based client making connections to both types as needed. This work has been going on for a while on Vista development boxes without any problems. However when I opened the solution on a Windows 7 box (Beta 7000 build) I found I could not access the WCF services hosted locally using Visual Studio 2008’s WebDev.Webserver.exe (Cassini) server.

Security given the Ed Gibson edge

Robert Hogg — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:15:00 +0000

Microsoft's CSA Ed Gibson returned to Black Marble on the 21 January to impress the importance of security on another roomful of IT professionals and developers. Another excellent presentation, raising some key points that everyone needs to address.

Another Successful Technical Update

Robert Hogg — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:36:00 +0000

The usual suspects of Black Marble speakers presented on the Microsoft technologies from 2008 and the forthcoming developments for 2009. A rapid fire run through covered everything from Oslo to Windows 7 through Azure and Performance Point to System Centre. All the news, and milestones for Microsoft releases in 2009 and beyond.

Good lunch too.

Business Process Management presented to an Enthusiastic Room

Robert Hogg — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:12:00 +0000

PNMSoft joined us at our day of events on the 21st January, to speak on Business Process Management. A fascinating presentation by Gal Horvitz was greeted enthusiastically by the room. All in all, a successful session.

Azure Briefing is coming to Black Marble HQ

Robert Hogg — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:21:00 +0000

The Developer & Platform Group at Microsoft are pleased to announce a series of technical briefings, targeted at ISVs and Start-ups, focused on the cloud based Azure Services Platform (first announced at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles in October 2008). Black Marble are delighted to host the Bradford leg of this event on 13 February.

This event will cover:

· Windows Azure – The operating system for the Cloud

Installing an MSI on Windows 7 fails after 16th January 2009

Richard Fennell — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:18:46 +0000

I am using Windows 7 Beta on my main PC, whilst trying to install an application today I hit a problem, the installer failed on start-up. Firstly I thought it was a corrupt MSI so I tried another application, but it did the same. When I checked the Windows Application event log I found the following

Faulting application name: msiexec.exe, version: 5.0.7000.0, time stamp: 0x49432105
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 6.1.7000.0, time stamp: 0x49434898
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000000ebbaa
Faulting process id: 0x7dc
Faulting application start time: 0x01c97a77da8e8b3e
Faulting application path: C:WindowsSystem32msiexec.exe
Faulting module path: C:WindowsSYSTEM32ntdll.dll

Another call for speakers

Richard Fennell — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:18:39 +0000

Just seen that there has been a calls for speakers for DDD Belfast, another chance to meet up with like minded developers.

XP Club January 2009 Meeting

Richard Fennell — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:48:59 +0000

The XP Club did not manage to book the usual venue, the Victoria Hotel Pub in Leeds, for this months meeting as it was already booked. So for one month only, on the 14th of January, will be next door to Victoria Hotel Pub at the O'Neils from 7pm.

Also, it has been decided there will be no technical presentation this month, we will meet to discuss the issues and politics around the club, including club's constitution, bank accounts, rough strategy for the future and so on. You are all welcome to come along and help to shape the future of the club, help with some duties or just come to meet-up with fellow geeks.

Do you want to know what Microsoft is up to in 2009?

Linda Hogg — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:28:26 +0000

Black Marble’s Annual Technical Update returns on the 21st January at 2pm … and we’re ready to reveal what little gems you may have missed in 2008, and what you can expect in 2009 and beyond. If you’ve never been to a Black Marble event before, this is a great introduction, it covers the products you know, and those you didn’t know were there. Looks like a great turnout this year. so come early, and join us for a fabulous lunch!

First thoughts on Windows 7 Beta

Richard Fennell — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:59:01 +0000

I had the PDC CTP on my Netbook and that was OK so I had not expected any major issues. That said it has not been without problems, but all the issues I have logged as part of the beta program have been related to hardware detection (missing base stations and ignored physical Wifi switch state) on my Acer laptop. However, these issue can be worked around i.e. don’t use sleep or hibernate. so have not stopped be using the beta on my primary PC.

Session submission for SQLBits IV has been opened

Richard Fennell — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 14:18:41 +0000

It is good to see how fast sessions have been submitted for SQLBits, a nice range already. And great news that the event on the 28th March is in Manchester.

I have submitted an updated version of the session I did for SQLBits II on Team System, hope some people find it interesting.

Free CodeRush ( and bits of Refactor Pro ) Xpress for C#

Robert Hogg — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:45:09 +0000

One of the great announcements at the PDC was that Microsoft and DevExpress have done a deal to giveaway a version of CodeRush which includes some of the more popular features of CodeRush and Refactor Pro

For those of you lucky enough to come to our evening event with the legendary Oliver Sturm, you will have already got it or its fully featured versions. I would not endorse this product if I really didn’t believe in it. To answer someone's question at our event, every developer at Black Marble is given a copy (full) of CodeRush and Refactor Pro.

More Free Books

Robert Hogg — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:38:46 +0000

You can get a free copy of the excellent Vista Edition of “Writing Secure Code” Here

Seasonal Spirit at Black Marble

Linda Hogg — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 11:15:05 +0000

Once again, Black Marble, with friends and family, had a great Xmas lunch at the Chaophraya in Leeds. Everyone who attended enjoyed the food, the company and the great gifts! I’m now looking forward to the first Annual Black Marble Magic Show in the New Year on our next Home Day!

I would like to take this opportunity to wish staff, friends, customers and partners a wonderful Christmas and prosperous New Year.

Have a very Sci Fi Xmas …

Linda Hogg — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 11:08:21 +0000

The latest selection of Black Marble Xmas cards have a distinctly sci fi theme … We are particularly fond of the snowman below inspired by our devs regular game playing!

Have a very Halo Xmas.

Black Marble and Microsoft Architecture in the North

Robert Hogg — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:52:08 +0000

At the start of December Black Marble was very proud to co-host Architecture in the North with Microsoft.

I would like to thank everybody who came and to the great Microsoft speakers who came to educate us all.

Session Decks

Sustainability from Data Centre to the Cloud - Matt Deacon

Architecture Guidance - Simon Thurman

Making Sense of Windows Azure -Simon Davies

Oslo,Microsoft's vision for the future of Modelling - Robert Hogg

[Resource] Visual Studio tools, utilities and add-ons

Robert Hogg — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:51:30 +0000

as a part of my collected sets of links here is a set of useful tools and links for Visual Studio

Languages

IronPython 2.0 can be downloaded from here

Tools

Microsoft Code Analysis Tool .NET (CAT.NET) v1 CTP - 32 bit - here

-CAT.NET is a snap-in to the Visual Studio IDE that helps you identify security flaws within a managed code (C#, Visual Basic .NET, J#),V1 contains rules to detect - Cross Site Scripting - SQL Injection - Process Command Injection - File Canonicalization - Exception Information - LDAP Injection - XPATH Injection - Redirection to User Controlled Site

Free Book

Robert Hogg — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:49:49 +0000

Yes that's right Microsoft Press are celebrating 25 years and giving away free books, this months is Joseph Davies’s book on IPV6

Get it Here

the offer runs out in a few days so get downloading if you want it.

Running TypeMock based test in Team Build

Richard Fennell — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:34:02 +0000

If you have TypeMock Isolator based MSTests in a solution you will want them to be run as part of any CI build process.

To get this to work with Team Build you have to make sure Isolator is started in the build box at the right time (something that is done automagically behind the scenes by Visual Studio during developer testing). This is not actually that difficult as TypeMock provide some tasks for just this purpose.

My problems with Live Messenger inside Visual Studio are fixed.

Richard Fennell — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:19:53 +0000

One of the cool feature of the last October 08 release of TFS Power Tools has been that the members of a Team Project are shown inside Team Explorer.

One of the ideas of this is that you can use Live Messenger from inside Team Explorer to see team members status, but I and many other were seeing the error shown below as Team Explorer refreshed

There had been much talk of it being settings in the registry, UAC being used etc. but none of the fixes detailed worked for me.

Update on using StyleCop in TFS Team Build

Richard Fennell — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 21:51:00 +0000

I posted a while ago about trying to wire in the results from StyleCop into a Team Build, the problem I had was that I could not get the StyleCop violations into the build summary.

Well I still can’t, after much checking and asking around I was reliably informed that the build summary is not editable and there are no immediate plans for it to be in the future versions of TFS.

MSB3155 errors in Team build when publishing to click once

Richard Fennell — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:08:00 +0000

If your team build project uses the Publish Target option (to create a ClickOnce deploy) you may see the error

BuildWallboard.csproj" (Publish target) (3:5) ->
(_DeploymentGenerateBootstrapper target) ->
MSB3155: Item 'Microsoft.Net.Framework.3.5.SP1' could not be located in BuildWallboard'.
MSB3155: Item 'Microsoft.Windows.Installer.3.1' could not be located in BuildWallboard'.

This is because on the build server needs a ‘default installation’ of Visual Studio Developer (or Suite). The publish function, like the MSTest function is not something the Team Build server can do bit itself it needs Visual Studio to do the heavy lifting.

Should my TFS Build Server be 32bit or 64bit?

Richard Fennell — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 10:53:00 +0000

I would say at this time unless you need 64Bit specific assemblies built you are best staying on a 32bit operating system. This will happily build MSIL .NET assemblies which I guess for most of us is the bulk of our work. OK you loose a bit of performance if you have 64bit hardware (or virtual hardware in our case), but I doubt this will be critical, shaving a few seconds of an automated build is not normally important.

Getting MSB6006 errors for MSTest under TFS Team Build 2008

Richard Fennell — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 09:25:00 +0000

I have been rebuilding our TFS build systems on Hyper-V based virtualised hardware. The long term plan being to hold a configured build server as as Hyper-V template to we could prevision extra ones quickly, or rebuild all of them if we need to upgrade some library or tool; in effect to give us revision control over our build servers.

All seemed to be going OK, initially existing builds seemed to be running OK when targeted at the new server. However I soon saw that tests were failing with the error

TFS TeamBuild and Sharepoint WSP deployment (and any post build events for that matter)

Richard Fennell — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:45:47 +0000

We use the SharePoint Visual Studio Project Template on CodePlex to create WSP deployment packages for our SharePoint features. I tend to think of this WSP creation project in the same way as a MSI installer; so we don’t put SharePoint components into the WSP solution itself, it is an extra project in the solution that assembles the components from a variety of other solutions (e.g. web parts, workflows, event receivers, shared libraries for the GAC etc) and builds a single deployable WSP file.

We Just Keep on Giving at Xmas …

Linda Hogg — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 21:02:47 +0000

Update – just needed to correct myself … it is a Kringle-O-Tron not a Robot Santa! D’oh!

In case you missed it … we are providing cut out and keep Santa and Kringle-O-Tron with our online Xmas cards this year. They make up wonderful little models, with just folding and cutting! As we can testify to by the number dotted around our offices. Graphics Girl has done us proud.

Click on the picture for a bigger view … but visit the site to print them out next to ‘Cut Out and Fold Projects’.

BizTalk 2009 and ESB 2.0

Robert Hogg — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 20:28:51 +0000

BizTalk 2009 CTP is now out along side ESB 2.0 CTP and RFID(Mobile)

BizTalk 2009 supports visual studio 2008 , SQL Server 2008 AND TFS with some great new tooling for development and application lifecycle management.

BizTalk RFID Mobile enhances BizTalk Server RFID by offering device management and offline processing capabilities using Windows CE based machines. BizTalk RFID Mobile is free to all BizTalk Server with Microsoft Software Assurance. With 2009 BizTalk RFID Mobile will be available as part of the license.

Christmas Cheer from Black Marble

Linda Hogg — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 10:44:30 +0000

Following the wonderfully successful Black Marble Brigade Xmas Card in 2007, we are back with a great set of designs this year too. Graphics Girl has produced a wonderful ‘traditional’ card (above) that will have landed on your desk this year … as well as a selection of others that didn’t quite make the cut … we had such trouble selecting! You can view them as they are published (every Monday and Thursday through December) online here.

December’s Guest Coke

Linda Hogg — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 10:34:23 +0000

At Black Marble we try to always go one step further, one of the popular things we do is to get international varieties of coke and other pop/soda from Korean to American. This December, the Guest Cokes filling your fridge include the very exotic Irish variety of regular coke … and also a French Diet Coke! Enjoy.

Steve Ballmer’s MVP Live Search Challenge

Richard Fennell — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:02:23 +0000

At the last MVP Summit Steve Ballmer said “I’m going to ask you one week switch your default [search engine], one week. At the end of the week…I’ll want feedback, how was your week, what happened, what did you like, what didn’t you like … Can I make that deal with you? (Cheers and applause.) That’s the deal.”

Well the week was last week, and how did I find Live Search?

Developer testing of Sharepoint Webparts using Typemock Isolator and Ivonna

Richard Fennell — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:20:06 +0000

Updated 3 Dec 2008 – I got an email from Artem Smirnov the author of Ivonna pointing out a couple of things, so I have updated this post
Updated 3 May 2009 – I altered the code samples as the previous ones did not seem to work with Typemock Isolator 5.3.0 .

I have previously written a post on using Isolator with Sharepoint, also Andrew Woodward has written a good and more detailed tutorial on the subject, so I don’t intend to go over old ground here.

A Northern Approach to Architecture

Linda Hogg — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:20:26 +0000

Black Marble hosted the first Architecture Forum in the North today and despite the treacherous weather conditions, there was a great and enthusiastic turnout.

The day opened with Matt Deacon, Chief Architectural Advisor from Microsoft espousing on Sustainable IT, followed up by Simon Thurman, a Microsoft Architecture Evangelist on Patterns and Practices. A round table arrangement for lunch kept the conversation going, all over fabulous turkey sandwiches and freshly made mince pies … one thing you can say about a Black Marble event, you always get fed well! The afternoon kicked off with Senior Architectural Engineer from Microsoft, Simon Davies explaining Azure, and the final session of the day saw Black Marble MD and Architecture MVP Robert Hogg discussing Oslo and Microsoft’s vision for the future of Modelling.

Managing Remote Hyper-V Servers From Windows 7

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:34:09 +0000

I'm using the Mini9 quite a lot lately, at least in part to fiddle with Windows 7. I decided it would be nice to be able to access our Hyper-V servers so I went looking for the management tools...

It turns out that Windows 7 ships with the Hyper-V management snap-ins. No real surprise there as my understanding is that it also includes Hyper-V (although I've not managed to run it up on an x64 machine yet so I can't verify that - it certainly isn't available in x86). To get at them, you need to install the relevant bits of Windows through the 'Turn Windows Features on or off' UI:

Software Craftsmanship 2009

Richard Fennell — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:18:48 +0000

Applications to attend Software Craftsmanship 2009 have opened, this is a free conference that aims to discuss ‘the "hard skills" that programmers and teams require to deliver high quality working software’.

If you have not heard of Software Craftsmanship take a look at Peter McBreen’s book Software Craftsmanship: The New Imperative well worth the read.

December XPClub Meeting

Richard Fennell — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:28:27 +0000

The next meeting is on the 10th of December at Victoria Hotel in central Leeds at 7pm as usual.

The speaker is Gary Short who is speaking on Design Patterns. Come to this free event to find out more about this vital subject to developers in any language from an excellent speaker.

As an added bonus we will all head off to Leeds Christmas Market, to have some wurst, sauerkraut and continental lager.

Interesting news on test SharePoint

Richard Fennell — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:48:29 +0000

Typemock announced today a new product Isolator for Sharepoint – which allows unit testing of Sharepoint code without needing Sharepoint installed. Now this is something I have been using the full version of Isolator for of late, and there are more blog posts on the way from me, so watch this space.

So if you are a Sharepoint developer this is an important product you should a least have a look at.

DDD7, OSLO Microsoft’s Vision for the future of Modelling

Robert Hogg — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:08:55 +0000

On Saturday I was pleased to have been chosen to present on Microsoft “Oslo” at Developer Developer Developer 7. The event was a runaway success and there will be more.

I would like to thank everybody who attended my talk and especially those who were kind enough to provide feedback ( good and bad ). The only downside was my Quadrant demo did not work too well as it was running especially slow and I did not demonstrate half of what I had intended but it turned out that my laptop had decided to run in extra slow power saving mode!!!

Back From a Long Few Weeks of sitting in a flying bus

Robert Hogg — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:36:06 +0000

I am back from a few long weeks away both at the PDC in Los Angles and TechED IT in Barcelona, it was been great fun out at the PDC finally seeing “Oslo” out in the wild but the week at TechED talking to lots of great people about the joy of BizTalk brought me firmly back to reality.

Microsoft has started to put information out about some ground breaking technologies , Azure, Oslo and of course Windows 7. Now I am back and in one place I will be putting time aside to keep a solid set of Oslo information coming your way.

Back from DDD7

Richard Fennell — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:40:45 +0000

Another long day over the weekend at DDD7, but worth it. An excellent selection of sessions; I particularly liked Ben Hall’s on Pex and Jon Skeet’s on Linq.

A big thank you to the organisers for putting on such a successful event. It was noticeably fuller than past events, as we know DDD7 filled up in about four hours. Maybe time for a bigger venue, but would we lose the atmosphere?

The other option is for DDD style events around the country and to this end there were a few announcements yesterday. We already know about DD Scotland in May 2009, the new ones announced for Q2 2009 were

Ways of Making your Developers More Productive … Part One

Linda Hogg — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 22:48:29 +0000

We are always pushing automation of our processes at Black Marble … and here’s one that gadget that would only require minor tweaking to make my life easier now I just need to replace that little animal with a developer …

(my thanks to Engadget for inspiration)

Call for speakers for Developer Day Scotland is open

Richard Fennell — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:27:44 +0000

The call for speakers at the DDS event on the 2nd of May 2009 is now open. So get your session proposals up and see if there is any interest.

I am not sure what I will propose, maybe something about testing Sharepoint

An Event to Remember

Linda Hogg — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:21:03 +0000

On Wednesday, we ran another of our triple-event days; great range of products covered and a lot of positive feedback. We started with m’learned colleagues Rik and John demonstrating all you need to know about Microsoft CRM 4.0. A hearty lunch readied the room for MSDN’s Eric Nelson and Mike Taulty from Microsoft and their exploration of Visual Studio 2008. The day culminated with Oliver Sturm from DevExpress explaining Refactor Pro! A lot of positive feedback, with many developers going home happy – in particular the gentleman who walked away with a full license from DevExpress!

[Resource]Developer and Architecture Guides (Updated 26th April)

Robert Hogg — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:05:20 +0000

With the slew of great Developer and Architecture Guides appearing I have decided that a central list of them all is in order. I am now marking my resource lists to help people find them in the slew of “interesting” comments in my blog.

Enterprise Library is up to 4.1 get it HERE

Windows 7 Developer Guide – A guide for developing Windows 7 - get it here

Acceptance Test Engineering Guidance Guidance book - get it here

Entering a license key for Typemock Isolator if you are not administrator

Richard Fennell — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:44:52 +0000

To license an installation of Typemock Isolator you run the Configuration tools and type in the key, you don’t get the option to enter the key during the installation. When I tried to run this tool today I got the error

Now at first I thought it might be that I was on a64bit OS and it was looking in a portion of the registry for 32bit applications. However I was wrong it was far simpler than that.

Rob Miles marches on to more world wide fame

Robert Hogg — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:13:58 +0000

The ever so great Rob Miles has released his most excellent C# Course for all. It is already spreading to the far east. The big question is where next?

Windows 7 on the Dell Mini

Richard Fennell — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:35:26 +0000

I don’t recommend having automatic update switched on (which is the default) for Windows 7. Yesterday my Windows 7 install decided to install 20 updates. It rebooted and then rebooted again and again. My guess is that a driver updated and killed the boot process.

It did try to go into the automatic fix, but this just said it could not fix the issue, maybe it was a driver issue. I could not find an equivalent to safe mode to try to delete the updates, so today I am re-installing. This time making setting a system restore point so I can rollback if the same happens again

Enterprise Library 4.1

Robert Hogg — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 14:49:49 +0000

The P&P group have updated the Enterprise Library to 4.1 get it HERE

TypeMock Isolator, SPTypeMock and SharePoint testing

Richard Fennell — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:01:43 +0000

I had to work unexpectedly from home yesterday, this has given me a chance to look at TypeMock Isolator and SPTypeMock to aid in the testing of SharePoint without the normal disturbances of being in the office.

First thing I have to say is TypeMock is an amazing tool, OK it costs some money, unlike RhinoMocks, but it’s ability to mock out sealed classes that have no public constructors is essential when testing SharePoint (which seems to contain nothing but sealed classes with no public constructors).

Strange guide to Ruby

Richard Fennell — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:06:28 +0000

At the XP Club last night I was pointed at a web site that contains a very strange guide to Ruby ”Why’s (poignant) guide to Ruby”. This is one of strangest language books I have read in a while, probably since “Mr Bunny’s Guide to Active X”, which was described in its own blurb…

“This is the first technology book by Carlton Egremont III, author of numerous lengthy grocery lists (unpublished), one or two letters to his mom (unsent), and a doodle on page 117 of the Rochester Public Library's copy of Moby Dick (overdue). Mr. Bunny's Guide to ActiveX makes a lovely gift for the nerd who has everything, and is perfect for propping up uneven table legs. For the high-tech parent there is simply no better antidote to yet another bedtime reading of "The Velveteen Rabbit" or the "OLE 2 Programmer's Reference". Just like Carlton, you and your children will come to believe in a talking bunny, a befuddled farmer, and a technology called ActiveX. “

Arc of Truth

Linda Hogg — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:16:00 +0000

Technorati Tags: Hardware

Microsoft Arc Mouse - Black

Somehow I managed to obtain a new mouse for my laptop … it’s a Microsoft Arc. It’s extremely comfortable to use with a subtle transceiver, small enough to leave in the laptop in transit. Plus it looks nicely different, quite stylish and not really very mouse like at all. I wonder if this is connected to the mouse Boss blogged about too …

Microsoft Arc

Robert Hogg — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:14:14 +0000

I am a bit partial to trying out new Microsoft hardware :), Over the weekend I received a Microsoft Arc

The Arc Mouse’s is a full size mouse which has a brilliant folding back plate its foldable shape allows it to easily half in size and a natty carrying bag . Its micro transceiver clicks into the underside of the mouse using a magnet. The micro transceiver is super small (< 1cm) so it can be left in the laptop while travelling.

Neverwhere but here …

Linda Hogg — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:57:30 +0000

I thought I would take this opportunity to post about what I’ve been reading.

Neil Gaiman seems to be one of those writers that geeks love to love – usually starting with “The Sandman”, but many enjoying his novels too. Even non-geeks have been exposed through “Stardust”, the movie. Having only become a fan of Neil Gaiman’s writing (his books, not his comics) in the last few years, I am not surprised to find that I missed the TV Series, “Neverwhere” when it was first shown in 1996.

A Peek into the Geek Den …

Linda Hogg — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:52:49 +0000

Ever wondered what it takes to keep geeks happy? Running HR for a company full of hardcore geeks means more than keeping the milk fresh and the lights switched on.

Black Marble is a deeply technical software house, and that means our staff are mostly developers. And it's one of my responsibilities to ensure that our developers have a comfortable working environment. It's not easy keeping a geek house - it has needs unlike any other office ... more kinds of pop (soda) than you can imagine (on any given day, you can find 7 different varieties of Coke ... and that's not counting the guest cokes that accompany our conference-hopping staff back to our fridge). On top of that ... there's the eerie glow coming from many corners of the office at lunchtime ... when the Halo wars break out! Plus all those gadgets ... contrary to popular opinion, they don’t just appear overnight!

Windows 7 on the Dell Mini 9

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:03:43 +0000

What better way to try Windows 7 then installing it on the Mini 9? Having read all the commentary about the smaller footprint of the new OS I couldn't resist.

If you want to try this yourself, the procedure is exactly as if you were installing Vista. You will need the drivers folder from the Dell, along with the contents of the Program FilesWireless Select Switch folder from the XP install and the R192569.exe file from the ZIPFILES folder which is on the support CD I believe.

MicroFormats are here to stay with OOMPH

Robert Hogg — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 02:30:15 +0000

I was looking into Micro Formats earlier in the year and so I was really interested to see that the Mix team have produced a MicroFormats Toolkits to help create , consume and use MicroFormats.

There is a IE component to help identify MicroFormats.

A Live Writer Plugin to help create hCards

CSS styles for MicroFormats

check it out below.

Physical Security just got a bit harder

Robert Hogg — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 02:28:39 +0000

Normally when I talk about security I am discussing security about developer , IT or personal ( social engineering ). However this article took my fancy about UCSD Scientists furthering the high tech nature of lock picking by producing a system that makes a working copy of a key based solely on a photograph.

TFS Power Toys

Richard Fennell — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 10:42:00 +0000

I am not a fan of blog posts that are just a repeat of an announcement on other blogs, but in this case I think it is worth noting that the TFS October 2008 Release of the Power Toys are out.

The power toys are always interesting but the point of note here is the new shell integration for TFS. This means you can check in/out from Windows Explorer, thus in effect making it far easier to integrate third party products with TFS, like Dreamweaver or Expression Blend (OK not third party but has no TFS integration until version 3).

XPClub meeting on 12th November

Richard Fennell — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:44:47 +0000

Next weeks meeting is at the Victoria Hotel in Leeds as usual at 7pm. It is going to be group discussion sort of session, the subjects being:

Daniel Drozdzewski is going to present the future of the computing (based on the article read in recent New Scientist about processors built on logic gates utilising the chaos phenomenon)

plus

moderated conversation about design in software projects

plus the usual gossip from the industry.

The future of paid conferences and other thoughts

Richard Fennell — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:31:00 +0000

Whist at PDC and the VBug conference I have heard a a good deal of chat over the future of paying for conferences and user groups. This is in the light of all the PDC sessions being available on Channel9 in under 24 hours and that the content at the Vbug conference is also available at free events like DDD.

The question boils down to can a person or company justify paying a good few thousand Pounds, Euro or Dollars to fly half way round the world when they could see the same content at home? In my previous post on the PDC I suggested it was worth it for the networking, and I still think this is so. However, I have heard an interesting slant on this from more than one person; this is go to the city were the conference is but not to the actual conference; just taking in the parties and maybe watching content via the Internet where available.

Page views not updated in community server

Richard Fennell — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:02:00 +0000

Since we added the new themes to our community server we have not been getting any updates on the Blogs control panel as to the number of times a post has been viewed (but the aggregate views via RSS are incremented OK)

After a bit of digging it seems that we missing the IncrementViewCount flag on the in the post.aspx file. It should be as shown below.

<CSBlog:WeblogPostData Property="FormattedBody" runat="server" IncrementViewCount="true" />

Tech Ed EMEA IT: Day 4 - Guru Central

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 11:57:34 +0000

So, we're on the penultimate day of TechEd EMEA and I have to say that exhaustion is starting to creep in. However, the day had a great start with sessions by Steve Riley and then Mark Russinovich.

Steve was talking about security implications of virtulisation and his views were stimulating. He was talking in depth about what to consider when virtualising machines and why Microsoft took the architectural approach that they did for the Hyper-V stack when security was considered. I could post more, but I would urge you to go and find the video of the session when it's available as Steve himself gave a much better delivery of the material than I ever could.

Tech Ed EMEA IT: Day 3 - Steve Riley

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 06:00:54 +0000

The last session of the day was just incredible. A surfer-dude with boundless energy wandering around the audience in shorts, cracking jokes and telling stories and every single one related in some way to his point. Steve Riley is a fantastic presenter, and his session - Do these ten things now or else get 0wned was a great session on security. Sadly, I don't think it's repeated or I would urge you all to attend the next viewing. If you have the chance to see Steve speak, grab it with both hands - especially if you are involved in any way with security or IT management.

My VBug conference session on TFS

Richard Fennell — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:07:01 +0000

You can find the slides for my Vbug sessions on the [Black Marble web site](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/SectionDisplay.aspx?name=Publications&subsection=Conference Papers).

I hope those you attended found it useful.

Tech Ed EMEA IT: Day 3 - Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualisation (MED-V)

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:11:33 +0000

OK, MED-V is cool! Sadly, cool though it is, it's not something we'll use3 at BM, but in my previous lives doing large organisation IT, MED-V would have been a killer.

In a nutshell, it is this: create a Virtual PC image with your legacy OS and legacy App. Deploy that VPC to your users desktop so they can run your legacy app but let them run the app without needing to start the VPC and use two desktops.

Tech Ed EMEA IT: Day 3 - Server 2008 R2

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:38:04 +0000

We were in early today, looking forward to a session on SharePoint with Bill Engolish. Sadly, that was cancelled so Andy and I sat in on the Server 2008 R2 overview session presented by Iain McDonald. That was very interesing, and we learned a bit more about BranchCache. It doesn't look like it will replace WAN accelerators like Riverbved, because it doesn't appear to function at their low level. However, it does a similar thing at the file level. The client requests a file from the remote server, which instead replies with hashes. The client PC the requests those hashes from the local cache, improving performance. The cache itself is built on request so does not need to be pre-populated (which is good). I think WAN accelerators have nothing to fear from this, but for smaller organisations or ones which aren't able to put the accelerators in (perhaps their servers are hosted, for example) BranchCache looks like a very promising technology.

Going to conferences is worth it, well the chats in the corridor certainly are.

Richard Fennell — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:54:00 +0000

I am down in Reading for the VBug conference where I am speaking on TFS tomorrow.

Whilst in the bar chatting to Roy Osherove from Typemock, the keynote speaker for the conference, he asked if I had looked at the Sharepoint patterns and practices document that details using Typemock Isolator for unit testing in Sharepoint.

On a first look it seems very interesting; as usual at this point I just wonder how I missed the announcement of this document last month! Is is just me or does everyone struggle to keep up with the the blogs and site you should read?

TechEd EMEA IT: Day 2 - Threat Management Gateway

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:06:59 +0000

Andy and I are now in a TMG preview demo. This looks really interesting - we spoke to the guys at ATE last night and saw a few items that I hope to see now in more detail. TMG is ISA Server vnext - codenamed 'Nitrogen' and part of the 'Stirling' next wave of Forefront.

Stirling family members exchange information to allow 'dynamic response' - trigger actions from different forefront elements (client sec etc) based on alerts from other elements (eg mail scanner). That looks really powerful.

TechEd EMEA IT: Day 2 - Windows 7 Feature Preview

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:04:02 +0000

So, the first session of the day was an extremely well-attended overview of Windows 7 features. When they talk about evolution rather than revolution with regard to Windows 7, I think that's accurate. It was very much about developing and extending the foundations of Vista.

A few things stuck out, however. An almost throwaway comment about DirectConnect requiring IPSEC and IPv6 means that I must dig deeper, and that the technology, whilst cool, is almost totally useless to me, stuck behind two layers of NAT in a managed building. BranchCache was again mentioned with, again, no indication of how it works - more digging required.

patterns & practices Acceptance Test Engineering Guidance

Richard Fennell — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:11:20 +0000

Robert blogged about the new beta release of the patterns & practices Acceptance Test Engineering Guidance document. I have had a chance to do a quick read now and I have to say I am impressed. If nothing else it gives great comparative look at waterfall and agile methods for delivery, and a review of many types of acceptance testing.

As with many of the p&p documents it is not exhaustive in what it covers, but what it does give is an excellent and detailed starting point for you to make the decisions that are right for your project. It does not give all the answers just most of the right questions.

Tech Ed EMEA IT 2008: Day 1 - Keynote

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:08:06 +0000

So, the keynote was interesting. Much of the content I had seen before, but there were some demos that were interesting and a few snippets that made me take note.

For example, I had not understood that the acquisition of Kidaro will enable interaction between applications running within a virtual machine and the host desktop in ways that are not currently achievable. That the technology will ship as part of a new Desktop Optimisation Pack was news. I believe the technology is name MEDV - Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualisation.

Tech ED EMEA IT: Day 1 - Waiting for the Keynote

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:44:16 +0000

It's an exercise in surreality. I've just walked through tunnels reminiscent of THX1138, to emerge in a wonderful blue-bathed auditorium, and they're playing the Akira soundtrack (specifically the bit from just after the first nuclear explosion). Weird.

Andy and I travelled all the way from Bradford, and the first guy we strike up conversation with... is from Salford! What are the odds?

Anyway, here's a pic of the view from our seats. More after the keynote...

TechEd EMEA IT: Day 1

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 06:32:10 +0000

It's 7:25 AM. Andy and I are hoping to make a whistle-stop trip to the Cathedral before making it to the conference early enough to get good seats for the keynote.

I thought I'd take a picture of the conference pack, especially since I've heard grumblings about the PDC bag. The TechEd pack looks pretty much identical to the pack the devs brought home last year, to me.

patterns & practices Application Architecture Guide

Robert Hogg — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 02:37:03 +0000

A new version of the Application Architecture Guide ( v2.0 ) has been released to beta.

Part I, Fundamentals of Application Architecture
Part II, Design
Part III, Layers
Part IV, Quality Attributes
Part V, Archetypes - Design and Patterns

Get it Here.

TechEd EMEA IT: Day 0 - Greetings from Barcelona

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 20:23:57 +0000

Ola! Andy and I are now in sunny Espana. Only it's not sunny. Oh well... However, true to form we started our trip, having registered at the conference centre, by eating hot dogs in a german fast food joint in a Spanish shopping centre! If you're passing, Kurz & Gut does pretty good food.

I'm also extremely impressed with the Metro system here in Barcelona. It's my first time in the city, and the transport is pretty efficient, with a wonderful simple trip-based charging mechanism.

CodeRush and Refactor XPress for C#

Robert Hogg — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 20:14:31 +0000

Developer Express and Microsoft now are shipping a limited free copy version of CodeRush and Refactor! Pro. The free edition is available for C# developers using Visual Studio 2008.

A list of features :

Find any File or Symbol...
Tab to Next Reference
Expand/Shrink Selection
Intelligent Declaration Based on Usage
Professional Grade Refactoring
Editor Features
Navigation Features

Get it Here

If you want to know more about the greatness of the free tools come along to one of our evening events where the near legendary Oliver Sturm will be presenting on [Developer Productivity](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Enhancing Developer Productivity with DevExpress CodeRush and Refactor! with Oliver Sturm)

PDC – Home – TechED

Robert Hogg — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 18:53:10 +0000

I am just back from the PDC and all the great news ( post to follow ) and I am just off to TechED IT all though Rik seems to have forgotten me :(

if you are at TechED IT pop over to the BizTalk booth and say hello.

Patterns and Practices : Acceptance Test Engineering Guidance

Robert Hogg — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 18:28:50 +0000

The P&P team have released the Acceptance Test Engineering Guidance Guidance book. The guide is designed to help groups meet customers expectations of delivery.

How to Plan for Acceptance Testing
What Kinds of Acceptance Tests to Run
How to Create and Run Acceptance Tests
Defining What “Done” Means ( this is the important one from my observations )

Get it here

I can’t say enough how much the P&P team are making a difference in quality to the whole of the development and IT industry, if you haven't had the privilege of looking at the exceptional set of knowledge the P&P team put together look here

Post PDC 2008 thoughts

Richard Fennell — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 13:29:08 +0000

So back home now after a reasonable journey back from LA all things considered; so I have had a bit of time to reflect, was the PDC good?

Well I think I enjoyed my previous PDC in 2005 more, your first time always sticks in your memory. I think that this might be due to the fact that at the 2005 PDC LINQ was announced and it was a real left field thing, nobody seemed to see it coming. Due to the prior announcements (leaks) there was nothing that was not expected at this years PDC.

Team System Database GDR Edition RTM Released

Richard Fennell — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 22:19:46 +0000

While I was at the PDC I missed the announcement that the release candidate for Database Edition was made, I was not following blogs too much. You can find all the download links for the RTM at Gert Drapers Blog, you can also see his PDC session where he made the announcement.

Why did I miss the session you might ask? well I was in Agile development with Team System session – some big improvement in Office integration with TFS

Barcelona-bound

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:24:23 +0000

Andy and I are travelling to Barcelona this weekend for TechEd EMEA IT. I’m really looking forward to some of the sessions on Hyper-V, SharePoint and Forefront.If you’re going to be there, feel free to drop us a line and say hi.

PDC Day 3

Richard Fennell — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:33:21 +0000

The keynote today was all about MSR, interesting as ever. I particularly liked the demos of Second Light (Surface computing that reaches beyond the surface of the physical pc) and Boku (a system to help children program). The latter is close to our hearts at Black Marble due to the work we have done on FPL, another system to teach children to program (watch out for free downloads of this application soon)

PDC 2008 Day 2 Keynote

Richard Fennell — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:47:54 +0000

Well it was all end user focused today; Windows 7 and experience in Live systems. All looks very nice, given the usually question you have to raise in a connected environment over personal data security. I am sure Microsoft have done a good job of physical and logical data security, but the whole concept of mesh networks opens up a huge potential for social attacks. No developer can protect against the user clicking on an ill advised email or now mesh link; I know I have fixed too many friends PCs with the XP Antivirus 2008 Trojan of late, where they click on a link because an email said their anti virus was out of date, they thought they were doing good.

PDC Buzzword bingo

Richard Fennell — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:36:10 +0000

It has been a while but I knew a conference would turn up some good buzzwords

Meshify – to add Live mesh functions to a site

PDC Day 1 , Azure

Robert Hogg — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 16:32:39 +0000

Microsoft Azure is the name of Microsoft’s Cloud Operating system, a new service based operating platform

Windows Azure ( cool logo to come ) is Microsoft’s core web tier capability for virtual computation with automated service management
using a fabric controller for the provisioning with its design based on a balance based on existing windows dev skills + code , allowing develop

It turns out the the legendary Dave Cutler has been working on Azure for a while, all of the azure team were
touting Red shoes , presumably as a nod to the original working title of Red Box(I think that is right)

It made me laugh…

Richard Fennell — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 16:30:08 +0000

At the PDC expo drinks last night I was asked to show age ID to get a drink! Just me it seems, nobody else from the company.

I thought I was doing well to be carded on my 30th birthday whilst in the US, but 10 years on it getting silly – You must ask how do I keep my youthfully countenance? Wish I knew, but they say it is youth culture here in LA.

VSTS 2010 at the PDC

Richard Fennell — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:59:34 +0000

Though not really mentioned in the keynote there are a lot of sessions on VSTS 2010 at the PDC; it is going to be a major really major release.

Chatting in between the sessions with other delegates there seems to loads of interest in the new testing features, but we know this is pain point from Alt.net meetings. It will be interesting to see how these new tools deliver, I am sure the manual testing tools will be useful, but I am a bit more doubtful over the UI testing tools. We have all seen the demo promise of these products before and hit problems when we try to use them for real.

PDC 2008 thoughts day 1

Richard Fennell — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:59:15 +0000

So it seems we are going to have themed days at the 2008 PDC and day one is all about the Azure services platform. Though judging by the expo stands the key announcements for tomorrow - Oslo and Dublin are out there too. As conferences go it seems a bit confused to me, I guess Microsoft are aiming for three big bangs at three keynotes; but we seem to have had a big bang today and splutter of future items.

All life is here

Richard Fennell — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:05:17 +0000

I won’t repeat Robert’s blog entry on the Black Marble founders reunion, but just to add the missing photo

(Black Marble) Founders Day

Robert Hogg — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:38:53 +0000

Every now and again the founders of Black Marble meet up to discuss the future directions of the computing industry to help plan the road ahead for Black Marble. This year we chose Newport Beach south of Los Angeles.

Although I can’t imagine why people would like to live near here. Andy has suggested that our next catch up should be in Hawaii, while I think that might happen, it is more likely to be at the Hawaii lounge in Cleckheaton, south of the M62

The PDC is nearly here

Robert Hogg — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:30:03 +0000

A bunch the pride at the black marble are here ready and waiting for the PDC, we are all registered ( with the less than amazing shopping bag issued, better things to come ;) ), Robert , James and Richard

look in awe at the future

of thinking outside of the box

here’s looking to tomorrow.

Mix Remixed

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 23:49:13 +0000

I don’t visit the Mix community site often – historically, the content has been of little interest and infrequently updated. Imagine my surprise, then, to find a relaunched Mix Online with a new Microformats project – Oomph.

In short, it’s cool – a microformats extension for IE plus other goodies to help implement them, including a live writer plugin for creating hcards. Go check it out, and I’ll try to post more later…

TF53010 & TF213000 unable to load

Richard Fennell — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:16:50 +0000

I got this error when installing TFS 2008. In the error log I could see the problem was when the TfsGssInit.exe was run, it said

Detailed Message: TF213000: A required user account could not be added during installation or repair of Team Foundation Server. The installation or repair failed with the following exception message: System.TypeInitializationException…..

I found the answer in the TFS forum. The thread (and others) did suggest there were DNS lookup issues, but the thing that got it for me was removing VS2008 Team Client (and it’s SP1) from the server. I had installed these whilst I had been waiting for the IT department do some work in the SQL Data Tier. I thought I was saving times, I was wrong!.

TF220050 error in TFS install

Richard Fennell — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:16:35 +0000

Whilst doing a new TFS 2008 dual tier install I was getting a failure with a TF220050 error when I entered the data tier DB instance name. The setup wizard just said ‘failed to connect to data tier’, but you can find the actual error number in the install logs to be found under C:Documents and Settings[setup user]Local SettingsTemp

This error seems to be just a generic low level ‘cannot connect to the DB’; in my case it was caused by one of two issues:

... and I understand DDD7 is now full

Richard Fennell — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:40:00 +0000

So that took about 6 hours by my estimation. Popular or what!

DDD7 is now full

Robert Hogg — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:17:56 +0000

well it is a testament to the strength of the developer community that only hours after being open for registration DDD7 is now full. there is a waiting list and if you are at all keen on development I would urge you to add yourself to the wait list as this will greatly increase your chance of seeing me present on Oslo :)

DDD7 Registration is open

Richard Fennell — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:22:50 +0000

Ian Cooper has just announced that you can now register for DDD7, but be quick it is expected to be full in 24 hours.

Vista on Dell Mini 9: Using junctions to move files off the SSD

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:46:39 +0000

Flush with my success earlier in getting apps installed on the SD card now mounted as 'c:SD Program Files' I installed a few things. I then hit a snag.

When you install apps using an MSI, the installation files get cached by Windows Installer. Steadily, c:windowsinstaller gets bigger and bigger, so whilst my apps were no longer taking up space, the install files were (and some of those are quite large).

Vista on the Dell Mini 9: Installing applications on an SD card

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:05:08 +0000

I’m still trying new things with the Mini 9. I now have an image file that I can restore to the Mini which has my base install after running sysprep. The problem I have is storage space – the SSD isn’t _quite_ big enough.

So, Richard wandered in this morning and handed me a 4Gb SD card to experiment with. The question: Can we use the SD card and install app onto it?

TFS Iterations not appearing in IterationPath

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 12:35:14 +0000

I have been working on site that has had to do a disaster recovery of their TFS application tier (AT) due to hardware failure. For a short period they have had to use a spare PC as their AT. Due to the hast required to get the developers working this AT was only configured to for source control and work item editing.

So I was onsite to put the proper replacement AT in place. All seemed to go OK until we added a new Iteration to a team project. It did not appear in the IterationPath field for work items.

TFS 2008 SP1 resets service accounts

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 12:23:07 +0000

I installed the TFS 2008 SP1 on a site that was using custom accounts for the identities that run the application pools for the WSS instance and Report Services.

These user accounts got reset back to Network Service when the service pack was installed; I had not see this occur on any site I had upgraded previously. This meant you could not start WSS or Reporting Services.

Manually resetting them back to their old correct accounts fixed the problem.

Using StyleCop in TFS Team Build

Richard Fennell — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 22:19:00 +0000

The recent release of the MSBuild Extensions includes a task for StyleCop 4.3. I have been trying to get this integrated into our TFS TeamBuild, I think it is a far more preferable way to do it than editing the various project files in our solution to link in StyleCop as you had to do in 4.2.

There are a good few steps I had to follow to get it doing:

Install the StyleCop 4.3 Msi

Vista on the Dell Mini 9: Redux

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 21:43:46 +0000

I've been chipping away at this for a while now today, and I've learned a few things on the way:

When Vista says it suggests installing the battery drivers for the system, don't. The zip file it suggested I install broke power management.
Patch the system fully as an admin user before logging in as a restricted user. It will save you hours of time.
Sysinternals Diskmon doesn't work with Vista - you need to run it as admin, and that certainly isn't an option for my restricted users.
Vista when hibernating just shows a black screen. That's not very helpful the first time you try it, on a silent machine with no disk activity lights at all.
think Vista takes longer to hibernate and come back from hibernation than XP, although coming back from sleep is much quicker than it's older sibling.

Overall, I'm still happy. I have Vista, Office 2007 and Live Writer and 3.5Gb of disk space free. With no serious hacking the Dell runs at around 50% memory usage witrh a browser and live writer running. I can live with that. Battery life appears OK. It's 10:30 and I've been using the Dell since 8pm, thrashing the disk (as much as there is one) and the wi-fi, and I'm at 38% battery. That puts me on track for about four hours or so and I can live with that.

Getting Vista on the Dell Mini 9

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:27:40 +0000

Our second Mini 9 arrived in the office today. This one is for Andy and myself to use whilst out of the office. Richard has successfully upgraded his to XP Professional, so we had to try to push the bar out a little further – we’re running Vista Business.

I have not spent any time tweaking or prodding yet. I used install media with SP1 included and obliterated the partition on the SSD, then installed the drivers from Dell where necessary, and a driver for the battery hardware that Vista itself suggested rather than the Dell solution.

DDD7 Agenda Published

Richard Fennell — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 22:15:11 +0000

Well the votes are in and my proposed session for DDD7 on automated testing did not make the cut, but thanks to anyone who voted for it. I can’t say I am surprised that I am not on the list given the larger number of very interesting sessions proposed.

However, I am a little disappointed that even though there were a good percentage of the proposed sessions on testing related subjects only Ian’s on TDD and Ben’s on Pex made it through; I really had expected to see Gojko’s on Fitnesse.Net on the list.

Like the new Blog theme?

Richard Fennell — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:29:52 +0000

Lauren has has restyled our blog server to match the new company web site and also done a matching blog template.

Do you like it?

Microsoft CRM 4.0 adapter for BizTalk 2006

Robert Hogg — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:15:53 +0000

Microsoft have just released the Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2006 adapter for Microsoft Dynamics® CRM 4.0, the adapter has the same functionality as the 3.0 adapter plus :-

• Support for both 32-bit and 64-bit deployments of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

• Support for form-based authentication

• Support the joy that is multi-tenancy

Best of all the adapter is free.

Download Here

XP Club meeting

Richard Fennell — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:50:21 +0000

An excellent turnout for tonights XP Club meeting. As I write Nick McKenna is talking about his experiences in adopting agile processes.

Flash problems

Richard Fennell — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:29:00 +0000

Are you seeing the error "Cannot play media. You do not have the correct version of the flash player. Download the correct version" on the BBC web site or on YouTube "Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Macromedia's Flash Player. Get the latest Flash player"?

I have been on my Dell Mini; I suspect the problem was the upgrade route I took from XP-Home -> IE8 Beta ->XP Prof meant the registry was a mess. Repeated re-installation of Flash and Shockwave had no effect.

First thoughts on the Acer Aspire One

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:48:00 +0000

You can’t say that things never change. I nipped out to Tesco last night for a few bits of shopping – you know, some beer, spices for cooking, etc – and came back with an Acer Aspire One. As you do…

To be fair, I have been looking at them closely, and Tesco are by far the cheapest place to get one. I picked up the 1Gb RAM, 120Gb HDD Linux model for about two hundred and fifty nicker, which I thought was pretty reasonable.

Running fitness.Net tests in unit test – some tips

Richard Fennell — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 21:39:00 +0000

I posted a while ago on wiring in Fitness.Net into a unit test framework using HTML files to hold the tests. Well I have been using the technique for some workflow acceptance testing and hit a couple of gotta’s that are easy to forget:

Make sure the HTML files containing the user story tests are set to copy to the project output directory in the IDE – if they are not then the framework cannot find the tests, so obviously none are run. The danger is you think the problem is an incorrect class or method name, when it is a simple missing file problem.
If you edit the user story HTML file make sure you rebuild the solution. If you don’t do this the copy to the output directory might not be triggered as a simple build maybe skipped as the IDE will not see any changes to source files it needs to compile the project. This is especially easy to forget if you are using a test add-in such as Testdriven.net as opposed to clicking on build yourself.
Be careful with the HTML editor you use to create user story file in case it reformats the page. This is important for parameters (but it seems not for the method name fields). You need to make they are formatted

My Value

Upcoming events in October

Richard Fennell — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 15:54:44 +0000

It is getting to that conference time of year again; I can’t believe the PDC is only 3 weeks away, then VBug the next week and DDD7 just after that.

A bit closer to home there are some free events coming up this month:

XPClub - October Meeting: "Agile Narrative" by Nick McKenna, Wednesday, 8th October, 7pm for 7:30pm at the Victoria Hotel in the centre of Leeds (free event inc. free beer!), no need to register just turn up
Black Marble community events – [Silverlight, XNA and Gaming](http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/events.aspx?event=Silverlight, XNA and Gaming) Pete Mcgann (XNA) and Richard Costall (Silverlight) talk about XNA, Gaming and Silverlight in their own unique style. 22nd October 6pm for 6:15pm at The Holiday Inn, Tong (between Leeds and Bradford). This free event also provides free food, you can just turn up, but really helps if you register online.

Look forward to seeing you at one of the events in Yorkshire

The October Power Tools Release

Richard Fennell — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:44:11 +0000

I posted about the problems of using Blend with source control, specifically TFS. Well the next version of TFS Power tools gives a partial answer.

They are to include Windows Shell Extensions so at least the check-in/out process can be managed would having another application open other than an explorer windows.

Well it is step forward, until Blend 3 appears

Testing Driven Development for Workflow Foundation

Richard Fennell — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:28:22 +0000

As we move into the SOA world workflows will become more common and so the need to test them will increase. If we take the most simplistic view these are a sets if statements and loops so should be amenable to automated testing and TDD.

However you have to careful how you try to do this, it is too easy to forget that your workflow will run the the WF thread. Why is this problem?

XP Home to XP Professional when IE8 is involved

Richard Fennell — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:55:21 +0000

The one major thing that I did not like with my Dell Mini was the fact it had installed XP Home. My main grip with this was the fact my main user account had to be an admin user, and I could not login as a user called administrator unless in safe mode. So I decided to do an in place upgrade to XP Professional (which also meant i could join the company domain). This seemed straight forward, I attached an external USB DVD and got the XP Professional SP3 slipstream media. The process continued as you would expect until the final reboot where it sat on the splash screen saying 'please wait' for a hour or two.

Microsoft Dublin ( Microsoft WCF/WF Application Host )

Robert Hogg — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:57:33 +0000

WOW, I was expecting this in a few weeks but Microsoft have just announced that .NET 4.0 will include new versions of WCF and WF , with new stateful and conversational services and significantly improved designers.

The new version of WF includes a 10 times performance increase , new flow control models including a large number of built in activities ( including but not limited to power shell , db and messaging ) , compos able rules and the ability to debug XAML

ReMix in Colour

Robert Hogg — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:55:40 +0000

Two weeks ago I was delighted to be at ReMix in Brighton. On the last day I was asked to be a Judge in the finals of Speaker Idol. The speakers did a great job in entertaining and informing the attendees , taking there own valuable time at the conference to share more information with others.

One chap presented on RGB to HSL , which is an important topic certainly for me as I spend some of my life doing that same work.

Dell Mini 9: A Day In The Life

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:40:00 +0000

Colour me impressed. I managed well over four hours’ battery life today and found the Mini 9 a joy to use. I have encountered a snag, however, and it wasn’t one that I expected.

You see, I’m now sitting on the 21:30 train from London Kings Cross to Wakefield after having been in the big smoke for a day of meetings. I got onto an empty train and picked a seat with a table – I want to get some work done on the documents required after my meeting and I thought the space would be nice.

Further thoughts on mocking out a SMTP Server

Richard Fennell — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:31:00 +0000

I posted on the problems I had had mocking out an SMTP server, well I have moved on a bit. As I said in the update note in the last post, I had given up on nDumbster and moved over to LumiSoft's freeware mail server.

The Lumisoft server is a far better starting point as it is a 'real' server that supports all the major mail protocols. As all the source (and binaries if you can't be bothered to build it yourself) are shipped it is easy to create a wrapper class for unit testing purposes that can do whatever you need.

'Datadude' merged with Team Developer

Richard Fennell — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 12:45:51 +0000

It was announced overnight by Microsoft that the Database Professional SKU for Visual Studio will be made available to all people who have a licensed copy of Team Developer.

This is great news as it addresses the problem of where to put the expensive copy of DataDude (which I think has been a barrier to it's uptake), in most companies there is not the clear distinction between code and DB devs.

First thoughts on the Dell Mini 9

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:34:00 +0000

I’m down in London tomorrow, and rather than lug my laptop on the train I’ve borrowed Richard’s shiny new Mini 9.

Overall, I’m quite impressed with it. I’m still not sure about the keyboard, even after a couple of hours typing away – the keys are small and some of them are smaller still, which makes typing an interesting experience. However, I’m sure I would get used to it with time. The thing is, a netbook is not aimed at being your everyday machine, so does a quirky keyboard become a barrier to use if that use is intermittent?

Mocking out an email server

Richard Fennell — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:37:25 +0000

I am currently looking at automation of acceptance testing for workflows and a common task is to make sure an email has been sent. To do this in a TDD style I have been using the mock SMTP server nDumbster.

Now this was a port from Java in the the days of .NET 1.1 and does not seem to have had any development since. This can be seen because the following test using the .Net 1.1 System.Web.Mail call works beautifully, returning in a second or so

First thoughts on the Dell Mini 9

Richard Fennell — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:45:34 +0000

After Alt.net I had thought getting an ultra light notebook was a good idea. At most conference I need to browser, blog and read email; I don’t need to carry around a full development desktop replacement laptop.

Whilst at ReMix I had enough of the old battery in my Acer laptop, so just before it ran out of juice again I ordered a Dell Mini 9, which was actually cheaper than my HTC phone! Today it arrived, a lot sooner than I was expecting, Dell has said it would be next month.

So what will we need to run 'Rosario'?

Richard Fennell — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:10:45 +0000

Brian Harry has published an interesting post on the platform decisions for 'Rosario'.

The most interesting item is it will only support SQL 2008; so get planning a migration for that central enterprise SQL server!

Post ReMix thoughts

Richard Fennell — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:34:32 +0000

So how was ReMix? well a bit like last year not earth shattering, but what can you expect. We have PDC in a month so there is going to be no major announcements, also this is a rerun event from the US MIX conference, again reducing the chances of anything new.

So if you are a developer and been to TechEd or just to local community events (and as Andy Westgarth said we are very lucky at the quality and number of community events and speakers in the UK) you will have heard nothing new about Silverlight etal. Though it is far to say that this may not be true for designers, and I felt the development track was pitched at this level.

Rebuild of GUITester

Richard Fennell — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:39:01 +0000

I have eventually got round to rebuilding my GUITester on Codeplex for VS2008. I must get round to looking to see if a similar declarative test markup system has any mileage for XAML. Something was talking about at Alt.net in the spring - how time flies.

Local user groups

Richard Fennell — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 23:13:54 +0000

I have been asked a couple of times whist at the Alt.net and ReMix conferences about the local user groups around Leeds. Well these are the regular free community events I know about:

Black Marble community events - my company runs free community events at a hotel between Leeds and Bradford roughly monthly from autumn to spring. We invite a variety of leading .NET community speakers.

The Yorkshire Extreme Programming and Agile Methods Club (XPClub) - meets the 2nd Wednesday of the month in the centre of Leeds. This is a group of .NET and Java developers interested in agile development bast practice.

Not speaking at Vbug next week

Richard Fennell — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 22:13:26 +0000

I have just found out that the session I was doing at Vbug in Coventry next week has been cancelled due to low numbers. Sorry if you were planning to come, but don't worry I will be doing a similar sessions (the the bonus of post PDC Rosario updates) at the VBug conference in November.

Blend and Source control

Richard Fennell — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:50:37 +0000

It is all well and good Microsoft saying that a developers and designer can share the same project WPF/Silverlight files in Visual Studio and Expression Blend, but whilst Blend does not have the ability to use a source control repository (TFS, SVN or anything else for that matter) and actually strips out any source control binding it finds in a project file, this is for me unworkable experience. How has this product got to V2 without this feature?

Remix UK 08 Keynote

Richard Fennell — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:27:12 +0000

Just seen the keynote for Remix in Brighton, I must say that Bill Buxton's part was one of the best keynotes I have seen (watch out for the streamed webcast). For me the most important thing for a keynote is to set the tone, the meme, for the conference and his session certainly did. OK it is good to see the demos of products but you can't beat a good bit of thought provoking public speaking. First time I have seen this done well by Microsoft since the last PDC a couple of years ago. Interestingly, setting the tone was something always done very well at the Sun JavaOne conferences I attended in the late 90s.

ReMix 2008

Robert Hogg — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:16:01 +0000

I am with a contingent from Black Marble at REMIX UK in Brighton, if you are here say hello.

Bill Buxtons keynote is both engaging and inspirational, if you are in the land of design I suggest trying to watch it.

Not enough people locally for a TFS user group?

Richard Fennell — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:07:48 +0000

Do you feel alone, nobody nearby who you can talk to about TFS? Well try the new virtual user group meeting in Second Life.

Only issue is the meeting will be 2am UK time by my reckoning.

Microsoft and the Object Management Group

Robert Hogg — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:26:30 +0000

While it might sound like a rather dull sequel to a set of “Microsoft does adventure” books, in fact Microsoft has joined the OMG and it is a very significant direction change for Microsoft to make, I have been following and commenting on the OMG’s work since the early 90’s, I really am pleased, as I think it will benefit our industry as a whole.

Read the press release here.

BizTalk 2009

Robert Hogg — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:25:40 +0000

Microsoft has just updated it’s BizTalk Roadmap , the key change in the roadmap is the introduction of BizTalk 2009. BizTalk 2009 replaces the planned 2006r3 release. The 2009 release should be with us early in 2009 with some great features including development in Visual Studio 2008 :), I have summarised the features below

Updated Platform – Support for Windows Server 2008 including virtualisation using Hyper-V & SQL Server 2008.

Developer & Team Productivity – Support for Visual Studio 2008 , .Net 3.5 and improved application lifecycle mgmt support including TFS with integrated source control, bug tracking and MSBuild automation.

Alt.net - the day after

Richard Fennell — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 15:16:21 +0000

Back home now after a excellent two days at Alt.Net in London. As with the spring conference this was a thought provoking event. I really like the whole open space format, though there were four 'main sessions' the event started the night before in the planning session and the bar and carried on without a pause, including the train trip home.

The main sessions can be excellent; but it is usually the chat walking to get a coffee or over lunch was where you get a nugget of information that completes a picture for you. It is great to find out you are not alone in the problems you have and refreshing to hear people speak so openly over the challenges and successes they have had.

Signing Powershell scripts with a Thawte code signing certificate

Richard Fennell — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:19:03 +0000

I hit a problem today when trying to sign a powershell script as detailed on Scott Hanselman's blog with a Thawte code signing certificate.

The basic issue was that the certificate could be seen in the Personal section of the Certificates MMC snap-in. Also it was listed if I issued the Powershell command

Get-ChildItem cert:CurrentUserMy

but if I added the flag to only show usable codesigning (Class III) certificates it was not listed.

September XPClub Meeting is this Wednesday

Richard Fennell — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:49:59 +0000

The next XPClub meeting is a double bill: Code Quality and Scala + Lift. and is being held at the usual venue the Victoria Hotel Leeds. This is a free event open to all.

As usual drinks and snacks thanks to the club sponsors are free, also there will be a draw for one free personal license for any of the products by JetBrains - the new club sponsor.

Upgrading Team Foundation Server 2008 with SP1

Richard Fennell — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 17:58:01 +0000

Today I got round to upgrading our TFS 2008 (dual server setup) with Team Server 2008 SP1. I tried it first on my demo VPC I use for presentations (reminder I am at VBug Coventry at the end of the talking about TFS, a free event open to all). Anyway, this update went fine and did not take too long, 5 or 10 minutes.

On the main system all seemed to go OK, but it did take around 45 minutes. I assumed the time it takes is dependant on volume of data in the DB, some sort of schema update I guess.

Browsers are like buses

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:31:48 +0000

You wait around for ages and then two come along, all at once! No sooner have I downloaded IE8 beta 2 than Google announce Chrome!

I've been using IE8 for a few days and I'm quite impressed. I've just downloaded Chrome and I have to say, it's a darn good browser. The feature I most wanted from any tab-based browser and one I've mentioned before in the context of IE is present in Chrome - tabs you can drag between windows.

Controlling a Ajax Control ModalPopupExtender from Code behind

Richard Fennell — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:21:53 +0000

I have had a nightmare getting this going.

Adding the ModalPopupExtender to a form is easy, you drop it on and tell it the two required controls parameters

PopupControlID="MyModalPanel"
TargetControlID="ButtonToLoadIt"

And it just works fine, but is triggered by a client side click of the Target Control.

If you want to do some server side code behind first you are meant to set the

TargetControlID to a fake control that is visible on form e.g. "FakeButtonToLoadIt" IT IS VITAL THIS CONTROL IS VISIBLE AND HENCE RENDERED, but the control can be effectively hidden via CSS styling with something like Style="display: none"
In the code behind after your own processing you are just meant to call this.MPE.Show(); where MPE is the ID of your extender

Well this did not work for me. If I clicked my fake control (when it was not hidden obviously) it all worked by the server side call just displayed my panel where it was in the underlying HTML flow - the extension never kicked in.

Workflow and SQL Error: Part 3

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:52:11 +0000

As you may remember from my earlier post and subsequent follow-up, we have been seeing an issue related to workflows and the Workflow History list in SharePoint 2007. As I've already mentioned, the case is with Microsoft and I also said that I would post updates as new information arrived. Today, more detail has emerged and, as promised, I am sharing.

Whilst replicating the fault today we were having trouble - one of us had a SharePoint install that failed every time and the other had one which would not fail at all. Whilst looking at possible differences we realised that the failing site was a publishing site and the non-failing site was a team site.

Speaking on Team System in Coventry

Richard Fennell — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:50:34 +0000

I am speaking at VBug Coventry on the 24th of September about Visual Studio Team System. For details have a look at the [VBug events](Elmbank Training, Juniper Room (Ground Floor), Mill Lane, Coventry, CV1 2LQ, GB) site, look forward to seeing you there.

eScrum 1,1 available

Richard Fennell — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 08:23:24 +0000

For those who have not seen it eScrum 1.1 is now available. This basically a update for the installer so it works on VS2008 so you don't have to go through all the manual fiddling you had to in the past.

So if you want a nice simple agile team project process, with a nice web site to give progress visibility, give it a look.

The Cops are in at Work

Robert Hogg — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:34:10 +0000

New versions of my favourite Cop(that’s police to you and I) Duo, FxCop and StyleCop are out.

FxCop 1.36 is out including but not limited to 200+ bug fixes over Beta2, new globalisation rules (I smell a Guy at work), half the memory requirement.

StyleCop 4.3 is out also including great features such as better VS integration, a bunch of new rules which you can’t live without and the final changes to make StyleCop its name :)

Netware 6.5 on Hyper-V

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:01:59 +0000

As part of a customer project I needed to create a Netware environment for testing. It's been a little while since I did any netware management and I quite enjoyed it. I did, however, encounter a couple of gotchas which I thought I'd write up for the greater good.

Netware OS

Installing the Netware OS was actually pretty straightforward. There are no integration services offered for Netware so from the outset I knew that I would need to use legacy hardware options in the virtual machine.

251 ways to help the community and learn visual studio

Robert Hogg — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:07:48 +0000

I have been consistently impressed by the blog/efforts of the ever lovely Sara Ford. for those of you who do not know who Sara is, she is a SDE/T on the Visual Studio Core team at Microsoft and via her blog provides us time strapped developers with visual studio hints in bit size easy to understand chunks almost everyday. if you don’t read her blog shame on you, subscribe now.

Sara is the author of the upcoming book Microsoft Visual Studio Tips. Sara has compiled 251 tips from her Tip of the Day series, to help on your way to Visual Studio enlightenment.

Why doesn't my ActionsPane appear when I create a new document form a VSTO enabled template?

Richard Fennell — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:47:25 +0000

When you are using a VSTO enabled Word Template inside a SharePoint custom content type you have to be careful which actual .DOTX file you use within the SharePoint custom content type.

DO NOT - use the .DOTX from your VSTO Visual Studio project directory
DO USE - the .DOTX from the the project's ClickOnce publish location.

The key point here is that until you have published the VSTO project via ClickOnce the .DOTX template does not know where to find the deployment of the associated assemblies. The copy in the project directory never actually knows this location as it is just a source file not a deliverable.

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is here

Robert Hogg — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:21:40 +0000

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is now available on MSDN subscriber downloads. or from Microsoft download.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (exe)

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (iso)

there are a good number of fixes and new features in the service pack (including TR1 for you C++ philes out there)

you MUST read the readme to make sure there are no problems and with the Silverlight 2 beta 2 tools you will need to download and run the new installer

Visual Studio 2008 themes

Robert Hogg — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:10:51 +0000

there are some nice themes for Visual Studio 2008 but if you want your own try this online tool to get that colour scheme you have always wanted.

Argh... more media rights issues

Richard Fennell — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 07:53:34 +0000

I posted about NBC Olympic coverage - today I discovered I cannot stream BBC provided media content from the Olympics on my Windows PDA using Opera via the Vodafone 3G service. Seems the BBC does not think I am in the UK. I know Yorkshire assumes it should be independent, but I don't think it has happened yet.

I suppose this is all to be expected, technology that allows reasonable media delivery over a mobile network at a vaguely sane price is new; especially when roaming between countries/networks. I doubt we will see this problem disappear soon unless the media rights are more commonly picked up by the telco providers such as Vodfone as opposed to the broadcast media companies like NBC and the BBC.

No Silverlight NBC Olympics for us

Richard Fennell — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 10:19:02 +0000

After the announcement at Mix of the NBC Silverlight Olympic streaming service I was looking forward to have a look at what had been created. Turns out you have to be in the USA to watch it, I assume due to media rights issues, a bit of a shame. I hope something can be worked out with a small fraction of the 2200 hours of content so we can all see what Silverlight can do for such a major event.

Blog mirror

Richard Fennell — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:56:34 +0000

My blog is now being mirrored at http://msmvps.com/blogs/rfennell/Default.aspx as well as being available in it's real location http://blogs.blackmarble.co.uk/blogs/rfennell

To quote MSMVPS it is The Ultimate Destination for Blogs by Current and Former Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals.

Moving the document store in TFS

Richard Fennell — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:50:00 +0000

I have at last got round to moving the location of the WSS sites used by our TFS server from the WSS instance running on our TFS Application Tier (AT) to our main 64bit MOSS 2007 server farm. A job I have been putting off for ages.

I decided that there was nothing on the TFS WSS sites of importance, other than documents (which I could easily copy) so decided to create new WSS sites as opposed to trying a backup and restore model.

A Digital Road Trip

Richard Fennell — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 21:31:13 +0000

Over the past few days I have been travelling around the country by car, something I have not done for a while, preferring the train. It was a good chance to try out a couple of gadgets. One I have had a for a while, my HTC Touch Cruise phone, but the other was new a Pure Highway DAB car radio.

So what did I learn?

The phone

I have recently set my phone to use push email (so constantly sync'ing with Exchange during office hours). This seems to have had a serious adverse effect on battery life. I had not noticed this before as I usually connect my phone to my PC via USB when in the office thus keeping it charged and up to date. Whilst away, without really thinking about it, I had expect my usual (pre push email) 3 day battery life, but the constant sync and using the phone as a camera knocked this down to about 8 hours! The simple solution seems to be to set the sync to every hour, thus reducing the data calls.

Unable to access My Tasks in Project Web Access

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:51:35 +0000

Sometime ago we noticed an issue with My Tasks in Project Server. Certain users were unable to access My Tasks at all - they simply got a SharePoint error page.

A little jiggery-pokery with callstack and custom errors later, we saw that the error referenced a GUID for a task. I then searched the Project Server Publishing DB for the task GUID and subsequently located the project to which it belonged. If I edited the project in MS Project and updated the server, removing the task assignment from the user, they could access my tasks.

Configuring ActiveSync on Windows Mobile for Exchange Push

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:30:40 +0000

I'm not certain how many of you will find this useful, but I had a question about configuring the Touch Diamond to talk to Exchange which I regrettably failed to notice.

It's an interesting point of debate, now I come to think of it. When I got my Diamond the first thing I did was confgigure ActiveSync directly on the device. Whilst I do connect to my laptop from time to time, I don't actually have any real sync going on between the two, other than possible for OneNote and Notes. How many people out there still use Outlook to sync their phone information if Exchange Push is available?

SharePoint Website Schematic

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:14:39 +0000

I find myself drawing the same diagram over and over again in meetings to explain how SharePoint sites relate to IIS web sites, how managed paths and alternate access mappings fit and why you need to extend the SharePoint web application if you want more than one authentication provider.

After some of my colleagues pestered me to draw it again, I decided to create an electronic version, and since everybody seems to find it so useful I thought I'd post it here as well.

Site Policies and FBA in SharePoint: Update

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:01:16 +0000

My apologies to Craig, who posted a comment to my earlier post about our FBA problems and I didn't notice until today.

To update you all on the situation, the fault is still with Microsoft and I have not yet received a hotfix.

However, for anybody considering FBA in their deployment, I would not let this issue stop you. There are two reasons I say that:

Normally with FBA you would extend the web application in question, having both FBA and Windows authentication available on the same content via different URLs. This makes your life easier with things like indexing and management.
The workaround I detailed is a good temporary solution to the problem with only minimal impact on the user experience (in that certain options are offered which may not work too well in Office when using FBA).

Hopefully this answer's Craig's question and assuages any doubts about the wisdom of deploying FBA in your SharePoint solution.

WPF Performance

Robert Hogg — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:32:17 +0000

When I was at DDS a nice chap asked me if I knew about WPF performance and the answer was no but I did do some digging and just for the record this is what I found , comments welcome.

Perf in WPF

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa970683.aspx

Perf tools for WPF

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa969767.aspx

the most important bit could be .NET 3.5 SP1

http://blogs.msdn.com/jgoldb/default.aspx

you need to make sure that the problem is not poor code performance ( your code )

Virtual BizTalk -

Robert Hogg — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:44:02 +0000

The BizTalk CAT/UE team have just released the “Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Hyper-V Guide”.

It covers Deploying, Evaluating and Testing BizTalk with Hyper-V. if you are even thinking of virtualizing BizTalk read this guide.

'Unable to find control' when programmatically adding ASP.NET validation controls

Richard Fennell — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:11:07 +0000

I have been building a webpart that needs client side validation. I kept getting the error:

"Unable to find control id txtNotes referenced by the 'ControlToValidate' property"

Now most of the posts say just use the command to get the 'real' ID at runtime

this.rfvNotes.ControlToValidate = this.txtNotes.ClientID;

But this did not work, in the end the form I found worked was:

protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e)
    {
        base.OnInit(e);
        this.txtNotes.ID = "txtNotes";
        this.rfvNotes.ControlToValidate = this.txtNotes.ID;
        this.rfvNotes.Enabled = true;
        this.rfvNotes.Text = "* Required";
    }

Life with a Diamond: nearly two weeks on

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:30:20 +0000

I said I'd post again once I'd had the Diamond a little while. It's now been two weeks and I can honestly say I'm completely happy with it. Battery life for me is fine - I charge it about every three days and it chugs along with exchange push pretty much constantly. I am quite comfortable with the soft keyboard and I can honestly say I haven't noticed any issues with the speed of the device either.

Running Fitnesse.NET tests using MSTest

Richard Fennell — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:00:00 +0000

Update 29 Mar 2010 - See this post for some updated usage notes

I have been looking at Fitnesse.NET for a while; if you have not come across this testing tool I cannot recommend Gojko Adzic book highly enough; an excellent real world introduction to Fitnesse.NET.

For me, the problem with Fitnesse is that it's WIKI architecture does not lend itself to working within our Team Foundation Server based development model. However, as I am not really looking for a tool to allow Business Analysts to edit a central repository of tests the WIKI was not that important; so I have been looking at a way to store the Fitnesse tests inside a Visual Studio solution, so they are managed like a unit test.

Registration opened for SQLBits III (Cubed)

Richard Fennell — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:59:41 +0000

I see that the registration (and hence session voting) has opened for the free community conference SQLBits III,

I can't make it as it is the same day as Alt.Net. However, I really do recommend this event if you ever work with data (some of you do that don't you?)

New Team System Power Tools

Richard Fennell — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:19:30 +0000

The July edition of the Team System power tools have just been released.

To pick out just one of a great set of tools - have a look at the Alert Editor, a really easy way to wire up external events handler to do things when TFS events occur.

Leeds SQL Usergroup

Richard Fennell — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:32:00 +0000

Thanks to everyone one who attended my session at the Leeds SQL User group on Visual Studio Database Edition and to UPCO for hosting the event.

The slide stack is available on the Black Marble web site

Workflow and SQL Error: Update

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:52:30 +0000

I posted last week about a couple of issues we were experiencing with SharePoint. I made some traction on the Workflow History issue at the end of last week and the revelation was pretty far-reaching, so I'm posting again.

It turns out that the stuff I said about systemupdate was wrong... up to a point.

There is a bug with systemupdate and triggering events, but it's not the one we thought it was! It turns out that the behaviour we are seeing is correct - systemupdate is supposed to trigger events, just not update things like the modified by and last updated columns. It's actually the behaviour within a workflow which is at fault, in that events aren't being triggered when they should be.

Touch Diamond Battery Life

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:40:03 +0000

In my last post about the Diamond I said I would let you know what the battery life is. I therefore carefully refrained from giving it any charge over the weekend, even when connected to my PC.

That means that it received no power from 5.30pm on Friday until it died (which it did, eventually).

After that time, exchange push carried on notifying me of email immediately on arrival until 8pm, after which it downshifted to checking every hour and continued like that for the rest of the weekend.

blogging on the move: redux

Rik Hepworth — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 16:54:18 +0000

Richard's little mobile blogging app is nice, but he isn't that responsive to user requests (ie, mine!) so I thought I would see if anything else was out there.
Sadly, the answer appears to be 'not really'
However, I did come across Diarist, from Kevin Daly. Perhaps not surprisingly I am using it now. I must say that two thumb typing on the diamond keyboard is not bad, although nowhere near as fast as the real keyboard on the tytn.
So is diarist better than blogwriter? Well, it's easier to add links and images... Still no real formatting support though, which is a shame.
Try it for yourself.

My Orange Diamond is... err... black

Rik Hepworth — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 10:11:00 +0000

That might sound like a strange thing to say, but when my shiny new Touch Diamond, which I picked up from Orange this week, has no Orange branding or customisation of the UI. I hadn't really noticed that until I went into the manual, where the screenshots are totally different from my phone. I was beginning to wonder if something had gone wrong with the setup process, when I saw this thread at XDA-Developers.

And as predicted....

Richard Fennell — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 08:49:58 +0000

The Alt.net summer conference is now full after about 24 hours and that is with a larger capacity venue than the last one.

Told it would be fast

HTC Touch Diamond on Orange

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:26:27 +0000

Thanks to the advanced notice from Tracy and Matt's blog, I picked up my HTC Touch Diamond yesterday from the Orange Store and it's great!

'But wait!' I hear you cry, 'didn't he go on about the experia x1 and how he wanted one?'

Well, yes, I did. I admit it - I am fickle in my affections.Since I wrote that post, I have spent time considering what I want in a phone and size has become a significant factor. The Diamond is tiny, it really is. It's not far from the size of my old Nokia 8910 and it's lighter than that old warhorse.

I've registered have you?

Richard Fennell — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 08:07:23 +0000

Registration has opened for the Alt.UK Summer conference. If the first UK Alt.net conference event is anything to go by it will fill up fast, so don't hang around if you are interested

Publishing a ASP.NET WCF service encryption error

Richard Fennell — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:30:52 +0000

I was trying to publish a .NET 3.5 WCF service to a network share e.g. \\myserversharefolder\_to\_holdservice and got the error "The specified file could not be encrypted" for all the files.

I changed to a publish to the local disk it published fine, so what caused that?

As part of some security impact modelling I have been doing development with my local source directories encrypted using standard Vista security (FYI does not seem to cause any significant performance impact)

Next XP Club meeting

Richard Fennell — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:26:10 +0000

This months meeting of the XPClub is on Wednesday. It is a general group chat about refactoring, branching and merging.

This is a free event, usually with a few free beers, at the usual time & location, 7pm at the Victoria Hotel in Leeds, so hope to see you there

Bug tracking with TFS

Richard Fennell — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 22:37:25 +0000

I have posted in the past about my efforts to write a user facing bug tracking interface for TFS to integrate with our SharePoint based customer portal. I have had some mixed success, but the end point is that I am just not happy with what I have written.

Historically we have used our own home grown call tracking system (started as an Access DB, went via VB6 to ASP then ASP.NET, now is web service based) which our clients know (and love?). This give a far richer audit trail for the actions performed on a support call than is possible with a work item in TFS. In the end this simple fact is what has forced me to conclude that TFS work items are not the thing to expose to end user/help desk staff for bug tracking.

Useful .Net Search and Replace tool

Rik Hepworth — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 10:27:00 +0000

I need to update something like 300 web.config files today, with the same change in each. I turned to my old friend Google for his recommendations and up popped a magnificent free tool from Nodesoft.

Why magnificent? It's advanced mode allows you to specify start and end tags and update everything in between. That's fantastic for dealing with big chunks of web.config files! Better yet, give it a file mask and a path and it will run through the entire folder tree if you like. Update whole servers in seconds.

Congratulations Richard!

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:01:47 +0000

Well done Richard, who has been given the accolade of Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for Visual Studio Team System.

Workflow History and SQL Error

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:59:32 +0000

When trying to view an item in a list which has workflows run against it, you get an error:

Some part of your SQL statement is nested too deeply. Rewrite the query or break it up into smaller queries

Problem Background

Trying to explain the exact nature of our configuration in this case would break many people's heads. This, therefore, is a bit of a simplification.

We have a custom webpart which allows users to log an enquiry. We create an item in a list with the enquiry details, and send an email to the account responsible for dealing with those enquiries. A copy of the list item is created in another list (we'll leave out the why and wherefore of that for now). The two copies must be kept in sync. More details on that later.

DDD7 Session Submissions

Richard Fennell — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:22:57 +0000

It really good to see so many submissions for the DDD7, and many new names, always a good sign of a the community working well.

I just got round to putting one in myself on integrating testing into MSBuild.

There is still time for more though. So have a think and put in a session proposal - trust me it is great fun.

Comment Spam and Contacting Me

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:01:55 +0000

You may have noticed that I have disabled comments on my old posts. You may also have noticed that I have now disabled the Contact Me function on my blog.

Why? Comment spam, and more recently, a huge influx of spam via the contact form.

I will try to find a solution via some kind of community server plugin. In the meantime, posting comments will be open for 14 days after I make a post and will then automatically switch off.

CITP

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:53:17 +0000

Received in an email today from the BCS:

I am delighted to inform you that your application for Chartered IT Professional (CITP) status has been successful.

Problems with Site Policies and FBA in SharePoint 2007

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:46:14 +0000

If you are using Forms Based Authentication and try to access Site Policies you may well find that you get an Access Denied response. If you do, this post will help you!

I've been meaning to post this for a while because I'm sure it may help somebody. As usual, it's been pushed back and back until now I finally have some time. I also have another, workflow-related post on another problem which will follow shortly.

Richard is an MVP

Robert Hogg — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:57:01 +0000

I know it is on his blog but Richard is an MVP, it couldn’t happen to a nicer person. I am also pleased that Kevin Ball was renewed and Andy Westgarth is also now an MVP. it was nice to see all of the above at our event today.

congratulations to all the new and renewed MVP’s

Wow I'm an MVP

Richard Fennell — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:42:48 +0000

Found out last night that I have just been made an MVP for Team System, is that cool or what!

TFS Team Build compile details

Richard Fennell — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:31:34 +0000

Martin Woodward posted a few weeks ago about his build bunny. Now this is something I had tried a while ago for DDD4, but hit the same problem Martin had that the old Nabaztag API was too slow and messages could take hours to arrive, making it useless in the real world. Inspired by Martin and the new faster API I have been working on a new Team Build status monitor for the office.

Speaking at Leeds SQL User group

Richard Fennell — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 21:38:17 +0000

For those who are interested, I am speaking on Visual Studio for Database Professionals at the Leeds SQL user group on the 16th July. This is a free event, for more details see the event web site.

CA0055 error in FXCop

Richard Fennell — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:29:02 +0000

I have been setting up a new Team Build server today. All our projects are being set to do code analysis (FXCop) after the build. For one project this worked on the developer PC but failed on the build machine.

The CA0055 error means 'file not found' or 'could not load' the assembly to be analysed. Firstly I suspected there was a problem with path names being over 256 characters (both the assemblies and solutions names were long) which can be a problem MSBuild, but this was not the case.

TechED 2008 IT in Orlando

Robert Hogg — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:23:32 +0000

I am just back from a week on the BizTalk Stand at TechED IT in Orlando, it was great to have the opportunity to chat to so many great people and to meet other BizTalkers.

I was privileged to meet some great people to name but a few

Mark Beckner author of the classic Apress BizTalk 2006 EDI book.

Todd VanNurden co editor of the legendary BizTalk Hotrod

Clint Huffman Microsoft PFE

Catching Up

Rik Hepworth — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 12:30:00 +0000

I've been far too busy lately and whilst there have been lots of things I wanted to post about, time has not been on my side. Before I start to forget some of the points I thought a quick post was in order.

@media 2008 was great. Slides and audio are just filtering onto the blog now. A highlight for me was Indi Young's talk on Mental Models. I now have her book on my desk (waiting for having the time to read it) and I'm excited about how the technique might interface nicely with the User Stories we use for feeding requirements into our Scrum development process.
Also at @media, I managed to catch up with Nick, who was as insightful as ever. He's on the lookout for a Cold Fusion developer, if anyone is interested.
On the food front, if you're down on the South Bank try Giraffe. Also not bad was the food at Auberge, not far from the IMAX.
One interesting point is that there was a lot of talk about 'agile methods' from the presenters, but I wasn't getting the impression that there was actually a great deal of understanding as to what they really entail. We use Scrum at Black Marble, albeit with some pragmatism as there are some things you just can't do when you're not working on time and materials. I find that the increased level of dialogue between team members that Scrum gives improves the execution of the project no end. If you want to know more about Scrum, Ken Schwaber's books are a good, quick read.
On the smartphone front, the iPhone 3G looks nice, but given my company infrastructure, the Touch Diamond looks more so. Also, the Diamond is nice and small which is something I've been searching for in a smartphone for a while. Big nod of respect to Opera - I have a beta of 9.5 on my TYTN right now and it's a very nice mobile browser. I'm looking forward to seeing what the polished product is like on the Diamond.
I have yet to get chance to install it, but the beta Power Pack for Windows Home Server is available which addresses the data corruption bug. I have a single disk in mine right now and to be honest it's not doing much other than backups, but I'd recommend one just for that - simple and straightforward image-based backups of all the PCs in the house. Great!

XPClub Meeting about Opera

Richard Fennell — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:40:01 +0000

Good session at the Yorkshire Extreme Programming Club last night. Chris Mills of Opera spoke on the mobile web.

If this, or the general issue of standards in web development are of interest http://dev.opera.com is well worth a look.

TFS Build server and running MSTest - directory creation error

Richard Fennell — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:37:04 +0000

When you create a build type for a team project on TFS you can enable testing using MSTest by saying 'run any tests that are found in a given DLL'. I used this today to create a CI build for a project, I am looking at using Team Build as opposed to CruiseCrontrol as we have done historically.

I hit a problem that the tests were running but the build was failing (or in Team build speak - partial succeeding i.e. compiling but not passed testing). On looking in the build log I saw the error was:

Rescheduled XPClub Meeting

Richard Fennell — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:49:12 +0000

This Wednesday, the 11th, is the rescheduled XPClub meeting 'Exploring Mobile Web Development' with Chris Mills developer relations manager for Opera

This is a free event and open to all, hope to see you there.

Interesting post on testing

Richard Fennell — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:27:14 +0000

Interesting post from Ben Hall on the role of the tester, something I have posted on in the past.

As Ben asks what are other people views?

Go south young man.......and read a book on a SmartPhone

Richard Fennell — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:23:43 +0000

I have got into reading books off my HTC smart phone using the Microsoft Reader. It means you always have a book with you (as well as a web browser, blog writer, phone etc.....)

The problem has been getting books in a suitable format, yes I know that you can buy electronic books but there are so many out of copyright classic's I have not read yet. You can download many from Project Gutenberg (and convert them to the right format using the add-in for Word) so why buy newer ones?

Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 is here

Robert Hogg — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 03:17:55 +0000

As promised you can get silverlight 2.0 beta 2 here and the june preview of blend and zoom here.

The SDK is available here or with the Visual Studio 2008 tools here.

Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile Developer Preview

Robert Hogg — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:02:33 +0000

I like the concept of SideShow and I think one of its flaws is not enough devices NOW , they are slowly coming on stream but not quickly enough for me. So along with all of the other items arriving this week I was pleased to see this a windows mobile version of side show and I have spent the day controlling my PC from my phone :)

Live Writer Preview

Robert Hogg — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:01:14 +0000

I will say it now and I will say it again , Live Writer rocks. A new tech preview with some cool user features and even more developer features are available here.

User Features include:

Video and Image enhancements : Soapbox support , Better Image support (cropping , tilting , effects )

Editing: Word count , smart quotes , auto linking

UI:

tabs for view switching

Bugs:

many UI WSIWYG faults fixed ( scripts and objects :) )

TechED Developers Announcements

Robert Hogg — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 21:58:30 +0000

I am not at TechED Dev in Orlando ( I am going to IT Pro next week , see me at the BizTalk ATE stand ), but there are some important announcements to cover off.

Microsoft Project Codename “Velocity” CTP

**“**Velocity” allows high availability to data by integrating Large clusters of machines _s_eamlessly into a single cache, making it easier to develop scalable, high-performance applications.

Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 v1.2

On the train home

Richard Fennell — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:07:34 +0000

Thanks to everyone who attended my session on DataDude in Edinburgh yesterday. I hope you found it useful. For those based in Yorkshire I will be doing the same session for the local SQL user group on the 16th July.

The slides I used yesterday were virtually identical to the ones I used at SQLBits II and can be found on our server. The only major change was a bit about yesterdays announcement of the GDR release that I wrote on the train up after watching the Channel9 video - but Gert's blog is a better source information for this.

New CTP Release for VS2008 Database Edition

Richard Fennell — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:55:30 +0000

Typical I am giving a session on VS2008 DataDude tomorrow and Microsoft go and release a new version!

See Gert Drapers blog for the full details or Channel 9 for a video which I will be watch in the train tomorrow I guess.

Speaking in Edinburgh this week

Richard Fennell — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:18:46 +0000

I am speaking at the Scottish SQL user group on Wednesday about VS2008 for DB Professionals.

Hope to see you there.

Developer Edition for Sharepoint

Richard Fennell — Fri, 30 May 2008 09:37:14 +0000

There has been a good deal of discussion on Blogs and Forums as to if there is a need for a developer edition of Sharepoint (WSS3.0) so you can develop against it under Vista. Historically your options were:

Run W2K3 on your client PC - licensing issues and maybe drivers if using a laptop
Do all development in a VPC (or VMware) - is be a bit slow.

Now some people argue the separation between client and server this causes is good - and it is a strong argument. However I want to get the best performance out of my development PC, so a WSS3.0 on Vista would be really useful to me. I know it won't address all my development issues (I will still need a VPC from time to time) but it will do 90% of my day to day work and run at least 50% faster than a VPC.

and another point...

Richard Fennell — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:44:00 +0000

I forgot to say in the last post the thing I noticed most about Spain - the quality of the roads and the courtesy of the drivers. Both excellent. As a cyclist in the UK I am used to pot-holes and being cut up all the time. None of this is Spain, drivers seem happy to wait for cycles and overtake safely giving loads of room. All this on super smooth roads.

An Idle break

Richard Fennell — Mon, 26 May 2008 17:49:55 +0000

I have had a week off on holiday at a triathlon club training camp (some holiday some might say, 26 hours of training sessions in 6 days). We were staying at Idle Breaks just outside Malaga. A location which I cannot recommend highly enough, great location, facilities, food and owners.

However, I have to say you do get some strange looks as you get ready for a swim in the Mediterranean.

Microsoft Source Analysis for C#

Robert Hogg — Sun, 25 May 2008 22:03:45 +0000

Phew what a name, well if you want consistent style across developers this is the tool for you. Previously known as StyleCop inside Microsoft. Microsoft Source Analysis is pretty much a mandatory addition to any team development toolkit.

In the same way the FxCop helps "focus" developers towards consistent better quality code , StyleCop does the same with code style. But also like FxCop , StyleCop will make a lot of developers gnash their teeth, while they get used to it.

New TFS stuff that has just been published

Richard Fennell — Tue, 13 May 2008 20:11:56 +0000

Yesterday we had the first drop of the VS2008 SP1 Beta, well there is also one for TFS2008. As with the main VS2008 service pack there are loads of fixes and some new features.

Support for Windows Server 2008.
Support for SQL Server Codename Katmai CTP6.
The Add to Source Control dialogs have been improved to be easier to use and more scalable.
Drag & Drop from Windows Explorer to add to Source Control.
Support for Version control operations on files not in bound solutions.
Right-click access to set Working Folder/Cloak of folders from within Source Control Explorer.
Check in date/time column in Source Control Explorer.
Editable path field for the Source Control Explorer.
Email work items and queries to someone.
A new API to download files to a stream.
Links to Team System Web Access pages from notifications.
Improvements to the number of projects per server.
Performance and scale improvements.
Improvements to the VSS converter to make it much more robust.
Support for creating Team Projects from the command line.

Given my experiences with the VS2008 Beta I think I will be waiting for the real release before I put this near our main systems. As with any system critical beta only play with them in a sandbox!

Extreme Programming Club Meeting

Richard Fennell — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:57:00 +0000

14 May UPDATE - Due t illness the speaker cannot make it , so this session is being rescheduled to next month. Check the XP Club site for what is on in its place

Remember tomorrow is monthly meeting of the Yorkshire Extreme Programming Club at the Victoria Hotel in Leeds.

The session is by Chris Mills a developer relations manager for development for the Opera Browser.

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta is out

Robert Hogg — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:27:59 +0000

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta is out for testing.

Scott has a great blog post on SP1, but the highlights (which are numerous)

- Classic ASP intelisense and debugging is back

- Faster application startup time

- Better client side rollout

- New Windows Form Controls

- WPF Performance Improvements

- WPF Extensible shader effects

- WPF Direct3D interface

- WPF Design surface improvements in VS2008

- ADO.NET Entity Framework included

Developer Day Scotland

Richard Fennell — Sun, 11 May 2008 21:11:06 +0000

Thanks to everyone who attended my session in Glasgow yesterday, I hope you found it useful.

The slides will appear on the DDS site at some point but you can find them now on the Black Marble site. There is also a web cast of a virtual identical presentation on the Extreme Programming Club site.

The noticeable difference at this event from DDD in Reading was what was going on at lunch time. The grok talks seemed far better attended than at TVP, also there was interesting Alt.Net Open Spaces style session where we had a general chat on tools and libraries which I attended.

Fixed Sprint Burndown chart for eScrum on TFS 2008

Richard Fennell — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:01:56 +0000

Since updating to TFS 2008 we have lost our Sprint Burndown chart in eScrum, not a major problem as we use the cumulative flow in its place. However, I have eventually got round to fixing it.

It turns out the problem is down to the the way the dates for the start and end of the Sprint are converted to measure names for the main MDX query. There were both regional date format issues (mm/dd/yy as opposed to dd/mm/yy) and the fact that the MDX query was very particular over leading zeros for the end date of the range e.g. 14/4/2008 did not work but 14/04/2008 did (but this was not the case for the start date!)

Registry Access Errors with the TFS API

Richard Fennell — Fri, 09 May 2008 09:45:02 +0000

If you are using the TFS API within a WebApp with impersonation there is a good chance you will see the error below when you run the web site on IIS

System.Security.SecurityException: Requested registry access is not allowed.
at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowSecurityException(ExceptionResource resource)
at Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey.OpenSubKey(String name, Boolean writable)
at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.RegisteredServers.OpenCurrentUser(Boolean writable, Boolean shouldCreate)
at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.RegisteredServers.GetUriForServer(String serverName)
at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.RegisteredServers.GetServerKeyForServer(String serverName, String subKey, Boolean writable, Boolean shouldCreate)

If you google for this forums tells you to add read access for the impersonated user to

PerformanceCounters not showing up in PerfMon

Richard Fennell — Thu, 08 May 2008 20:49:43 +0000

I have just adding some Performance Counters to instrument some code and had a few issues that are worth knowing about.

I created two categories of counters using the following code:

//Create a category with a single counter
PerformanceCounterCategory.Create(
               "categoryName", "categoryDescription",
               PerformanceCounterCategoryType.SingleInstance,
               "counterName", "counterDescription");

//Create a category with more than one counter
System.Diagnostics.CounterCreationDataCollection counterCollection System.Diagnostics.CounterCreationDataCollection();
counterCollection.Add(new System.Diagnostics.CounterCreationData(
     "Name1,
     "Description1",
     PerformanceCounterType.NumberOfItems64));
counterCollection.Add(new System.Diagnostics.CounterCreationData(
     "Name2,
     "Description2",
     PerformanceCounterType.NumberOfItems64));
// Create the category and pass the collection to it.
System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounterCategory.Create(
            "multicategoryName",
            "multicategoryDescription",
            PerformanceCounterCategoryType.SingleInstance,
            counterCollection);

The Microsoft Telepathic™ Interface is finally here

Robert Hogg — Wed, 07 May 2008 19:04:25 +0000

After years of discussions with clients that their ever and rapidly changing requirements could only be met if we implemented a telepathic interface to read their users minds, Microsoft have done the decent thing and released Microsoft® ESP™. Now Microsoft are saying that ESP is a toolkit to allow developers to build realistic simulations and models that are rich and easy to use, but we know the truth ;)

if you want to find out more here is a video you must watch.

Happy Star Wars Day

Robert Hogg — Sun, 04 May 2008 22:06:05 +0000

I hope you all had a great Star Wars day, May the 4th be with you.

BizTalk 2006 R2 Management Pack

Robert Hogg — Sun, 04 May 2008 21:23:07 +0000

The BizTalk Server Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 is a management pack for discovery and monitoring of BizTalk Server components and applications. This new management pack includes monitoring for most of the new R2 Features

Suspended Message Alerts
Alert Suppression Policy
Native EDI
BAM Technical Assistance Alerts
BizTalk Message Boxes and Hosts
Orchestration Failures
Service Monitoring
Application Monitoring
Monitoring of various aspects of RFID

Why aren't there more plays about quantum physics?

Richard Fennell — Sun, 04 May 2008 19:36:05 +0000

Saw an excellent play last night, Hapgood at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. For those who have no heard if it, it is a Tom Stoppard play about spies and physics set in the late 80s.

I know of two plays that take their theme from quantum uncertainly, this one and Copenhagen, both nights out I have really enjoyed. They are plays that keep you guessing all the way as to what is really the truth (if such a thing can ever be known).

Blogging On The Move

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:07:00 +0000

We try to dogfood here at Black Marble so I'm writing this on my HTC TYTN. How? With Richard's new app

Extra announcement on BizTalk 2006 R3

Robert Hogg — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:24:38 +0000

Burley Kawasaki has just announced at the Microsoft Insight 2008 conference that in BizTalk 2006 R3 that Microsoft has Acquired from Covast some of their advanced B2B functionality specifically around new vertical industries ( details to come ) , this will be a no cost addition to BizTalk 2006 R3.

Architecture Insight 2008

Robert Hogg — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:24:00 +0000

Matt Deacon (Microsoft) runs a significant set of Architecture events certainly in the UK. Over the last two days several of the Black Marble architects and seniors have been at the Microsoft Insight Conference 2008. There has been a great range of topics split roughly into Infrastructure , Solutions , SaaS and Enterprise. I will update this post with links to available content when it is available.

Burley Kawasaki provided the closing Keynote on The Road to Oslo :), if you missed Burleys talk we will be running a SOA event at Black Marble in the next month or so

I want a TFS 64bit API

Richard Fennell — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:26:19 +0000

The lack of 64Bit TFS API DLLs is becoming a real pain for me. We have committed to a 64Bit server architecture for all our IIS and hence MOSS servers; both of these seem unable to WOW64 the 32bit TFS DLLs (though Cassini can!) so I cannot load any web front ends that use TFS such as eScrum or anything home grown on my main servers.

My only option is to run 32it servers as well for the primary systems. This is not too bad for IIS/ASP.NET bits, but it is not recommended to have a mixed 32/64bit frontend for MOSS.

First Release of BlogWriter for Smart Devices

Richard Fennell — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:08:51 +0000

I have just uploaded the first release of my BlogWriter for Smart Devices which allows you to post new messages to blog servers that uses the MetaBlog API. My aim was to provide a LiveWriter like application for devices like my HTC PDA.

In the zip file you will find these instructions and a .CAB file. The installation process is as follows:

Make sure you Smart Device has .NET Compact Framework 3.5 installed
Copy the the CAB file to your smart device
On the smart device double click on the CAB – you will get a message about unknown publisher, say OK. The EXE and the CAB are digitally signed but Black Marble is not a known publisher (we don't have Mobile2Market certificate which is the only type that the installer can check publishers against).
Answer the questions as to where you want to install the application.
Once the program has been installed there should be a icon on program menu for Blog Writer, click it to run
You see a splash screen, this should disappear after a short while and leave an empty page (this is because the blog server has not been configured yet)

Enigma & Friends

Richard Fennell — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 08:35:00 +0000

I went to very interesting IET meeting last night entitled 'Enigma & Friends' given by John Alexander. He is a private collector of encryption machines; the bulk of his collection is currently house in the Block-B exhibit at Bletchley Park and is open to the public.

The difference between going to the museum and seeing his presentation is threefold. Firstly the you get his extensive knowledge of the subject, but I think even more interestingly hear of the adventures it takes to obtain what must be remembered were (or still are) top secret machines. And finally you get a chance to handle the machines, probably something I will not get the chance to do again.

BizTalk 2006 R3

Robert Hogg — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:49:10 +0000

To coincide with the release of SQL Server 2008 Microsoft plans to release an updated version of BizTalk Server. The update will cover compatibility with Windows Server 2008, .NET Framework 3.5, Visual Studio 2008 , and SQL Server 2008.

This allows BizTalk Server users to improve on: scalability for mission-critical workloads, improved support for next-generation web and service oriented applications and improved virtualization support.

The R3 release also includes enhancements for

Ramp Up to .Net 2.0 for Java , VB6 , .NET 1.1 and Novice Developers

Robert Hogg — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 04:31:12 +0000

Microsoft have made a series of training packs available for free for developers wanting to skill up to .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio.

when you have finished Microsoft will give you discounts on exams and further training.

Returning from Seattle

Robert Hogg — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 05:45:15 +0000

I am sat in the departure lounge at Schipol (Amsterdam) waiting to head for the sunny north of England. I have had a great week at the MVP summit and best yet I already know I can go next year :) ( ray for all the April MVP's ).

Seattle has provided us with what can only be described as "mixed" weather , High Summer on Saturday (last) , Hail and snow (today). I think this level of random weather explains a lot about how the people in Seattle behaviour ( wild eyed and big smiles ).

Smart Device Blog Writer

Richard Fennell — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 21:08:11 +0000

This post has been written with a blog writer (same idea as Live Writer) that I have written for a Smart Device using the .NET Compact Framework 3.5

The reason I wrote it was I find Community Server a bit awkward to use in a web browser on a small form factor device like my HTC Cruise phone. Being able to create a post offiline just seemed an easier option.

Outlook Mobile Sync Issues over 3G

Richard Fennell — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:20:00 +0000

I posted a while ago about my new HTC Cruise, well I am still really happy with it but I have come across a problem. I have found that from time to time I get problems trying to do a Send/Receive in Outlook Mobile via the 3G mobile phone network. Well today after a chat with Tom I spotted the pattern.

Speaking at Scottish SQL Usergroup

Richard Fennell — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:46:00 +0000

I will be speaking on Visual Studio for Database Professionals to the Scottish SQL usergroup on the 4th June in Edinburgh.

Update The event booking site is now available at http://www.sqlserverfaq.com/?eid=115

As I was saying to the Dalai Lama

Robert Hogg — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 02:30:10 +0000

On Sunday I bumped into the Dalai Lama in my Hotel. When I say bumped into the Dalai Lama , I mean bumped into a solid wall of Seattle's finest motorcycle cops who were stood in front of the Dalai Lama. He obviously was sad that we did not have time for a chat but I had to head off with Rob Miles to get some food ( mmmmm ham and hash browns ) , but he did wave which was nice.

I am sitting in on the Oslo Software Design Review

Robert Hogg — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:49:19 +0000

I am currently attending the Microsoft Connected Systems Divisions , Olso Software Design Review and I am looking at the future and it is so bright it hurts, not to mention the amazing talent in the room , Juval Lowy, Sam Gentile, Brian Loesgen, Brian Noyes, Michele Leroux Bustamante, Roman Kiss, Don Box, Chris Anderson , Chris Sells , Alan Smith just to mention a just a few.

I think Brian Loesgen has put it best , It is nice to see we have all been betting on the right horse

VBUG Newcastle: VS2008, SQL Server 2008 and Win 2008 Launch Event

Richard Fennell — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:45:51 +0000

The details are out the for VBug event I am speaking at, it is going to be at The Castlegate, Melbourne Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 2JQ

Hope to see you there.

Thoughts on Open Space

Robert Hogg — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:11:48 +0000

I am attending a set of "Open Space" sessions, I think the idea of getting people together on like minded topics is great. But the "Philosophy of Open Space" suffers from the same problems of any other "Purist" self help/focus/delivery solutions i.e. it works great if the mediator is strong or in some cases where the attendees are strong. At other events I have attended sessions where "provided" mediators have been less than useless.

Sunny Seattle

Robert Hogg — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:08:37 +0000

I at the MVP summit in Seattle and so far have seen the hottest and chilliest days I have seen this year. it has been great to catch up with old friends

:) only 20 minutes in and Barry Dorrans is up running loud and true to make the world right with the goodness that is card space (don't ask what the subject actually being discussed , as it is not relevant to Barry's ability to promote card space) , while simultaneously trying to offer a radiant Michele Leroux Bustamante a box of chocolates. I love this world :)

Community Launch Events

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 09:04:00 +0000

A big thanks to everybody who came to the Server 2008 launch event last week. Andy and myself had a great time presenting to such an enthusiastic crowd. In the end we ran long because of the amount of dialogue around the new features of Server 2008 and I hope everyone went away having got something useful.

Now I need to reduce the two hours of material down to a perky 45 minutes for delivery at the VBug-hosted launch event on April 30th. Richard is there too, and Iain is also speaking, making up the triumvirate. It's my first non-Black Marble community event and I'm quite looking forward to it.

The Rise of the Phoenix

Robert Hogg — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:59:08 +0000

Microsoft Research have been working on the next generation of compiler optimisation and analysis tools for sometime, if this is your area I recommend looking at the Phoenix Connect Web Site. I saw Jim Hogg ( with a surname like that , how great must this guy be :) ) , present on Phoenix a few years ago and it promises to be a great step in the fundamentals of development. This version of Phoenix supports visual studio 2008 and as a sample has a lisp compiler!

[Resource] Useful BizTalk Links ( Updated 11th December 2008 )

Robert Hogg — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 13:54:37 +0000

I thought it would be useful to keep my links for BizTalk in my blog, I will keep updating this list when new BizTalk items ( or old ones I have missed ) present themselves.

Tools

BizTalk Server 2006 Best Practices Analyzer V1.1

BizTalk LoadGen 2007 Tool

BizTalk Undeploy Tool

ESB

ESB Guidance

ESB Installation - Currently My Notes , but there is a set on its way from MSDN , I will update this shortly.

Irish Microsoft Technology Conference (IMTC) is over and follow up

Robert Hogg — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 13:22:54 +0000

Well the IMTC has finished , it was great fun and it was really nice to see so many great presenters presenting on a wide range of great subjects.

I managed to see some of the slots but I was busy preparing for my two sessions.

Overview of Microsoft Live Labs Volta

Well the writing was on the wall as soon as I had finished my 4th perfect run through of slides and demo's. for some reason my laptop refused ( despite a lot of coaxing ) to duplicate the screen and so I ended up coding over my shoulder onto the large cinema screen making a lot of typo's. I think the presentation part of Volta went well but the coding demo's were not great.However the audience were great and very understanding.

Community Launch Events

Richard Fennell — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 13:28:57 +0000

A busy time in the next few weeks for free community launch events for Windows 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL 2008.

This week we at Black Marble are hosting a series of three evening events (See online booking) where you can see virtually the whole set of Black Marble speakers.

On the 30th of April there will be a VBug hosted launch event in Newcastle where I, Rik and Iain will be speaking.

Back home from the IMTC

Richard Fennell — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 13:31:32 +0000

After an uneventful journey I have got home from the IMTC conference in Dublin. Thanks to the organiser for running the event, it seemed to go well.

I hope I managed to answer any question my sessions on SQL BI and Scrum raised, if not send a message via this blog. I suspect there might be a few from the Scrum session as it seems the cinema (where the conference was held) had a movie scheduled to start at 6pm, the same time I was scheduled to finish so not much chance to stand around for a Q&A and chat.

The youth of today

Richard Fennell — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:05:00 +0000

It is the school holidays, so I am sitting in a children's indoor jungle gym sorting out my slides for Ireland while my son rushes around.

Having someone working on a laptop here seems to be a bit of novelty. I have had a number of children rush over to see what I am doing. They don't stay watching long when they spot the VPC of SQL 2008 and a PowerPoint stack.

I am No Longer a MVP for Visual Studio Architect :(

Robert Hogg — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:56:15 +0000

But I am now a MVP for BizTalk , Hurrah.

My thanks for the support the VS team has given me in the last year and I look forward to working with the BizTalk chaps and chapettes over the next year even more than I have this year.

Also many thanks to the MVP support team as I know due to the broad areas of the community I work in, can make it hard to place me in the program.

More sessions in Ireland next week

Richard Fennell — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:14:47 +0000

Just found out that Robert and myself are both now doing two sessions at the Irish Microsoft Technologies Conference next week.

**Thursday
**13:45 - BI in SQL 08 (Richard Fennell)
16:45 - Microsoft Volta: Next Gen .NET Client-Server Apps (Robert Hogg)

**Friday
**10:00 - Overview of Business Process Automation and implementing an Enterprise Service Bus using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 (Robert Hogg)
16:45 - What is Scrum? (Richard Fennell)

New style web applications

Richard Fennell — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 20:51:52 +0000

With the advent of Silverlight we are going to see more and more web delivered applications. A good example of what we can expect is the Microsoft HEROES happen {here} virtual launch site. If you did not make it to the event it is well worth a look with all the slides and videos of the sessions.

This site does makes heavy use of multimedia and it is maybe just me but I find it hard to find things, it look great but I don't like having to guess where the menu might be. In general I want information fast not see a intro video; but this could just be because I am a developer and not a designer. I think this is especially true of sites you go back to again and again. It strikes me that for sites like this search become the key if you are ever to find relevant material.

New release of VSTS Scrum Process Template

Richard Fennell — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 20:29:26 +0000

I see there has been a release of the VSTS Scrum Process Template for VS2008 on CodePlex, so adding a way to run Scrum projects with the current release of TFS without the fiddling required for eScrum.

It looks good, but is missing for me the best part of eScrum, the web site that allows quick updating of the Scrum project without the need for Visual Studio. If you are going to be doing Scrum you don't want to having to spend loads of time on the electronic scrum board administration.

Irish Microsoft Technology Conference 2008

Robert Hogg — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 00:56:00 +0000

Both Richard and I are presenting at the Irish Microsoft Technology Conference (IMTC) 2008 on the 3rd and 4th of April l, in Dublin. Richard is presenting on BI in SQL 08 and I am presenting on Overview of Business Process Automation and implementing an Enterprise Service Bus using Microsoft BizTalk 2006. The agenda can be found at http://imtc.firstport.ie/agenda.aspx, there are some great speakers lined up. What is noticeable is my title is somewhat longer than Richards and so by the time I have got past my title slide I suspect he will be on his first demo. In my talk I will be giving an overview of collaboration in the Microsoft Sphere , BizTalk and the ESB Architectural guidance package, if practice timings permit I will also be giving some demonstrations of the great tools BizTalk and ESB offer Business Process Automation.

Windows Server 2008 , SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 Launch event

Robert Hogg — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 00:38:50 +0000

Richard and I headed down to Heroes Happen Here event in Birmingham in preparation for our launch events in a few weeks time. Due to external pressures and Richards driving ( he won't spring for a helicopter ) we didn't arrive until a bit after the event had started ( I know , I thought they would wait , but its ok they have recorded the whole event so we did miss anything and I don't think they will mind if anybody else has a look ;) )

Stay at Home server

Robert Hogg — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 00:14:18 +0000

if you read my post on Home Server well a video that having a server at home is not shameful ( more than 3 is though , hint Barry )

Watch the Video

Vista Service Pack 1

Robert Hogg — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 23:35:58 +0000

Incase you haven't seen , Vista Service Pack 1 is out and already available from Windows Update. well I am five machines through and not a hitch.

Service Pack 1 adds more than fixes , it offers significant performance and reliability improvements. it also adds a set of general improvements which I don't think are well announced

There are new cryptographic and random number generation algorithms , IIS is the same as its Server version and most importantly UAC has taken a bit of a kick and now behaves a lot better , HURRAH

Dot Net Rocks - Barry Dorrans revisits Security with OpenID and Cardspace

Richard Fennell — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:07:01 +0000

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

Code Analysis (FxCop)

Robert Hogg — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:51:23 +0000

if you have listened to me talk about code quality and engaging with developers about the need to produce quality code from the get-go, you will not be surprised at the deep pleasure that a new release of FxCop brings to me. if you haven't had the pleasure of such a gripping conversation ( or rant as most people would call it ) and plan to talk to me at some point in the future , do your self and your company a favour download and use FxCop , improve your code quality and in the process make me smile.

Hats off, lads

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:48:00 +0000

Just seen the sad news of the passing of Arthur C. Clarke. The world was better for his having been in it, and will not be the same without him.

Insightful

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:20:00 +0000

Joel Spolsky has a biting and articulate article on the IE8 standards debate.

A great article on handy SharePoint controls

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:52:00 +0000

I don't know about you, but I always mean to gather various bits of knowledge into one place, but just like tidying my filing at home, I never quite get around to it. Fortunately for me, Chris O'Brien is a bit more organised and in my ever expanding blogroll today I saw a great article about really useful SharePoint controls to use in custom pages for that handy bit of functionality.

Taking time to enjoy the scenery

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:42:00 +0000

You know, the thing about RSS is that it's a bit like the advent of the motor car - you miss things. Just as driving around means you don't get to pass the time of day with folk, or discover that tiny little deli you'd never notice from the road, RSS dehumanises the web.

For example, I subscribe to the blog of my good friend Nick Smith. Since he hasn't posted about his new redesign, I didn't know about it. Which is a shame, because I like it - it puts me in mind of Tim Burton's animations with it's tendril-like curves.

Installing SQL 2008 Feb CTP on a VPC

Richard Fennell — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 21:41:15 +0000

I have been trying to install the Feb CTP of SQL 2008 on an Virtual PC, but kept getting the following error

SQL Server Browser Install for feature 'SQL_Browser_Redist_SqlBrowser_Cpu32' failed with exception System.InvalidOperationException: This access control list is not in canonical form and therefore cannot be modified.

Turns out the problem was that I had run SysInterals NewSID on the VPC as it was based on a diff disk off our standard W2K3 test install and I wanted it not to clash with other test installs. NewSID leaves the registry in a state that causes the SQL installer problems. To get round it you need to run

A couple of speaking engagements

Richard Fennell — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:20:01 +0000

I will be speaking at the Irish Microsoft Technology Conference in early April on the Business Intelligence features in SQL 2008.

I also just found out my Continuous Integration session at Developer Day Scotland has been successful in the vote, thanks to everyone who voted for it.

CruiseControl & MSTest from Visual Studio 2008

Richard Fennell — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 20:38:00 +0000

Ages ago I posted on using MSTest and CruiseControl .NET with VS2005. As I am presenting tomorrow to the Yorkshire Extreme Programming Club on CC.Net I thought it a good idea to revisit this subject with VS2008.

Well basically nothing has changed, the old ccnet.config I detailed still works. However, I discovered that you no longer really need the block to delete the TestProject.TRX file as it seem the 2008 MSTest.EXE can overwrite an existing test results file.

TFS 'Invalid File Handle' when getting files

Richard Fennell — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:35:31 +0000

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

After months on backorder my HTC Cruise arrives, was it worth the wait?

Richard Fennell — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:15:29 +0000

What seems many months ago I ordered an HTC Cruise from Expansys. My old QTEK S100 was literally falling apart. The new phone was supposedly on 4 day delivery, well it took best part of 4 months to arrive (don't you just hate online stock levels and delivery dates that are just wrong) but was the wait worth it?

Well I have been using it for a couple of weeks and in general I would say yes it was worth the wait. As with any of these phone/PDA devices some features can be a compromised, they are never the best phones in the world, if you want a great phone with a long battery life get something like an old Nokia 6310 from eBay. That said, on first impressions the HTC Mobile 6 package with their Touch interface does seem a good all rounder.

SIlverlight 2 SDK Beta 1 - Control Samples

Richard Fennell — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:10:54 +0000

Interesting to see that the samples of Silverlight controls have been shipped with associated MSTest projects. I think this is first for Microsoft.

Now this is a great way to see the intention behind the way any bit of code was designed. A good test set is far more use than most documentation, as it truly matches the code features. If you are doing TDD then it cannot get stale.

Searching SharePoint through an IE8 Activity

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:19:00 +0000

IE8 Activities look cool. They're almost like favlets from where I stand, but they offer a very simple way for users to access online services and pass simple parameters.

I decided I wanted to play, and we use SharePoint heavily here at Black Marble. The obvious thing to do was to create an activity which would allow the user to search for the selected text using SharePoint search.

Activities are defined through XML. Essentially, you give it a name, an icon and define the actions that can be performed. There are execute and preview actions, but the small preview window doesn't really lend itself to SharePoint search (I tried!).

Silverlight A-go-go and IE8 Hurrah

Robert Hogg — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 23:53:21 +0000

Well the secret that never was, is out Silverlight 2.0 beta is now out along with a full complement of expression tools in beta , IE 8 has also made a welcome appearance.

The visual studio update for silverlight in my Visual Studio list here

I will try and do a full breakdown in the next few days, but at the minute too busy smiling :)

IE8 Rapid Fire Site Test

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:57:00 +0000

I can't spend much longer playing with IE8 or my wife will skin me. However, from my cursory browsing experience I'm worried. Either the devs have a good deal of work to do or I'm going to be very busy with CSS rules for a while.

Here's the University of Bradford site in IE8:

And to try to compare apples with oranges, here it is in Firefox 3 beta 3:

Internet Explorer 8...

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:28:00 +0000

Well, as expected, the public beta of IE8 appeared on the web pretty much straight after the Mix08 keynote mentioned it. I managed to grab it within mere moments and I now have it installed on my trusty laptop.

As announced only a day or two ago, it defaults to the new rendering mode, with a big toolbar button to toggle back to IE7 mode. I haven't had time to test the browser with any sites yet, but I'll try to do that in the next few days and maybe post again.

March 2008 meeting of the Yorkshire Extreme Programming Club

Richard Fennell — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:28:11 +0000

In a change from the usual venue in Leeds, the next meeting of the Extreme Programming club will be at Black Marble's office in Bradford.

I will be giving a updated version of my DDD4 presentation on Cruise Control .NET.

The fun starts a 7pm on Wednesday the 12th of March, it is free and open to all, see you there.

SQLBits II

Richard Fennell — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 22:10:52 +0000

I was at SQLBits II in Birmingham yesterday, a great venue and great sessions. I particularly enjoyed András Belokosztolszki's session on transient data in SQL, giving an insight on when as a developer it is appropriate to use different techniques to manage data.

My session on Visual Studio for Database Professionals seemed to be well received. However, I did sense some resistance from people (who I assume were DBAs as opposed to developers) who did not like the idea of a world where DB schema control is not done from within SQL Management studio, but with a revision controlled off line environment. Maybe some DBAs don't want to be part of the larger developer family on a project?

Mobile Community Event

Robert Hogg — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:48:36 +0000

Andy Wigley came over to BM Towers to present on Windows Mobile Development using Visual Studio 2008.

Huge thanks again to Andy for coming over to do the event.

Technorati tags: Windows Mobile, Community Events

The Faint Smell of Popcorn, mmmm Popcorn

Robert Hogg — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:45:07 +0000

Wow Matt and I have just finished our presentation on Microsoft Volta Live Labs at the Irish Web Technology Conference , it is being held at the Cineworld complex in Dublin. Yes we did get to present on the Big Screen :) , it is totally surreal seeing your caricature displayed so big it is bigger than you ( Lauren's designs look even better 10' high , not that they don't look great when they are smaller , errr , I think my next caricature will be suddenly less flattering ).

See you at the Irish Web Developers Conference on Friday

Robert Hogg — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 19:27:00 +0000

Mat and I will be speaking at the Irish Web Developers Conference in Dublin , Friday Morning at 9.15am.

The subject is Microsoft Live Labs Volta, which is just fantastic.

See you on Friday.

Technorati tags: Irish Web Developers Confererence, Volta, Live Labs

'Aah, VSTO!' ... cooking up an OBA solution

Richard Fennell — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 17:01:00 +0000

I have been doing some Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) development in Word of late, not exactly a pain free experience.

First thing to say is that even given all the marketing spiel, VSTO is not that different from VBA in older versions of Office.

To get going I create a new VSTO 2008 Word 2007 Template project based on an import of our old Word template (to get styles, layout etc.). I then basically cut and pasted the logic from our old VBA macros into an ActionPane in the new one and it just worked.

Microsoft DreamSpark

Robert Hogg — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:54:10 +0000

Anybody who has met me knows how passionate I am about teaching people to program and getting them to use their minds, Well Microsoft has excelled themselves , Any student in higher education can get

Visual Studio Pro 2008 , SQL Server 2005 , Expression Studio , Windows Server 2003 (Not sure on this one , but hey why not) , XNA Game Studio and XNA

DDD Ireland Agenda published

Richard Fennell — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:11:51 +0000

The agenda has been published for **DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper! Day - Ireland ** which is being held on the Saturday May 3rd 2008 in Galway.

I can't make it to the event, but it does look well worth the trip. Keep an on on the conference web site RSS feed to see when registration opens.

I love this world

Robert Hogg — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 01:20:14 +0000

Everyday I wake up, I love the world we all live in even more , Technology marches on giving us the vital tools we have needed since the 1970's. Until today I wasn't looking for a new car but come to think of it although I have a newish car I feel the desperate need for a new one and a safari suit , curious.

Technorati tags: Cars

Sharepoint is like a shelf that is too short.....

Richard Fennell — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 20:52:01 +0000

You have all these books to put on a shelf and as you put one on at one end another one falls off at the other. You just can't get them all on at the same time.

What do I mean by this?

Sharepoint has many features and with these come limitations due to the way features have been implemented. I am repeatedly finding that to use feature A means that you cannot use all of feature B. Historic choices can have a huge impact on what can be done in the future.

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition Power Tools

Robert Hogg — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:14:43 +0000

A new release of the Power Tools for the Database Edition to work with Visual Studio 2008 adds several new features

a new set custom unit test conditions

a new Data Generation Wizard

MSBuild tasks to support running TSQL Static Code Analysis from the command line,Schema and Data Compare and a TSQL Static Code Analysis feature

The power tools also include new refactoring types, a dependency viewer, additional data generators and editors,

Scottish Developers

Richard Fennell — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 14:47:37 +0000

Thanks to Colin Mackay for organising the Scottish Developers event in Glasgow last night; as promised I have uploaded the slide on TFS that I presented.

I am already looking forward to seeing everyone again at Developer Day Scotland which is also being held in Glasgow at the Caledonian University.

Visual Studio 2008 Architect Survey

Robert Hogg — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:26:33 +0000

The Visual Studio team are already working on the next release and they want to hear from you. If you are using the Architect or Team Suite editions of Visual Studio help define the next version by filling out this survey. It's worth filling it out if you use any of the Team products as you can make a difference, I've done mine have you?

Click Here to take survey

S+S Blueprint Manager

Robert Hogg — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:59:08 +0000

Fresh and hot foot from the Office Dev conference the first of the Software + Services Blueprints is out. It looks like there are more blueprints on the way , the first one is using Outlook to be a S + S client. The experience is much like Glide which as it looks like the PM is Michael Lehman it is not surprising.

If you have not looked at the Arch Guidance before , You MUST run visual studio after install, start a S + S project and it will start the S+S Blueprints Manager which in turn will offer a RSS down load , once this is started ( I suggest trusting the RSS feed to save time ) more Guidance packs will arrive when they are published.

Your Community Needs YOU! in Scotland

Robert Hogg — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 23:50:00 +0000

I am not suggesting that we cross to border to crush any impending revolt ( but now that I think of it ;) ) , Nope it's Developer Developer Scotland , the first of the Developer Developer events to happen in the North is underway with a great set of sessions to choose from, DDS will be help in Glasgow on Saturday 10th May 2007 from 9.00am to 5.00pm.

DDS is being run by Scottish Developers and they need your help , it is community after all. The choice of sessions is not yet set and you need to Vote for the ones you want to see and lo they will be done.

Voting opens Developer Day Scotland

Richard Fennell — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 21:45:55 +0000

Vote early vote often......

Next meeting of the Extreme Programming Club

Richard Fennell — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 21:39:45 +0000

The next meeting of the extreme programming club is going to be held on the Thursday the 14th of February 2008 at the Victoria Hotel, at 7.00pm, Leeds. Get Directions »

Next meeting is happening on Thursday 14th of February

There are going to have two shorter, or rather more agile talks:

"CRAP hits the fan - Change Risk Analyzer and Predictor" - new kid on the block of software metrics and static code analyzers presented by Daniel Drozdzewski - Java developer at Erudine. This presentation focuses on software metrics in general or rather their failure and proposes gentle solution supported by examples in Java.

The XPERIA X1 - A Windows Mobile device that I could really get excited over

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:05:00 +0000

Before I joined Black Marble I had a succession of Sony Ericsson smartphones - the P800, P900 and finally a P910i. They were great - the size was good, the UI was good, the handwriting recognition was excellent (with a grafitti-style interface that meant I could really get a good turn of speed) and I could work most functions one handed with the fabulous Jog Dial. Please note that the jog dial was sadly emasculated with phones after the P910i when Sony Ericsson foolishly reduced it's degrees of freedom to simply rolling back and forth and clicking.

Implementing SOA and ESB with BizTalk

Robert Hogg — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 01:35:16 +0000

During conversations over the last few months with people about ESB , SOA and BizTalk. It became quite apparent that there was information on the subject for people who knew what all the TLA's were but no first step primer, so Wrox press commissioned me to produce an E-Brief to help IT managers , Architects and developers gain a foundation on how SOA , ESB and BizTalk fit together. I am really pleased to announce that the E-Brief is finished and should be available soon from all good retailers :)

Irish Web Developers Conference

Robert Hogg — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 01:29:24 +0000

I have just had it confirmed that I will be talking with Mat at the Irish Web Developers Conference in Dublin at the end of the month on Live Labs Volta.

if you want to know more about Live Labs Volta come to the session.

Technorati tags: Irish Web Developers Confererence, Volta, Live Labs

Security Events with Ed Gibson

Robert Hogg — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 01:11:55 +0000

Our January Event with Ed Gibson ( Microsoft UK's chief security advisor ) went really well and everybody thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Ed has a very specific set of ideas he is keen to share , one of them is that all parents should spend 10 minutes speaking to the little people ( children) and I agree , I also know that children don't always listen to their parents and I was lucky enough that I could take my eldest child to our talk and listen to and meet Ed in person. Whilst tired and poorly , I think the overall effect was a good one on the child. My deepest thanks go out to Ed and the attendees for a great night.

Heroes Happen Here

Robert Hogg — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:59:54 +0000

The big Microsoft launch is nearly upon us , Windows Server 2008 , Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008. We have run Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 events in the last 6 months to get everybody up to speed and ready to go , but we haven't run a specific visual studio event. If all goes well over the next day or two I hope that we will be running an event at Black Marble to do just that ;)

Happy Birthday Vista and Hello SP1

Robert Hogg — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:56:42 +0000

Well Vista is one and what an un remarkable year , not many patches , no problems with hardware , no problems with wireless networking. While it may lead you to think that there is nothing to celebrate , I think not , it just works. bar my hate hate relationship with UAC kindly telling me it is turned off , I like Vista.

But wait there is more , I am writing this on a newly patched SP1 version of Vista ( there is nothing like the smell of a fresh service pack in the morning )

Spring cleaning

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 16:21:00 +0000

You know, one of these days I'll find the time to properly redesign this blog. In the meantime, the excellent Kid Congo theme from the latest version of Community Server will suffice, albeit with the alteration of colours to match our corporate blue.

@media 2008

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 16:01:00 +0000

After sadly missing last year due to workload, I am excited to be able to attend @media 2008 in London along with Tom and Lauren from Black Marble. If you know me and you want to meet up please get in touch!

Balancing customer needs against forward motion: IE8

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 15:37:00 +0000

I've watched the debate with interest but not posted anything until now. The news of Internet Explorer 8 keeping it's new rendering engine to itself unless you tell it otherwise caused a strong outpouring of opinion around the web.

I must admit, my initial reaction mirrored that of many others - that it's just plain wrong (although my good friend Nick's posting took some concentration to ascertain his thoughts!). Why hold back on improved support for CSS; why hide the fact that the engine now passes ACID2?

Visual Studio Updates

Robert Hogg — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 13:44:03 +0000

Microsoft released an hotfix rollup which solves a lot of performance and usability issues.

you can find the link along with the rest of my Visual Studio 2008 master links list here

Technorati tags: Visual Studio 2008, Hotfix

New Banner Image

Richard Fennell — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:35:35 +0000

I felt it was time for a new banner image, my triathlon photo had been up a while. So I have used one of the new cartoons our designer Lauren has done for all the staff at Black Marble.

Commemorative limited edition collectors plate will soon be available.

Another declarative programming language to try to test

Richard Fennell — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 09:39:49 +0000

At the Alt.NET UK conference there was a good deal of discussion about tactics to test declarative languages such as XAML in WPF applications. Well it seems we have another one coming out of the Oslo project - 'D'.

Looks like there is no escape, testing of declarative languages is going to be a ripe area to develop tools and techniques.

Oh to be a tester....

Richard Fennell — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:34:33 +0000

Whilst at the Alt.net conference it was pointed out that I have a different view of the role of a tester in a software development team to many other people. It seems a tester, to many people, is viewed as a person who follows manual test scripts and/or monitors automated systems, they are really part of the QA process not part of development.

Now to me this is just wrong. I started, a good while ago, in electronics testing and yes we did have people who sat with test gear and checked circuit boards gave the right voltages etc.; but we also had a test development team who built the test harnesses, scripts and tools. It is this second group in my option that equate to software testers - they are developers who write code to enable testing. They might do some manual testing but as much as possible this should be automated; we have computers available to us, so make them do the repetitive test work whenever possible.

First Alt.Net.UK Conference thoughts

Richard Fennell — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 20:19:33 +0000

I am sitting on the train heading north. After deciding trying to stream the England/Wales match from iPlayer on the train WiFi was probably not a good idea, especially after just reading the score, I though I should write about the Alt.Net UK Conference; a very interesting experience. It is great to meet so many people who are so enthusiastic over their jobs and learning how to do it better. There were some faces I knew from DDD and other community events, but also many new faces. I was surprised by the distance some people had travelled, I met a good few from around Europe, but I think Roy won the prize with a trip from Israel.

Registration for SQLBits II

Richard Fennell — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:04:27 +0000

It seems there are still some places left for SQLBits II in Birmingham on the 1st of March. If you want to go I suggest you register fast as these community events do fill up fast.

Presenting at the first meeting of the Peterborough VBug group

Richard Fennell — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 22:18:51 +0000

I enjoyed presenting on TFS at the inaugural meeting of the Peterborough VBug group last night. Thanks to Jyoti Majithia (VBug regional administrator) and Andy Westgarth (VBug chairman) for organising it. Hopefully this will be the start of another thriving user group community.

If anyone wants a copy of the slide stack, there were no major changes between the one I used last night and the DDD5 one our main web site. There is also a screencast of demo of eScrum in the same archive.

Lego Turns 50

Robert Hogg — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 18:12:11 +0000

One of the most important toys of our time has turned 50 , I am a huge fan of learning and development tools and Lego is one of the greatest out there. There isn't a Christmas or Birthday that I don't provide the mandatory educational ;) set of Lego to some random child/niece/nephew or developer.

GizModo has a cool timeline ( I had the Galaxy Explorer , the car and the train when I was younger. The Mindstorms NXTis sat on my desk :) ) of Lego's history.

Web Site Disaster

Robert Hogg — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 23:53:38 +0000

It looks like the Black Marble Web Site is a bit of a disaster today, I am sure it will be fine by tomorrow.

I guess this is what the web is all about, but there are limits ;)

Technorati tags: Web Site, Disaster, Netdisaster

Fun upgrading from Visual Studio TFS 2008 Beta2 to RTM

Richard Fennell — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 21:31:00 +0000

A while ago I made the classic mistake of installing the Beta2 of TFS on our live servers after seeing posts that it was reliable enough for production use. I had stupidly assumed that there would be an upgrade path to the RTM; there usually is from the last beta, but not this time.

TIP: Don't ever do this yourself, only use beta's in places you can throw them away without any issues.

SQLBits II (the sql)

Richard Fennell — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:25:40 +0000

Just heard my session Development Life Cycle using Visual Studio Team Edition for DB Professionals has been accepted for SQLBits II on the 1st of March in Birmingham.

Thanks to everyone who voted for it, and I hope to see you there.

![](http://www.sqlbits.com/images/SQLBIts II LogoWithDate.png)

SharePoint, TRACE.WriteLine and DebugView

Richard Fennell — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:48:12 +0000

I have been debugging some SharePoint 2007 webparts and have had to resort to TRACE output and the SysInternal DebugView; it is like ASP pages in the 90s all over again!

Anyway had a weird problem that only alternate TRACE.WriteLine commands were appearing in the view. I have not found a reason why or a solution as yet, I suspect a buffer flushing issue, but you can work round it once you know it is happening.

When a Mummy and Daddy love each other very much

Robert Hogg — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:44:57 +0000

It has come to the point when I have to explain that facts of life to my youngest daughter , luckily Microsoft have come to the rescue with a rather useful book to help explain the issues at hand. It is only available online but do hope they do a print run of this deeply educational book.

Technorati tags: Home Server, Stay at home server, microsoft

Running the TFS Best Practice Analyzer and 2005 Team Explorer

Richard Fennell — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:12:33 +0000

If you run the 2008 Power Tools BPA against a TFS 2008 install that has the 2005 Team Explorer also installed on it you will get virtually no reports generated. It runs to completion but the reports are empty.

This is due to some clash between the BPA and the TFS 2005 DLLs (V8.0). Removed the 2005 Team Explorer and it works as expected.

Now you are probably asking why would I have 2005 Team Explorer on a 2008 install? It is because a number of the third party TFS add-ins, such as eScrum, require the 2005 DLLs either to install or to run. As in theory the 2005 and 2008 installs are site side by side so it should not be an issue - but it is for the BPA.

Presenting in Glasgow

Richard Fennell — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:16:12 +0000

I will be doing a TFS and Continuous Integration session for Scottish Developers on the 12th of February

CCNet WebDashboard getting assembly does not allow partially trusted callers exception

Richard Fennell — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 22:33:00 +0000

Whilst installing a TFS & CCNet demo system I got an exception

System.Security.SecurityException: That assembly does not allow partially trusted callers

when I tried to load the CCNet WebDashboard.

The problem was that default CCNet installer had created the WebDashboard on the default web site as the virtual directory

http://localhost/ccnet

As this was also a TFS server the default web site was a WSS3 server. Bascially the SharePoint did not like (trust) the CCNet virtual directory's DLLs.

TF220066 Error installing TFS

Richard Fennell — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:46:21 +0000

I was installing a Dual Tier Team Foundation Server 2008 at a clients today and got a problem that when installing the Application Tier (AT) I entered the name of the Data Tier server (DT) and it said the server could not be found.

Unlike TFS 2005, 2008 does not require you to to do a separate install on the DT to create the empty DBs, so I assumed it was just a connectivity problem. However there was none to be found, so I checked the detailed TFS install error log and saw I had a TS220066 error that also mentioned SQLRS - I guessed at a reporting services issue.

TFS WebParts in a 64bit SharePoint environment

Richard Fennell — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:20:50 +0000

In my post on using TFS WebParts in Sharepoint I provided a proof of concept set of source to allow work items to be viewed and edited within 32bit SharePoint 2007. However I hit a problem that our live SharePoint is running 64bit and the TFS API is only available for 32bit, so the WebParts could not be loaded.

To get round this problem I have built a version of the WebParts that move all the 32bit TFS API calls into a separate web service. This allows the web service to be hosted on a 32bit box whilst the WebParts are still run within the 64bit SharePoint environment.

Next meeting of the Yorkshire Extreme Programming Club

Richard Fennell — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 11:43:53 +0000

The next meeting of the extreme programming club is going to be held on the Thursday the 10th of January 2008 at the Victoria Hotel, at 7.00pm, Leeds. I believe the session is on CRAP (Change Risk Analyzer and Predictor) code metrics but this still has to be confirmed.

This is your chance to discuss the future for the user group as I mentioned in my previous post

Great Scrum Video

Richard Fennell — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 10:19:52 +0000

I have just had pointed out to me there is a great video about Google's use of Scrum. It is a presentation done by Jeff Sutherland one of the founders of Scrum.

Take a look it is well worth it.

Future for the Yorkshire XP Club

Richard Fennell — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:10:14 +0000

Times are a'changing for the Yorkshire Extreme Programming and Agile Methods Club, our local user group. There are plans to put the organisation on a more formal structure including a organising committee with the key aim to extend the groups appeal. In the past it has really been driven by the good works of the staff of Erudine, thanks to them for all the work thus far.

To facilitate these changes a new organiser Daniel Drozdzewski from Eurdine has put up a survey to find out what people want and is keen to hear ideas via the forum as he says we "want to bring more interesting speakers and topics, make it more organised and appealing to wider audience."

Getting Team Foundation Server to use a remote 64Bit SharePoint 2007 farm.

Richard Fennell — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:25:06 +0000

If you try to install the Team Foundation 2008 SharePoint extensions on a 64bit farm you get a 'SharePoint must be installed' error; I guess the installer is looking in the wrong directory for something to confirm SharePoint is there.

However, it seems the MSI is only installing some features that are not 32/64bit specific. So you can try a manual install of these features.

The notes on http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem/aa718901.aspx give a basic guide, but these were written for the previous SharePoint so you have to alter a few paths, mostly 6.0 to 12.0 in the paths to the Web Server Extensions EXEs, and the templates have moved in Team System to [Program Files]Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation ServerToolsTemplates

TFS Build Agent on Team Foundation Workgroup Edition

Richard Fennell — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 09:27:57 +0000

If you see 'TF215085 local build agent not authorized to communicate with team foundation server' when you queue a new build via Visual Studio, you would assume you just have to add the TFSBuild user to the team projects build group as the rest of the message suggests (right click in team explorer for the project and look at the group membership).

However this is not enough it seems if you are running a workgroup edition of Team Foundation server. You also have to make sure the TFSBuild user is in the licensed users group for the team server (right click the server itself in the team explorer).

Windows CE Wifi Router

Robert Hogg — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 12:21:25 +0000

if you are out and about and need a WiFi to GPRS router look here

Technorati tags: WIFI routing GPRS

TFS 2008 Media on MSDN

Richard Fennell — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 22:05:01 +0000

Don't make the mistake I did with Team Foundation Server 2008 media on MSDN downloads.

The MSDN file en_visual_studio_team_system_2008_team_foundation_server_workgroup_x86_x64wow_dvd_X14-29253.iso is the workgroup edition, as the file name suggests. The problem is that you cannot upgraded it to a full edition. TFS documentation says that a trial or workgroup edition can be upgraded by entering a valid CD-key when in Add remove programs, maintenance mode; however this option is greyed out if you install from this media. I checked with Microsoft and there is no way round this for this ISO image.

Developers Highway Code v2.0

Robert Hogg — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 22:58:20 +0000

For anybody who has been to one of our Developer or one of our hosted MSDN events you will most likely have a copy of the developers Highway Code, if not don't worry read on. There is a New Version with added Security goodness. But how much is the new copy £1000, £2000 , no its free. It turns out according to my good and learned friend Guy it is written by Paul Maher, a Technical Evangelist at Microsoft UK but wait there's more , download it now ( December 24th at time of writing ) and enter a prize draw for a copy of Vista Ultimate.

Christmas Chaos Parts III,IV,V,VI

Robert Hogg — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:07:23 +0000

Its like all of star wars in one go (and one more) See BizTalk Boy in Action and more

Technorati tags: Xmas, Black Marble, Comic, BizTalk Boy, Sharepoint sprite, Graphics Girl, Coding Ninja, CSS Avenger, Black Marble Brigade, The Architect, Black Marble Comcs

TFS WebPart for viewing workitems in SharePoint 2007

Richard Fennell — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 22:47:39 +0000

I have been trying to get a simple means for our clients to log faults into our TFS system whilst inside our MOSS2007 based customer portal. I had been suffering from two major problems as my previous posts mentioned. However, I now have some solutions or at least workarounds:

Historically all users who connected to the TFS server needed a Team Foundation Client CAL - this issue has been addressed by changes in licensing for TFS by Microsoft; basically it is now free to look at work items and add bugs
The way the SharePoint and TFS APIs handle user identity (SPUser & ICreditial) do not match, and are not improbable. There is no way round the user having to reenter their user credentials for each system - so my web part logs into TFS as a user set via it's parameters, this is not the same user as the credentials used to authenticate into SharePoint, it is in effect a proxy user for accessing TFS

So where does this leave us?

And another possible session at SQLBits II

Richard Fennell — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 19:01:36 +0000

I also submitted a session for SQLBits II in Birmingham on using Visual Studio to manage the life cycle of DB projects. The voting for this community conference I assume opens in the new year as submissions close this weekend.

It will be interesting to see if this more central location (well central to England not the UK) attracts more attendees than Reading.

Again vote early and often.

Maybe speaking at Developer Day Scotland

Richard Fennell — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:56:15 +0000

And I may be speaking at Developer Day Scotland - it is all down to you; like other DDD style events the attendees get a chance to select what they would like to see. So keep an eye on the possible agenda and please vote as soon at submission close.

Speaking at VBUG Peterborough

Richard Fennell — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:52:14 +0000

I will be speaking at what I think is the inaugural meeting of the Peterborough VBUG User group in Team Foundation Servers.

For more details see http://www.vbug.co.uk/Events/January-2008/VBUG-Team-Foundation-Server-with-Richard-Fennell.aspx

Hope to see you there.

Python of Iron Studio

Robert Hogg — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 01:57:08 +0000

Iron Python hosted in Visual Studio 2008 shell is now available

Technorati tags: python, ironpython, visual studio 2008

Christmas Chaos Part II

Robert Hogg — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:57:55 +0000

Part II of this gripping serial ( I can't believe I am writing this , but hey its Xmas ) , is up this time only online

See the Amazing CSS Avenger and Sharepoint Sprite , wonder at the wonderness , marvel at the marvelness , you get the idea

Technorati tags: Xmas, Black Marble, Comic, BizTalk Boy, Sharepoint sprite, Graphics Girl, Coding Ninja, CSS Avenger, Black Marble Brigade, The Architect, Black Marble Comcs

ESB Guidance Setup Walk through (DRAFT)

Robert Hogg — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:53:01 +0000

prerequisites:

SETUP BAM
SETUP UDDI on SERVER 2003

install updates.
install entlib 3.1
install dundas web chart

PROCESS:

1. UNPACK THE SOURCE
2. CREATE THE TWO DATABASES USING THE SCRIPTS (ADMIN AND EXCEPTION) in "SourceSamplesManagement PortalSQLesb.administration database.sql" and
"SourceException HandlingSQLESB.ExceptionHandling.DatabaseCreate ScriptsEsbExceptionDb_CREATE.sql"

3. OPEN THE PROJECT SOLUTION, NEED TO MAKE CHANGES TO LINES 1088, 1233 IN ProcessFault.cs, and LINE 316 in ExceptionMgmt.cs to allow the ALL.Exceptions SEND PORT HANDLE NON-STANDARD DATE FORMATS. (ref http://www.codeplex.com/esb/WorkItem/View.aspx?WorkItemId=4430))

Christmas Chaos

Robert Hogg — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 00:08:44 +0000

Its 13 days to Xmas , its snowing ( well nearly ) and the Christmas Carolers are about to destroy Santa's list.

Can anybody Save Xmas from the corrupt Christmas carolers find out in this limited edition 7 part mini series from Black Marble Comics.

The first edition is also available in print and is winging its way to lucky people up and down the land :)

Cor lummie.

Powershell and SourceSafe

Richard Fennell — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 20:50:00 +0000

I posted yesterday on using Powershell to email a TFS user if they had files checked out. Well, we still run a legacy set of SourceSafe databases for old projects that are under maintenance, but not major redevelopment. (Our usual practice is to migrate projects to TFS at major release points).

Anyway, these SourceSafe repositories are just as likely, if not more so, to have files left checked out as TFS. The following script email a list of all checked out files in a SourceSafe DB

Alt.Net.UK

Richard Fennell — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 20:35:30 +0000

I am far from the first to post about the Alt.Net.UK conference next year. I think this is a great idea, I have posted a few times on how I am finding the most useful conferences being the ones about best practice. New technology is great, we all like new toys, but it is the engineering practices we do day to day that have the most effect in the quality of your work, not the IDE we use.

Using Powershell to remind users of checked out files from TFS

Richard Fennell — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 16:19:37 +0000

With any source control system it is possible to leave files checked out. This is especially true if your IDE does the checking out behind the scenes. This is made worse still by the fact you can have a number of workspaces on the same PC in TFS. It is too easy to forget.

It is therefore a good idea to check from time to time that the files you have checked out are the ones you think you have. There is nothing worse than trying to work on a project to find a key file is checked out or locked to another user or PC.

PDC 2008 , We will be there , will you

Robert Hogg — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 12:28:05 +0000

Another PDC is on its way the 2007 PDC was cancelled due to early announcements at Mix 07 and now is set for October 2008. The last PDC brought us LINQ and WF , which blew us all away. if this one is anyway close to the last one, the only thing I can do is sleep the week before to make sure I can cope ;). So if you are going to the PDC 2008 let us know and we can try to catch up.

Last night I met a spaceman

Richard Fennell — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 09:21:49 +0000

Last night I went to a lecture by Dr Alexander Martynov and Colonel Alexander Volkov organised by [Space Connections](http://pace Connections "http://www.spaceconnections.net/") on the Russian space efforts in both the Soviet and current era.

The thing that struck me was the often spoken of different between the US/NASA technology based solution and the the Russian 'simple first' philosophy e.g. the cosmonaut should be able to fix it themselves with the tools to hand, a philosophy the Mir space station repeatedly showed

EMEA Project Conference: Keynote Thoughts

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 08:55:00 +0000

Well, the keynote just ended and I needed to check email so I thought I'd do a quick post. A good chunk of the keynote had already been covered by yesterday's partner-only sessions. However, Mike Angiulo publicly announced that the Office 2007 family Service Pack 1 will be available on December 11th, 2007. I guess that means we can tell the world! I'm surprised, actually, that I haven't noticed this on any of the SharePoint blogs I frequent.

Project Partner Day

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 22:51:00 +0000

Well, it's the end of day zero, the partner-only day here at the Madrid Project Conference. It's been an interesting day. I'm not sure what I am allowed to say, but service pack 1 for Office 2007, which covers the desktop products, sharepoint, project server et al is very close to being available now. That was an interesting announcement, as we are looking at installing Project Server in Black Marble. I'd like to wait for SP1 - it makes sense - but because SharePoint will be patched at the same time I need to do some testing of our customisations first.

EMEA Project Conference - Madrid

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 08:56:00 +0000

Finally, after all the excitement that Richard and Robert had in Seattle and Barcelona, I find myself in the Auditorium Hotel, Madrid for the EMEA Project Conference.

According to the multilingual sales blurb in my room, the hotel is the largest in Europe, and I must say it's very nice. We flew in yesterday and today is an MS Partner-only day before the conference itself kicks off tomorrow.

Project Server is something we're very interested in using ourselves, and it's integration with SharePoint (MOSS/WSS) makes it an attractive solution to anybody who has already deployed MOSS for their corporate intranet, as we have.

Intellisense not working in Visual Studio 2008

Richard Fennell — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:49:30 +0000

Since I upgraded my VS2008 Beta2 to the RTM, the intellisense has not been working. I have seen a few posts about this, some suggesting you need to reset the configuration by running

devenv.exe /safemode

(see http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241278(VS.80).aspx)

but this did not work for me.

So I had a poke about in Tools|Option and found that on the Text Editor|All Languages that the three checkboxes for Statement Completion where showing neither empty or checked but a fully coloured box - which usually means an unknown settings. So a set these all to checked (a tick) and my Intellisense started working.

DDD6 demo - better late than never

Richard Fennell — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 19:29:03 +0000

For those of you who attended my DDD6 session on Scrum you will remember that I had to cut my demo of eScrum short due to taking too many questions as I went along.

So I have recorded what I intended to show as a screencast, enjoy.

Virtual Server and MAC addresses

Richard Fennell — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:18:10 +0000

Today I had to do some work on an old VB6 system, a development environment I do not have on my Vista laptop.

So I copied a Virtual PC image I had with most of the tools I needed and ran it on one of our Virtual Servers. As this VPC needed to run at the same time as the VPC I copied it from, I ran NewSid to change the SID and the PC names.

The Start of the Visual Studio Avalanche (Updated April 21 2008)

Robert Hogg — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 09:15:27 +0000

The Avalanche of add-on's for Visual Studio 2008 has started. I thought it would be useful to keep a list so here it is.

Latest Addition : VSTS Model Power Tool : CTP

Visual Studio 2008 SDK

Web Deployment Project (RTW)

ASP Ajax Control Toolkit

Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Templates for Visual Studio 2008

Key Additions

Guidance Automation Toolkit ( Needs the GAX below to install )

Guidance Automation Extensions

Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack the feature pack extends the VC++ Libraries shipped with Visual Studio 2008 and also includes an implementation of TR1

The day after DDD6

Richard Fennell — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 21:26:08 +0000

Got back from DDD6 late last night after our 5am start. After what seemed a short nights sleep I got up to do the Abbey Dash 10K in Leeds this morning with 6000 other runners, posting a 47 minute time, which I suppose is OK given the complete lack training of late due to conferences of late and I was hampered by tripping over some wire left in the road near the start and cutting my knee open!

Interesting change to TFS licensing

Richard Fennell — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 21:16:16 +0000

Just seen a post on Brian Harry's blog that the license has been changed for TFS. You no longer need a CAL for all users who connect to the TFS server, a special case of users has been created, those who can create work items, but do little else. You now have an unlimited number of theses as standard.

Why is this good? it means you can have anyone in a company connect to the TFS server to log bugs or change requests. Previously to do this means you bought a lot of CALs, or very naughtily ignored he license, so this is good sensible move.

System Security

Richard Fennell — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 11:04:10 +0000

While I was presenting yesterday at the second of Black Marble's events on Windows 2008 to a group of IT professionals, I suggested that they look at 'Writing Secure Code' by Michael Howard and David LeBlanc to get a good view of security in depth and risk analysis. On second thoughts, this book might be a bit too developer focused. I think Michael Howard's new book with Steve Lipner "The Security Development Lifecycle" might be a bit more appropriate read (though it does not seem to be available on Amazon UK yet, should be there soon).

Mandatory Visual Studio 2008 has been released blog post

Robert Hogg — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 09:06:44 +0000

Well Visual Studio 2008 has been released either a few days early ( the money was on thursday ) , or a few days late ( the rest of the money was for the TechED Dev Keynote ). Which every way it is a good sight , Microsoft has put on extra download ability to help with all the eager developers who need the power NOW NOW NOW ;)

Soma has the official word on the subject.

Fun with a DDD6 demo

Richard Fennell — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 22:45:00 +0000

I have been working on my DDD6 demo, I intend to show eScrum at end of my session on Scrum. I thought I would use the VPC I had from DDD5, this was based on the TFS Orcas Beta1 and had all the tools I wanted configured. To get some more realistic data in the reports I wanted to leave TFS server running for a week and on a daily basis update the work items as if the project was progressing.

ESB Guidance Updates

Robert Hogg — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:32:00 +0000

The Microsoft ESB Guidance for BizTalk 2006 R2 has been released. Interestingly it has moved from CodePlex!.

The first thing to do is read the manual, it is included in the installer but you will find it useful to read the manual first.

The ESB Guidance has some prerequisites that need downloading and I have gathered them all here to make life easier.

Enterprise Library 3.1

2) Debug View ( for tracing )

Updating an Ajax Application

Richard Fennell — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:17:00 +0000

Our home grown work tracking system has been through many versions over the years. The current incarnation was using a pre-release version of the Microsoft AJAX extensions. Now this caused a problem when we moved the ASP.NET application to a newly rebuilt IIS server with the 1.0 release version of AJAX.

We were getting errors that the correct System.Web.Extensions DLL could not be found, as you would expect. I rebuilt the application using Visual Studio 2005 with the AJAX 1.0 Release installed, and published this build. I tried to load the application and the browser went into a tight loop, not what I expected. I checked the server event log and found the issue was that in the published web.config file there was a reference to a Crystal Reports DLL (which we have not used for years). Once I removed this reference from the web.confg the site worked perfectly.

Hard Choices at TechED

Robert Hogg — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 18:09:53 +0000

Well I knew that presenting at TechED would be hard but this week has been one of the hardest I have ever faced. During the week we had been struggling with getting the demo of the prerelease ESB working. We had practiced a good two person rotating handover presentation which looked and ran great and all in all we were generally ok, until Ewan received a phone call from his family and had to leave for home and would not be able to present.

When you think it cannot get worse...

Richard Fennell — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 11:35:48 +0000

... you end up presenting at TechEd.

Yesterday was fun (of a sort) I ended up doing the demo section of the ESB Guidance session at TechEd. This session was scheduled to be done by Robert Hogg (Black Marble) and Ewan Fairweather (Microsoft) but Ewan had to fly home early unexpectedly on Friday morning, so leaving somewhat of a gap.

So you say, 'that is not too bad you just step in and do the prepared and scripted demo'. Well in a perfect world you would, but about 6 hours before our session was on the formal release of ESB 1.0 was posted to the MSDN site. As our demo was based on a CTP build, and as we knew the final release was somewhat different, we thought it only right to at least show the new documentation and file structures. So a hectic few hours were had by all.

TechEd Barcelona - update

Richard Fennell — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 10:04:14 +0000

I have not been blogging much from here have I, it is not that the sessions are not that interesting, but no single item has been giving me an huge urge to write.

As I said in my last post I think this is a conference of best practice ideas and as such you tend to pick up a useful nugget here and there which you store away for future use. This is particularity relevant as at present I am reviewing our engineering process to improve our software development life cycle.

No sizzle and not much sausage

Richard Fennell — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 14:59:00 +0000

The keynote at TechEd was as expected, we all knew about the impending release of VS2008, and still no fixed date yet (so no sausage there) and not really anything announced product wise that was not already in the blog sphere (so no real sizzle).

I think this is going to be conference on delivering on last years promises; how to get the best from the tools and technology announced last year, now that they are now really production ready and the early adopters have had a year to play with them.

How to create a community

Richard Fennell — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 13:00:39 +0000

Just come out of an interesting set of round table events for 'community influencers' at TechEd. These are people who are active in both the online and face-to-face communities from all round Europe (and Australia - the reach of TechEd Europe!) attended.

In the sessions I went to the general discussion was on the point I posted about a few weeks ago and that had been a running conversions on a number of UK blogs. I was refeshing (or sad?) to find the problems we have seen at home over attendance are the same around Europe:

Waiting to watch paint start to dry

Richard Fennell — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 12:45:53 +0000

I am now sitting in the keynote waiting for the session to start - they have graffiti artists on the stage - I wonder if it is a homarge to that great Palm Pilot handwriting text entry language?

Or is my my chance to say that that 'this keynote I could actually watch paint dry'?

Oh... the paint fumes are starting to get to me............................

If it is Monday it must be Barcelona

Richard Fennell — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 09:09:23 +0000

What an awful journey I have had since my last post, the trip back from the USA was fine; the problems started getting from the UK to Spain. Basically fog at Liverpool stopped all flights so we had to change airline and airport to get here in time for the TechEd conference. Should have been here by noon on Sunday and actually got here nearer 9pm, so no sigh seeing for me.

Last day at SOA - day 4

Richard Fennell — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 22:10:17 +0000

Seems quiet here today at the SOA conference, less people about. I wonder how many have sneaked off early for flights? It does seem to be mostly Europeans left, judging by the languages I have heard.

This does not mean parking was easy this morning, as in the same conference center Bill Gates and Bill Clinton are speaking at an MSPAC event. Now a bit of google'ing shows MSPAC is either:

SOA Conference Wrap up

Robert Hogg — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 18:33:12 +0000

The conference has been great , even though there has been some amazing announcements people don't seem to have grasped the gravity of what has happened. I suspect that it is a mixture of lack of comprehension and "it pie in the sky" , but it looks like OLSO will be coming hard and fast and you will see a lot on it in this blog over the next year or so.

SQL Server 2008 Event in Leeds/Bradford

Robert Hogg — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:56:30 +0000

Mike Ormand is super exited to be coming to Leeds and Bradford on our next event day (22nd of November). Mike is a great speaker and if SQL is your thing come along. if SQL isn't your thing we also have Sessions on Windows Server 2008 and in the evening we are running a community event where we will be Mix 07 in the North

Technorati tags: Microsoft Events, Mike Ormand, SQL Server 2008, leeds, bradford, black Marble

Day 3 at the SOA conference

Robert Hogg — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:39:14 +0000

Probably one of the best session so far with Clemens Vasters and Steve Swartz on Software + Services in the Cloud. I think it is really important that speakers relate both to the audience and between themselves and Vasters and Swartz do it in spades. if you ever get the chance I recommend hearing these knowledgeable and brilliant speakers.

Marty Wasznicky presented on ESB and he gave one of the fastest presentations I have ever seen, he also over ran , all in nearly a full day of presentation in an hour and what an hour :) , it was great. However Marty's presentation has made me change ours for TechED and I think I will cut a lot as my session as it is a 200 session.

Channel 9 Interview with Robby Ingebretsen

Richard Fennell — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 16:23:00 +0000

When at Mix07 I posted about Robby Ingebretsen's excellent session on the relationship between developers and designers in the WPF/Silverlight world.

Channel9 has just posted an interview with him on the same subject, well worth looking at if this is the type of project you are involved in.

A trip out to a Seattle Landmark

Richard Fennell — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 05:46:00 +0000

There is more to Seattle than the Space Needle and flying fish at Pike Place Market. At the end of the SOA conference today I persuaded Robert to embark on a tourist adventure, to brave the Seattle traffic and go to Archie McPhee "Outfitters of Popular Culture" . It should have been a 20 minute drive... hour and half later of nose to tail traffic we arrived.

Now I had come across Archie McPhee years ago when my ex wife had been on the Clarion West SF writers camp, and she came back with the strangest plastic frog in fur white rabbit suit; I always wonder what the person who made it in China think of the west?

Thoughts from the SOA conference - day 3

Richard Fennell — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 23:55:03 +0000

As with all conferences you tend to flag part way through, you start to think of the flight home and not having to sit in yet another session (no matter how interesting it sound on paper). It starts to seem all sessions are either in a cold draft or tropical atmosphere. At this point I have to say I am not looking forward to another conference next week at TechEd Barcelona, I could do with a holiday! Now I am sure some will say a conference is a holiday, but I rarely find them so, holidays do not involve PowerPoint (with maybe the exception of Triathlon training camps, but many people would say they are not holidays either)

Microsoft SOA Conference - day 2

Richard Fennell — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 02:51:40 +0000

I have focused on the the more developer end of SOA today. In the morning excellent sessions by Aaron Skonnard and Matt Milner on using WCF in BizTalk and best WF practices respectively, both provided an interesting set of gotta's to look out for. Check their blogs if this is an area you work in.

In the afternoon I went to a session on the Microsoft Managed Service Engine (MSE), a set of tools to allow versioning of services using in effect a WCF based proxy broker. Not a solution for every site, but in an ESB SOA world it could really save the day if you want an Agile development model, where you have to change WDSL contracts as a system evolves. My only worry would be how far it can go with the XML transforms to keep old clients working with new contracts. You still need a depreciation model which might be an issue - but even if this is the case a potentially very useful tool I am sure I will be revisiting.

Buzzword bingo 2

Richard Fennell — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 01:55:04 +0000

Not a great day for new buzzwords to me at the SOA conference today, so just the one:

POX - Plain Old XML, as opposed to XML data with extra META data

My Pay

Robert Hogg — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 20:48:05 +0000

I have just read Scott Adams blog as he has a strong insight into the mind of corporate mind and politicians well errr motives. He has an Interesting Post on how to predict the success of a company. Fundamentally a happy CEO/MD gives good direction and miserable staff work hard. As person keen on good idea's , I will be looking to follow his advice to the letter and make sure that BM should take heed. As far as I can see there is no downside. So lashings of bonuses for me , reduction of staff benefits to no broken glass or gravel in the coffee should promote huge growth in the business. What could possibly go wrong ;)

Day 2 at the SOA conference

Robert Hogg — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 20:38:27 +0000

There has only been one major problem for both Richard and myself at the SOA conference has been that the prize for filling in the evaluations is a

hp-officejet-l7780.jpg

An officejet not even a small one , most people here flew here and errrr. Don't get me wrong the idea and feeling is great but not the strongest sense of practicality.

we have been filling in the forms just not our names and I think I am doomed to explain to the attendants on each room that it is a really nice prize , but I don't want one .

Where are all the people?

Richard Fennell — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 16:44:29 +0000

Since arriving in the Bellevue/Redmond area I have been struck by the lack of people. Wherever I have gone it seems like the place was built for at least twice the number that are present, whether it be the shopping centers or restaurants. I wondered was it because:

the others are soon to arrive
half the people left

Now after traveling in to the conference for a couple of days and watching the local news I have the answer, It is option 1. - they are all stuck in traffic.

Day 1 at the SOA conference

Robert Hogg — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 03:33:00 +0000

We are at the Microsoft SOA conference in Redmond , we have been meeting up with old friends and bumping into people who only exist on our bookshelves in the office. Compared to the last time I was here there is a LOT more interest in BizTalk and SOA. We have see running versions of Oslo Microsoft's vision of beyond BizTalk 2006 R2 and it is a very significant vision at that. I will be blogging more on OSLO over the next few months.

Microsoft SOA Conference - end of day 1

Richard Fennell — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 02:51:53 +0000

So my thoughts at the end of day....

Certainly a useful day, but the conference seems a little slow. The breaks seem long,the sessions short and the breakout sessions finished quite early in the day. Maybe I am just used to the crammed in format of TechEd that go on late into the evening.

On the plus side this format does give a good chance to chat to other attendees, who seem very chatty and are from a wide variety of locations across the world; though nearly all white and male, an even less diverse group than at Mix UK! What does this say about the IT industry or maybe more to the point who gets to go to conferences?

Mission control we have a problem

Richard Fennell — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 23:13:47 +0000

Sitting here at the back of the Kodiak room at the Microsoft Conference Center in Redmond is somewhat similar to the control room at JPL which I went to on my last trip to the USA.

All is can see is a sea of laptops and heads just visible over the rows of desks.

It is nice to have a desk and easy access to power and Internet - all conferences should be this way.

SOA Buzzword Bingo Part 1

Richard Fennell — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:46:45 +0000

SOA being a conference on business process is a great place to learn new words for the game of buzzword bingo, new ones to me thus far are:

Onboarding - to hire staff
Toast - information provided via a gadget on the desktop

Microsoft SOA Conference Day 1

Richard Fennell — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:32:05 +0000

After a couple of days in the Washington state my body has caught up to a manageable time zone (somewhere east of Denver I think, but that is close enough) just in time for for the start of the Microsoft SOA 2007 conference.

The keynote for me highlighted that Microsoft see the future in the cloud, the Internet Service Bus (ISB) as opposed to silo'd Enterprise Service Buses (ESB). Now this assumes customers have gone down the SOA route already, which I would say is not the case in the SME market I work in. I still see many monolithic legacy applications where migration to SOA has not been considered yet.

Vista high CPU on startup

Richard Fennell — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:12:58 +0000

For a while I have been suffering that when I switch on my Acer Core2 Duo Vista laptop, both cores sometimes go to 85%+ utilization, so the PC is slooooow. Usually after a few reboots it seems to clear. This can happen after a resume from hibernate and complete restart; there was no obvious pattern. Task manager only says that the load is due to the NT Kernel process - so not much help there.

In Redmond for the SOA conference

Robert Hogg — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 04:06:39 +0000

Richard and I are currently in Redmond for the SOA conference at the Microsoft conference. if you are at the SOA conference come over and say hello

DDD6

Richard Fennell — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:42:01 +0000

I have been on holiday for a week and I see that registration for DDD6 has opened and closed - good job my session was voted onto the agenda else I would not be going.

Thanks to anyone who voted for my session, see you there.

Imagine Cup 2008 is upon us already

Robert Hogg — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:22:54 +0000

The Imagine Cup Software Challenger 2008 has opened with a new format for 2008. You will need to get your idea in by December the 14th and then (hopefully) onto an innovation accelerator and then to the final UK round. I think the new format will help level the field a lot allowing teams to shine with innovation not just coding. BUT after the idea comes the coding so ....

Mark Johnston is super exited about the cup, if you have questions I am sure he will answer them.

Bradford the 'greenest city'

Richard Fennell — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 20:38:31 +0000

I see Bradford, where the Black Marble offices are, has been ranked the greenest city in the UK. Strange that at the technology centre we are in there is no recycling at all, not for paper, cans or plastic.

We have asked if such a service can be laid on (developers drink a lot of can of coke), but were told that recycling is not a service offered as part of the council's commercial refuse collection service.

A long day of seminars

Richard Fennell — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:50:39 +0000

Just got home from a long day of Black Marble hosted presentations. This morning I was presenting on SQL 2008, seemed to go well. This afternoon it was a very busy MSDN session by Martin Parry and Daniel Moth from the Microsoft DPE team on VS2008 and .NET 3.5. Finally this evening there was a interesting community event on the .NET Micro Framework by Rob Miles, the same session he is doing at TechEd in Barcelona, worth getting along to if you are there, if not try the book.

SQLBit Podcast

Richard Fennell — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 22:15:33 +0000

Craig Murphy has just posted a podcast we did at SQLBits last weekend.

Enjoy............

DDD news

Richard Fennell — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:23:00 +0000

The voting for DDD6 is now open - as I always say vote early vote often.

I hope my submission of a proposal for a session on Scrum is of interest. I know I have had feedback on my previous sessions that people want to know more on this area.

Also saw today on Colin Angus Mackey's blog that DDD7 DDD Scotland will be in May 2008 at Glasgow Caledonian University. Well another 3+ hour drive but in a different direction! It will be interesting to see if the change of location alters attendance

Agile Workshop by Clarke Ching

Richard Fennell — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:18:05 +0000

Last night went to an excellent free meeting at the Yorkshire Extreme programming Club given by Clarke Ching entitled :

Programmers may be from Mars, Customers may be from Venus ...
but why does everyone think that Project Managers are from Uranus?

From the title I was unsure of the content, other than it would be about project management. It turned out to be a workshop on using formal conflict resolution techniques to dig into problems in projects to find solutions and to expose underlying patterns - very interesting. This is set of techniques I had come across (I did got to Bradford University which has a well know Peace Studies department that studies just this area) but had not considered their use in project management.

TechED 2007 Developer Here I come

Robert Hogg — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:10:22 +0000

Well it can be told I have been offered a speaking place at TechED Barcelona, I am very chuffed. I am presenting with Ewan Fairweather who is a Premier Field Engineer at Microsoft on Implementing ESB using the Microsoft best practices. It looks, even though I say so myself to be a great talk.

if you are at TechED 2007 Developer and you are interested in finding out more about ESB and BizTalk then pop into our session on Friday.

Visual Studio 2008 update

Robert Hogg — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:42:32 +0000

I had been quietly predicting that visual studio 2008 would be available around the time of TechED 2007 Barcelona ( 5th-9th November ). But today a patch for Beta 2 has been released which would suggest otherwise The Patch covers faults with C# and intelisense.

Update: Having run the update on some machines it is producing an error HotIron !!!

Technorati tags: Visual Studio 2008

I think I got away with it!

Richard Fennell — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 21:23:14 +0000

I have just got back from SQLBits after giving my session on Unit testing in SQL. As I said at the start of my session, at developer events I often feel a bit of an outsider when I say I am talking on testing as opposed to development; today it was doubly so when surround by so many DBAs. I have to say some of the sessions I attended seemed to be from a completely different world to my day to day work. Hey but that is what makes IT interesting is it not?

Javascript errors with Escrum

Richard Fennell — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:59:21 +0000

Whilst sorting our eScrum installation I kept getting a variety of Javascript errors when selecting a project using the dialog on the top right of the main web form. I also was unable to create new product via the web site.

It turned out to be two problems:

Templates

Some the projects I had registered to be used via the Escrum web site were not using the eScrum template, they were using the Conchango Scrum one.

TFS Update to 2008 Beta2 and Escrum Admin

Richard Fennell — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:33:49 +0000

As I posted before I have been updating our TFS server to 2008 Beta2, today it was the WSS from 2.0 to 3.0. Well I followed the process on Sudhir Hasbe's blog and it just worked, so now we have WSS3.0 running the the TFS application tier. The final step will be to move the SharePoint sites to our main MOSS 2007 farm, but that is for another day.

As part of today's upgrade I was working on process templates. We use Escrum but I had noticed our Escrum web site was not showing all the projects using that template. I had completely forgotten that you had to manually add Team Projects to the Escrum web site. This is done using a URL like:

Upgrading from TFS2005 to TFS 2008 'Orcas' Beta 2

Richard Fennell — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 18:59:00 +0000

Today I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade our 'live' TFS installation to 2008 Beta2, now there is support from Microsoft. The only reason I have delayed this long has been we have been involved in the delivery of a big project and I did not want to take the TFS server down for any reason.

Our TFS installation is dual server, the data tier (DT) running on our central SQL2005 64bit server and the application tier (AT) on a virtual server as a VPC. I have kept the AT virtual as it is easy to backup.

GUITester and CodePlex

Richard Fennell — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:30:46 +0000

Due to popular demand, well one person, I have uploaded my GUITester system I presented about at DDD3 to CodePlex. It can be found at http://www.codeplex.com/guitester.

If you are interested in moving the project forward let me know.

Disaster Recovery in TFS

Richard Fennell — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:42:28 +0000

If you are having to support a TFS install there have been some excellent posts on disaster recovery on Sudhir Hasbe's blog, he is a PM on the TFS team.

Well worth a read.

Speaking at NxtGenUG Birmingham

Richard Fennell — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:37:51 +0000

I will be speaking at NxtGen usergroup Birmingham branch on the 17th December about, you guessed it TFS.

Look forward to seeing you there.

Last nights Bristol .NET Developers Network usergroup meeting.

Richard Fennell — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:33:12 +0000

As I sit on the train traveling north to our Black Marble hosted MSDN event I must write to say how much I enjoyed presenting at last night's .NET Developers Network usergroup meeting; thanks to Guy Smith Ferrier and the whole group for getting it organized.

I think I managed to cover all the questions raised about TFS during the meeting. I have been through my slides to add notes to clarify any points raised. The updated set of the slide stack can be downloaded from http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/SectionDisplay.aspx?name=Publications&subsection=Conference%20Papers.

TV Mashup

Richard Fennell — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 17:39:10 +0000

I have had a week of Web 2.0 mashup sites at the MIx07 London event so was interested in a thing on the TV last night whilst watching England's appalling performance against South Africa in the rugby.

eBay ran adverts with a virtually real time feed (20 second delay they claimed) from a live auction. Now I have never seen this before, maybe I just don't watch ITV enough, so this is the first Internet/broadcast TV mashup I have seen. I wonder how much the sale prices of the lucky items featured in the adverts are affected?

SQLBits

Richard Fennell — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 11:55:14 +0000

I have just heard my proposed session for the SQLBits conference has been accepted. I will be talking on Unit Testing in SQL Server my proposal was:

Test driven development is one of the current hot topics in software development, but how far can these principles be applied in the world of SQL? In this session I will look at the principles of TDD and other testing options using both freeware tools and Microsoft’s Visual Studio Datadude

Mix:UK 07 Round-up

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 08:43:00 +0000

We're back up north after Mix:UK 07 and I thought I'd follow up my earlier post with a few thoughts on the event and it's content.

Before I do that, however, I need to give a cheer for our guys: Jonny performed incredibly in the Guiter Hero competition to be triumphant in front of his screaming supporters, and Sam, Mat, Tom and Jonny cleaned up the the goody-bagging stakes of the Swaggily Fortunes quiz!

MIX 07 Day 2

Richard Fennell — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 16:32:58 +0000

See I was right, in my post yesterday I said the key role missing in most WPF projects was the 'designer who can cut code' or 'coder with a design eye', the session Silverlight, WPF, Expression design projects - where do we get started today was on just this subject Paul Dawson and Robby Ingebretsen discussed the need for 'producers' who take on this bridging role, with tips on where to find them.

End of the first day @ Mix07 UK

Richard Fennell — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 10:12:32 +0000

So we reach the end of the first day of Mix07 London, what are my thoughts? Well the conference, as conference go, is well organized and I can have no complaint over the quality of the sessions or presenters.

Has it changed how I think about Silverlight? Well I have realised that 1.0 is a very different product to 1.1. Have no doubt this conference is about SilverLight 1.1, and that the 1.1 Alpha release is missing a lot of functionality at present. As a shipping product 1.1 look a long way off, at least a year (which is forever it seems in the world of Web 2.0).

In the Mix

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 14:21:00 +0000

Well, it's just after 3pm on day one of Mix:UK 07. I'm taking a break with a coffee so I thought I'd post.

It's mixed bag down here (sorry - no pun intended). The technology is fantastic - the stuff that can be achieved with WPF and Silverlight is excellent. I'm still a little uncertain that usability has been sacrificed on the sacrificial alter of bling, however. To be fair, that's more telling about the rapid-development nature of conference demos, where the wow-factor is more important, but I think it's a very, very significant issue which should not be allowed to get lost in the excitement.

Where is the beer and sandwiches?

Richard Fennell — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 12:41:43 +0000

Today and tomorrow I am at the Mix07 conference in London which is being held at the Congress Centre, a building that I knew as the Trade Union Congress building. So given this location I expected a Harold Wilson 'beer and sandwiches' style lunch, but no it was small food (very nice tapas style dishes) and as we all know - if it is small and food it is trendy. You know you are at a design orientated event when the even the food is trendy!

TFS and CruiseControl

Richard Fennell — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 20:23:10 +0000

I am speaking at the .NET User group in Bristol next week and have been putting some final touches to my demos.

One thing I will be talking about is using CruiseControl with TFS. Whilst getting this running on my demo VPC I hit a problem. I did a default install of CruiseControl .Net 1.3, this was on top of a Visual Studio TFS Orcas VPC I had built for DDD5.

When I tried to load the CCNet WebDashBoard (installed onto the default web site) I got an error:

Only Egg could get Egg on their face

Robert Hogg — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 19:02:46 +0000

In a recent post I discussed the feelings I had about Egg's poor telephone Security, with a follow up that in writing ( this is important to the plot ) that I thought their telephone security was poor and I wished a) to only be contacted in writing and b) close my account. With the predictability of an A-Team episode , Egg dutifully called ( from a withheld number , but a human not a machine , there's progress for you ) and demanded that I go through a security check !!!!

It's conference season

Richard Fennell — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 11:18:23 +0000

I am off to loads of conferences and event in the next few week, you wait all year for one then they all come together.....

Next week

Mix07 - London
Office Business Applications Architect Forum - London

This month

MSDN: Introduction to .NET Framework V3.0 - Leeds (hosted by Black Marble)
Microsoft SOA and Business Process Conference 2007 - Seattle

Next month

TechEd Developer 2007 - Barcelona
MSDN: What’s new in Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Fx 3.5 for the Web Developer - Leeds (hosted by Black Marble)
SQLBits - Reading

I aim to blog from all of them WiFi and batteries allowing

New version of Live Writer

Richard Fennell — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 10:37:14 +0000

New version of LiveWriter beta is out, it adds video support (not sure yet if this feature works with Community Server).

Watch out of you are installing it as it also updates other Live components such as messenger and tried to add some IE toolbars you might or might not want

My TFS wants an upgrade to 2008 and is sulking

Richard Fennell — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 10:18:24 +0000

I posted about the problems I had adding a user to a project TFS earlier this week. Well I have seen a similar problem again today, I added a new user to an AD group but they could not access the project until I restarted the Web Server process on my TFS front end server. I still suspect a cache problem is the root issue.

However, I have had another thought - it could be because my TFS 2005 server knows I intend to install the 2008 Beta2 but don't have the time as I am off to MIX07 in London next week and won't do a major update if I am not going to be about, so it is sulking!.

Mildly Miffed

Robert Hogg — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 22:39:34 +0000

In a previous Post I discussed Name space collisions inside BM, I am quite upset that nobody has been paying attention to this problem and it is still getting worse.

In the last week Paul hired Paul to work for him and Steve hired wait for it , Steve to work for him. if this continues , everybody will will either get issued a GUID or get sub-dermal RFID implants and all references will involve using a scanner.

TF14044 Error

Richard Fennell — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 10:55:38 +0000

Today I tried to add a user to an existing TFS Team project, this user had happily been working on other team projects hosted on the same same server. In theory all I had to do was add the AD user to an existing AD group that was already setup as a contributor to the team project I now wanted them to work on.

However when I did this I got the error "TF14044: Access Denied: User DomainNameusername needs the CREATE_PROJECTS global permission(s)" when they tried to load the Source Code Explorer tab in VS2005. Basically they could not see any files or the directory containing them.

Upgrade of our Blog server to Community Server 2007

Black Marble — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 14:44:00 +0000

As any of you who are regular readers of BM-Bloggers may have noticed, our blog server structure had become a little confused over the years. We started BM-Bloggers as a single blog hosted using .Text, we then moved it to a multi blog server hosted on Community Server 2.0, then started adding other blogs and mirrors as the volume of posts from our development team grew. This ended up finally being hosted on CS2.1.

Web site development: University of Bradford Part 1

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 18:21:00 +0000

One of the last projects I was involved in before I left the University of Bradford to join Black Marble was a new design for the external web site of the institution. I'd pretty much finished the construction of the page layouts and styles before I left, but it's only now that the site is about to go live. I've threatened a few people with a series of posts on how the site is constructed and although I'm not there any more it seems topical.

Can't debug into a MOSS Webpart

Richard Fennell — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 12:10:22 +0000

I am doing some work at present where I need to debug into webparts hosted in a MOSS 2007 server. Never an easy set of debugging to get right.

To try to ease the process I wrote a WinForm test application that just calls the webpart method with test parameters so I don't have to go through all the pages I normally would to get to the feature I need, or manually have to attach the debugger to the Sharepoint web process every time.

SQLBits Community Conference

Richard Fennell — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 09:47:57 +0000

The proposed session list for SQLBits (to be held on the 6th Oct at Microsoft TVP) has been published. If you don't know, SQLBits is a free community conference in the style of DDD, but on just SQL related topics.

Just like DDD all the speakers are volunteers and the attendees get to vote on the sessions they would like to see.

So if you have any interested in SQL, or as Anders Hejlsberg said at a LINQ session I saw 'if you are a developer who uses data', why not register and vote for what you would like to see.

EGG's Training Program for Cyber Criminals

Robert Hogg — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 14:57:24 +0000

This morning as I was finishing breakfast with the children, I received a call which was an automated call from EGG ( a UK credit card provider ) stating that there had been unusual activity on my credit card. This in itself is not unsurprising as I have just come back from South Korea (see past posts) , the deeply deeply worrying part was the automated call then demanded Security information from me. Some of you may know that I regularly speak on Software and Application Security and more so on How easily people can be manipulated into handing over Secure information and how this can be mitigated. In my opinion the single biggest problem in opening people up to manipulation is large organizations showing users poor security.

Should you go to Korea , Should you do the Imagine Cup

Robert Hogg — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 11:57:31 +0000

The empathic answer to both of these is YES. Several people have commented that after reading my blog they felt that I did not have a great time in Korea with the Imagine Cup, nothing could be further from the truth. It was great , weird but great, I think any down fall in enjoyment ( and there wasn't much ) was entirely down to lack of preparation on my part and so I have included some thoughts on both the Imagine Cup and visiting Korea.

Installing VS2008Beta2 from an ISO

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 11:37:31 +0000

I tried to install Visual Studio Beta 2 from an ISO today using the Virtual CD Rom tool. This mounted the ISO fine as drive Z: but when I ran the setup.exe I got an error that it could not load the SITSetup.dll, even though this was in the ISO.

I copied the contents of the ISO to my physical disk and reran the setup and all was OK, so the tip is mounted ISO don't always work as you expect.

Cannot create a new project in TFS - reporting services problem

Richard Fennell — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 10:29:01 +0000

I tried to create a new TFS team project today and got an error that the TFS server could not access the SQL Reporting Services server. I then checked I could access http://myserver/reports and this also failed. On looking in the event log I saw a number of EventID 107 'cannot connect to the report server database'

Now I was unsure what could have caused this, it was working last time I created a project! So check the update log on the server and found the only patches that had been applied since I last created a project, and that seemed plausible, were Visual Studio 2005 SP1 (which I thought was already on, but maybe it was just VS TFS SP1) and SQL 2005 SP2.

Imagine Cup Days 4 and 5

Robert Hogg — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 16:42:00 +0000

Day 4 was well like a normal day , sleep (some) , food (mostly edible) . we saw some great presentations and had a normal day with out the need to work.

Day 5 started early 8.00 and the Seedlings did 3 hours on the stand as did all of the other competitors, doing the rounds when there is no competition was great as everybody was relaxed and happy.

Andy Sithers was Extra Super Exited to be with us

Korea (Imagine Cup) Days 3 - 78

Robert Hogg — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 14:44:00 +0000

Today was a very bizarre experience. we set off at 8.00am (midnight UK time) in a thunderous downpour to see the sights.

After several uncomfortable days in transit in the bus , we were issues a pastel colored umbrellas and fans! The first visit was to the national museum , much time was taken by the organizers to organizes themselves, reorganizes themselves , double check their organization skills and think about synergies the plan over future events, while we waited on the bus.

Imagine Cup Coverage

Richard Fennell — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:09:00 +0000

If you are reading Robert's blog you will know he is in Korea as the mentor of The Seedings, the UK entry for the Microsoft Imagine Cup.

I have just seen that the is some video coverage on Microsoft's Channel8 (which seems to be a Channel9/10 spin off for the Imaging Cup students).

Enjoy.....

Technorati Tags: Imagine Cup

Getting HTC Phonepad to work on an Orange SPV M700

Black Marble — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 15:58:00 +0000

Some time ago I upgraded my Orange mobile to an M700. It's a very nice phone indeed, and the ability to be able to use TomTom 6 on it as well saves me having to varry around yet another electronic device.

One thing about it did however annoy me - there was no equivalent of the T9 text input that I had on my old phone. I wasn't keen on getting the stylus out to tap away at the tiny keyboard shown on the screen when I wanted to write a text message. I tried getting a copy of HTC phonepad working on the phone, but to no avail.

Korea (Imagine Cup) Day 2

Robert Hogg — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 09:47:00 +0000

And onto Day 2 , the presentation was at 9.00am. it went very very well.

Just after the presentation some of the Argentinean team came over for a chat

During the chat a Mexican film crew came around and started talking about the UK and Argentina , in my deep subconscious all I could hear was one of my school teachers saying just before a school trip to Germany "DONT MENTION THE WAR, BOY" only to hear the word "Malvenas" from the film crew and feel a very tight feeling in my stomach.

Korea (Imagine Cup) Day 1

Robert Hogg — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 09:44:00 +0000

Well here we are Day 1 , it already feels like Thursday.

Set up has gone well , everything is working on the initial pass.

the booth looking nice and tidy

then we filled the booth with some riff-raff

and then the first presentation

The presentation went will, the QandA was a bit hairy more due to tiredness than anything else

Korea (Imagine Cup) Day 0 - Addenda

Robert Hogg — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 09:43:00 +0000

There small set of minor interesting points have happened today so there they are in no order

Coke but not as we know it

the cans are smaller ( 250Ml ) which is just wrong. Taste is well odd, but nice.

General consumption of personal body weights in coke has continued.

One of the nice finds is Grape Fanta - YUM

The W has a rather spiffy wooden mirror ( a camera controlled set of rotating wooden blocks ).

Korea (Imagine Cup) Day 0

Robert Hogg — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 09:41:00 +0000

I am in Korea with the UK Imagine Cup team and I thought a small picture journey would help

here is the team with a rangy stranger in Paris CDG

in Seoul Airport mmmm Noodles

What says Oriental efficiency more than a ride on Mop :)

the chaps on our transport bus ( Luxury ), Jim seems to be having some tummy trouble.

Visual Studio Rosario

Robert Hogg — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 04:25:10 +0000

I think the guys in the VS team have outdone themselves, not only has Visual Studio 2008 beta 2 just been released , BUT the preview of the version of visual studio to follow is now available here. Mine is on its way down :)

Technorati tags: visual studio, visual Studio rosario

Boss on Tour

Robert Hogg — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 04:21:02 +0000

Well after leaving home Friday lunchtime , now Sunday at 11.00am I am in Korea with the Seedlings for the World Wide Final of the Imagine Cup. Tired does not even come close to describing how I feel.

Technorati tags: imagine cup 2007, korea

Design goal met

Richard Fennell — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 08:13:48 +0000

I was watching the Channel 9 video on the Silverlight game Zero Gravity, the developers said that their aim was to produce an addictive game - they certainly succeeded.

This is a great video to watch to get a developers/design view on Silverlight

Technorati Tags: Silverlight

Sysadmin Deep Doo Doo

Robert Hogg — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 11:07:03 +0000

I was out of the office on Friday and a little birdie has just reminded me that I missed partaking in the celebrations that are Sysadmin day. On Sysadmin day legend has it Sysadmin's demand more ego massaging than normal to such an extent that it take days for their swollen egos to return to normal and they can actually fit through the door of the machine room.

I am concerned that my failure to partake could end up with my laptop being exchanged with a commodore pet and my phone replaced with something made of Bakelite, so if all of our Sysadmin's out there are reading this , presents have been ordered and will be with you shortly.

Name Space Collisions

Robert Hogg — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 08:01:25 +0000

We have been suffering some staff problems recently, everybody we hire has a name that is already in use elsewhere in the company. So we have decided to reorganise the Black Marble name space, initial thoughts included post name numbering , but nobody could agree if the numbering base should be zero or one and Richard 0 was not complementary (Rik however liked the idea of being No 2) . The usual list of server/workstation naming suggestions came and went but in the end the solution came when clearing out the freebies cupboard and some of the devs took some old BM Red polo shirts. So next time you are visiting say hello to some of our interns Ensign's Disposable,Expendable and Der Trihs , you will be able to find them crawling around in the Jefferies tubes before being send out as part of a customer landing party.

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 is out

Robert Hogg — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 07:51:58 +0000

Incase you haven't found out already Visual Studio 2008 beta 2 is out for download , ours has just finished downloading and I will update on new features over the next few days.

Technorati tags: Visual Studio

Living with IT Managers

Robert Hogg — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 07:31:26 +0000

Rik sent me this to illustrate the pain of not having a new server within the last week and has suggested that we may need to move to this if his demands of a bi-weekly addition to the server farm is not met.

Technorati tags: Humour

Testing , Testing , 0 , 1 , 10 , 11

Robert Hogg — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 07:23:19 +0000

Well it was bound to happen , we have split my blog posts off on its own. As ever BM Blogger's is the aggregate blog. I feel all alone in a big empty space , no doubt I will fill it up soon.

enjoy.

Technorati tags: Black Marble

Every home should have one

Richard Fennell — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 09:24:56 +0000

Scientific American has a interesting article on a Data Center in a box. Basically it is a standard shipping container full of Sun Servers. I am our our IT manager would like one! it should fit on any house's driveway, a stylish addition to any home.

It is an interesting spin on the old IBM data recovery model where they turned up with a duplicate of your system in a truck in event of a major failure. The key change is it is being sold as a greatly cheaper option than a traditional data center. All it needs is power, a water supply (cooling) and I suppose given our current weather, a location not prone to flooding.

Web development helpers: Redux

Rik Hepworth — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 07:59:00 +0000

After posting yesterday about useful tools for development I stumbled across another little gem of a utility. IE7Pro is much more of a usability-enhancing tool but it has a wonderfully handy tool nestling within - Save Current Tab As Image. If you need to do grabs of pages for documentation or presentations and the page is more than a single screen in length this will transform your life - no more cropping and stitching!

Web development little helpers

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 09:31:00 +0000

As web development gets more and more complex having the right tools to help you figure out what's going on is essential. I thought I'd do a quick post on the ones I find most useful. In no particular order, then, here they are.

Virtual PC
This one is a godsend, because as we all know, running multiple versions of Internet Explorer is hard. VPC, now available as a free download from Microsoft, allows me to run the numerous variants of IE our clients require me to test against.
If you just want IE6, Microsoft have a handy downloadable pre-built VPC:
Download Virtual PC
Download the Internet Explorer Compatibility VPC Image
Firebug for Firefox
Now imitated for other browsers, Firebug is fantastic. A clear and straightforward way to identify the bugs in your pages or styles, it allows you to easily identify which stylesheet rules are being applied and in what order, and to hack 'em on the fly as you test your fixes. Add to that the ability to mangle the page and debug javascript and we have a winner.
Download Firebug
Chris Pederick's Developer Toolbar for Firefox
Even though Firebug is great, I still use Chris Pederick's trusty developer toolbar for enabling and disabling styles, accessing the W3C validator and other stuff. Couldn't live without it, in fact.
Get Developer Toolbar
Nikhil Kothari's Web Development Helper for IE
Broadly offering the same level of information as Firebug, but without the ability to hack on the fly, this is a handy way of seeing what IE is doing with your page under the hood.
Get Web Development Helper
Inspector for Safari (for Windows)
I have a trusty Mac Mini that I use for checking Safari as well, but the advent of Safari for Windows has made my life easier, I must admit. How excited was I, then, to find that you get Inspector working with the Windows version. Again, loads of info about the page, although hacking on the fly. Instructions courtesty of David Barkol's blog. A note - as I write this the latest nightly crashes horribly - I am using the nightly from the 21st June and it works well. At some point I will try later builds but right now a stable platform that I can enable easily and consistently is more important.
Enable Web Inspector for Safari on Windows

I'd love to hear from anybody who uses other cool tools that I may not have come across. I'm particularly interested in these kind of things for Opera.

The World Bank backing Board Games to fight poverty

Black Marble — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 21:42:15 +0000

It may surprise some but I am a huge fan of board games, I feel that they can provide a great social event and some of the newer games produced over the last 10 years, are truly sublime.

However I did not expect to see the World bank trying to fight poverty by producing board games, especially commissioning a game around the subject of street addressing.

In November 2006, they called for game proposals on this topic: “Designing and Developing an Educational Game on Street Addressing.”

SharePoint problems with access rights

Rik Hepworth — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 09:18:00 +0000

I spent a while knocking my head against a problem with a SharePoint server farm that's worth posting about. It's also worth a big hats-off to our Technical Support Coordinator at Microsoft Partner Support who dredged up the article that finally pointed us in the right direction.

The problem

I'll post later about our approach to SharePoint installations, but I'll summarise thus: We create multiple user accounts to the SharePoint services - a db access account, an installation account etc etc. In this instance we were building a three server setup - db server, web server, index server. The accounts were created first, logged in as a domain admin. I also installed SharePoint as the domain admin, but didn't run the config wizard.

How books date

Richard Fennell — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 22:11:25 +0000

I have been having a phase of reading novel's I read years go, this time it is Neuromancer by William Gibson (published 1984). This choice was triggered by it being reviewed on BBC Radio4's A Good Read, the suggestion of Bill Thompson the BBC technology columnist.

I have been surprised by how little it seems to have dated, ok in places the sizes of data streams and the like seem small (how fast capacity moves on), and maybe the way cyberspace is visualized was nearer the mark of today's virtual worlds in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (published 1992) but on the whole it seems just as believable as a remember it being when I first read it. Still a worthwhile enjoyable read that has not aged as so much Sci-Fi does.

TFS Webpart in MOSS2007

Richard Fennell — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 16:17:51 +0000

Introduction

I said I would post again when I had something to show in my TFS WorkItem webparts project, well here it is. I have created a pair of web parts, one to list all the work items and the other to display the details of a given item.

For testing I have create a single ASP.NET 2.0 web page that implements a WebPart manager. This needs to be setup to allow connection between the two WebParts. Note: if you use this sample you will probably have to recreate the connection between the web parts on the test page. Click the edit option (dropdown at top right) for either WebPart and use the connect option. When running it should look like this.

Empty Reports with the eScrum Template

Richard Fennell — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 12:40:09 +0000

After I installed the eScrum template everything seemed fine bar the reports, only the work item report showed anything, in fact on the other reports their parameter combo boxes were empty. The key difference is the workitem report is drawn form the SQL DBs, while all the other reports are drawn from the OLAP warehouse cube.

If you connect to the SQL server and run the command

select * from dbo._WarehouseConfig where id in ('LastPRocessTimeStamp','RunIntervalSeconds')

Losing all files when moving a project in TFS Source Control

Richard Fennell — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 12:17:21 +0000

Problem

Today I tried to move VS2005 solution in TFS source control from one Source Control location to another (on the same server) as I had put it in a stupid location to start with.

So I unbound the source control (File -> Source Control -> Change Source Control) and then went into Source Control Explorer and deleted the directory and then committed the pending delete. This removed the files in the source control BUT ALSO the local ones on my disk, due to the workspace mapping. This was not what I expected, you use source control so you always have copy, a safety net, I had just lost all of my copies by using source control!

Another stupid way to waste an hour or two.....

Richard Fennell — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 08:53:57 +0000

When developing SharePoint add-in try to remember if you put a previous version of the DLL in the GAC or not. I have just wasted a couple of hours trying to work out why a new version of a DLL is not being read from a site collection's bin directory, when there was an old version in the GAC.

Of course this would not have been an issue if I had been checking the version number properly! A good argument for pair programming to avoid these stupid blind spots

First thoughts on using the TFS API inside Sharepoint 2007

Richard Fennell — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 21:46:00 +0000

I have been looking at writing some SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) web parts to show information about TFS workitems. This turned out to be a bit more complex than expected.

I wrote a ASP.NET 2.0 webpart using the TFS WorkItem Tracking Web Project on Codeporject as a starting point. My first WebPart just listed workitems in a project. This went OK and the webpart worked fine in a simple ASP.NET Web Part Manager based test page.

Vista Media Center problems and a solution

Black Marble — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 11:25:00 +0000

I've been meaning to build a Media Center PC for a while and have finally bitten the bullet and bought some components to add to a fairly old socket A Shuttle, which I happened to have lurking around. I bought a Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1300 TV card and an ATI X1550 AGP graphics card to add to the machine, along with a copy of Vista Home Premium to provide me with Media Center.

Good pointer to DNR TV from Colin @ DDD5

Richard Fennell — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 10:42:09 +0000

I have just watched the Dot Net Rocks TV Show that Colin Mackay recommended during his DDD5 session on Mock Objects (and posted about in his blog).

I cannot agree more that it is great practical intro to using the Model/View/Presenter pattern, easy to follow and not getting bogged down as is so often the case with anything on patterns.

I must get round to watching more on DNR TV, I listen to to the DNR Radio Podcats regularly but subjects like this are far easier understand when you see the code. However between DNR Radio, DNR TV, Channel 9, MSDN TV etc. and wanting some form of home life I am not sure how I will find the time.

DDD5, thoughts the day after...........

Richard Fennell — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 19:30:22 +0000

After not really enough sleep it seems a good time reflect on DDD5.

My session

I felt my session went well, and the initial feedback was good. It is always good to be asked question all day about your session, proves it got people thinking; I certainly learnt a few tricks for TFS from these conversations.

A common question I got was 'I am using Product XYZ should a change to TFS?'. To this my answer is always a question 'Does your system, whether off the shelf or home grown work for you?' If it does then don't rush to change it. Certainly look at TFS and see if it is better solution for your project needs - if it is not don't change to TFS. If you don't a working system to manage software development certainly look at TFS, or anything for that matter. Good software only comes out of a structured process, whether the process is Agile or Formal in style all the team must know what it is and adhere to it.

DDD5 Presentation - Team Foundation Server

Richard Fennell — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 22:35:25 +0000

I have just got back home from today's DDD5 conference. Time for some more considered posting later, it has been a long day, but I thought I would get my slide stack up as quick as I could. You can find the Power Point stack (with the speaker notes included) at http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/SectionDisplay.aspx?name=Publications&subsection=Conference Papers, along with previous DDD presentation.

Thanks to everyone who attended my session, I look forward to hearing some feedback, but now some sleep I as up at 5am......

eScrum 1.0

Richard Fennell — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 21:23:38 +0000

I have been looking at eScrum and first impressions are good. This is not the first Scrum process template for TFS, there is also the one from Conchango.

My feeling over the Conchango one was that it seemed very like the standard MSF Agile template, more a terminology rename. Hence it felt a bit 'clunky' to use and not too agile. Sticking to a 'post-it notes on a white board' model seemed a better way to manage a Scrum sprint.

Attrice Team Foundation Sidekicks and Teamplain on TFS Orcas release

Richard Fennell — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 12:22:32 +0000

If you want to install TFS add-ins, such as Attrice Team Foundation Sidekicks and Teamplain, on the TFS Orcas release you have to install the TFS V8 Client (the one which is shipped with Team Foundation Server 2005). If you don't have this version both products fails to start/install as they claim they cannot find the correct assemblies.

Once you have installed the V8 client (as well as the Orcas V9 ones) both products work fine with Orcas.

Visual Studio 2008

Black Marble — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 17:22:27 +0000

Well it is out (the name at least) thanks to Daniel Moth a DPE here in the UK. I haven't heard the information else where but Daniel is very reliable. it must be said that everybody had already guessed , but it is nice to know.

Technorati tags: Orcas, Visual Studio

DDD5 is full

Richard Fennell — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 20:07:27 +0000

It seems that DDD5 was full within a few hours of registration being opened.

DDD5 Registration has opened

Richard Fennell — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 20:29:20 +0000

DDD5 Registration has opened, register fast the DDD events fill up fast.

A New Version of Live Writer is out

Black Marble — Thu, 31 May 2007 06:04:06 +0000

For any of you out there currently using Live Writer, check out the New Version. If you aren't using Live Writer for blogging , I would recommend you at least look at it.

Some of the nice features

Direct Add a Plugin ( there are some great code formatting ones )

Inline spell checking ( a must for me )

it supports Sharepoint

Snazzy new look and feel ( it now has one )

DDD5 Agenda

Richard Fennell — Wed, 30 May 2007 14:44:32 +0000

I see the agenda for DDD5 is up, thanks to everyone who voted for my session on TFS.

I better write it now!

Correct cleaning method for Corsair Flash Voyager USB Stick

Richard Fennell — Tue, 22 May 2007 21:00:32 +0000

I can confirm that putting a Corsair Flash Voyager USB Stick in 40C Mixed Cotton wash is not the best way to clean it of old data. A traditional format remains the best solution for dirty data.

However, it does show these rubberized USB sticks are tough, two hours in a washing mean seems to have done no harm. Also the new orange colored moels are fast enough for Vista TurboFlash usage.

New Office

Black Marble — Sat, 19 May 2007 21:44:21 +0000

Black Marble has moved to bigger offices, don't worry we are in the same building so we are easy to find. The building management company has refurbished the conference center for us. The new offices are three times bigger than the old ones and wait for it , we are nearly full again :)

Rik , Richard and Andy had a fun packed day of server moving and other nice adminy type things in preparation of Rik spending more of my money on more servers ( I think he eats them or something , we always need a new one ).

Updating firmware on SPV M3100 (HTC TyTN)

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 14 May 2007 09:21:00 +0000

Still no Windows Mobile 6 update for my Orange SPV M3100, but they did release an update to WM5 recently.

Installing said update turned out to be slightly trickier than I expected. I don't know if anybody else has experienced the same problem, but a word to the wise - don't try the update on Windows Vista!

The first part works OK - it connects to the device and interrogates it, but when it actually tries to connect and download the new firmware it fails.

Great session on TDD

Richard Fennell — Fri, 11 May 2007 20:00:42 +0000

Went to a great session last night at the Yorkshire Extreme Programming Club, a intro to Test Driven Development using just Excel. The presentation was given by Clarke Ching, you can find out more about him and this presentation on his blog

I just had not occurred to me that Excel is a great way to show TDD principles to people who are not developers, such as project managers and business analysts. It is interesting how using TDD, refactoring and pair programming (well the whole room actually) anyone can see how to get a complex business requirement to elegant code in nice easy steps.

Security Mini Tour

Black Marble — Mon, 07 May 2007 22:07:25 +0000

I have finished a mini 3 day tour of York , Hull and Manchester Universities with Ed Gibson Microsoft's Chief Security Advisor (CSA) for the UK. I was the opening act for Ed and provided the context for his talk, hopefully we will be revising the event in the Autumn for other universities as well as a Secure coding event for the universities that we have already visited. The reaction from the audiences was great and I think that in most case people got a lot more than the bargained for and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

Murder most not here

Black Marble — Mon, 07 May 2007 21:52:18 +0000

I have just watched an episode of "Lewis" with Caitlin and she was getting quite concerned that a murder hadn't occurred within the first few minutes and I started to speculate on the formula for occurrence of deaths in detective dramas. Having had some thought, the area around Midsummer seems to have a shocking body count followed by Morse, with Lewis topping up the Oxford and Thames valley body count. Although for awhile we did have a problem in the Leeds area with frost but that seems to have cleared up now.

Speaking at the .NET Developers Network

Richard Fennell — Mon, 07 May 2007 15:08:22 +0000

On Wednesday 19th of September I will be speaking at an evening event organised by Guy Smith-Ferrier of the .NET Developers Network in Bristol. The session will be on Microsoft Team Foundation Server.

For full details have a look at http://www.dotnetdevnet.com/Meetings/tabid/54/EntryID/7/Default.aspx

FEST07

Richard Fennell — Mon, 07 May 2007 15:02:35 +0000

Just got my reminder for NxtGen's FEST07 conference which is at Microsoft TVP on the 23rd of May.

Unfortunately, due to a busy diary, I cannot make it to the event, but the speaker line up does look good. If you have never seen Rafal Lukawiecki speak, who has topped the polls at TechEd for the last 7 years, this is your chance.

To quote Dave McMahon, one of the NxtGen organizers:

Accessing Virtual Server via VMRC through a ISA firewall with Vista

Richard Fennell — Thu, 03 May 2007 11:30:00 +0000

The problem

We have had an insteresting problem, we have a Virtual Server 2007 R2 (Beta), this is accessed both internally on our company network and externally via a ISA 2006 on the Internet. This has been working fine with our XP PCs, but we saw problems when we tried to use Vista.

When on our LAN, the Vista PC was fine, you could connect to the Virtual Server console web page and VMRC to any VPC. We had set our domain *.blackmarble.co.uk as the local intranet in IE security so we were not prompted for for repeated logins.

Installing SQL2005 SP2 on Vista

Richard Fennell — Thu, 03 May 2007 11:19:34 +0000

We have been having fun installing SQL2005 Developer Edition on Vista PCs with Reporting Services, you need the SP2 for Vista, but installation of this kept stalling with authentication problems.

Turns out this is the process to follow:

Do a default Install SQL 2005 Dev. Edition
Run the Reporting Service Configuration Tools, make sure that the Reporting Services Process is started.
Make sure the new SQL service has also be started (via control panel)
Run the SP2 package, we were having problems on the login verification page, it said we could not authenticate the Reporting Services login until we had done steps 2 and 3.

Vote early vote oftan....

Richard Fennell — Tue, 01 May 2007 11:07:59 +0000

The voting for the sessions at DDD5 is now open. Have a good read of the options and vote for what you would like to see sessions on.

Of course I would not be suggesting you should vote for mine, but...............

Interesting TFS discussion

Richard Fennell — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:29:02 +0000

Ayende Rahien and Roy Osherove have been having an interesting ping-pong about the merits and problems of TFS.

Well worth a read....

Analysis tools not to be without

Richard Fennell — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 20:58:34 +0000

Maybe it is just my background in network analysis, but I do feel any developer working with remote servers needs a protocol analyzer; in just the same way as you need the SQL profiler when working with a Microsoft SQL server, especially with auto generated code. Without tools like these how can you work out what is actually being sent on the wire? And if the data on the wire is wrong what hope is there for higher levels in the application|

Update on my old Dell

Richard Fennell — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 11:33:18 +0000

I posted in the past about all the problems I had with my overheating Dell 5150, and with the problems trying to Vista Betas working on it. Well an update on both....

After putting new thermal grease on the CPU heatskin it never overheated again
With the release version of Vista every bit of hardware (bar the modem which I quickly found a driver for) was detected and worked first time and I have seen no problems with the PC since.

So I have a healthy, three year old laptop running Vista with the Aero interface (and the 5150 does have a nice high res. screen) perfectly adequately.

Who stole Microsoft Marketing and where are they?

Black Marble — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:24:43 +0000

Microsoft marketing have as of today vanished and are presumed missing. They normally show themselves sometime at the end of the product cycle to replace cool and interesting project names with irrelevant and confusing messages about the product. Without the Microsoft marketing department's intervention a large proportion of the work I do explaining the Microsoft developer story might not be needed.

So what is the evidence that these mysterious people and oft not seen people, In the last year great products Avalon became WPF , Indigo became WCF , WF became WF (mmm) , Longhorn became Vista. So Soma (VP Developer Division at Microsoft) announced that WPF/e ( WPF everywhere ) is going to be called wait for it , wait for it Silverlight,

Follow up on our nVidia RAID problems

Richard Fennell — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 17:03:14 +0000

I had posted on problems with the nVidia Raid on our SunFire servers. Well I think I now have the root cause of the problems: not the Sun hardware, the nVidia RAID, or Windows 64 bit drivers.

All the problems we had were when we used mirrored pairs of Western Digital 500Gb SATA drives that we had bought in a single batch of four drives. Identical drives bought on another day were fine, as were 500Gb drives from Maxtor and Hitachi.

What happened to the idealists?

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 13:20:00 +0000

Douglas Coupland's Jpod has been doing the rounds in the office of late. I enjoyed MicroSerfs, so approached Jpod with excitement.

Frankly, I'm disappointed.

It's not the writing - I 've enjoyed pretty much all of his books. It's not that the books are similar in approach and style (they are) but rather the contrast in the lives of the characters.

Overall, MicroSerfs was optimistic. The characters in the book were using their talent to make the world a better place. The technology in Jpod is cynically created to make the most money. I finished MicroSerfs feeling good about what I do for a living; I'm stuggling through Jpod as it slowly destroys that feeling.

Analysing Active Directory

Rik Hepworth — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 12:56:00 +0000

I think I've mentioned before how I've been updating our IT infrastructure. Company growth has meant a need for expanded services. Add to that new versions of SharePoint and Exchange, mix in a need to run virtual servers for development and you have a need for more tin.

Over the past six months I've expanded our domain to keep pace with our growing needs. The number of physical servers we have has increased, with a few more virtual servers for specific roles that I prefer to keep separate but which don't really merit their own box.

An extreme hour

Richard Fennell — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 20:35:20 +0000

I went to the Yorkshire Extreme Programming Club last night, the meeting included an Extreme Hour. An interesting experience; the idea is that in an hour you go through a number of 10 minute XP iterations, doing 'development' by drawing the solution on a white board.

Yesterday we had three separate groups of six; each with two customer, two developers (pair programming i.e. with one pen) and two QA/testers, and all had to design moon cheese harvesting solutions.

When the server just stops

Richard Fennell — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:37:52 +0000

Today I rebuilt a PC with new drives and all seemed OK, but after 15 minutes or so it kept stopping (no nice shutdown), irrespective of what the PC was doing. I even swapped back the old disks all to no avail, hence I was stumped for a while.

The problem turned out to be it was a somewhat full case and a wire was stopping the system fan turning, so the CPU was going into thermal shutdown and leaving no event log messages. Also the motherboard was not complaining as the am was still drawing current.

Before you ask...

Richard Fennell — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 10:45:15 +0000

The photo I have added to my blog's header is me at the Ripon Triathlon

SQL Server 2005 Books Online Scoped Search

Black Marble — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 21:16:45 +0000

Thanks to Kimberly Tripp for pointing this out. Always nice to have the latest version of the SQL Server books online and the link below allows a "live" search format for accessing content. Using IE7 you can also add the online books as a search provider.

SQL Server Books Online Scoped Search

Problems removing McAfee ProtectionPoint 1.5.0 Agent

Richard Fennell — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 21:09:00 +0000

When your try to remove the McAfee ProtectionPilot 1.5.0 agent using the command

frminst /remove=agent

you get an error "can't stop service mcafeeframework" if you are using VirusScan 8.5.

This is because VirusScan 8.5 has a new option under Access Protection that stops the McAfee services being stopped. So if you want to remove the agent you first have to go into the VirusScan Console and on the access protection properties page uncheck the Proect McAfee Services, then disable Access Protection for good measure. Then run the remove command andall should be OK

Microsoft in SCIAM

Richard Fennell — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 10:52:51 +0000

There seems to be a good deal of Microsoft stuff over the past few editions of Scientific American (SCIAM), and before you ask yes I do live in the UK, but I find Nature a bit too academic for me and New Scientist has too many job adverts. SCIAM is just 'popular' science enough to read over breakfast.

The March edition has two such articles, but not on mainstream Microsoft products:

One is on the Microsoft Theory Group of Microsoft Research and is called Graph Theory and Teatime. This looks at the team of top flight mathematicians choosing to work at Microsoft Research, as opposed to a more traditional career in academia, in much the same way as AT&T Bell labs operated in the past.
The other on Digital Life, the current research and possibilities of using computers as external memory. It is written by Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell again of Microsoft Research who are working on the www.mylifebits.com research project. Raises some interesting issues of security and archiving.

Both of these are every interesting and I think still available free on the web via the links above. I think they show a move by Microsoft to make their more academic and blue sky research known to the general public (or at least the ones who read pop science magazines!)

WOW what a week

Black Marble — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 23:30:50 +0000

Well , I could not have predicted the last week. A great event on Thursday on Sharepoint , hot foot to the train station on the way to see my students compete in the UK Imagine cup. But I was in Linda's car and the Cam shaft decided to make a break for it out of the top of the engine. Thanks to the lovely AA I still managed to make it to the train station and catch the following train.

MVP

Black Marble — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 23:06:53 +0000

First a criticism of Microsoft , why oh why oh why do Microsoft send out the notifications about the MVP awards on April fools day. It's not like I would suspect foul play from the guys in the office but ....

More importantly a heap of thanks to the nice people at Microsoft for awarding me an MVP and even more thanks to the people who have supported me by nominating me for MVP

DDD5 Submissions

Richard Fennell — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 15:26:40 +0000

In case you missed it, you can now make submissions for presentation slots at DDD5.

Even if you don't want to present, keep an eye on the site for a chance to vote on what you would like to see and to register as an attendee.

And another point on TeamPlain

Richard Fennell — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 20:26:33 +0000

I just realised that TeamPlain also makes external access easier for remote users outside your firewall. The problem with external access to TFS from VS Team Studio is that you have to open up the TFS server and the associated WSS 2.0 server ports in your firewall. Not a major issue but opening ports is something you want to minimise, or at least your firewall manager will want to minimise.

Imagine Cup Success for Black Marble-Mentored Seedlings from Hull

Black Marble — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 15:19:00 +0000

More detail will follow, but great news just in from Reading!

The Seedlings, a team of students from Hull University, mentored by Black Marble's Robert Hogg, have just won the UK leg of the Imagine Cup, and are on their way to Korea later in the year! The entry, a program to teach children to progam, MyFPL (My First Programming Language), wowed the judges.

The Seedlings are: James Alexander, Michelle Goddard, Matthew Steele & Matthew Steeples.

Wow... TeamPlain is easy to install

Richard Fennell — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 10:03:41 +0000

As I am sure you have seen Microsoft have purchased devBiz and made their TeamPlain product free to all TFS customers. I have just installed the new free release of TeamPlain on our TFS system and I must say what a pleasant experience it was; run the MSI answering a few questions, go into the newly created TeamPlain admin web page, enter the URL of the TFS server and that's it. Really easy and it just works. Compared to the the fun I have had with other bits of TFS this is joy.

Moving Microsoft CRM 3.0

Richard Fennell — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 11:14:04 +0000

I had to move our CRM install this week to new hardware, and I had expected it to be a nasty job. However it turned out to be straight forward, though it is really hard to find any useful Microsoft Dynamics CRM documentation beyond the basic manuals. Why do the Dynamics team make it so hard to find things out?

Anyway these are the steps to follow:

To move the database (got this process from a Microsoft Knowledgebase document on setting up SQL clustering for CRM)

Changing TFS user account passwords

Richard Fennell — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 13:14:38 +0000

If you change the domaintfsservice and/or the domaintfsreports as you would expect your TFS server to stop, and it does. To get it back working you have to reset the passwords in:

The various TFS AppPools on the frontend server need the new tfsservice password
The datasource in ([frontendserver]/reports) on the reporting services need the new tfsreports password.

After that all should be OK

Shame it is at TVP

Richard Fennell — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 15:19:01 +0000

When I heard the NxtGenUG were putting on a day conference Fest 07 on the 23rd May, I had assumed it might be in the midlands, as that is where their user groups are based. However it is at Microsoft TVP in Reading - yet another trek south, does nothing other than an occasional MSDN/TechNet road shows come further north than the M4 corridor? other than our Black Marble events of course!

This said the line up of speakers looks great and well worth the trip.

Swapping from Nvidia RAID to Software mirroring on a SunFire x2100

Richard Fennell — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 14:55:37 +0000

Our SunFire x2100 application servers, running Windows 2003 R2, are configured with Nvidia RAID system (built into the motherboard) to mirror the pair of SATA drives in each servers. Two of these servers keeps losing the mirrors, but a third, and a SunFire x2200, do not. When this happens Windows hanging - not good in a server.

We have had a support call open with Sun and swapped bits of hardware, but it keeps happening. During the support calls we discovered that the Nvidia RAID is not true hardware, but a 'software trick'. So not a great step up from letting Windows do the mirroring itself.

My Presentation at the Extreme Programming Club

Richard Fennell — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 16:10:54 +0000

I did my presentation on Scrum last night for the Extreme programming club in Leeds, seemed to go down well. A lively discussion was had on Scrum and a whole bunch of agile issues. If anyone has questions post them on the club forum.

The next meeting on 12th of April an Extreme Hour, an audience participation event on doing an XP project in a an hour - sounds interesting.

Tech Fest 07

Black Marble — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 21:39:16 +0000

I have just been watching the Tech Fest 07 Keynote with my eldest daughter and Microsoft Research has been doing some really cool things. The world wide telescope was noted with some interest and I suspect we will be looking at it further. I could be wrong but it looks like our old friend Robert Scoble 33:16 into the video.

Some of you know about my passion to help people learn how to program , Boku a robot to help teaching children was a very nice step and I will be looking at it to see how it can help the work we are involved with.

At last a working Vista replacement for XP Media Center PC

Richard Fennell — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 21:38:30 +0000

I decided to completely rebuild my media center PC as I was making no progress on the problems I had discussed in my previous post.

I dropped in a new hard disk as drive C: (leaving in my old one to allow me to copy data off) and installed Vista Ultimate, no problems there. It did not find drivers for my ASUS motherboard SoundMax card or for my Hauppauge Nova T 500.

Acer 8200 , Vista and support from Acer

Black Marble — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 18:22:19 +0000

Black Marble has standardised on Acer for our notebooks and in general we have been very very pleased. They are powerful , cost effective and nice to use. The only problem that has occurred in the last few months is that my 8200 ( 8204 ) had a cosmetic fault ( the lid had delaminated ) , this was dealt with quite quickly but the unit returned with in 2 weeks came with a fault with the graphics sub system. The second repair took over 6 weeks. Luckily we always keep the last generation of our equipment as emergency backup , interestingly on my old c300 tablet under Vista I was able to work with visual studio 2005 quite effectively where as under XP there was only two chances , no chance and neh ( need to add Iain's border's accent to make this work) chance.

Visual Studio "Orcas" and Beyond

Black Marble — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 18:14:05 +0000

Until recently there has been little or no information about Orcas unless you are actively looking , what has been noticeable over the last few weeks is that the DPE crowd at Microsoft in the UK and PM's from corp have been blogging more and more prolifically. Last month is did a brief overview of Orcas and the rest of the current developer technologies , my feeling from the preparation for the talk is there is enough of a "Message" to get out to the developer domain about Vista and .NET 3.0 and so talking futures as well was a step to much.

Speaking on Scrum

Richard Fennell — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 17:49:58 +0000

I will be speaking about Scrum at the second Yorkshire Extreme Programming Club meeting next Thursday 8th March at the Victoria Hotel in Leeds.

So if you are interested in a quick introduction to Scrum, or just want to meet other developers in the Yorkshire region interested in Agile methods come along.

Start ++

Black Marble — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 22:43:01 +0000

For a long time ( my time with XP ) , I have used Baden Slick Run to run commands using the keyboard. For those not familiar with Slick Run you set it up point at application assign a quick name and when you press the windows key + Q , type the quick name and the app starts ( with all appropriate command line params as needed ). There is a new version of Slick Run which runs on vista and a newer version written in .NET ( I knew these guys had good taste ) , but recently Brandon Paddock who is a SDE/T on the search team at Microsoft has released Start ++ which allows you add short cuts to the instant search box ( windows key and type ) such as devenv :). While Slick Run has point at running app and lots of well thought out UI parts which make it rock , the integration of Start ++ to windows is top and it has the most important feature a check box to allow you to run the application elevated ( devenv ). Now if Baden and Start ++ could merge :)

.NET Micro Framework

Black Marble — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 00:31:19 +0000

The .NET micro framework is now available .NET Microframework , the MF adds a new project type to Visual Studio. the first thing I noticed is that the name space for the libraries is Microsoft.SPOT , SPOT was the original name of the MF. I would expect this to change before release.

I think any desktop developer and possibly even compact framework developer will have quite a shock at the level of work needed as the amount of support in the Micro Framework ( the name gives it away as to how large the supported libraries are ) , is small but perfectly formed, but there is no UI design surface in Visual Studio and there is work needed to be done by the programmer which traditionally the .NET framework would have done.

RESTafarians

Black Marble — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 00:15:12 +0000

I have been spelunking through a pile of documentation on Sharepoint and came across a comment that people who follow the priciples of REST (Representational State Transfer) are referred to as RESTful or for the more extreem RESTafarians. As this seems to be the case I wonder if someone who advoates SOAP is SOAPful or more likely CLEAN :)

X2100 IPMI Redux - success!

Rik Hepworth — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 14:38:00 +0000

In hindsight I should have thought of it, but even if I had, others got there first.

You may remember my problems with IPMI on our X2100 servers from an earlier posting. Today I had cause to revisit the matter, as we're having terrible issues with the Nvidia RAID on one of our servers.

The lack of a Windows version of IPMItool is still a pain, but I am leagues closer to a usable solution now, thanks to Cygwin. The solution, it turns out, whilst somewhat laborious, is fairly straightforward. Simply build IPMItool under cygwin. Result!

Virtual PC 2007 out

Black Marble — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 06:28:43 +0000

I am a big fan of virtualisation and it as a concept has changed development practices so I am pleased that Virtual PC 2007 is out and FREE , get it and install it.

Virtual PC 2007 32/64 bit

enjoy

Windows Home Server - something for my father

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 10:06:00 +0000

On Saturday I got the email telling me that I'd been accepted onto the Home Server Beta 2. I'm excited about this product in a way that I haven't been about new software solutions for a while.

I've taken part in beta programmes before. I've been around a while, and as an IT pro you get desensitised after a while. Vista has some innovative features, but it's evolutionm, not revolution.

Vista Upgrade - attempts 4, success 0

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 09:49:00 +0000

I have yet to succeed in upgrading from Windows XP to Windows Vista. Each time it runs through to the completing upgrade phase, gets about halfway through that bit whereupon I get stuck in a reboot cycle.

I have tried this now on three separate machines and two different installed partitions on one of them.

Two of the machines were Shuttle SN25G2 SFF boxes with Nforce 2 motherboards and the onboard nforce 2 (basically a geforce 2) video.

Yorkshire XP Club

Richard Fennell — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 21:48:42 +0000

The new Yorkshire Extreme Programing Club seems to be getting off to a good start. The first meeting was well attended and there is activity on the message board.

Take a look at http://www.extremeprogrammingclub.com/

Microsoft SQL 2005 starts then stops with 3414 error

Richard Fennell — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 13:05:05 +0000

I recently had one of our Windows 2003 server lose it's disk mirrors and locked up. When it was restarted it has two (virtually idenitical) drives C: and E:. It booted off the primary mirror disk (C:) and all seemed OK except SQL.

I also tried booting off the secondary mirror (E:) but this would not boot (this drive it turns out had some bad blocks).

So I went back to the primary disk. The actual problems was SQL server started but then stopped after a few seconds, the Windows error log showed the unhelpful 3414 error. I google for this, but all that was mentioned was issues with DTC, but this did not relavent as we not use distributed transactions. There was nothing else on the web of note.

When installing Cassini why do I always forget this?

Richard Fennell — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 10:47:31 +0000

If installing the Cassini Personal Server on a PC you will often get the "Cassini managed web server failed to start listening to port 80. Possible conflict with another web server on the same port." error.

You of course think this is a firewall, other web server or anti virus port blocker problems

IT IS NOT!

Ok it might be those problems as well but usually it is that you need to run

SharePoint 2007 on x64 - don't try to run 32-bit web apps!

Rik Hepworth — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 13:15:00 +0000

We're slowly migrating services onto our new servers here at Black Marble. This morning we had one of those moments where significant amounts of wall kicking and teeth gnashing ensue.

Basically, we forgot that if you enable 32-bit .net support on IIS 6 it disables 64-bit support - you can't run 32 bit and 64 bit apps concurrently.

We spent a long time the other week getting our release version of SharePoint 2007 installed on one of our shiny Sun X2100 x64 servers. We expect the site to be quite large, so it made sense to run the x64 version of SharePoint.

Moving Community Server

Richard Fennell — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 16:49:58 +0000

Today I moved this blog server from an old server to our nice shinny new ones. This meant splitting it so the DB to the dedicated SQL server and the front end to the new web server box. This cause a few problems.

The actual move was fine, just back and restore the DB and copy over the ASP.NET web contents. I then edited the web.config to point at the new server and had some problems, some expect some not.

Resources for Rob Miles XNA Games Development Presentation.

Black Marble — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 09:04:01 +0000

Yesterday Rob Miles of Hull University gave his very interesting presentation on XNA and the Future of Game Development - Rob Miles as the community part of our day of events in Leeds.

All the samples and demo's Rob used can be found on his Blog, the XNA specific area is http://www.robmiles.com/xna. This is also a greate resouce for XNA in general.

It was great to see a wide range of attendees at this evening event. I for one are keen to hear what sort of subjects people would like to hear about at these community events? It seem XNA was right on the nail.

More on TFS Access from the Internet

Richard Fennell — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 23:17:47 +0000

Time for a bit of a follow up on my server name issues with TFS. As expected there is correct way to alter the names of the various TFS servers, it involves editing the contents of one of the TFS database tables, not any config file.

The best documentation I have found is that for setting up the new ISAPI filter provided with TFS Service Pack 1 to assist in authentication. Have a look at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/aa833872(... the section ISAPI does detail how to alter the names in various locations.

New Agile user group in Leeds

Richard Fennell — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 15:06:13 +0000

I got the West Yorkshire British Computer Society branch news letter today and I saw there is an extreme programming club being set up locally, the first meeting is in Leeds on Thur 8th Feb at Victoria Hotel, Great George St at 7pm. You can find the blog for the group at http://extremeprogrammingclub.blogspot.com/

I think this is great news, the DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper series of events that I have presented at have shown there is an appetite for community events, so lets hope there is enough interest to get this local group going. I for will will be attending.

Well that almost worked

Richard Fennell — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 17:13:10 +0000

My plan for editing the local copy of the RegProxyFileCache.xml to change the name of the TFS server is OK until you restart the system.

I need to look further into this......

XNA and the Future of Game Development - Rob Miles

Black Marble — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 21:59:00 +0000

Black Marble are pleased to be hosting this evening event on 31 January.

XNA represents a major milestone in the field of game development,bringing game creators a unified platform and the safety of managedcode. It also greatly reduces the difficulties faced when starting outin game development, closing the gap between idea and workingimplementation. The recent release of XNA Express gives programmers achance to get to grips with the XNA framework and use it to createcontent for both the PC and the XBOX 360.Beginning with an overview ofthe XNA platform and the XNA Express development tools, this demo packedpresentation then moves into the 'nitty gritty' of game developmentusing XNA, leading to a fully realised casual game running on an XBOX360. Whether you are a seasoned games coder, or a programmer thinking ofmoving into game development this session will give you plenty of foodfor thought and information to get you started.

Microsoft Developer Launch on the Road coming to Black Marble

Black Marble — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 21:56:00 +0000

Our annual Technical Update events are running on January 31 but this time, our Technical Update for Developers is changing ... it is now including Martin Parry, a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft.

The Developer Evangelists for Microsoft are taking the developer launch for Office 2007 and Vista on the road in the next few weeks and are now including our Technical Update for Developers in their schedule.

Martin Parry, one of the Developer Evangelists will be speaking for the majority of the afternoon, covering .NET framework 3, programming with the ribbon in Office 2007 and advances in presentation, reliability and security in Vista.

2 Day Advanced ASP.NET Security Course from NxtGenUG

Black Marble — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 21:47:00 +0000

NxtGenUG and Dinis Cruz are running 2 day residential courses on Advanced ASP.NET Security training including such topics as Security Principles, .NET Framework Architecture, Threat Modeling, Discovering Vulnerabilities, Penetration Testing Techniques and Secure Coding Techniques.

Those of you who attended the Ed Gibson - On the Road event will be familiar with Dinis, he is totally passionate and committed about his subject.

Linda

Lets just rename that Team Foundation Server................

Richard Fennell — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 18:21:51 +0000

I have previously posted on the fun I had getting TFS running in our office. Well thus far it has been stable, other than some 'user too stupid' errors, and we have been fairly happy.

The next stage was to expose the TFS server out through our firewall to allow home working. This turned out to not be too bad (expect some posts on our experiences with ISA server soon) but raised an interesting issue.

Time to revisit Microserfs

Richard Fennell — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 17:32:53 +0000

I was given a copy of JPod by Douglas Coupland for Christmas, now I will not be adding anything to the range of reviews to say it is very much Microserf V2.0 - similar story but it is just that people seem not to work as hard (but are still in the office as they have little life outside work) and the strange things that occur to them are very strange indeed. In Microserf you could believe it could happen, but JPod, well it is going a bit far. Also I agree with the comments that this book it is rather self referential.

Update on Virtual Server

Richard Fennell — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 14:18:43 +0000

Yesterday I posted about problems with accessing remotely the Virtual PCs from the Virtual Server console. It turns out the problem was domain name related. We had a different name on the internal DNS to that on the external side.

In effect the server was trying to call:

vmrc://virtualserver.mydomain.co.uk:5900/my pc

when we should have been calling

vmrc://virtualserver-external.mydomain.co.uk:5900/my pc

even though we had actually accessed the system via

http://virtualserver-external.mydomain.co.uk

This has been fixed by getting all our DNS entries in line.

Accessing Virtual Server via an ISA server

Richard Fennell — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 23:24:07 +0000

We have been moving over to ISA Server to allow better management of internet resources, one problem we have had is publishing our Virtual Server so our tele-workers can get remote access to the test systems.

The ISA application publish rule works fine to allow access to the main Virtual Server console page (can create, start stop PC etc) but if you click on a Virtual PC you get a no connection screen, so you cannot actually use the Virtual PC.

Opening of a new blog

Richard Fennell — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 21:50:00 +0000

As Black Marble is growing we have decided to split out our individual blogs, hence the opening of 'But it works on my PC!'.

BM Bloggers will remain an aggregate of all the various sub blogs, which will grow in number over time.

Coming out of sleep mode in Vista

Black Marble — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 13:02:55 +0000

I have been fiddling a bit more on my Vista media center PC and I thought I had a solution to the sleep issues I previously posted about

USB Power

Asus (and I think many other brands of motherboard) default the USB ports to have no power during S3 sleep mode - to save power. This means that you cannot use a USB device to trigger wake up by default. For my Media Center PC (with no PS2 input devices) this meant I had no effective way to trigger a restart, bar the buttons on the case. Even when I used the main power button it seemed that on restart/wake-up there was still no power sent to the USB devices until they were unplugged and plugged back in.

Vista media center update

Black Marble — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 17:35:03 +0000

In my last post I covered my woes with my upgrade from XP MCE to Vista Ultimate. Well here is an update......

After contacting Hauppauge I could not get a date for a HVR 1100 Vista driver. I managed to wait a week with my reduced set of digital channels (less than on analogue!) but could not put up with it any longer; so I decide to buy a new tuner card.

Feel my Vista pain.......

Black Marble — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 17:58:47 +0000

I have posted in the past on getting my XP Media Center PC running - not really a product for the novice. So it was with high hopes I decided to upgraded to Vista - Media Center functionality is now standard, it must be easier!

The initial update was fine, I ran the upgrade advisor and it told me to remove Nero and Mcafee which I did, it then took about an hour, but asked no real questions after the license key. It seemed to pick up my old XP settings OK, it then got a few newer drivers from Microsoft update site and I thought great it has all worked.

So now I am certified!

Black Marble — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 20:40:08 +0000

I am now a certified Scrum Master having completed a course with Mike Cohn in London. I have read about Scrum a good deal in the past, and it turns out I had not been that wrong in the way I had tried to implement it.

So was it a good course, I certainly think so, Mike leads the class well. As with most project management (and IT I suppose) the course shows you that communication is the key, you can get so much information from the discussions the class has as opposed to a more traditional 'taught class' approach. But this is at the core of Scrum where the team should be a team of equal not a manager and staff.

Slide stack for DDD4

Black Marble — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 13:01:00 +0000

This is the first time I have got Internet access since DDD4 on Saturday.

You can now get my DDD4 slides about continuous integration. I have edited them a bit from the version I used at the weekend, as the session was very demo lead I have dropped in main configuration samples I used as slide notes. I hope they are useful and not too cryptic.

So what did I think of the event - for me it went well I was happy with my session, lets see if the feedback says others were. As usual after my session I did not feel up to attending much more. Is this common does any conference divide into attendees and presenters?

Fun with Installing a Dual Server Team Foundation Server

Black Marble — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 14:00:00 +0000

I am convinced that the TFS install has an hidden registry entry that counts the number of time you try to install it, only allowing success after some random number has been reached. The number of blog post you see around the ' I tried and tried and on my X attempt it work".

The problem is you seem to have to have all your ' ducks in a row' else there is no hope of success. This seems a common pattern on many current Microsoft installation process, they are large and monolithic with little progress information and if you go get a failure you really need to dig into long log files and then flatten the boxes before trying again.

ClickOnce publish to a non available URLs

Black Marble — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 16:26:31 +0000

If you are publishing an application with ClickOnce you may not have the final URL for the deployment site e.g. you are planning to use www.myapp.com but you have no access now, this happens to us quite oftan as a software house when we are developing something that will be deployed with ClickOnce within a client's network.

You can of course publish to you local machine but the problem is the temporary URL you use to deploy is stored in the ClickOnce manifest, which has a checksum so you cannot edit it by hand.

Getting the SMDC working on Sun X2100 servers with Windows tools

Black Marble — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 12:02:00 +0000

Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the LOM

I've been working hard lately on Black Marble's infrastructure. To support the various software technologies we run and would like to run there are now three shiny Sun X2100 servers sitting in our rack. Sun hardware is great - it's robust, reliable and well built. It's also quick! I've used the 64-bit V20 and V40 servers in the past and one of the things I liked a great deal was the LOM functionality they had. I could SSH to a dedicated subsystem and probe the servers for information on their status, temperature, faults etc. I could also power-cyle them - really handy when a server has hung and it's a ten minute walk between buildings in the rain!

So it is all over

Black Marble — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 15:00:45 +0000

So what are my final thoughts on TechEd developer 2006? Well I think the split of Developers from IT Pros works. In my opinion this is the best TechEd I have been to from a content quality and relevance point of view, in the past there have been too many sessions on IT Support issues.

Also it is good to be back in Barcelona, a nice bit of late season sun. I surprise myself saying that as I hated the old venue used for past Barcelona TechEds; out towards the airport, but I have to say the CCIB is great. All session rooms are close to each other, everything ran smoothly, there are shops nearby and easy metro link to hotels and other civilization - what more can you ask for a conference?

Geek Migration Patterns

Black Marble — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 14:01:00 +0000

it is now the time that Geek's start their migration away from their temporary home , back to their regular nesting locations. I think watching the migrating geek is fascinating and I have been following this timid species for several days and here are my findings.

The natural instinct of the geek is to flock in a fixed pattern which is actually a representation of the layout of the caffeine molecule ( hence the term a caffeine of geek's )

TechED shortfalls , support, and successes

Black Marble — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 10:07:00 +0000

During dinner several of us were discussing the shortfalls and successes of the TechED so far.

Successes

Great speakers , good content , well delivered. Which when all considered is all that is needed.

however

Shortfalls

Perceivable lack of Theme , each talk has been categorized and I do say perceived , as a chat to Dave Gristwood at the UK drinks covered this thorny subject to great depth suggested that planning content TechED is by no way an easy task, but stood out side it would have been nice to see more viable threads.

TechED Swag - Feeding the developer

Black Marble — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 08:35:00 +0000

As all of the developer community knows , developers live on caffeine and freebies , for example a .NET 3.0 FX T-Shirt can keep a developer alive for over 2 weeks , a hat and pen will keep a developer going for over a week, and a rucksack or Jacket for several months.

TechED has been a bit lite on Swag , but that has not stopped us from getting some interesting giveaways for our community events ( not for our regular events ) over the next few months ( watch this space for announcements ) and thanks to intervention from some generous souls in the .NET team and Microsoft DPE in the UK with promises of material and giveaways for the community events , we have now stopped moving at the speed of loot through TechED safe in the knowledge that the developers we know and will meet over the next few months will be fed well and that some of our European colleagues will also have a chance at some freebies :).

Side Show

Black Marble — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 08:26:00 +0000

I was lucky enough to see a hands on session with Side Show yesterday afternoon, Dan Polivy who presented the sesssion brought along a selection of mock-up and nearly ready prototypes of mock up Slide Show devices , I think there has been a lot of misconceptions as to the purpose on Side Show and I think that developers really need to look at the HOL's available and understand that the program they write will NEVER run on the device , the application provides data.

TechEd Day 3

Black Marble — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 20:45:44 +0000

Most interesting session for me today was on '_Offline Caching and Synchronization with a New ADO.NET Sync Framework'. T_his can be summed up as making Smart Client applications behave like Outlook i.e. occasionally connected, but all done without the user having to be involved. Thus allowing the application to run on less than reliable networks whilst keeping a central store of data up to date.

Historically this is problematic to achieve but with the new ADO.Net framework extension that has just gone to RC status it can be done in a few lines of code. For more details have a look at http://blogs.msdn.com/stevelasker/

TechED 2006 so far

Black Marble — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 14:42:00 +0000

So far the quality of presentations at TechED has been fantastic , the only downside technically so far has been a dead machine ( now rectified ).

The must see slots have been by Roy Osherove , Anders Hejlsburg , Aaron Skonnard and Todd Bleeker. My favorite so far was a white boarding session with Aaron on "Agreeing to Disagree", one of those insiteful events.

TechEd-Developers

DDD4 Session - But it works on my PC

Black Marble — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 21:48:49 +0000

Just seen that my session at DDD4 has received enough votes to get on the schedule for the event in December, thanks to everyone who voted for it. If you have not been to a previous DDD event I would really recommend having a look at this day conference, I am sure anyone can learn a lot and a great networking opportunity

So I better get round to writing my demos now!

Half way there...

Black Marble — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 21:24:23 +0000

End of the second day and just got back from the UK Party, the only real big social event at this party lite TechEd.

After yesterday's SQL focus today I have wandered a bit, some Test Driven Dvelopment (TDD), some C# 3.0 futures as well as some other bits.

Unlike other conferences I have been to, I think it is hard to pick a core theme for this TechEd, if I were pushed it would be workflow in all its various guises. A few speakers have mentioned how they see workflow foundation as being the Visual Basic 1.0 equivalent for workflow and I think I agree, it is going to be nasty for a while but in a few months/years we are going to wonder why we ever wrote out own state machines.

One day down...

Black Marble — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 20:37:58 +0000

So the first day is over and where have I been? we most of the day I have been in the Kimberly Tripp sessions on SQL optimization. All three have been excellent, but what as a day-to-day C# developer (as opposed to an SQL developer) have I learnt. Well it can be summed uo as any guess I make over indexes are wrong, and more indexes are almost certainly not better!

Advanced Indexing with Kimberly Tripp Parts 1 and 2

Black Marble — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 16:36:32 +0000

Kimberly Tripp is well regarded in SQL Server circles and after watching part 1 of a 2 part session on advanced indexing you can really see why. The depth of knowledge that Kimberly demonstrates is outstanding.

Part 2 is about to start, looking round and part 1 has thinned the crowd a little. I will update after the second session with more detail...

...back after part 2, outstanding session covering a wide variety of indexing strategies including an interesting comparison of SQL OR and UNION ALL, indexed views and data tuning advisor. Worth looking on www.sqlskills.com for more info plus the sql scripts to all the items discussed in part 1 and 2.

Richard's first thoughts on TechEd Barcelona

Black Marble — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 10:48:07 +0000

It is a feeling of deja-vue, having been to the PDC last year the keynote was very similar; but that is what you would expect as PDC is an inspiring futures' event and TechEd, especially at this point in the release cycle is a 'its here now use it' event. On the more futures side the LINQ demo's are certainly slicker.

The notable item missing from the keynote was the announcement of RTM for Vista, hopefully it will be there before the IT Professional week of TechEd next week!

Searching custom properties in Microsoft Office document with Index server

Black Marble — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 19:26:35 +0000

I have been fighting this for a while, and after speaking to Microsoft I think have the correct procedure, I have to say I found the documentation on Index server querying and management a little confused.

Create a Word document or Excel sheet and on the file menu select properties. Pick the custom tab and add a custom property e.g. custID and set it 12345. Save the document
On the machine ruinning index server select Admin Tools|Computer Management find the index server option, create a new catalog pointing the directory the files are in (just as documented nothing clever required here)
Let it index the files
In the management tool go into the new catalog and look at document the properties, you should see lots of things that could be indexed including the custom properties you created.
Select each custom property in turn (right click on them and select properties) and set that the property is cached and at the primary storage level
We need to give the custom properties friendly name. To do this create a text file somewhere call something like search.idq and put entries as follows in it, one row for each custom property you have, the GUID can be seen in the properties window, I think it will be the same for all Office documents. The name in quotes is the friendly name we want to see, I have always matched this to the property name but I don't know if this is required

[Names]
CustID = d5cdd505-2e9c-101b-9397-08002b2cf9ae "CustID"
OtherProp = d5cdd505-2e9c-101b-9397-08002b2cf9ae "OtherProp"

Black Marble @ TechED

Black Marble — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 20:31:40 +0000

Richard, Iain and myself are off to TechED Developer on Monday, if you are going and would like to catch up , let us know.

Technorati tags: TechEd-Developers

Interview I did for Nxtgen user group

Black Marble — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 14:11:36 +0000

A while ago I spoke at the Nxtgen User group (see the post Black Marble @ the Coventry NxtGen User Group). Whilst there I did an interview with David McMahon. This is now available on their web site, just follow the link Richard Fennell Interview to view a transcript.

DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper4

Black Marble — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 11:58:27 +0000

Voting has opened at http://www.developerday.co.uk/ddd/agendaddd4.asp for the sessions you would like to see at the event in December. So if you want to see me speak on "But it works on my PC!" or continuous integration to improve software quality (or don't want to) getting voting for sessions.

Irrespective of whether you vote or not, get along to this event. It is a really good way to keep up to date with what is going on in the UK with .NET; especially of you can't make it over to TechED next month.

Black Marble Events on the Move

Black Marble — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 11:57:00 +0000

Due to complications with Ed Gibson's schedule we have to postpone the Leeds leg of Ed Gibson - On the Road and as a consequence Black Marble's first event 'Making the Most of your IT Systems using Business Intelligence', has been postponed to 27 February 2007. We apologise for any inconvenience and hope you will be able to attend.

As we saw such a huge interest in the event we have managed to secure Ed Gibson to speak at the first of Black Marble's community events on 7 December at 6pm, following Black Marble's day of events.

Visual Basic.NET 2005 Power Packs ( subverted to c# )

Black Marble — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 21:53:34 +0000

Microsoft have just launched two Power Packs for VB.NET to help provide more functionality out of the box for VB.

PrintForm Component 1.0

With the new PrintForm component you can layout the Windows Form exactly as you want it and to print the form as a quick report

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa...

Printing can be done to printer , preview or file. To use the PrintForm component in c# just follow the instructions for VB. it seems to be a bit slow in the trial I did earlier but I will do some more tests.

New Season of Black Marble Events at a new Venue

Black Marble — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 16:03:00 +0000

I've just published our new schedule of events for Autumn/Winter 2006/2007.

Coming next year - events on BizTalk, SharePoint 2007, Longhorn Server and Exchange Server.

All our events our free, and refreshments/lunch is provided.

Feel free to bring a colleague!

We have also moved to a new venue - make sure you check the map and directions in your confirmation email.

Linda

Technical Update (for Developers) - New Event

Black Marble — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 16:00:00 +0000

This event will provide a technical update covering Microsoft's latest shipping products, as well as what's forthcoming and the development environments that will be available to customise them.

Our aim is to provide a review of up and coming products, as well as highlighting any from the past year you may have missed, in order to help you make informed decisions for now and the future by raising awareness of the direction and scope of Microsoft's product plan by discussing these, and many more.

Technical Update 2007 (for Managers) - New Events

Black Marble — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 15:58:00 +0000

A welcome return for our Technical Update in January 2007.

This event will provide a technical update covering Microsoft's latest shipping products, as well as what's forthcoming and the development environments that will be available to customise them.

Managing Development with Microsoft Team Server and Visual Studio 2005 - New Event

Black Marble — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 15:55:00 +0000

Microsoft has launched Visual Studio 2005, a major new release of its developer tools environment, and the foundation of Microsoft platform development for the next few years. This marked the arrival of the lifecycle tools, Visual Studio Team System and the Team Foundation Server, to support end-to-end system development scenarios. These are the tools Microsoft has been using for years internally but are being made available to address customers need to more rapidly develop and deliver solutions that meet the business performance, scalability and end user requirements.

The Manager’s Essential Guide to IT Security and Best Practice - New Event

Black Marble — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 15:54:00 +0000

An essential guide for general and IT managers on IT security issues that affect the whole IT industry. We will cover:

Security
Current Security Technologies
Security Awareness and User Education
Social Engineering
Security Best Practices
Software Security
ISA Server 2006

Date: 7 December, Time: 9am - 12pm, Location: The Courtyard.

Visit www.blackmarble.co.uk or email events@blackmarble.co.uk for more information or to book.

Make the Most of your IT Systems using Business Intelligence - New Event

Black Marble — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 15:51:00 +0000

Business Intelligence (BI) is not a product but a term that covers a wide range of products that allow a manager to make better business decisions.

BI has changed over the years both in reach and formality - today a good BI system can present data on a wide variety of heterogeneous services in a robust and accessible manner. Hence, in most cases provision of BI is an IT infrastructure issue focused on getting key data to key people.

Ed Gibson - On the Road

Black Marble — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 15:34:00 +0000

Black Marble are proud to host the Northern leg of the 'Ed Gibson "On The Road"' Events tour which will take place mid-Septermber to mid-October 2006 at 5 venues around the country. The aim of the events are to raise awareness of the issues surrounding computer security, specifically Organised Crime and Hacking and also to raise the awareness amongst the Business and Developer communities of Developer and IT Pro User Groups and how they can help instruct and inform developers and managers about new technologies and other issues such as security.

More thermal grease please nurse....

Black Marble — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 14:27:20 +0000

A while ago I posted about my Dell 5150 overheating. Well all the things I tried have helped a bit, but not really sorted the problem so in desperation I called Dell support (when all else fails etc. etc.)

They suggested putting the latest bios on (A38), cleaning the heatsink with compressed air and making sure it was seated right, nothing I had not read in newsgroups. However, this got me thinking, when the motherboard had been swapped under warrantee, had the engineer put more thermal grease on the CPU?

Installing XP on my Virtual PC is sloooooooow

Black Marble — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 14:15:57 +0000

When installing Windows (any version) on a Virtual PC get the Virtual PC extensions installed as soon as possible.

I have been installing a basic XP SP2 from an ISO image on a VPC and it has been hogging my P4HT processor, virtually melting my Dell 5150. After the basic installation I did a Windows update and this was really crawling along, with high CPU usage and loads of pauses. So I stopped the update, installed the VPC extensions did a reboot and now it is flying along, just I would expect.

Unhandled exceptions in .NET 2.0 background threads

Black Marble — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 21:13:27 +0000

First a bit of history, in .NET 1.1 any exceptions that were not handled in a background thread that generated them were just lost, you had to remember to handle them within the failing thread or never see them again.

This 'feature' has been addressed in .NET 2.0 and now any unhandled exception in a background thread will cause the standard JIT/Debugger dialog to appear just as any unhandled exception in the primary UI thread would.

Great Channel9 video in GUI testing

Black Marble — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 18:31:00 +0000

I have just watched the very interesting Ifeanyi Echeruo: Testing WPF - UI Fuzzing with InvokeStress. This gives a great discussion of the role of the tester within the development team, and no they don't 'just press buttons to see what happens'. They are there to drive quality and it is very much a development role.

Also it shows how to use the accessibility API in WPF (but similar APIs are there in all Windows versions) to drive testing of the GUI. The tool InvokeStress discussed is also available for downloaded at http://wpf.netfx3.com/files/folders/developer/entry5155.aspx. Basically this tool discovers all the GUI controls and click, drags etc. them to see what happens. This is a great way to check all possible route through an application; but you can also use it to build specific scenario tests.

Living with CruiseControl and MSTest

Black Marble — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 13:42:24 +0000

A while ago I posted on getting CruiseControl.NET working with MSTest. This has been working OK for us, but as with all things you learn a lot from living with it. So here are some tips and comments about our experiences:

Watch your timeouts

Many problems we have had have been due to steps in the build process taking longer than the timeout specified in the ccnet.config file. If this occurs the CruiseControl build process aborts as a failure, but here is the rub, the step that is taking too long still completes and so usually when you look at the logs for the failed build you see that the compile is OK, but the next step, in our case the tests are never run.

Upgrading this Blog from CommunityServer 2.0 to 2.1

Black Marble — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 08:47:25 +0000

I have just updated to the new release of CS2.1. All seemed straight forward, I unzipped the distribution, stopped my CS server, replaced the web home directory and then ran the cs_2.x_to_2.1_upgrade.sql script. This is all the readme said to do.

However when I restarted the server and tried to login I got the error (after editing the web.config to report detailed errors)

Procedure or Function 'aspnet_Profile_GetProperties' expects parameter '@TimeZoneAdjustment', which was not supplied.

New release of GUITester with Regular Expressions

Black Marble — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 17:35:45 +0000

Following my visit to Nxtgen I have added regular expression functionality to GUITester as promised.

The ClickTextTest attribute now has an optional extra boolean flag, this allows you to say if the text to match is a fixed string or a regular expression. The usage to check a textbox contains an email address:

[ClickTextTest("email test","textBoxRegularExpression",@"^w+([-+.]w+)*@w+([-.]w+)*.w+([-.]w+)*$",true)]
private Button btnRegularExpression;
private TextBox textBoxRegularExpression;

There is also a simple text field test that allow you to validate that a field matches a regular expression, this is used in the form:

Sick of typos in your Blog

Black Marble — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 07:04:26 +0000

Do you find editing your blog on-line limiting whether it be:

awkward to use
does not have features you would like to see such as spelling checks
you can lost that big blog posting if there is comms failure to your ISP
or just that you want to create entries when you are not on-line such, as when commuting

If so have a look at Windows Live Writer, this is a beta of a desktop application that provides WYSIWGY authoring to most common Blog services, including Community Server (as this blog is hosted on).

SharpRobo - another way to test GUIs

Black Marble — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 15:46:00 +0000

SharpRobo is another interesting way to test your win forms application, it uses recorder (test classes) to allow user operations to be replayed.

The potential issue for me is that you need to derive your forms and controls from SharpRobo base classes, it remains to be seen how much this is a limitation, but will worth a good look to see if it can work on GUI projects

NxtGenUG - Ed Gibson "on the road"

Black Marble — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 20:20:00 +0000

This looks well worth the day out Ed Gibson "on the road".

Ed Gibson is the new Chief Security Advisor for Microsoft UK. He is an ex-FBI agent and really interesting to listern to at DDD; he has a story or two!

Black Marble @ the Coventry NxtGen User Group

Black Marble — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 19:25:00 +0000

I spoke at NxtGenUG’s Coventry user group earlier this week on GUI testing. All seemed to go well, but we shall see when I get the attendee feedback. It was good to see such a good turnout for a summer event, I know how hard it is to get people out at this time of year – I would hope that it was the scintillating subject I was speaking on , but I doubt it, more down to the hard work of the NxtGenUG organisers. It seems to be a user group going somewhere, I hear it is just about to open it third group down in Oxford.

Sharepoint 2007 and SQL Express

Black Marble — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 10:22:00 +0000

I have just been building a couple of Sharepoint 2007 test servers with SQL Express

I have been seeing the error message

ReporterServer$SQLExpress $ is an illegal charactor.

having removed SQL Express and replaced it with SQL Server the error still persists

however after some gnashing of teeth and toil , the answer is that SQL Express reporting services creates an App Pool of the Name Reporter$SQLExpress which when removed allow Sharepoint to install applications

Presenting at NxcGenUG

Black Marble — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 16:18:00 +0000

I am presenting at NxtGenUG user group in Coventry on the 14th of August. I will be presenting an updated version of my presentation from DDD on Testing graphical user interfaces

Creating new accounts on this Blog Server

Black Marble — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 14:56:00 +0000

It has just been bought to my attention that this Blogs server had been set to not allow new users to create accounts. This was due to an overly tight security review, sorry to anyone wo has wanted to post comments on either BM-Bloggers or Musapaloosa.

New member registration has been re-enabled - comment away

Richard

The joy of XP Media Center Edition

Black Marble — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 20:50:00 +0000

I decided to build a MCE PC for home (replacing a £200 DigiFusion PVR), I thought how hard can it be, it is just XP and a TV card.

I don't intend to go into the gory details of the build, suffice it to say one blown motherboard and a true understanding that this is an OEM product (for dedicated hardware) not for the home builder, but I can provide a few pointers:

Office Developer Conference 2006

Black Marble — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 20:31:00 +0000

I had a great time at the Office Developer Conference in Hammersmith last week. It covered Infopath 12, SharePoint V3 and Workflow, some of my hot topics at the moment.

It was great to put faces to names (and bloggers) like Dave Gristwood, and to see a few others speak again (like Mike Ormond). I also enjoyed Jessica Gruber's sessions, and will be reading her blog from now on too.

The Horror the beautiful horror of moving EVC 4 projects to Visual Studio 2005

Black Marble — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 11:25:00 +0000

I have just finished moving a large Embedded Visual Studio 4 (MFC) project to Visual Studio 2005. It was somewhat a painful experienece which I would not want others to have to endure.

I am sure anybody else will have different problems but the solutions that helped me were

1. build a new Visual Studio 2005 MFC application

2. migrate the old app by opening it in VIsual Studio 2005 ( save the app )

Dell Inspiron 5150 Running Hot and VPCs running slow

Black Marble — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 17:26:00 +0000

I had to have a new motherboard in my Dell 5150 laptop, one of the memory slots failed on the old one. Since the repair my laptop seems to have been running hot. Also when using Virtual PC 2004 SP1 the sessions seems to pause for a second or two from time to time.

I have tried the hotfix for VPC 2004 and this seemed to help the speed a bit (but not as much as I would have hoped), but my PC still seemed a lot hotter than it used to be.

SourceSafe and CruiseControl

Black Marble — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 13:11:00 +0000

A day or so ago our CruiseControl stopped working, I was seeing loads of problems in the Get source stage. Basically it was timing out, but it had work last week! OK I had been trying to get MsTest integrated but that should not have effected the source control.

After much fiddling including:

Creating a new VSS DB (very small one)
Moving the DB to a different server
Trying VSS 6.0 and VSS 2005 clients

I pinned the problem down to a networking issue (the new small VSS DB worked OK if local on the same box as CCNet, but not across a 1Gb LAN to another 2003 Server).

MSTest and CruiseControl .NET

Black Marble — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:29:00 +0000

I have been trying to get Visual Studio 2005 Team Developer style unit tests working within CruiseControl.

The documention says it should work, but is a little scant as to the detail of how to do it. So now I have it all going I thought an example of the working ccnet.config file with some comments might help other people trying to get this going.

So the background is I have a VS.NET 2005 solution (My Sample.sln) with some projects in it. One of these is a Test Project (TestProject.csproj). This contains some test which can be run via the Test menu option is VS.NET.

More on the .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5 Comparison

Black Marble — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 15:43:00 +0000

In my demo last week I extended a string class; I am pleased to say that after some ( quick ) investigation as predicted the calls to the class are identical.

To explain extensions we can use the following code

class Fred {

string MyStringMethod ( string s ) {

// do something

}

string x = Fred.MyStringMethod(x);

Using extensions we can change the definition of the method MyStringMethod to use this

string MyStringMethod ( this string s )

Comparison of .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5

Black Marble — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 13:30:00 +0000

Last Saturday I presented on LINQ at Developer Developer Developer. I stated that that much of LINQ was syntactic sugar ( very good low fat sugar) and in fact much of the work being done by the compiler effectively did repetetive work that we do day to day.

I see this as very solid reoccurring theme in Microsoft development tools, if the developer is doing the same thing again and again, visual studio will aim to help without being too prescriptive.

WinFX 3.0 is now .Net Framework 3.0

Black Marble — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 11:59:00 +0000

WinFX 3.0 is now .Net Framework 3.0

With the aim of providing us with consistency Soma has announced that from now on WinFX consisting of Windows Presentation Framework (Avalon) , Windows Communications Framework (Indigo) , Windows Workflow Foundation (WinOE) and Cardspace ( the product formaly known as Infocard ) will be known as .Net Framework 3.0

It looks as though .NET 3.0 will be dependant on .NET 2.0 and should not download the runtime as well.

Loading test data files in Microsoft Test Projects without fixed paths

Black Marble — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 18:42:00 +0000

I sorted a problem today that has been going on a while, how to load test data in unit tests without resorting to fixed paths.

We had an class library assembly and an associated test project in Visual Studio 2005 Team Developer Edition. The problem was the methods we needed to test (via a unit test) had to load some data from a file at run time.

In the 'real' application the file was loaded using the code

Sharings Types across Web Service

Black Marble — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 21:31:00 +0000

I have been struggling for a while with sharing DLLs between web services and WinForm application. Many people have written on this. All the articles all tend to be deeply technical and hence fairly tough going. However I have found a quick easy solution from these various documents, this posting tries to given some background then the steps to get round the problem.

I am sure everyone else who has written on this thinks they have made the subject clearer, so my apologies now for any extra confusion I cause.

That threading issue seen at DDD3 in the session demo

Black Marble — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 19:03:00 +0000

At DDD3 when I was demo'ing GUITester I said there was a problem with the tests that used multi-threading were failing. This used to work with .Net 1.1 but not with 2.0.

Due to the short notice of doing the session I did not have time to find the answer before the talk. However I have found it now. As I had guessed the issue was the increased security in .Net 2.0. I have done a quick dirty fix and this was to add the CheckForIllegalCrossThreadCalls line, as shown below

GUITest at DDD3

Black Marble — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 09:24:00 +0000

Well Developer Developer Developer Day 3 was interesting, a few months ago I had put in a proposal to speak at the event about GUITester, but it was not voted for, so I didn’t continue to work on the session.

So I arrived on Saturday expecting a relaxing day of sitting in the audience, and watching Robert pace up and down waiting to do his session on LINQ at the end of the day. However it did not work out like that.

Linq at Developer Developer Developer 3

Black Marble — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 14:05:00 +0000

I am speaking at Developer Developer Developer Day 3 at Microsoft in Reading tomorrow, on Linq.

I'll be providing an overview of up and coming features for CSharp 3.0, VB 9.0 and the .NET Language Integrated Query (LINQ). Covering features such as: anonymous types, lamda expressions, deep XML support, implicitly typed local variables and covering the general LINQ, DLinq and XLinq.

If you want to know more

Thoughts on automatically generating Test Methods in a Team Developer Edition Test Project

Black Marble — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 20:31:00 +0000

With my current implementation of the GUITesting framework integrated with Test Projects within VS.Net, I end up with all the GUITests in a single [TestMethod]. This is a far from perfect solution, if nothing else it is hard to debug, you only see the first failing test.

So I thought what I need to do is automatically generate [TestMethod] flagged methods at runtime in something like the form below in the runtime UnitTest class within the Test Project.

Updating GUITester to build using VS.Net 2005 and make use of Test Projects

Black Marble — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 23:28:00 +0000

I have rebuilt the GUITesting framework using VS.Net 2005. No changes really, the built in converter from VS.Net 2003 to 2005 did the job with no errors. At this time I have not done any work to exploit the new features of .NET 2.0.

However, what I have had a look at is integrating the new testing features of VS.Net 2005 Team Developer edition. So in this V2.0 source release you will find a test project, sorry if you not have Team developer edition of VS.Net, just remove the test project when it fails to load!

Update on my Vista problems

Black Marble — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 18:42:00 +0000

I reinstalled Vista again on my Dell 5150, but this time I used the Nvidia drivers from the http://www.nvidia.com/page/technology_vista_home.html and my lack of a login prompt has not reappeared.

However, it is not all good news, the Aero interfaces has only appeared once, the rest of the time it is the non-Aero version. The performance rating of the PC seems to vary everytime I run the tool, which might be the cause.

Boot failure with black screens using Vista on my Dell 5150

Black Marble — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 21:43:00 +0000

I have been battling with Vista CTP (5308) for a few days. I have now installed it twice on my Dell Inspiron 5150 (80MB drive, 2Gb memory, Bios A38) and both times it has installed fine, automatically updated the Nvidia FX5200 driver via Windows update and let me install applications, rebooting a few times as I go along and ending up with a working system. I thought everuthing was fine, as I could reboot and hiberate it without problems.

ASP.Net 2.0 ReportViewer

Black Marble — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 17:04:00 +0000

I have been fighting an authentication problem on this all day with the new ReportViewer in ASP.Net 2.0.

I have been getting 401 authorisation errors when I tried to set any parameters (or run a report with no parameters) inside the viewer.

Turns out the problem was that the _ReportViewer1.ServerReport.ReportServerUrl _ was set to http://test1.mydomain.com/ReportServer, if I changed it to http://locahost/ReportServer it all leapt into live, even though they should both resolve to the same server, and both work if I browser there with IE.

Experiences of updated from .Text .94 to CS 2.0

Black Marble — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 21:32:00 +0000

We had been running our blogs using separate single blog installations of .Text .94 for best part of two years without any major issues. With the release of Community Server 2.0 we decided that it was a good idea to upgrade, the danger of getting left behind on the upgrade path was just too real. So how do you go from .Text .94 to CS 2.0, well it is not that straight forward.

Update to CS 2.0

Black Marble — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 11:28:00 +0000

We have been running .Text 0.94 for a good while now, and all has been OK until a couple of weeks ago. We noticed an increase in Spam and that IE7 beta did not render some of the pages correctly, so making editing hard.

So I took this chance to update to the newly release Community Server 2.0, I will post my experiences soon

VB.Net samples - Source Release 1.1

Black Marble — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 10:00:00 +0000

I was asked via this blog if the GUITester tool can be used with VB.NET. Well because of the architecture of .NET in theory it can be used with any .NET language, as long as the language designers implemented attributes.

The only change that is required is to make sure that the attributes are declared in the correct manner. To this end I have added a very small VB.NET demo to the show the basic functions. There is a single form with a basic button click event. You then need to add the following attributes

Software Engineering

Black Marble — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 20:22:00 +0000

Yesterday I was at the Solution Architect Forum: Defining, Building and Using Software Factories at Microsoft TVP, all very interesting and I or Robert will no doubt blog on it soon.

The Q&A session throw up some interesting questions on if Software Factories will have an effect on the status of the Software Engineer, and the offshoring of development. This all got me thinking about licensing again, and so I have posted a paper I wrote this time last year on the subject.

“You need a license to touch that!” - a discussion of the need for licensing in Software Engineering

Black Marble — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 20:16:00 +0000

1. “YOU NEED A LICENSE TO TOUCH THAT!”

1.1. Introduction

Throughout the history of science and technology there has been a trend in the development spectrum away from the gentleman amateur and towards the professional engineer. This report explores at which point on this spectrum Software Engineering currently lies and, if it is found to lie at the fully professional end, whether or not there is a need for licenses to practice.

Visual Studio 2005 - Updating ASP.NET projects

Black Marble — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 20:28:00 +0000

Today I tried upgrading a VS 2003 ASP.NET 1.1 application to VS 2005 ASP.NET 2.0 all went OK I had a play but I wanted to roll back from my sourcesafe system to the ASP.NET 1.1 as this is what the production server is using at present. Again this all went OK, or so I thought.

I then tried to debug my ASP.NET 1.1 verison in VS 2003 and nothing worked! In fact the site would not run in any way, and the debugger would not attach.

WiFi on the Acer Travelmate 2350

Black Marble — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 21:01:00 +0000

This one really got me. I was trying to get the built in WiFi working on a new Acer 2350. Windows XP saw the built in IPN2220 fine, but got no signal strength, but a Netgear USB WiFi worked fine in the same PC

After much fiddling and time on Internet I found the problem, there is a small black flight mode switch on the left hand side (near the audio connectors). Move this and the WiFI is enabled and all was fine.

BT Callscape 100 SDK

Black Marble — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 21:11:00 +0000

Back in the dim and distant history of Black Marble we were involved in the development of an SDK for the BT Callscape 100, a serial port based Computer Telephony Intergration product. This SDK allowed Windows developers to make use of the CTI functionality of this BT product from within any application development environment that supported Active-X controls.

The Callscape 100 has long since been discontinued by BT, but it seems that there are some people still using them for a variety of specialist purposes (but this must be getting harder as the product was designed for Window's 16bit and a serial port, neither too common on current PCs!)

Microsoft Business Process Integration & Workflow Conference

Black Marble — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 16:11:00 +0000

Robert has jetted off to Microsoft in Redmond to take part in the Business Process Integration & Workflow Conference.

This is the event for partners to get up to speed on new and updated solutions for Business Process Automation, Integration Services and Workflow. He will be shown advance details about the strategies and technologies that will be launched over the next 9 months (including BizTalk Server 2006, Windows Communication Foundation (formerly code-named Indigo), and Windows Workflow Foundation (formerly code-named WinOE)). This is the partner event to get early information before these new products and technologies become generally available.

Podcasting from the PDC

Black Marble — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 15:59:00 +0000

Now showing on Channel9 - Richard's Podcast from the PDC!

On Site at PDC...with Richard Fennell

Another way to automate the application

Black Marble — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 01:30:00 +0000

Just been to the panel 'CLR Leveraging Dynamic Features' and seen IronPython demo'ed to control a VB.NET application. It was used to load the assembly, create the form, and allowed the triggering of events, but better still allowed the dynamic creation and binding of new controls from the IronPython command line.

Though I had seen IronPython used before from the command line, the new bit for me was the second part of the demo when it was embeding within another language. In the session example it was run from within a C# application, to control the VB.NET form using Python commands - VERY CLEVER

Channel 9 Sparks Feeding Frenzy!

Black Marble — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 21:07:00 +0000

Channel 9 were giving away 1600 t-shirts in 21 minutes - there was a feeding frenzy and the sharks were on the floor.

Funniest thing I've seen in a long time.

PDC05

Richard's Day 2 Keynote thought

Black Marble — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 19:07:00 +0000

Just a quick one here, WE HAVE SO MANY OPTIONS!!!!!!!

I see the short term issue for many prople will be which technology is best, do I go BizTalk now, grow something in house or wait a while for Windows Workflow Foundations.

My feeling is that WWF is the long term answer, but that does not help us today, business workflow is a dangerous area to try to run with beta code. It is usually too business critical, choices choices choices....................

Vista Automated Testing - Do we need trained pigeons?

Black Marble — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 18:55:00 +0000

Just been to the Windows Vista: Developing for Test Automation and Accessibility Using Programmatic Access to UI session by Thomas Logan, this is very interesting given the bits I have done over the past year on UI testing.

The UI Spy tool and associated framework is a great way to navigate and control the running of an application, but does not really seem to address, what I consider, a major problem working out if the UI control clicks had the required result e.g. In the session example it is hard to work out if the buttons presses generate the right polygon.

Richard's first thoughts at the PDC

Black Marble — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 23:24:00 +0000

I have wandered round after the PDC keynoted confused; before I came here I thought I had a plan on what to concentrate on but after the keynote all that went out the window!

I am at a loss as to which session to go to as there is so many wildly different areas I want to know more about!

The big item that struck me most today was Anders Hejlsberg on LINQ. I can see that being a hugely important technology for me, as I have many projects where I want to pull data from disparate sources. If you haven't come across LINQ yet look at http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=114680

Meeting the Channel 9ers

Black Marble — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 07:31:00 +0000

A great evening.

We went for pizza and met irascian who was most interesting to chat to, and a Microsoft 9er (2nd from left in picture) who did the channel9 redesign, I think his name is Adam Kinney. Met Scoble, and stayed for a very interesting discussion about life, the universe and Microsoft.

Then went on to the Westin Bonventure and met some of the guys from the Avalon team, as well as Tim Sneath who I remember from his days at TVP.

Registering and meeting '9'

Black Marble — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 19:18:00 +0000

Richard and I registered today. Saw the "Big Room" which is the name for the aircraft hangar where commnet, hol, and the channel 9 sit down is all happening.

Posted a couple of pics to the Channel 9 website, of me and Richard with the 9 guy and Richard lounging on the 9 guy bean bags. Also available in our gallery.

Picked up our PDC 'T' and bag, so now we can blend into the LA fashion crowds :)

Black Marble at the PDC

Black Marble — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 11:18:00 +0000

Black Marble is at the PDC in LA! Robert and Richard have touched down and are ready to go!

PDC05

Microsoft PDC

Black Marble — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 20:34:00 +0000

Robert and myself are off to the PDC in LA next week, get in touch if you want to meet up.

Richard

A Java implementation of the GUITester

Black Marble — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 21:35:00 +0000

The techniques used in my .NET GUITester project, though developed using C#, are applicable to any of the 30+ .NET Framework supported languages.

.NET does provide support for Microsoft's own 'Java like' language J#, but this is not actual Java. So I have done a small trial to see if similar techniques i.e. reflection and annotation (as Java terms attributes) could be applied in a 'pure' Sun Microsoft Systems Java 1.5 reference implementation. The aim of this trial was to try to replicate the first tests I did in .NET:

First release of Richard's GUITesting Framework for .NET

Black Marble — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 22:01:00 +0000

I am please to announce that the first release of my GUITest framework for is available.

I have posted the following items:

HTML article on the system
PDF User manual (very similar to the HTML article)
Sample of the GUITester (EXEs and DLLs only)
Complete source for the system

I look forward to hearing any comments

Richard

GUI Testing Framework - First software release

Black Marble — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 21:37:00 +0000

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Problem

The graphical user interface (GUI) of a computer system is one of the most troublesome sub-systems to test. Though some products have been marketed to address this area they have not been that well-received or effective. All such products have tended to be based on macro recording systems that often introduce more errors than originally present in the software they aim to test. The net effect of this is that the test engineer spends more time debugging their test scripts than they do testing their product, as the slightest change in a GUI layout will usually break the test harness. Hence up to now the most effective way to test a GUI is to get human testers to do it, though this is not without problems of its own.

Indigo and Avalon Beta1 (RC)

Black Marble — Wed, 25 May 2005 12:24:00 +0000

Indigo and Avalon Beta1 (RC) has been posted at Avalon and Indigo Beta 1 RC

This beta targets Visual Studio 2005 Beta2 and the only words I can use to describe it is totally awesome. We migrated all our Visual Studio 2005 installations to Beta2 at release due to the dependences for Avalon/Indigo/DSL tools we will not be implementing any remaining CTP releases, stroll on the Beta2 compatible DSL toolkit.

We will be producing some demonstrations for Indigo and Avalon during the summer so watch this space. If there is enough interest we may ( Microsoft Licensing permitting ) do an end of day session on Avalon and Indigo during our introduction to Visual Studio and SQL Server 2005 event in October.

Web Enabling your Business

Black Marble — Wed, 11 May 2005 13:16:00 +0000

Black Marble's latest seminar, Web Enabling your Business, takes place next Wednesday (18 May) at Touchbase.

Come for the usual high standard of content ... and stay for the food!

If you want to reserve a place, check out our website for details.

Richard's 'automated GUI testing in .NET' project

Black Marble — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 16:46:00 +0000

Testing of software, and specifically the automated testing of software, is an area I have always been interested in. Recently I have been working on ways of automating the testing of .NET Windows Form applications.

Today I have posted an article The automated testing of graphical user interfaces in .NET as a taster as to what I have been doing, I will be posting a more articles with sample test harnesses and an extensible API soon.

The automated testing of graphical user interfaces in .NET

Black Marble — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 16:37:00 +0000

**The Problem
**The graphical user interface of a computer system is one of the most troublesome sub-systems to test. Though some products have been marketed to address this area they have not been that well-received or effective. All such products have tended to be based on macro recording systems that are awkward to implement and keep up to date. The net effect of this is that the test engineer spends more time debugging their test scripts than they do testing their product, as the slightest change in a GUI layout will usually break the test harness. Hence up to now the most effective way to test a GUI is to get human testers to do it, though this is not without problems of its own, humans make mistakes, especially when doing boring repetitive tasks.

Another seminar, this time on Web Applications

Black Marble — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 20:12:00 +0000

Today we ran our second spring seminar, this time on technologies to enable Web Business. As usual the white paper associated with the event can be found at http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/WhitePapers/2005/Seminar Notes - Web Applications for Business.pdf

In the morning we discussed how ASP.NET, and specifically the new features in VS2005, can provide a very productive environment to develop both B2C and B2B systems. A special focus was made on how these tools can be used to create truly accessible web sites.

Compiler Dev Lab last day

Black Marble — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 00:21:00 +0000

It is the last day and so far it has been a great ammount of fun. This morning the SQL team
came to discuss the implementation of the CLR in SQL Server 2005.
The most enjoyable part of the day was a round table discussion.

Robert

DevLab Tuesday Evening

Black Marble — Wed, 09 Feb 2005 06:01:00 +0000

Jeff Sanquist organised a BBQ which was a trailer in the car park (remember it is February Folks) manned by a Hairy Biker; it must be said there was a point where I thought Jeff had lost the plot, I should have had more faith, the food was great. When I ambled down to the lecture room Channel 9 had just started filming a chat. UPDATE the video is now on Channel9 I am lurking in the background of the video and show up on the still :):)

Dev Lab Tuesday

Black Marble — Wed, 09 Feb 2005 00:56:00 +0000

Today we started with a presentation on VSIP program,
Chris Lovett presented "Whidbey XML editor and language service framework",
the XML editor and XSL debugger (isn't Whidbey just great) are shipped as standard
and Chris showed how this was done.

One of the most interesting parts showed how Visual Studio provides both
colourization and intellisense services. One of the most surprising is that
the colourisation is only passed characters on the current line and it is
expected to remember the rest of the line.
As visual studio requires parsing every time the system changes, parsers
need to be fast (in reality can only be lexers).

Microsoft Compiler Dev Lab

Black Marble — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 00:53:00 +0000

I am over at Microsoft in Redmond attending a Compiler Dev lab.
Compiler developers for all sorts of interesting compilers are here producing Cobol, RPG, Eifel, Delphi and others.

The event is run under NDA, so there is unfortunately a large number of ommisions.

John Gough provided an overview of producing your first CLR compiler,
I have seen John Gough present before and I have read the book (no tee shirt just yet).
The presentation was very well done and he managed to cover a lot of material,
If you are interested in compilers in .NET read his book.

Technical Update White Paper

Black Marble — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 19:03:00 +0000

On the 26th of January we ran our ever popular Technical Update Seminar. This seminar was supported by Microsoft as part of their Partner Program. The areas discussed were Microsoft products that were released in 2004 and what is going to be seen in the coming year and more distant future.

The associated white paper for the seminar can be found at http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/WhitePapers/TechUpdate2005.pdf.

Trial Framework for Pervasive Mobile Games

Black Marble — Thu, 30 Dec 2004 10:21:00 +0000

Black Marble is developing a trial framework for the next generation of Pervasive Mobile games, with the University of Bradford and Microsoft UK. We will be blogging more about this in the new year.

Robert

... And Software Development for IT Managers

Black Marble — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 21:19:00 +0000

Richard presented a guide for IT managers and developers on current development methodologies including eXtreem programming, MSF and Scrum and pressed the point of why they are necessary even in a relatively small project.

I presented a guide for IT managers who don't necessarily have a development background on techniques on managing developers and on the other side of the fence a guide for developers on how to be managed.

The Manager's Essential Guide to IT Security...

Black Marble — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 21:14:00 +0000

Richard presented a comprehensive guide to network and server based security, I covered a detailed view on software security and Nick provided a series of impressive demonstrations on how it can affect web sites. The segment that hit home for most of the attendees was on Social Engineering and how despite the system measures put in place someone can still talk their way into a machine room. We also covered an overview of how to train staff on techniques to recognise when they are being targeted. if you would like an overview of the Security morning, drop us a line.

SharePoint and Enterprise Project Management

Black Marble — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 19:48:00 +0000

Another successful event, though many of our attendees thought EPM was a step to take in the future, rather than now. The interest in Sharepoint was resounding.

Linda

Bond, James Bond - now in Arizona

Black Marble — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 11:28:00 +0000

The 40th Anniversary James Bond Exhibition is now in Arizona, with new terminals and updated software.

Linda

Black Marble Scores 4.3/5 for the .NET Curriculum Workshop

Black Marble — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 09:43:00 +0000

What can I add? Our response scores for the .NET Curriculum Workshop came in. An excellent response.

Robert

Black Marble - the latest Microsoft Gold Certified Partner

Black Marble — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 09:52:00 +0000

Thought I'd let someone else comment ...

Today, Microsoft recognizes Black Marble as a new Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for demonstrating its expertise in providing customer satisfaction with Microsoft products and technology. - Allison Watson, vice president of the Worldwide Partner Sales and Marketing Group at Microsoft Corp.

Linda

Day 2 of the .NET Curriculum Workshop

Black Marble — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 21:01:00 +0000

Another successful day, including the Visual Studion 2005 demo, which I think sealed the views on .NET.

Robert

Day 1 of the .NET Curriculum Workshop

Black Marble — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 21:06:00 +0000

Sessions went very well today, however the audience would have preferred all the C# material together - we spread it out over mobile apps etc.

Robert

.NET Curriculum Workshop

Black Marble — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 09:06:00 +0000

Black Marble are presenting on behalf of Microsoft at the .NET Curriculum Workshop tomorrow. We will be teaching Academics about .NET, and fortunately the material is now finished!

Robert

Tech Friday Morning

Black Marble — Fri, 02 Jul 2004 07:24:00 +0000

The Final Day at TechED

it's the final day at TechED, TechED has been great. Unfortunately I have spent most of my time in hall 8 which has poor wireless coverage.

Highlights (so far)

Tuesday

This year’s bag is a bizarre orange courier bag!

Express,Express,Express the whole of the visual studio product range now have an entry edition and they look very jolly.

Team Services, is Microsoft’s enterprise sized developer productivity tool, needless to say it will be trialed at Black Marble as soon as is possible.

Richard @ TechEd

Black Marble — Wed, 30 Jun 2004 09:17:00 +0000

I have just been to a session by Gert Drapers - Understanding and Optimising ADO.NET. I think of all the sessions I have been to at this year's TechEd, thus far, that this one will have most direct effect on the code I write.

If you use ADO.NET to access you SQL Server check out the session slides. The performance gains that are possibility available to you are significant, but I must dash to check my SQL query parameterization!

TechEd Europe 2004

Black Marble — Tue, 29 Jun 2004 10:20:00 +0000

Robert and Richard are currently soaking up the sights and sounds of TechEd Europe in Amsterdam. Look out for their posts throughout the week.

Bond, James Bond in Canada

Black Marble — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 10:19:00 +0000

The James Bond 40th Anniversary Exhibition is now in Canada, Science World in Vancouver to be exact. Black Marble continues to contribute to this touring exhibit, check out our website soon for more details!

AI for Games

Black Marble — Wed, 09 Jun 2004 10:24:00 +0000

Black Marble have completed work on the AI for Games project, with the School of Informatics at the University of Bradford. This Microsoft-supported project was instigated to teach students about AI with an interesting and unusual approach. Black Marble adapted Virus and Terrarium for use in lessons, and by all accounts the students benefited a great deal from the course, as well as enjoying it immensely!

More details on our website soon.

Terrarium Academic & The Virus Game round up

Black Marble — Mon, 24 May 2004 09:17:00 +0000

The Game Servers have run over 250,000 games during the duration of the AIFG course. We have also produced a Pocket PC version of the virus game and there are already plans for a second version of the Academic Terrarium.

Robert

Students Get bitten by Bugs

Black Marble — Wed, 12 May 2004 09:05:00 +0000

Feedback on the AI for Games module at the University of Bradford has been excellent, with some students reporting it their favourite part of the curriculum. The favourite part has been producing bugs for the Academic Version of Terrarium.

Robert

End of Conference

Black Marble — Sat, 17 Apr 2004 22:25:00 +0000

Last night we had the end of conference meal, followed by a group (Peter Drayton & Ian Palmer) of us playing TransAmerica into the wee hours. The presentation was well received despite Peter overrunning :)

Robert

Poor Lunch , Great company

Black Marble — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 16:31:00 +0000

The food for Wednesdays evening meal was not the best, however the company was very interesting. I talked with Paul Rhodes and Peter Cowling from the University of Bradford and Peter Drayton who is on the Rotor team.

Robert

Machine Learning

Black Marble — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 16:24:00 +0000

I have just attended a very interesting talk by Christopher Bishop (MSR Cambridge http://research.microsoft.com/~cmbishop ) about Machine Learning. He covered “Super-resolution enhancement of pictures” which is adding information to an image using an offset image or human determined perspective. Intelligent Edit and Removal of information from pictures and face tracking. I highly recommend attending a presentation by him. The features discussed will be present in a soon to be released Microsoft product.

Black Marble at Microsoft Research Academic Days in Dublin

Black Marble — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 16:14:00 +0000

We are currently in sunny ( it's raining ) Dublin for Microsoft Research Academic days. I have met up with Peter Cowling, Paul Rhodes from the University of Bradford and our Talk for Friday on AI for Games has been finished so we can relax and enjoy the conference.

Robert

Microsoft Research Conference, Dublin

Black Marble — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 09:19:00 +0000

Black Marble was invited to present alongside the University of Bradford at a Microsoft Research Conference in Dublin. Robert Hogg of Black Marble presented with Peter Cowling of the University of Bradford, on the Use of Viruses and Bugs to Teach Artificial Intelligence (AI) Programming using C# .NET.

Linda

Microsoft CRM Overview

Black Marble — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 19:44:00 +0000

Black Marble spent half a day explaining Microsoft CRM to local businesses, and many were impressed by its features.

New Server

Black Marble — Thu, 25 Mar 2004 13:23:00 +0000

I have moved out blogs to a new server, so please use the URL http://blogs.blackmarble.co.uk/bm-bloggersas opposed to the old http://sabs.blackmarble.co.uk/bm-bloggers.

I have put a redirection on the old address, but I don't know how RSS will like that !

Further to broadband and authentication post.....

Black Marble — Thu, 25 Mar 2004 12:07:00 +0000

Further to my broadband and authentication post I have found a problem using Crystal Enterprise via HTTPS.

If I connect a Microsoft CRM website via HTTP and then use the links in the product to a Crystal report all is fine. However if I use HTTPS then I get the rarther common 'Microsoft CRM Crystal Reports Logon Error. Please Verify That You Have Enough Crystal Licenses' error. Just check out the newsgroups to see how many people are getting the same problem.

A broadband and IIS authentication got-ya

Black Marble — Tue, 23 Mar 2004 21:26:00 +0000

I came accross a good got-ya when using HTTP over broadband to a Microsoft IIS with active directory authentication, you keep being forced to re-authenticate. However, if you use a dial-up connection or LAN all is fine. We noticed it using Outlook Web Access and Microsoft CRM but it would be the same with any products that require more than anonymous access.

Now it seems that broadband uses a different form of caching to dial-up ISP services, DSL providers use transparent caching servers . The effect of this to convince the IIS server that each client to server request is from a different client, hence all the login dialogs.

My trials with Microsoft Fax Server on Win2K3

Black Marble — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 13:08:00 +0000

What a nightmare, I tried to change the settings on our 2K3 servers fax server and chaos reigned, all I wanted to do was add a modem!.

The key problem was that the Fax Server Manager would not connect to the fax service, so you cannot edit anything.

I quick look on newgroups showed I was not alone with this problem, but the answers are sketchy. Basically they boiled down to don't put your fax on a AD Domain Controller. As we only have one 'live' server this is not the most helpful solution.

Terrarium

Black Marble — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 10:03:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that we have successfully produced a Terrarium Academic version for the AI for Games course at the University of Bradford. The Academic version of Terrarium has a simpler API for developing, as well as Terrain for navigation and Terrain Design Tools, and a bulk game server to allow terrains and bugs to be loaded and run, and a scoring system to turn it into a competitive environment.

Business Collaboration for IT Managers & Developing for Microsoft SharePoint 2003

Black Marble — Wed, 03 Mar 2004 19:43:00 +0000

A double-dose of SharePoint went down very well in our latest event, as well as, of course, the great food!

'Symbols not loaded' when trying to debug dynamically loaded assemblies in VS.NET

Black Marble — Thu, 26 Feb 2004 16:49:00 +0000

Here is an interesting one for all those who are trying to debug DLL assemblies that you load dynamically in your application.

For example, you have a .Net DLL project in VS.Net 2003 that is set to launch a .Net EXE when you hit F5. In your EXE, using a File Open dialog, you select and then load your .Net DLL and run the code within it. So basically the DLL is not bound or declared to the EXE at compile time, but you still want to be able to set breakpoints in your DLL that get hit when required.

Spring seminar events

Black Marble — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 11:45:00 +0000

We are running some more seminar events in 2003. This time we have tailored seminars for IT Managers and IT Developers so come along and join the fun, the lunch is good too!

Wednesday 3rd March - Business Collaboration for IT Managers
Wednesday 3rd March - Developing for Microsoft Sharepoint 2003
Thursday 1st April - Microsoft CRM Overview

Linda

AIFG at the UoB for MS

Black Marble — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 10:23:00 +0000

The Virus Game, for Microsoft and the University of Bradford, was finished and has become an integral part of the AI for Games course at the University. The Virus Game is a tile based board game and has been produced in both a desktop and a bulk game server versions.

Robert

Tech Update for IT Managers & Developers

Black Marble — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 19:52:00 +0000

Black Marble's annual Tech Update for IT managers and Developer took place today. In the developer segment we reprised Chris A's & Don Box's Lap around Longhorn for the local audience. It was very well received, see you at next years update

Robert

Developing Software for the future Microsoft Platform

Black Marble — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 23:01:00 +0000

Richard and I attended the event Developing Software for the future Microsoft Platform, where we saw Chris Anderson & Don Box's Lap Around Longhorn, it was very entertaining. A series of very interesting demonstrations of WinFS showed how powerful a file system could be. Bill Gates gave the closing session, which provided an interesting insight into the industry.
This was followed by the London Bloggers dinner at Masala Zone with Chris An & Don Box. However, we had to leave early - to catch our train back to the frozen north - not as a reflection on the food & company, which were both excellent.

BM-Bloggers is open!

Black Marble — Tue, 20 Jan 2004 11:22:00 +0000

Well this is the first posting to our new BM-Bloggers site. What is BM-Bloggers, it is a blog shared by the all the developers of Black Marble to comment on the development world as they see it. Hope you find it if interest.

Richard

Black Marble

What I Saw at AWS Summit London 2026

AWS Summit London 2026

Opening Keynote

AI and Machine Learning

Serverless and Containers

Security and Compliance

Sustainability and Social Impact

Final Thoughts

Unit Testing Bicep Logic with BicepConsoleTTK

Problem Space

Azure App Registrations | Display Name Guidance

Problem Space

Why It Matters

What Is Actually Unique

Azure Key Vault | Access Policies Removed On Deployment

Problem Space

Bicep Tips and Tricks | #10 | Authoring Practices

Problem Space

Why Define and Stick to Your Authoring Practices

Duplicated IP addresses give strange error when deploying Hyper-V environments

Background

The Problem

Fixing Ribble CGR-Ale (Mahle X35 based) ebike with intermittent power

Background

Migrating Azure WebApps from Docker Compose to Sidecar

Background

Creating a Notebook Service in Fabric

Fabric Notebook Service

Why has my BizTalk CI/CD build just stopped working?

The Problem

The Analysis

PostSharp assembly error upgrading Delinea Secret Server

The Problem

The Analysis

Another new problem when generating build agents using Packer

The Problem

Options for Migrating DevOps Toolsets

Unexpected 'task is dependent on a Node version that is end-of-life' warning with Azure DevOps Pipelines

Background

Caught out again by the cache in a build pipeline

MSTest | Controlling Parallelism of Test Runs

Introduction

Azure Logic Apps Standard | Send Custom Events to Application Insights

Introduction

Cannot create a new Azure DevOps Agent Pool on an Azure DevOps Server

The Issue

Issues parsing xUnit Test Coverage data into SonarQube

The Issue

What in the SQL? An in depth discussion of SQL vs NOSQL Implementations

Introduction

Updating powerBI connections after a SQL migration

The Issue

Five Web Frameworks in Ten Minutes

React

Building a Github Action for Cloudflare Project Deployment

Updating a project's SonarQube and OWASP Dependency Checker Plugin Configuration

The Issue

Azure Function Apps | OkObjectResult Returns Empty JSON After Moving to .NET 9 Isolated Worker Runtime

The Problem

Why This Happens

Grey Matter Podcast 'Secure by design: The DevSecOps mindset'

Interesting side effect with the Azure DevOps cache if misconfigured

The Problem

Getting a Surface Hub v1 Working with a Replacement PC

The Problem

Changing mySql SSL Certificates when running SnipeIT in Azure

The Issue

The Solution

Bicep Tips and Tricks | #9 | Prevent a Nasty Refactor with Function Namespaces

Problem Space

Bicep Tips and Tricks | #8 | Agnostic Templates Through Config Files

Overview

Another confusing Azure DevOps Pipelines YAML error message using StringList parameters

Introduction

Bicep Tips and Tricks | #7 | From Static to Dynamic Config

Overview

Finally I have working SONOFF SNZB-02P sensors with Home Assistant

Bicep Tips and Tricks | #6 | Typed Variables

Overview