The art of simplicity

Starting from Visual Studio 2012 the testing infrastructure became extensible making it possible to add support for other test frameworks without the need of 3th party plugins like Resharper or Gallio . Just before the year ended, the NUnit team released a new version(beta 4) of their NUnit Test Adapter for Visual Studio, with support for VS 2012 Update 1. The new release, version 0.94, works with the VS 2012 RTM as well but shows off some extra features when used with the update. The biggest addition to the Adapter in this release is that it now supports Traits . NUnit Properties and Categories are translated in to Visual Studio traits and you can sort the display of tests by trait or filter on them. This goes a long way toward making the Visual Studio Test Explorer useful in running large sets of tests. Release notes for this version can be found here: http://nunit.org/index.php?p=vsTestAdapterReleaseNotes&r=2.6.2 More information about Traits here: http://blogs.msdn.com...

Last week Microsoft released the Visual Studio 2012 Team Foundation Server Monitoring Management Pack for monitoring TFS with System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1 or 2012. You can download it here . The Team Foundation Server 2012 Monitoring Management Pack provides both proactive and reactive monitoring of Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2012. It monitors TFS components such as application tier server instances, team project collections, build servers, and proxy servers. Feature Summary The monitoring provided by this management pack includes availability and configuration monitoring, performance data collection, and default thresholds. You can integrate the monitoring of Team Foundation Server components into your service-oriented monitoring scenarios. Auto discovery of TFS components Implements containment hierarchy, reflecting logical architecture of the Product Implements a proper health model using Monitors Contains tasks, ...

Starting from Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox 3.1+, Safari 4+, Chrome 3+, and Opera 10.5+ browsers support native JSON parsing. But what if your users are still using IE7 (or even worse IE6)? Here are some of the options I prefer to use: To convert a JSON response to a JavaScript object: If you are using jQuery, use parseJSON . Internally it checks if browser supports JSON.parse, so the fallback is built in. Use the JSON.parse method from the json2.js library from Douglas Crockford. It adds a JSON object to the browser if it doesn’t exists yet. To convert a JavaScript object to serialized JSON string: For jQuery I couldn’t find an out-of-the-box solution, but the following jQuery plugin could do the trick: jQuery.toJSON Use the JSON.stringify method from the json2.js library. What I also like about the json2.js library from Douglas Crockford is that it allows you to manipulate the serialization process by adding a toJSON method to your ...

As you probably know Microsoft started its journey in ORM land with 2 frameworks: Linq to SQL, a lightweight ORM with some nice features and good performance but tightly coupled to SQL Server and Entity Framework which started as an ugly beast but is now transformed into a good, performant Enterprise ready ORM solution. So Microsoft decided to stop investing in Linq to SQL and put al its effort in Entity Framework. This means that although Linq to SQL is a nice ORM framework, it’s missing some useful features. Last week I got a question from a colleague about Linq to SQL. He couldn’t find a way to update the Linq to SQL DBML file so it reflects the changes he made to the underlying database model. This is just one of the missing features. Luckily there are some workarounds to fix this: Option 1: Remove the changed tables from the DBML designer and drag them again from the SQL explorer window. Option 2: Use the SqlMetalPlus addin. The add-in adds some extra context menu ...

I talked about the Bundling and Minification NuGet package before. Last week when configuring a new ASP.NET MVC 4 web application, I discovered another nice feature inside this library. Before I had to update the script references each time I upgraded to a new version of jQuery. So somewhere in my code I had a script reference like this: <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="~/scripts/jquery-1.7.1.js"/> With the Bundling and Minification library you can create a version independent bundle and set the reference once. So you no longer have to upgrade your script references. You can see this already in action if you created a new ASP.NET MVC application in Visual Studio 2012.  If you open up  the App_Start\BundleConfig.cs file and examine the RegisterBundles method, you’ll find the following code: public static void RegisterBundles(BundleCollection bundles) { bundles.Add(new ScriptBundle("~/bundles/jquery")...

Last week Attrice released their Team Foundation Server 2012 version of the Team Foundation Sidekicks . It offers the same functionality as previous versions but adds support of TFS both on premise and in-the-cloud (Team Foundation Service). Download version 4.5 of Team Foundation Sidekicks (only for Visual Studio © 2012, Team Foundation Server 2012 and Team Foundation Service).

One of the hidden gems in the SignalR framework is a utility called signalr.exe (in the Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.Hosting.Utils package) that you can use to do a few things. Install/Uninstall SignalR performance counters Generate a static js file for the magic ~/signalr/hubs url. After installing the Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.Hosting.Utils NuGet package, you’ll find a SignalR executable in the package folder(under \packages\Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.Hosting.Utils.1.0.0-alpha2\tools) Open a command prompt(run as Administrator). Browse to the tools folder containing the SignalR.exe file. Run signalr ipc to install the Performance Counters. These performance counters give you more detailed information about your SignalR applications. Remark: To use these on full IIS you need to add the app pool user for your application to the Performance Monitor Users group. Run signalr ghp /path:<path to binaries> to generate a static JavaScript file c...

You all probably seen QR codes before, these strange looking images containing any kind of data. Most of the times there are used to embed an URL but you can put any kind of data in it For a Windows 8 application I’m building I wanted to embed the option to generate QR codes and share these codes using the Windows 8 Share Contracts. The easiest way I found to generate QR codes is by using the Google Chart API . The only thing you need to do is specify the size in pixels of your barcode and the url you wish to encode. If you invoke a GET request to the Google Chart API using the following query string, you’ll get a generated QR image back: http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=300x300&chl=http://bartwullems.blogspot.com Nice and simple!

Since 2009 Shai Raiten is writing about TFS API making his blog one of the best resources for any information about customizing and extending Team Foundation Server. This resulted in a long list of blog posts: Basic TFS API Part 1: Domain Picker TFS API Part 2: Domain Picker Using Registered Servers (Cache) TFS API Part 3: Get Project List Using ICommonStructureService TFS API Part 4: Get TFS User List (Mail, Sid, Account, Domain) TFS API Part 7: Use IEventService To Get User Event Subscriptions TFS API Part 8: Subscribe/Unsubscribe Events Using IEventService TFS API Part 12: Set Security For Area/Iteration TFS API Part 13: More About Connecting TFS (Custom Credentials, Prompt) TFS API Part 20: Bye TeamFoundationServer and Welcome TfsTeamProjectCollection TFS API Part 25: Get TFS User List (Mail Sid, Account, Domain) – TFS 2010 TFS API Part 29 – TFS Impersonation TFS API Part 32 – Add and Remove Users From Application Groups Sou...

Last week I enabled TFS publishing for a Windows Azure Website .  However the deployment failed because I had multiple projects inside the solution and the build tried to deploy the wrong project. To fix this I used the following workaround: Create a separate solution for the project you want to deploy and check this solution into source control. Open Team Explorer and connect to your TFS project Right click on the Build definition that was created for you when enabled TFS publishing and choose Edit Build Definition...    Go to the Process tab and change the Solution To Build to the solution you just created. Next time you check in the new solution is used to build and deploy the project.

Last week the Windows Phone team hosted the Windows Phone 8 Jump Start training, a fast-paced and demo-packed learning ‘experience’ tailored to show developers how to build responsive, appealing, and effective applications quickly. All 20 modules are now available online for your on-demand viewing, (or download) on Channel 9. Mod 01a: Introducing Windows Phone 8 Development Part 1 Mod 01b: Introducing Windows Phone 8 Development Part 2 Mod 02: Designing Windows Phone 8 Apps Mod 03: Building Windows Phone 8 Apps Mod 04: Files and Storage on Windows Phone 8 Mod 05: Windows Phone 8 Application Lifecycle Mod 06: Background Agents Mod 07: Tiles and Lock Screen Notifications Mod 08: Push Notifications Mod 09: Using Phone Resources in Windows Phone 8 Mod 10: App to App Communication in Windows Phone 8 Mod 11: Network Communication in Windows Phone 8 Mod 12: Proximity Sensors and Bluetooth in Windows Phone 8 Mod 13: Speech Input in Wind...

Looking for a free(!) tool to connect to your Cloud databases? One of the tools I’ve been trying is Toad for Cloud Databases, a free SQL-based tool with the familiar look and feel of Toad, which enables users to use SQL(yes indeed SQL) with a set of  non-relational databases, including Hadoop (Hbase & Hive), Cassandra, MongoDB, SimpleDB, and Azure Table Services. How does it work? There are two key components to Toad for Cloud Databases: Toad client: Use it to access Cloud/NoSQL databases via SQL statements. Data Hub: It translates SQL statements submitted through the Toad client into a language understood by the Cloud database, and returns results in the familiar tabular row and column format. Installation You can download it from the following location(you’ll have to register first): http://toadworld.com/Freeware/ToadforCloudDatabasesFreeware/tabid/842/Default.aspx Run the installer after downloading has completed. Get started Start the Toad for...

One of the hardest parts of Team Foundation Server is choosing the right Process Template. The process template defines the set of work item types, queries, and reports that you will use to plan and track your project. Once you’ve created your Team Project, switching to a different Process Template is not an option. So you better choose right… To help you through the process Microsoft provided a great MSDN article providing lot’s of information about the default templates. It provides you some considerations to help you choose: Choose Scrum Process Template for Visual Studio ALM if your team uses Scrum, manages bugs along with product backlog items during sprint planning, and wants work items and processes designed to support Scrum. Choose Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) for Agile Software Development v6.0 if your team uses Agile methods, and you resolve work items before closing them. Choose MSF for Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Proce...

The TFS Administration Tool has been updated to use the Team Explorer 2012 DLL’s. So you no longer need to install Team Explorer 2010 to use this tool. Download TFS Administration Tool 2.2 (1.55 MB, MSI) The TFS Administration Tool allows Team Foundation Server administrators to manage user permissions on all three platforms utilized by Team Foundation Server: Team Foundation Server, SharePoint, and SQL Server Reporting Services. The tool also allows administrators to easily copy user permissions among team projects and to easily identify any missing permissions on any of the three platforms.

Last week when searching for an easy solution to delete some files from the TFS database, I found the following Visual Studio Extension: TFSSCExplorerExtension . “TFSSCExplorerExtension (Team Foundation Server Source Control Explorer VS 2010 Extension) is  aVisual Studio 2010 Extension Package that adds new features to the TFS Source Control Explorer window for TFS 2010 . ” A separate release is available for Visual Studio 2012 here . It offers the following features: Move to Folder: Move support for multiple files. Branch to Folder: Branch support for multiple files. Merge from Sources: Select items to Merge. File Icon Change: Branched files are shown with a different icon. Drag & Drop: Adds drag & drop support between file list in the left side and folder tree in the right side. Show/Hide deleted items: Quicker alternative then going to Tools – Options. Destroy: Permanently removes files or folders from Source Control. ...

For a project I’m doing we had to start a large refactoring round. Therefore it would be useful to get compiler errors on our ASP.NET MVC Views too. Otherwise we had to go through all the screens our self to detect problems. Luckily ASP.NET MVC offers this feature out-of-the-box: Unload your ASP.NET MVC project by right right clicking the project on the solution explorer in VS and choosing unload project Right click on the csproj file name and choose Edit. Somewhere in the csproj file you’ll find the following line: <MvcBuildViews>false</MvcBuildViews> Change the MvcBuildViews value from false to true. Save the file and reload your project. From this moment on the views are compiled too each time you build your project.

The airspace problem was one of the most annoying issues when integration a Win 32 component(like WinForms) with WPF. The problem is that each render technology belongs to only one airspace only. So when you place Win32 components in your WPF application they behave as a black hole for input leading to all kind of issues. I blogged about this issue before and even showed a possible workaround . With WPF 4.5 the issue is finally solved! To do this 2 extra properties are added to the HwndHost class(the base class for WindowsFormsHost ): IsRedirected and CompositionMode . IsRedirected: Set this property to true to solve the airspace problem. (It’s not enabled by default.) CompositionMode: Specified how deep the integration should go. It has multiple possible values: None : this is the default behavior and no integration is done: the airspace problems are still here. OutputOnly : The airspace problem are solved but the user (and the input system) can’t interact with the hosted ...

If you don’t have access to the new Storyboarding features in Powerpoint, don’t worry. Andreas Wulf released a free set of Windows 8 Wireframe Templates for Powerpoint . Using these templates, you can quickly put together a Windows 8 app layout and iterate on it. All elements in the set are based upon regular PowerPoint vector shapes, and are fully editable and customizable. The wireframing set is available as a .pptx file (for PowerPoint 2007 or newer) that you can download using the link below: Download Windows 8 Wireframing Set for PowerPoint (.pptx, 0.5 mb) Thanks Andreas! Some screenshots: Example grid page displaying item previews arranged in groups. Example page displaying details for a single group with previews for each item in the group. Example page displaying one item in detail. Example page displaying a list of items and the details for the selected item. Example of a Metro app in snapped view state. Collection of common...

Last week I discovered the Responsive Web Design Testing Tool by Matt Kersley . This tool has been built to help with testing your responsive websites while you design and build them. You can enter your website's URL into the address bar at the top of this page (not your browser's address bar) to test a specific page. The output will be rendered in different resolutions, giving you a quick overview of the design on different resolutions.

I talked about some of the great features of Web Deploy 3 before. But how do you get the new publishing experience in Visual Studio 2010? It took me some to figure out what software should be installed. You’ll need the following component: Web publish 1.1 forVS 2010 The easiest way to get this software is by using the Web Platform Installer. Download it here or open it if you already installed it before. Go to the Products tab and search for Microsoft Web Publish 1.1 for Visual Studio 2010. Click on Add and start the installation by clicking Install. Once the installation has completed, you’ll see the new and improved Web Publishing wizard when you click Publish in a web application.

With every new releases of the Microsoft OS, I’ll have to go through the same pain to get the DB2 providers working. IBM seems not able to release a driver that works out-of-the-box. So what are the hacks this time to get it working? Start with a normal installation of the DB2 client on your system(don’t forget to run as an administrator). The installation will end successfully but  when you try to connect to a DB2 database, you’ll probably get an error similar to this one: “sql1159 initialization error with db2 .net data provider reason code 7”   Go to Start -> Programs -> Visual Studio -> Developer Command Prompt. Open the prompt as an administrator Add the following assemblies to the GAC using gacutil: gacutil /if "C:\Program Files\IBM\SQLLIB\BIN\netf40\IBM.Data.DB2.dll" gacutil /if "C:\Program Files\IBM\SQLLIB\BIN\netf40\IBM.Data.DB2.entity.dll" gacutil /if "C:\Program Files\IBM\SQLLIB\BI...

I talked about the application pool ‘auto-start’ feature before. In IIS 8 it is renamed to Application Initialization module. Activating it allows you to enable the following capabilities: Starting a worker process without waiting for a request (AlwaysRunning) Load the application without waiting for a request (preloadEnabled) Show a loading page while the application is starting To enable these features Set the startMode on the application pool  to AlwaysRunning . <system.applicationHost> <applicationPools> <add name="DefaultAppPool" autoStart="true" startMode="AlwaysRunning" /> </applicationPools> </system.applicationHost> Set preloadEnabled to true on the web application. <system.applicationHost> <sites> <site name="Default Web Site" id="1"> <application path="/"> <virtualDirectory path="/...

Looking for a good book about testing with Visual Studio 2012? Microsoft released the free Testing for Continuous Delivery with Visual Studio 2012 e-book . “This book is aimed at test engineers, managers, developers, and folks interested in understanding the changing world of test. Over the last several years, software testing has changed a great deal. In the past, test plans were on paper, filed away and out of sight. Today they are—or can be with Visual Studio—living documents, as manual and automated tests are integrating into the test workflow supported by the test infrastructure. Today you no longer have to set up physical boxes; instead you can set up and automate virtual environments composed of virtual machines to meet your testing environment needs. With Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server, the pain of dealing with a heterogeneous test infrastructure is reduced, the cost and effectiveness of testing a product is improved, and regression testing becom...

I talked about uniquely identifying a Windows 8 device before. Last week I stumbled over this post by Rene Schulte .  In this post he creates the SystemInformation class. This class gathers some useful information about the current system and dumps it in a string: using System; using System.Globalization; using System.IO; using System.Net.NetworkInformation; using System.Runtime.InteropServices.WindowsRuntime; using System.Text; using System.Threading.Tasks; using Windows.ApplicationModel; using Windows.ApplicationModel.Store; using Windows.Devices.Enumeration; using Windows.Devices.Input; using Windows.Graphics.Display; using Windows.Networking.Connectivity; using Windows.Security.ExchangeActiveSyncProvisioning; using Windows.Storage; using Windows.System.Profile; using Windows.System.UserProfile; using Windows.UI.Xaml; namespace Schulte.Xaml.Windows { public class SystemInformation { public static async Task<string> Dump(bool shouldDumpCompleteDeviceInfos = f...

ASP.NET Web API is an ideal platform for building RESTful applications on the .NET Framework. Josh Reuben did a great job creating a guide of how to leverage Web API to construct a RESTful frontend API. This guide contains the following topics: The Advantages of REST Methodology over SOAP General RESTful API Design Overview ASPNET WebAPI Considerations Overview Design Routing Response Customization Validation Config Documentation generation Plugging into the Message Handler pipeline Exception Handling Cookie Management Internet Media Types, formatters and serialization True oData support Self-hosting Tracing Security A must read for every Web API developer!

Microsoft released a new version of the Visual Source Safe Upgrade tool. The tool provides a Wizard Based UI for upgrading Visual Source Safe repositories to Team Foundation Server 2012, 2010 or Team Foundation Service ( http://tfs.visualstudio.com/ ) It supports upgrading the following components from Visual SourceSafe to Team Foundation Server (TFS) version control: Code projects Files Version history Labels User information Documentation can be found at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms253060.aspx Download it from the Visual Studio Gallery: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/867f310a-db30-4228-bbad-7b9af0089282

Installing Team Foundation Server can be a daunting task. To help you in the process, Benjamin Day created an illustrated guide that walks you through the process of installing Team Foundation Server 2012 (TFS2012), the TFS2012 Build Service, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012, and TFS Lab Management. You can download the install guide as a Word document and as a PDF or watch it online .

For a developer being productive in it’s development environment is of the uppermost importance. One thing to make you more productive is knowing all(or some) keyboard shortcuts. Before I printed out the Visual Studio keybinding posters , but now I found a better alternative:   IntelliCommand . From the Visual Studio Gallery : “IntelliCommand - an extension for Visual Studio 2010 and 2012 which helps to find the short keys. It shows the help windows with all possible combinations when you press Ctrl or Shift or Alt or their combinations (hold it for about 2 seconds to see this window). Also it shows the list of possible combination when you press first combination of chord shortcut keys, like Ctrl+K, Ctrl+C (this combination comments selected text in editor).” Intelli Command shows all available shortcut keys for combination of Control + Shift after couple seconds: Ctrl+K was pressed. Visual Studio waits for second combination:

Last week Microsoft announced the release of Team Foundation Service. The new url for the service is http://tfs.visualstudio.com .  Read more about it on the service web site here: http://tfs.visualstudio.com/en-us/home/news/ . I got a lot of questions about the pricing strategy for this product. Microsoft revealed some information about their pricing strategy but for the complete information about paid plans and services, you’ll have to wait until 2013. At the moment Team Foundation Service includes a free usage plan with a robust set of features that make it quick and easy for individuals and lean teams to get started with this application lifecycle management (ALM) platform. The free plan includes support for up to 5 users, an unlimited number of projects, version control, work item tracking, agile planning tools, feedback management, and build (the last of which is still in preview). In addition, MSDN subscribers at the Visual Studio Test Pro with MSDN, Visual Studio Prem...

Last week one of our users reported a bug that they got an exception back when loading a big set of data. When looking at the exception logs, we saw that the following InvalidOperation exception was thrown: Error during serialization or deserialization using the JSON JavaScriptSerializer. The length of the string exceeds the value set on the maxJsonLength property. Some people suggested to set the maxJsonLength property in the web.config to a higher value, but this value is not used by ASP.NET MVC <system.web.extensions> <scripting> <webServices> <jsonSerialization maxJsonLength="100000"/> </webServices> </scripting> </system.web.extensions> We solved the issue by creating our own Actionresult inheriting from the existing JsonResult class based on the information in this post : public class LargeJsonResult:JsonResult { const string JsonRequestGetNotAllowed = "This request has been blocked because se...

The Windows 8 ecosystems offers you a broad set of tiles to improve the user experience. I always forget the list of available templates so this one is for me; a link to the tile template catalog so I can never forget the list of available options: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh761491.aspx . The template catalog lists the tile templates available for use in a tile notification, with pictorial examples of each together with their XML content. Note that when they are displayed on a computer set to a right-to-left (RTL) language, templates are flipped from their left and right descriptions here. In the static or peek templates that display an image collection, the larger square image is not quite square; it is slightly wider than it is tall. If you supply a square image, the image will be scaled for width and slightly cropped on the top and bottom.

Last week a colleague asked me to have a look at a Reporting Services problem. The reporting server returned the following error message when she tried to upload a report: Error : There was an Exception running the extension specified in the config file –> maximum request length exceeded. The problem started to occur after she added a large image to the report. By doing this the report size became too big and the report server started to complain that we are sending more data than it is configured to accept. Fixing this is similar to every other web application, do this by changing the web.config. This config file can be found on the following path: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSRS10_50.SQLEXPRESS\Reporting Services\ReportServer Open the config file and find the following line: < httpRuntime executionTimeout = "9000" /> Add a maxRequestLength attribute in there to fix the problem: < httpRuntime executionTimeout = "90...

By default when you delete an item from TFS source control, it’s not really deleted. Instead it’s marked as deleted and no longer visible in source control but it’s not deleted from the TFS database. (If you really want to delete something from the database, you can use the TFS Destroy command . But what if you want to “undelete” a deleted item? To allow this, we first have to show those deleted items in Source Control Explorer. Inside Visual Studio, go to “Tools-Options”, select “Source Control-visual Studio Team Foundation Server” and check the “Show deleted items in the Source Control explorer”.