A new version of dasBlog was released a few weeks ago. I must admit, that I downloaded and installed within minutes of seeing Scott Hanselman's blog post. When I initally started this blog I had a really hard time deciding which platform to use...should I use the more populare WordPress, should I try and get Community Server up and going, it was kind of hard to decide at that time. It wasn't until this release that I fully stood behind my inital decision to use dasBlog.

My favorite features include:

• Support for Google Sitemaps - The google webmaster tools and their analytics tools really make maintaining and running a site that much more fun. I think it was especially important to support google sitemaps since the content on our blogs are constantly changing. Note: The location to reference for your google sitemap can be found at [YourBlogDomain]/googlesitemap.ashx
• Better support for Windows Live Writer - Im assuming that the file uploading issues were fixed. Although I already configured LiveWriter to FTP all of my files up the server when needed.

I would also like to mention that the upgrad from 1.8 to 1.9 was a piece of cake. I just merged the web.config files and pushed the new files to the server.

More Information:

Scott Hanselman on dasBlog 1.9

Scott Hanselman on Google Sitemaps

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Analytics

dasBlog 1.9 upgrade information

Wow. Component Art has released one of the most impressive displays of AJAX enabled controls. I'm really getting anxious for Atlas to get out the door because I can't wait for the day that ASP.NET sites stop being the ugly red-headed step child of dynamic websites. Obviously that's an overstatement, but with this great release of Atlas I think we're all going to be blown away both by the third party control vendors as well as the home grown sites too.

Other AJAX Enabled control suites:

• Telerik
• Infragistics
• Of course the Atlas Control Kit

One of my most favorite features with TFS Version Control and Team Foundation Power Toys has to offer is Annotate. With annotate every single line of source code labeled with:

1. The user who made the last changes on each individual line of code
2. The changeset associated with the annotated section
3. The date of the changeset
4. A right click menu which gives you acces to - the changeset details, the history of the file, and the ability to annotate an the previous changeset version.

TFS Annotate Screenshot

Click here to download the latest version of TFS Power Toys

Brain Harry gives us an insight into a few of the changes that we should expect in the next refinement of Annotate.

Brian Harry has provided a list of the Bug fixes we should expect for the Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1. The fix I was most excited about was the common MS Project issue where resources could not be mapped to TFS because a comma was being used the separator in our domain accounts.

Yeah now I can change back my List separator from the ";" to the ",". (Not that I ever noticed any issues from having this setting).

In regard to my previous post on tracing sql statemens generated by llblgen, it turns out that someone has developed a more useful method for tracing LLBLGen Pro 2 by extending the internal partial class and modifying the output so that you can copy and past the SQL statements written to the Output window into Sql Management Studio or Sql Query Analyzer.

Click here to read the full blog entry @ RightHand blogs

The following information is extremely helpful if you find a need to view all of the SQL statements which LLBLGen Pro is generating while executing your project. Sitting back and letting LLBL Gen act like a magical bridge between your objects and your database, but sometimes you really need to know whats going. Perhaps the biggest reason why I decided to dig a little deeper stemmed from the fact that we were on a project with huge scalability concerns.

Add the following to your web.config file following the <system.web> section.

<system.diagnostics>

    <switches>

        <add name="SqlServerDQE" value="4" />

        <add name="AccessDQE" value="4" />

        <add name="OracleDQE" value="4" />

        <add name="FirebirdDQE" value="4" />

        <add name="MySqlDQE" value="4" />

        <add name="DB2DQE" value="4" />

        <add name="PostgeSqlDQE" value="4" />

        <add name="ORMGeneral" value="0" />

        <add name="ORMStateManagement" value="0" />

        <add name="ORMPersistenceExecution" value="3" />

    </switches>

</system.diagnostics>

Watch the Output menu to see what statements are being built and executed by the SqlServer Dynamic Query Engine

Sample output:

Method Exit: CreateSelectDQ
Method Exit: CreatePagingSelectDQ: no paging.
Method Enter: DaoBase.ExecuteMultiRowRetrievalQuery
Method Exit: DaoBase.ExecuteMultiRowRetrievalQuery
Method Exit: DaoBase.PerformGetMultiAction
Method Enter: CreateRowCountDQ
Method Enter: CreateSelectDQ
Method Enter: CreateSelectDQ
Generated Sql query:
Query: SELECT [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[ID] AS [Id], [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[DisplayName], [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[URL] AS [Url], [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[Description], [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[CategoryID] AS [CategoryId] FROM [TableName].[dbo].[Link]

Method Exit: CreateSelectDQ
Generated Sql query:
Query: SELECT COUNT(*) AS NumberOfRows FROM (SELECT [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[ID] AS [Id], [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[DisplayName], [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[URL] AS [Url], [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[Description], [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[CategoryID] AS [CategoryId] FROM [TableName].[dbo].[Link] ) TmpResult

Method Exit: CreateRowCountDQ
Method Enter: DaoBase.ExecuteScalarQuery
Method Exit: DaoBase.ExecuteScalarQuery
Method Enter: DaoBase.PerformGetMultiAction
Method Enter: CreatePagingSelectDQ
Method Enter: CreateSelectDQ
Method Enter: CreateSelectDQ
Generated Sql query:
Query: SELECT [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[ID] AS [Id], [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[DisplayName], [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[URL] AS [Url], [VirginiaAgencyRedesign].[dbo].[Link].[Description], [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[CategoryID] AS [CategoryId] FROM [TableName].[dbo].[Link] ORDER BY [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[DisplayName] ASC

Method Exit: CreateSelectDQ
Generated Sql query:
Query: SELECT TOP 10 [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[ID] AS [Id], [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[DisplayName], [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[URL] AS [Url], [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[Description], [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[CategoryID] AS [CategoryId] FROM [TableName].[dbo].[Link] ORDER BY [TableName].[dbo].[Link].[DisplayName] ASC

For some reason we started getting the error TF42026 when we attempted to execute our builds. I found this great blog post from Tom Wisnowski which gave a step by step checklist of things to check in order to resolve the issue.

Turns out our this error was being caused from the fact that our Team Build Service was not running.

2. Make sure the Team Build Service is running. Open the services MMC snapin and look for Team Build Service. Make sure the service is running. Also note the account that the service runs as; you will need it for the next step

This may be kind of late in the game to post about a feature which was probably discussed a while ago, but I thought that it would be worth mentioning anyway. Turns out the Microsoft Word 2007 will support blog publishing. I think its great that Microsoft has finally decided to start supporting many of the new "cooler" web features like RSS and Blogging.

Check out Joe Friend's Blog Post for more information.

I stumbled across a very startling blog post by Paul Wilson while reading my feeds today. It turns out that VS2003 will not be supported in Vista and VS2005 is not yet completely supported. I guess I was naive in assuming that both would work fine on the new OS but apparently there are going to be some issues. Im not sure how this will effect my move from XP @ home, but Im absolutely positive that most of our offices are not going to make the switch in a quite a long time.

Check out Paul's blog post

It is interesting to read all of the heated comments in reference to his post.

One of the things that I have noticed about LLBLGen Pro Version 2.0 is that, post installation, the LLBLGenProDataSource control is not added to your control. In my opnion one of the most important additions to the second version for LLBL is the fact that it supports the ObjectDataSource control model, but the control is only useful in your organization if people use it in development.

The following is a summary of how to add the DataSource control to your Toolbox:

1 .Right click toolbar and choose items. (Loading the choose items dialog may take a few moments)

2. On the choose items dialog click Browse

3.Locate the SD.LLBLGen.Pro.ORMSupportClasses.NET20.dll and select open.

4. The choose items list has now been updated.

Sort the list by name and check the box next to LLBLGenProDataSource. (note both of the Datasources will select automatically).

Select OK and view the new items on your toolbar.

It turns out that we have installed the TFS Workgroup edition which translates to the fact that we can have a maximum of 5 registered users on our TFS environment. I guess I should have done a little more research into the licensing issues involved with our MSDN subscriptions but it was such an interesting opportunity to:
1. Install TFS and get it up and running with all of its individual components.
2. Convince our department that a move toward this technology would be a step in the right direction.
3. Gain access to a pilot project which would be used as both a model for future projects and a platform for learning all of the ins-and-outs of using TFS throughout the entire lifecycle of a software product.

From here, we are going to have to look at the different licensing options and choose the best option for out team. The one biggest concern that I have is that the workgroup edition will not be updateable.

More info:

Don't Install Team Foundation Server Workgroup Edition!!!
MSDN Subscriptions Chart
Rick LaPlante's WebLog Post
Eric Hammersley's WebLog Post
Rob Caron's WebLog Post
Team System Licensing Whitepaper
How to upgrade TFS Workgroup Edition

Here is an older post from Scott Guthrie with several tips, tricks, recipes, and gotchas regarding ASP.NET 2.0. Topics include:

• User Interface
• Data
• Security
• Visual Studio
• Deployment
• Performance

Click here to check it out.

Ive been waiting for quite some time to hear a proposed release date for Atlas. Early users adopters will need to change some of their existing code to accomidate for some of the naming changes. See Scott Guthrie's blog post here.

Links:

• Atlas Homepage
• Atlas Overview
• Free Atlas Videos

Team Foudation Power Toys is a great collection of tools which are freely available for TFS.

Great features include:

• Annotate - IDE supported feature which allows you to view who last changed the contents of the your project's source files. Never will you have to wonder who is responsible for that ridiculous defect which you were forced to fix.
• TreeDiff - IDE supported feature which allows you to compare the difference in content between two different folders (ie. your local working folders and the server folders).
• And many more
  

Download Team Foundation Power Toys @ http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=5431080

More details can be found @

• http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2006/09/07/74...
• http://blogs.msdn.com/csell/archive/2006/06/21/641...

There are a number of great features in Microsofts Team System Suit and Team Foundation Server components. Of course there are the obvious advantages for the automated, process level, toolset which we gain with the integration of the numerous Microsoft components (Sql Server, Reporting Services, Sharepoint Services, Visual Studio 2005), but the customization of the framework is great as well.

The obvious benefits for TFS is can be found from the top down. Upper management has a newfound lookout tower over all of their projects, project management has more control over the project, and the developers have all of the new cool tools without all of the manual work. However, the customization of the TFS work items, policies, and practices, in my opinion, is will be what standardizes its use across all the industry.

That being said, I found some great blog posts on customizing the checkin policies:

Basic overview of customizing checkin-polices from MSDN.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181281....

Marcel de Vries has a great post describing an overview of the building a new policy.
http://blogs.infosupport.com/marcelv/pages/CustomP...

Some code samples from another post.
http://blogs.infosupport.com/marcelv/pages/CustomP...

And yet another .zip containing the source and solution for a comment required policy.
http://blogs.vertigosoftware.com/teamsystem/archiv...

So today I installed Team Foundation Build on our Team Foundation Server. Due to the fact that our team size is less than 25 people we decided to go with a single server installation. As of right now, we only have a single project in TFS with only 3-5 active users at any given moment. That being said, the installation for the Build server was cake which is more than I can say for all the hoops that I had to jump through in order to install of the components for TFS. After the installation, I created and ran a standard build, but the build failed.

Error Message:

Solution: , Project: <YourSolutionName>, Compilation errors and warnings

<BuildLocation>\<WebApplicationProject>.csproj(477,11): error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v8.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.

Turns out that this is a known Web Application Project issue.

Issue 6 - Using TFS Team Build
The May 2006 release of Web Application Projects supports building with Team Build on a Team Foundation Server (TFS). However, you will need to manually add the "Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" file to your Team Foundation Server for it to work.

1. On the computer running Team Build, navigate to the "C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v8.0" directory.
2. In this directory create a "WebApplications" directory.
3. Place the "Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" file in the "WebApplications" directory. This file can be found at the same location on your developer system that has been updated with the May 2006 release of Web Application Projects.

After performing these steps Team Build should be able to successfully build a web-project build with the new Web Application Project type.

Additionally, if you have an older version of a Web Application Project, you will need to add the WebApplication.targets line (shown in blue and bold) after the normal CSharp.targets or VBasic.targets line in your .csproj or .vbproj file (all new or newly migrated projects will have this line automatically).

<Import Project="$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\
v8.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" />

After copying the Microsoft.WebApplication.targets file the build worked perfect.

Ever since I began working with Visual Studio 2005 I have been making all of my web projects with the Web Application Project Add-In, it seems that one can easily forget that there were are a number of known issues with this great Add-In.