Mathias Olausson [MVP]

Yesterday Microsoft released a beta of a new interesting extension to TFS 2010 – the OData Service for Team Foundation Server 2010. This is a new way to get to the data in TFS using the Open Data Protocol (OData, http://www.odata.org/) instead of the web services and .NET object model. This means it will be much easier to consume TFS information from any device on any platform which supports HTTP requests.

If you have a project hosted on Codeplexhttp://www.codeplex.com/ there’s already a cloud-hosted service up for using OData to get to your TFS project there. Go to https://codeplexodata.cloudapp.net for documentation on how to use that.

See Brian Keller’s announcement of the OData Service plus a link to a video demonstration of what you can do with the service.

I’m installing the bits now, let’s see what we can do with it. To be continued…

VS/TFS 2010 SP1 has just been released! SP1 rolls up most of the post RTM hotfixes and updates but it does not include Feature Packs and some other updates.

Here’s a list of the current stack of tools and patches that should be applied to a new Visual Studio/TFS 2010 environment:

• Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1
• TFS 2010 Service Pack 1
• Expression Encoder
• Visual Studio Feature Pack 2. This feature pack contains new tooling around testing and also includes the Architecture and Modeling Feature Pack. Currently only available from MSDN downloads.
• Project Server Integration Feature Pack. Also only available from MSDN downloads.
• TFS Power Tools, March 2011 release
• Team Foundation Build Extensions
• TFS 2010 MSSCCI Provider
• Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Tools
• Visual Studio Code Metrics Power Tools
• Team Explorer Everywhere SP1. Again only available from MSDN downloads.

See Brian Harry’s detailed post on what should be installed where.

If you’re looking for a comprehensive list of what’s in SP1 look at Brian’s Visual Studio SP1 announcement post.

The TFS team just released an updated version of the essential TFS power tools. In this version I think the following are the most important additions:

• Improved feature-set in the Windows Shell Extension. Workspace management, history search and the option to do Shelving from the shell are all welcome features.
• TFS Build Power Tools. Stating with this release Microsoft will start sharing parts of their internal tools around build management. I had the opportunity to see some demos of the coming features at the MVP summit last week and I can’t wait to get more of those in the package! For now we have to settle with a command-line version of the Clone Build definition feature introduced in an earlier TFPT release (see this post on how that feature works: http://msmvps.com/blogs/molausson/archive/2010/10/21/clone-a-build-definition.aspx)

This update also resolves a number of issues with the TFS Backup/Restore tool that came with the previous release. Based on what I’ve heard the tool is ready for use now!

Brian Harrys has written more about this release here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2011/03/03/mar-11-team-foundation-server-power-tools-are-available.aspx

You can get the latest TFS Power Tools from the Visual Studio 2010 Extension Manager or directly from this link: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/c255a1e4-04ba-4f68-8f4e-cd473d6b971f

The evaluation VPCs Microsoft kindly provides us will soon expire (on December 15). To our rescue Brian Keller has updated the virtual machines for Hyper-V, Windows 7 and Virtual PC 2007 so that it will run for another six month (next date to be aware of is June 1 2011).

You can download the images from the following locations:

• Visual Studio and TFS 2010 evaluation (Hyper-V)
• Visual Studio and TFS 2010 evaluation (Windows 7)
• Visual Studio and TFS 2010 evaluation (Virtual PC 2007 SP1)

If you want to know more about what’s available in the VPC, check out Brian’s post Visual Studio 2010 RTM Virtual Machine with Sample Data and Hands-on-Labs.

This week the ALM Rangers shipped another project, this time the Visual Studio 2010 Database guidance project. I’ve been part of the review team in the project and had the opportunity to look at the content throughout the project. I think many will appreciate this release since it gives a nice umbrella over topics that are not covered on one place elsewhere.

The guidance document covers many important areas such as source code management, build and deployment and database testing.

The release contains both guidance and a set of nice hands-on labs, including:

• Visual Studio Guidance for Database Projects
• Visual Studio Database Projects Hands-On-Labs document
• Hands-On-Labs (HOLs), including:
  • Solution and Project Management
    • Refactoring a Visual Studio Database Solution to Leverage Shared Code
  • Source Code Control and Configuration Management
    • Single Team Branching Model
    • Multiple Team Branching Model
  • Integrating External Changes with the Project System
    • Maintaining Linked Servers in a Visual Studio Database Project
    • Complex data movement
  • Build and Deployment Automation
    • WiX-Integration with deployment of databases
    • The Integrate with Team Build Scenario
    • Building and deploying outside team build
  • Database Testing and Deployment Verification
    • The “Basic” Create Unit Test Scenario
    • The “Advanced” Create Unit Test Scenario
    • Find Model drifts Scenario

Go to http://vsdatabaseguide.codeplex.com/ to read more about the release and download the guidance.

Today Microsoft released its first true Scrum process template for TFS. Even if the MSF for Agile template has been used by many Scrum teams it doesn’t always have the right terminology (i.e. Product Backlog Item would map to User Story, Sprint Backlog Item to Task and so on) and it feels a bit unnecessary having to do the translation between the generic terms and the Scrum ones. With the new template for Scrum these obstacles goes away.

The process template includes the following work item types for managing work with TFS:

• Product backlog item
• Bug
• Task
• Sprint
• Impediment
• Test case
• Shared step

There are also a good set of reports included:

• Release Burndown
• Velocity
• Sprint Burndown
• Test Case Readiness
• Test Plan Progress
• Build Summary
• Build Success Over Time

I’ve looked at the template and it feels like a really nice choice for those wanting to use Scrum and TFS. You get the Scrum terms out of the box and the right metrics to follow up on. It’s also nice to see the Sprint work item type that makes it easier to get the default values and not having to enter these all the time.

Download the new process template here.

Read about the process on MSDN here.

There’s also a introduction to Scrum here.

The Visual Studio ALM Rangers has just released the first version of a Visual Studio 2010 architecture tooling guidance. I’ve spent some time reviewing the content and I like the practical approach taken to explain good practices around these new capabilities in Visual Studio.

From the project’s release notes:

“This release includes common usage scenarios, hands on labs and lessons learnt from the community discussions. The scenarios include understanding and reverse engineering an existing solution or starting a new solution from scratch. These are both common challenges that any dev lead or architect faces. The intent is not to give you an in-depth tour of the product features, but to present you with examples that show how these tools can support you in real world scenarios, and to provide you with practical guidance and checklists. This guidance is focused on practical ways of effectively using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and other tools to create a new or revised design as part of application lifecycle management.”

Apart from a Q&A document the guidance also contains the following Hands-On-Labs (HOLs):

• New Solution Scenario (HOL)
• Explore an Existing System Scenario (HOL)
• Creating extensions with the feature extension (HOL)
• Extensibility Layer Diagrams (HOL)
• Reusable Architecture (HOL)
• Validating an Architecture (HOL)

Visit http://vsarchitectureguide.codeplex.com/ to read more and to download the guidance.

The Visual Studio Lab Management team has released an updated virtual machine with the latest bits for testing out the Lab Management capabilities. The setup of lab management can be pretty involved so this is a great way to get to test the product in a quick and easy way!

See the following blog post for more details on what’s included in the demo image and what to need to do to get your environment up and running: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/lab_management/archive/2010/07/01/lab-management-pre-release-2010-walkthrough-vhd.aspx

Download to the VHD: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=592e874d-8fcd-4665-8e55-7da0d44b0dee&displaylang=en

If you prefer to use the Free Download Manager to batch download the files then Steve St Jean has created a list of the URLs to use: http://sstjean.blogspot.com/2010/07/want-to-try-out-visual-studio-lab.html

I really like that Microsoft builds virtual machines for us to use to try out new products. The only downside is that once in a while the images time-bombs and now this has happened with the latest Visual Studio RC 2010 image. Not too bad since we’ve been waiting for the RTM version for a while anyway and the new images have just recently been released for download.

Start downloading the images from the following locations:

• Visual Studio 2010 RTM (Hyper-V)
• Visual Studio 2010 RTM (Windows [7] Virtual PC)
• Visual Studio 2010 RTM (Virtual PC 2007 SP1)

Brian Keller has a detailed blog post on what’s included in the VPC as well as a nice list of files to download if you (like me) prefer to use the Free Download Manager to batch download the images.

First there wasn’t going to be a RC release of the power tools but by popular demand it was released anyway. I think it’s awesome that the TFS team manages to do these things in what I assume is pretty busy times in the end game of the 2010 development cycle. Anyway this release really helps us running the TFS 2010 RC!

Get the RC build of TFS 2010 Power Tools here.