Visual Studio 2005 Team System Training Videos

Today, I had to configure the code coverage support on one Visual Studio 2005 project. I guess you know, but the new Visual Studio Team System comes with code coverage support built in in addition to the unit tests that now can be even part of your solution (no need to use NUnit anymore). Turned out that it's really easy to use and is very powerful feature. If you have the same problem as mine, the following 2 minute movie (link) will show you exactly how that works. Actually, check out this location to find wealth of short videos with quick hints on different topics related to Visual Studio Team System:

[Visual Studio 2005 Team System Training Videos] (link)

TechEd'07from Orlando, US - Webcasts available online

If you haven't been to TechEd this year, or if you have been, but you want to see some of the talks there, go to this web site and check them out. There you will find the talks that been presented on TechEd'07 in Orlando, US. I think that these webcasts can give a good understanding of what Microsoft is developing and where it is heading to. Enjoy!

Interesting Microsoft SQL server team blogs

Check out the blogs below. You can find plenty of tech tips & tricks right from the guys, who are working on the MSSQL server team.

http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlqueryprocessing/
http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlprogrammability/
http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlserverstorageengine/
http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlcat/
http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlclr/

Virtual PC 2007

Very often you have the requirement to support multiple OS platforms, or if it is a Web app - multiple Web browser types. For this reason, in order to make a real test case, you need to have clean installations of all those OSs with no additional software or no more software that is actually needed by specification. However, sometimes you can't host multiple OS versions on one HDD, and even if you can, chances are that you won't use all of these distributions on daily basis, but rather only while running these system, integration or basic functional testing scenarios. One solution that I've used in this regards is Virtual PC which proved to be ideal and lightweight but very powerful. You may have different OS as images on your HDD (or DVDs in my case) and whenever you say need Windows 2003 with SP1, just take out the image and run the Virtual PC. Simple and very convenient.

Today I figured that a new verion of Virtual PC has been pushed out - Virtal PC 2007, which now supports Windows Vista natively. Take it for a spin from here.

Scaling out with Microsoft SQL Server 2005

Scaling out is a major architecture factor to most heavy-traffic Web solutions. Turning back time, I see most of the Web solutions that I've been involved with having significant requirements for data load and performance. The bottleneck in most of those cases has been on the database layer, where at some point we have had to think about scaling out. Not surprisingly database performance and tuning have been very interesting to me and I am trying to constantly educate myself. This is how I found the following very good papers related to scaling out technologies with SQL Server 2005. They will give you a broad perspective on what SQL Server 2005 can give you to make your application more scalable. These papers have been written by Bob Beauchemin, who is a well-known speaker and profound database guru.

Planning, Implementing, and Administering Scaleout Solutions with SQL Server 2005 (link)

Internals, Troubleshooting, and Best Practices for use of Scaleout Technologies in SQL Server 2005 (link)

Configuring XBOX 360 with Wndows Vista Media Center

I spent some time today trying to figure out how to hook up my XBox 360 with my new and shiny Windows Vista. I am sure that many other people will bump into the same problem. So to make long story short, I have a XBox 360, which used to be connected to my Windows XP Media Center. However, I've recently upgraded to Windows Vista Ultimate and thus I had to made a transition. So at first, my XBox wasn't able to look up any Media Center PC in the network. I though it could be related to some security settings on my PC, tweaked this and that for a while, but still no result. Then as all developers do when they cannot solve something right away (without reading manuals :)), I searched the Net. I found this article, which turned out to be the one-stop-shop for what I was trying to do:

Enjoy Windows Media Center on your Xbox 360, with your Music, Pictures, Live and Recorded TV*, and Online Media (link)

So the important part of this article was that I have to "disconnect" my XBox 360 from any previous PC partnerships. Another thing that I took care of was really related to security and Windows Firewall in Vista. This matter is explained in detail in the following article:

Troubleshoot problems with a Windows Media Center Extender device (link)

However, to be honest, when you add the new XBox extender to your new Windows Vista Media Center, one of the steps in the setup process will ask you whether you want to open these ports on the Firewall so pay special attention to it.

The whole new Microsoft Project 2007

I've used Microsoft Project for many projects and I personally think it is an amazing product. Gantt charts, resource planning, timelines, critical paths - you can do all this with Project and many more. While Project 2003 brought a whole new breath of features, today I was amazed by the new capabilities that Project 2007 delivers - check out this site for a comparison between these two versions. Now you can manage non-working time (with the previous version, you have to create a "dummy" non-working time task so that it takes over the unallocated time slot). Gantt charts have been improved and now provide far more sophisticated views. There are far more reports that you can create with couple of clicks to different programs - Excel, Visio, etc. And for the most part, Project 2007 follows the new office and Vista look and feel with the fancy ribbon and improved usability. So, if you want to take it for a spin, go and take the trial version and play with it (link).

Windows Live Gallery

Probably you know that if you have a Windows Live ID you can log in and personalize your home page there. There is a huge set of gadgets available. Today I found the official gallery, where you can pick up and install those gadgets that your really like. Just hit this page (link) and see what's there. Some of my favorite are: Live Clock (link), Radio Live Space (link), ToDo (link) and Favorites (link).

You will find gadgets that you can use with your Windows Vista. These gadgets can be installed on your desktop so that you make use of the online connectivity of your machine.