I ran across this document today, which details out Microsoft’s virtualization strategy on implementing 64-bit (Hyper-V) virtualization in the classrooms. As virtual machines do more, and require more resources, so must the hardware/software requirements of the training centers be updated.

In a nutshell, here are the requirements for HL6:

Hardware

 

· 64-bit Intel Virtualization Technology or AMD Virtualization processor (2.8 GHz dual core or better recommended)

· Dual 120 GB hard disks 7200 RPM SATA or better (striped)

· 4 GB RAM expandable to 8 GB or higher

· DVD (dual layer recommended)

· Network adapter

· Sound card

· Video adapter aero-capable recommended

· Super VGA monitor (17 inch/ 43 cm)

 

Software

 

· 64-bit Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition

· Hyper-V role configured

· Microsoft Learning Lab Launcher – Hyper-V version

I happened upon this interesting Microsoft site the other day. You can lookup the end-date for mainstream as well as extended support for your favorite (Microsoft) software product, such as Team Foundation Server 2008:

You can lookup by index, product family, or by searching.

You can read more about Microsoft Support Lifecycle here. Be sure to checkout the list of obsolete products too (like Microsoft FoxBASE).

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Report Builder 2.0 delivers an intuitive, Office-like report authoring environment enabling business and power users to leverage their experience with Microsoft Office 2007 products. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Report Builder 2.0 supports the full capabilities of SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services including:

• Flexible report layout capabilities of SQL Server 2008 Report Definition Language
• Data Visualizations including charts and gauges
• Richly formatted textboxes
• Export to Microsoft Office Word format

Features specific to Report Builder 2.0 are focused on simplifying the process of creating and editing reports and queries and include the following:

• Easy to use wizards for creating table, matrix and chart data regions
• Support for directly opening and editing reports stored on the report server
• Support for using server resources such as shared data sources
• Query designers for multiple data sources including a Microsoft SQL Server-specific query designer

Thanks to those who attended the second meeting of the Boise SQL Server User Group. We had a good turnout of around 30 people and I hope everyone enjoyed my presentation of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services (SSIS). I tried to balance the presentation between those who hadn't used SSIS and those who have.

If you are interested in the sample projects, packages, and data files from the talk, here they are.

In typical FireStarter event style, this event will be delivering a first class experience to all attendees and make them experts on developing on SharePoint technologies before the end of the event. There should be great speakers from the Microsoft roster presenting some awesome topics that will help you build and customize web sites with SharePoint and Web 2.0 technologies.

 

Logistics

Where: Microsoft Conference Center (Building 33) – Kodiak Room

When: June 11th 2008 - Wednesday

Free stuff: Breakfast and lunch provided, lots of swag

Attending

Click here to register to attend In-person 

Click here to attend via Live Meeting! (the in-person event will have a better experience)

If you have any questions, please contact Mithun.

The newly formed Boise SQL Server User Group kicks off its first meeting with Kalen Delaney on June 25, 2008.

I'm happy to see a Microsoft SQL Server user group in Boise. It will fit nicely with the other development and SharePoint groups in town.

For more information, contact Cindy Gross of Microsoft.

This is a very popular question on various forums, but none of them exactly answered the problem for my situation, so I wanted to share my approach.

Scenario

• Windows Server 2003 (local)
• Windows Server 2008 (remote)
• HP4345MFP installed on my (local) home network at IP Address 192.168.1.115 port 9100

• I'm sitting at the (local) 2003 server and when I remote desktop (RDP) into my (remote) 2008 server I want to print locally to my HP. Seems like a common use case, but I couldn't get it work for the life of me, until today.

Fix Attempt 1 - Enable local devices (didn't help)

Checked the box on the Remote Desktop Connection options to enable local printer devices.

Fix Attempt 2 - Try fix mentioned in article 302361 (didn't help)

The article mentioned a registry hack, which I tried even though it said that (local) Windows Server 2003 machines were exempt from needing the fix.

Fix Attempt 3 - Install the HP4345 driver on the (remote) Windows Server 2008 (didn't help)

This step made sense to me, because the applications local to the remote server would need to have a local driver to print against. I installed the HP LaserJet 4345 mfp PCL 5 driver, but it didn't help. I left the driver on there.

Fix Attempt 4 - Rename the printer to the exact same name as on the local machine (didn't help)

I found a couple of threads that mentioned this, so I did it. I named the (remote) Windows Server 2008 printer HP the same name as the (local) Windows Server 2003 printer: HP4345MFP.

Local HP4345MFP Properties	Remote HP4345MFP Properties

Fix Attempt 5 - Change the port of the Remote HP4345 printer (Success!)

My last resort was going to be to configure the server to connect back through the Internet to my home network, opening up port 9100 to the world. While researching this, I came across a possible solution. Thinking that the remote desktop session would provide some hooks into my local machine's ports, I opened the Properties window of the remote printer (as Administrator) and started going down the list of interesting ports beginning with TSXXX. Some of these were titled Inactive TS Port and some had "Gemini" in the description. Gemini is the name of my local computer, so I knew I was close. I started checking boxes and doing trial prints, until the LaserJet came to life. For me, TS003 was the winner!

I had to show off my three amigos here. In 2007, as in 2006, I logged enough Global Impact activities to achieve the gold status award. Along with it came the bronze and silver awards as well. This time, they are mounted to more easily sit on a shelf ... or so that the RDs don't try to use them in a car wash or something.

... and I'm already hard at work in 2008 working to link companies and the community with Microsoft.

Congrats to some of my fellow RDs who also achieved the gold award: Tomislav Bronzin (Croatia), Damir Tomicic (Germany), Jonathan Goodyear (US), Tedeusz Golonka (Poland), Vinod Unny (India), and 40 others.

Learn more about the Microsoft Regional Director (RD) program here.

It's generally known that if you want to run any tests, code analysis, or database project build/deployment that you need to install one or more Team Edition of VSTS on your build server. What's not so well known are the licensing ramifications around these scenarios.

Fortunately Jeff Beehler, Team System Chief of Staff, has posted on this subject.

To summarize:

If the users creating the builds are licensed users of the edition in question (or Team Suite), that license extends to Team Foundation Build and you don't need to purchase an additional license. One way to think about it is: the people that are using the Team editions need to be properly licensed which in turn ensures the that the build machines are covered as well. Users who merely queue (execute) and review the automated builds are only required to have a Team Foundation Server CAL.

Back home now, and I have a moment to get the photos downloaded from my camera and uploaded to my blog. Next time I'll take my SD card reader with me.

As you can see, registration was quite busy. I heard that there were 4000 people there, but didn't count them myself. The long lines delayed the keynote by about an hour:

Douglas McDowell and I snuck into the press area. Well, he was officially press (SQL Server Magazine), but I wasn't - still I took more notes than most of the other pressies there.

The main screen was huge, and 3D. We estimated about 80' wide and 20' tall. When no slides were on the screen, there was a spinning 3D Earth enclosed in curley brackets. Hey, what about VB?

After the keynote, there was a short walk to the LA convention center, where the breakout sessions, chalk-talks, exhibitor area, etc. Fortunately, we had these interpretive dancers along the way to keep us from getting lost.

The line to lunch was too long, so we ducked inside to check out the exhibitor area.

 

I was there (where it says "You Are Here")

Attendees attending one of Doug Seven's chalk talks on Team System.

Doug was all about the writing quality code and the 3 C's in his talk (Code Coverage, Code Analysis, and the new Code Metrics)

After I turned in my evaluation form, I picked up the attendee bag, which had  lots of goodies, including a hard-bound, coffee-table style book called "Heroes Happen Here" which contains IT heroes from all around the world, photographed by Carolyn Jones. And yes, I got my book signed!

Time flies. It's been a year since Dr. Gray, a Microsoft research fellow and Turing Award-winner, went missing while sailing off San Francisco. A year ago, at Boise Code Camp 2.0, I hosted a session on finding Jim Gray, using Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

Now, a year after Dr. Gray went missing, the Association of Computing Machinery (the organization that holds the Turing Awards), the IEEE Computer Society and the University of California-Berkeley have joined to announce a tribute to Gray, planned for May 31 at the UC Berkeley campus. Jim Gray attended UC Berkeley from 1961 to 1969 and earned the school's very first Ph.D. in computer science. Fittingly enough, the tribute will also feature technical sessions for registered participants.

You can find more information about the tribute here:

Microsoft announced today that PDC 2008 is on!

 

October 27–30, 2008
Pre-conferences October 26, 2008
Los Angeles, California

 

PDC is the definitive Microsoft event for software developers and architects focused on the future of the Microsoft platform. Mark your calendars and save the date. More information coming soon.

 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/pdc2008

In addition to adding support for the .NET Framework, Microsoft is taking the next version of Silverlight farther by adding a comprehensive control model, powerful skinning and “theming,” data binding, and over 20 controls in the box. To better capture the scope of the feature set for the next version of Silverlight, Microsoft will rename Silverlight 1.1 to Silverlight 2.0.  Microsoft will also commit to delivering a Silverlight 2.0 Beta with a Go-Live license in Q1 2008.

 

As for customer evidence, the NBA began engaging with Microsoft to deliver key interactive applications on NBA.com deploying Silverlight.  By utilizing Silverlight, the NBA will be able to further broaden the scope of its online experience across video and photos. From a broader Web development perspective, Microsoft will also release a preview of the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions in early December. Key features of the preview include MVC, Dynamic Data Controls and REST Services. Silverlight and ASP.NET are core technologies enabling better user experiences on the desktop, Web and beyond. Microsoft’s user experience approach is part of the broader Microsoft Application Platform strategy, formed with the goal of helping customers realize the benefits from more dynamic applications.

 

For more information on Thursday, please check out Scott Guthrie’s blog, Jesse Liberty’s blog, and the Silverlight homepage.

 

Also, feel free to check out the new Microsoft Download Center Beta, now powered by Microsoft Silverlight.

It seems that the US Tech-Ed is following Europe's lead, by breaking up the one large conference into two: one for developers and one for IT professionals.

• June 3-6, 2008 - Developers (developers, solution architects, designers, and testers)
• June 10-13, 2008 - IT Professionals

Both events will have a similar format with the past Tech·Eds, but will focus on a single audience instead of a mixed audience, which was the case with the previous Tech·Ed model.

 

Visit the main Tech-Ed site for more information, including some FAQs.

I just came across this download at Microsoft. It provides an introduction to the concepts and step by step instructions for creating and customizing TFS reports.

The zip file contains instructional PDF documents as well as several sample reports.

Way to go Microsoft, and SQL Server 2005!

For the first time in the report’s history, Microsoft is positioned in the Leader quadrant in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse DBMS. The analysts say that SQL Server 2005 is expected to grow in the data warehouse space and Microsoft’s vision for SQL Server 2008 makes clear the company’s intent to become a major presence in the data warehouse market.

 

Read more about this great announcement here.

Thanks to the Team System Rangers (an elite squad of TFS experts inside Microsoft) for putting together this document, which serves as a single point of entry into the world of TFS Operations as well as Microsoft's recommended operational best practices.

So, start learning/mastering TFS operations by clicking here.

Microsoft has released a new version of VSTS Web Access Power tool. This release is a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of what will ultimately be the 2008 version of the VSTS Web Access Power Tool.

• Built against the TFS 2008 object model - In previous versions of Web Access you had to install Team Explorer 2005 on any machine you were installing Web Access on. With this version, you will now be installing Team Explorer 2008 instead. In some future version, Microsoft hopes to remove the requirement to install any version of Team Explorer.
• Custom control support - added support for web based work item custom controls and have included a folder of documentation and samples on how to create them.
• Build queuing - added UI for the new TFS 2008 feature of build queuing. You can start new queued builds and view the build queue (in addition to the preexisting abilities - like viewing build details).
• Localization support - added support for localizing the web interface. Microsoft will also be localizing text for the final 2008 Power Tool release.
• Bug fixes & Performance improvements - Microsoft has received a number of reports and done more testing on the current version of the Power Tool, and has fixed everything thus far.

This release (and the final 2008 release) can be used with either a TFS 2005 or a TFS 2008 server.  In either case, you will need to install a TFS 2008 Team Explorer on the machine you install Web Access on. Since TFS 2005 did not support build queuing, that functionality will not be available when this and future versions of Web Access are used with a 2005 server.

 

You can download it here and read more about it at Brian Harry's blog posting.

Microsoft's Patterns & Practices group recently released the final version of the “Team Development with Team Foundation Server” Guide. This guide has been in beta for the last couple of months.

 

It shows you how to get the most out of Team Foundation Server to help improve the effectiveness of your team-based software development. Whether you are already using Team Foundation Server or adopting from scratch, you’ll find guidance and insights you can tailor for your specific scenarios. It's a collaborative effort between patterns & practices, Team System team members, and industry experts.

 

 

Some quick facts:

• 496 – Total number of pages
• 18 – Total number of chapters in this guide
• 11392 – Total number of downloads of the Beta version of this guide
• 8 – Number of attempts to get the Adobe build to work to generate the guide in .pdf format
• 60 – Number of external and MSFT contributors and reviewers

Download the guide from CodePlex.

Microsoft's Patterns & Practices group recently released the final version of the “Team Development with Team Foundation Server” Guide. This guide has been in beta for the last couple of months.

 

It shows you how to get the most out of Team Foundation Server to help improve the effectiveness of your team-based software development. Whether you are already using Team Foundation Server or adopting from scratch, you’ll find guidance and insights you can tailor for your specific scenarios. It's a collaborative effort between patterns & practices, Team System team members, and industry experts.

 

Some quick facts:

• 496 – Total number of pages
• 18 – Total number of chapters in this guide
• 11392 – Total number of downloads of the Beta version of this guide
• 8 – Number of attempts to get the Adobe build to work to generate the guide in .pdf format
• 60 – Number of external and MSFT contributors and reviewers

Download the guide from CodePlex.

Yesterday, Microsoft released a tool to migrate from IBM ClearCase to TFS.

Find more information on TFS migration topics, keep an eye on this blog.

My students this week told me about the new version. I remember using the original XML Notepad, and it was great, very simple.

For the longest time, I couldn't find it on Microsoft's site to download, and then a newer version showed up on CodePlex.

Plant to attend the MSDN event on October 4, 2007 (a Thursday). Products to be discussed: ASP.NET, Office, Visual Studio, and Windows Vista.

• times: 1:00 to 5:00 (welcome Time: 12:00 PM)
• Theater - Edwards Boise Stadium 21, 7701 Overland Road, Boise Idaho 83709

You can find out more, and register here.

MSDN Events are free, live sessions designed to enhance your coding skills and make your life a little easier. By attending you'll get up-to-the-minute technology delivered by seasoned developers and have lots of time to network and ask questions. Chat with your fellow developers get the latest coding tools and tips and learn how to create rich new applications.

Last month at Tech-Ed, I asked many of my SharePoint friends, and a few vendors, how to do this. I got answers ranging from "You can't" to "You'll need to buy our utility". They all told me that I should just add the content database back to my SharePoint instance and then use the WebDav or some other utility (sometimes commercial) to extract the documents in bulk. This wouldn't work, because I had upgraded to WSS 3.0 and this was a WSS 2.0 database. Well, it may have worked, but I was saving it as a final option.

Instead, I searched the Web and found a posting by Mark Jen where he posted the code on how to do this. His code does what I suspected was possible - just rip through the items in the dbo.Docs table, and stream out the Content fields. It handles the creation of the folders as well!

Thanks Mark!

Have you seen this yet? I caught a quick news story this morning on TV about Microsoft Surface.

Here's an article from the July 2007 issue of Popular Mechanics. There's a really cool video of Microsoft Surface on page 1 and on the interface on page 3 of that article.

BTW - I understand that the technology behind Surface is WPF.

Microsoft (and others) had announed that its Fall Professional Developer's Conference (PDC) would be October 2-5, in Los Angeles. Yesterday, they canceled the event and are in the process of rescheduling it.

From their site:

We are currently in the process of rescheduling this fall’s Professional Developer Conference. As the PDC is the definitive developer event focused on the future of the Microsoft platform, we try to align it to be in front of major platform milestones. By this fall, however, upcoming platform technologies including Windows Server 2008, SQL Server codenamed “Katmai,” Visual Studio codenamed “Orcas” and Silverlight will already be in developers’ hands and approaching launch, which is where we’ll focus our developer engagement in the near term. We will update this site when we have a new date for the PDC that is better timed with the next wave of platform technologies.

Microsoft just launched "The Region", a global hub for the 140 software architects, developers, trainers and other professionals selected as Regional Directors. The site is designed to help RDs circulate insights, information, inspiration and inquiries among each other, and among the broader developer community.

Check out The Region today.

If you did sign the petition, then you should probably get out more, and check out a cool technology called .NET.

If you did not sign the petition, be proud and show it ...

I've been in Orlando this week, speaking at SQL Connections and have been derelict in my blogging duties, especially with regard to VSTS.

• Microsoft announced on Monday that they had acquired DevBiz (the company that produces TeamPlain), which has been the leader in browser-based access to Team Foundation Server, further boosting cross-platform access (and adoption). TeamPlain Web Access also enables a peripheral team member to browse project information and manipulate work items, source code, etc. I believe the new, official name will become "Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Web Access" (another mouthful). This acquisition also means that we will get to use TeamPlain for FREE (assuming we have a proper client access license for TFS). Read more about the acquisition on Brian Harry's blog and Microsoft PressPass.
  
  
• Microsoft published their Visual Studio Team System "Future Releases" roadmap, even beyond Orcas. So now, we can all speak the words "Rosario" in public. Rosario is the codename for the version of VSTS beyond Orcas. The roadmap is very thorough, even listing service packs and power tools, so you know exactly what delivery vehicle your feature or fix will be arriving in.
  
  
• Gert Drapers (the data dude) announced Service Release (SR) 1 for VSTS Edition for Database Professionals. He says that it's "in the works" and will be published sometime in Q2 of 2007 (let's hope April). He lists a few of the fixes and features that will be in the SR in a recent blog posting.
  
  
• Yesterday, Microsoft announced that unit testing will become a feature of the Professional edition of Visual Studio Orcas. This has been a passionately-requested feature by everyone in the world not running Dev, Test, or Team Suite editions. Finally, everyone who has Professional edition and up will be able to write and run unit tests. What about code coverage, that's still a question.
  
  
• The Patterns and Practices team has released updated prescriptive guidance on VSTS. JD Meiers lists many of the improvements on a blog post and you can find the guidance itself on CodePlex.
  
  
• Speaking of guidance, Microsoft recently published a 40-page branching guidance document which does a very good job of explaing branching and merging strategies for various size teams.

The next Ask An Expert Live Chat is scheduled for Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 12:00 PM PDT. 
  
Mark your calendars (or click this ICS link). For more information, visit Microsoft Technical Chats.

One of the coolest controls that Visual Studio 2005 includes is the report design and view functionality of the ReportViewer controls. What used to be a server-only function, .RDL (now .RDLC) files can be rendered client-side by Web or Windows applications with this control. Reports can contain tabular, aggregated, and multidimensional data.

Thanks to Peter Myers for pointing me to this site to answer all of my (and your) questions and help unlock the hidden potential of the ReportViewer control.

Last summer, Microsoft acquired Sysinternals and Mark Russinovich. They have consolidated all of the cool utilities, for both IT professionals and developers, into one listing. You’ll find utilities to help you manage, troubleshoot and diagnose your Windows systems and applications.

Enjoy.

I was honored to learn that I had achieved the Bronze, Silver, and Gold awards for 2006.

Thanks to all of you who read my blog, attend my classes, and generally listen to me ramble on about Microsoft's tools and technology. Without you I wouldn't have these giant coins to carry around!

Join members of the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, Team Editions for Architects, Developers, Database Pros, and Testers. In addition, discuss what's new in the latest Community Technology Preview (CTP).

Join the chat on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 from 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time.

As many of you may know, Dr. Jim Gray (Microsoft Researcher and Turing award recipient) went missing a week ago, on his sailboat Tenacious off the coast of San Francisco. I've had the pleasure, on several occasions, of speaking with Jim and learning more about his research. If we cannot find him, it will be a huge loss.

The search for Tenacious (and Jim) is underway, in a big way. Many news agencies are calling it the largest private search for a missing person ever. This blog is aggregating all of the latest information. Best of all, YOU CAN HELP! Visit Amazon's Mechanical Turk site dedicated to finding Jim, and help by searching new/updated high resolution satellite imagery. All of the instructions are provided, you just need to donate some time.

Registration is now open for MIX '07 in Las Vegas.

This event is geared toward Web developers, designers, online advertising professionals and includes a broad set of partners and customers. Building on last year’s inaugural event, MIX will continue to explore how to build more interactive and responsive experiences that take full advantage of the capabilities of the Web. This is a great opportunity to dive deeper into Microsoft’s Web technology offerings and discover new ways to create more dynamic customer connections.

www.visitmix.com

Thanks to Brian Harry and team for releasing the latest version of the provider.

The enhancements in this latest release include:

• Enable handling branched solutions in Visual Studio 2003
• Fixed issues to enable provider to support TOAD for SQL Server 2.0
• Enhanced the "Choose Folder in Team Foundation Server" dialog
• Fixed bug which prevented Properties Dialog from displaying local path
• Work Items Query list in the Checkin Dialog is loaded and saved on the disk
• "Get" operation performance improvements
• Miscellaneous bug fixes

Download the new provider here, and remember it is for use by anyone who owns a Team Foundation Server Client Access License (CAL).

Mark your calendars! Microsoft's Boise launch of Windows Vista, Office 2007, and Exchange 2007 will be on January 30.

The event is broken-down into two, half-day events, one for develpers and one for IT professionals. Here are the registration links: Developer track | IT Pro track.

If you can't make that event, then the one in Seattle on February 26 might be a better choice, because it is the only launch with a keynote by Bill Gates.

Some of you have been beta testing it and, thanks in part to your hard work, it's ready for prime-time ... before the holidays!

Click here to learn more, and download SP1 for Visual Studio 2005, Team Foundation Server, and/or the Express editions. In addition, you can download Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Update for Windows Vista Beta.

Spread the word!

Microsoft release Robotics Studio this morning. Microsoft Robotics Studio allows robotic applications to be developed using Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Visual Studio Express C# and VB as well as Microsoft IronPython.

Read the Press Release and the PressPass Q&A with Tandy Trower for more information.

Microsoft will be holding the next Professional Developers Conference (PDC) October 2-5, 2007 in Los Angeles, with two days of pre-conference on September 30 and October 1.  Save the date!

The PDC is the definitive developer event focused on the future of the Microsoft platform. PDC 2007 attendees will have the opportunity to access new code, learn about the latest Microsoft product offerings and hear from Microsoft executives about the various platform developments.

Click here for more information.

I just noticed that there is a December update to the SQL 2005 samples. The December 2006 update is identical to the July 2006 update, except that support for Windows Vista has been added. If you already downloaded the July update and do not run on Windows Vista, then you do not need to download this update.

I'm getting more and more questions regarding running Visual Studio 2005 on Vista. Here's the summary from Microsoft:

"Visual Studio 2005 is supported on Windows Vista. We recommend that developers install Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 and the Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Update for Windows Vista as they become available (SP1 end of this year, VS Update for Vista Q1 next year). We also recommend that Visual Studio 2005 be run with elevated administrator privileges. Visual Studio 2003 & 2002 are not supported on Windows Vista. The underlying frameworks (.NET Fx 3.0, 2.0 & 1.1) are supported and applications using them will run on Windows Vista."

(Update 14 Dec) Here are some more resources ...

• Visual Studio 2005 on Windows Vista Issue List
• Heath Stuart's blog

You can read more on Soma's blog.

As for SQL Server 2005, I've heard that you won't have any problems installing the Developer edition, but if you want to install Standard or Enterprise versions, you'll need to install the CTP of Beta 2. If you are wanting to use Reporting Services, remember that RS uses IIS and IIS 7 + Vista are different. Here is a blog post (in Spanish but the screens are pretty self-explanatory), instructing on how to properly configure IIS on Vista for RS. Beyond that, there is guidance in an older June article.

Finally, Microsoft has added an easy, and powerful search tool for searching past events and Webcasts.

I'm honored to be speaking at the Iowa .NET User Group this week. My topic will be on SQL Server 2005 for Developers. If you are in the area, please stop by. Visit their site for more information.

You might have heard, and it was such a tragedy that the group's founder, Eric Jacobs, and another member, Josh Trainor, were killed in a plane crash last Month. My prayers go out to the family and friends of Eric and Josh.

Plan now to attend the launch of Windows Vista, Office 2007, and Exchange Server 2007 in Boise on January 30, 2007. There will be two tracks throughout the day: IT Professional and (wait for it) Developer!

Click here to sign-up for the Developer track.

Click here to sign-up for the IT Pro track.

 The event will be held at the Boise Centre on the Grove. See you there!

I had a great time last week representing INETA and presenting Team System topics to the San Gabriel Valley .NET Developers user group and the Bay .NET user group in Califrnia.

I really enjoyed chating with Mike Parker, an MIT grad, Army Reserves officer, sharp software developer, and the owner of this rolling WarDriving mobile-consulting "love van" ...

I just noticed that both the .CHM files were recently updated, and available for download.

• The Installation guide (TFSInstall-v61004.chm) is now version 8.0.61004 (10/6/2006) - 261 kb
• The Administrator's guide (TFSAdmin-v61101.chm) is now version 8.0.61101 (11/1/2006) - 2.2 mb

You'll find the updated hyperlinks at the bottom of our Widgets page.

I'm back home now, but had a total blast at DevConnections in Las Vegas this week. I saw many friends and colleagues who I hadn't seen for awhile. I was surprised that there were ~4700 attendees at the show, with quite a large exhibiter hall too. It's really become a mini Tech-Ed.

From left to right: Richard Hundhausen, Andrew Kelly, Dino Esposito, Peter DeBetta,
Brian Moran, Stacia Misner, Rushabh Mehta, Jeff Jones, Douglas McDowell.

Visit my personal photo album for more photos (Conferences > Dev Connections 2006 Las Vegas).

Although I don't have their newest (7th edition) book yet, I plan on picking it up. From what I've read at the site, the Hitchhiker's Guide to Visual Studio and SQL Server (7th Edition) seems to be just what the industry needs for the critical intersection of technologies.

Nice work Bill and Peter!

Microsoft has made the difficult decision not to hold Tech·Ed 2007 in New Orleans. With this event drawing a large number of attendees from around the world and with the airlines only servicing the city with about half of their pre-Katrina flights, the logistics of moving that large a group into and out of the city is challenging and would likely result in travel and logistical challenges for attendees.

Instead, Tech·Ed 2007 will be held on June 4-8, 2007 in Orlando at the Orange County Convention Center (OCCC).

Here is the official site.

A PowerPoint deck introducing .NET 3.0 has been uploaded to the presentations area of the .NET Framework 3.0 site.

Although it's still pre-release (release candidate 1 is available for download), the new .NET Framework 3.0 looks very promising as the new managed code programming model for Windows. It will combine the power of the .NET Framework 2.0 with new technologies for building applications that have visually compelling user experiences (WPF), seamless communication across technology boundaries (WCF), and the ability to support a wide range of business processes (WF).

Here's a direct link to the slide deck introducing .NET 3.0, as well as intro decks of WF, WPF, WCF, and CardSpace.

As a follow-up, you can also find some good .NET 3.0 presentations at .NET University.

Join members of the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, Team Editions for Architects, Developers, Database Pros, and Testers. In addition, discuss what's new in the latest Community Technology Preview (CTP).

Join the chat on Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 from 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time.

That's right. Seattle Code Camp 2.0 is upon us, with a late-breaking venue change ...

Camp will be held at Nintendo's DigiPen Univeristy, which is very near the Microsoft Campus.

Consultants from our company will be doing talks on SQL Server, Team System, and Ruby. See you there, this Saturday and Sunday (October 28 and 29).

That's right, John Lam, a respected developer, and partner of ObjectSharp in Toronto will be joining Microsoft in January 2007. Could it be all of his hard work creating RubyCLR has paid off? He won't say.

Congrats on the "friendly takeover" of Microsoft, John. Good luck, and make cool things!

Read John's announcement here.

If you want to run a free diagnostic and inventory report on your system, then check out Belarc Advisor.

The Belarc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status, CIS (Center for Internet Security) benchmarks, and displays the results in your Web browser. All of your PC profile information is kept private on your PC and is not sent to any web server.

I downloaded, installed, and ran the report in under a minute. It breaks it down by area: operating system, system model, processor, main circuit board, drives, memory modules, users, local drive volumes, network drives, printers, controllers, display, bus adapters, multimedia, communications, other devices, virus protection, missing Microsoft security hotfixes, installed Microsoft hotfixes (by product), software licenses, software versions, and a System Security Status score (x.xx out of 10) with details!

Best of all, it's free!

I'll have to admit that it's been a few years since I've studied and compared disk defragmenter software. I've always just right-clicked my drive and let Windows defrag it. I've never really been impressed, however, with the results, even after running it three times.

After the first run:

After the second run:

After the third run:

So then I installed and ran PerfectDisk 8.0 which beats the built-in defragmenter software in many ways.

You can see the before:

and after of its run:

and then back to Windows to see its results:

You decide for yourself!

Peter Nowak's book on CF development for mobile devices has just been released. The book is in German.

I met Peter awhile back at Tech-Ed Europe 2005 and he gave me a lot of good feedback on my Team System book.

Nice work Peter!

Attaboy Martin! Good looking post on SandCastle, btw. Sandcastle produces accurate, MSDN style, comprehensive documentation by reflecting over the source assemblies and optionally integrating XML Documentation Comments.

Be sure to mark his blog, so you can follow this rambling genius architect.

I enjoyed traveling to Spokane (I have family there) and presenting to the Spokane .NET User Group (SNUG?) on various SQL Server 2005 T-SQL, engine, and data type enhancement topics. This was my second INETA event, and they just keep getting better.

One of the attendees works for a company called SprayCool, which has a technology for keeping mission-critical servers and data centers cool, and running smoothly. This has to be the "coolest" thing I've heard of in awhile! SprayCool is the process of using liquid evaporation, or phase change, to cool electronics. A fine mist of coolant is sprayed onto electronic hot spots and immediately evaporates. The vapor is then captured and the heat is rejected as it circulates through a heat exchanger. This results in an extremely efficient method of cooling.

I just heard about this new add-in that helps VB6 developers integrate .NET Windows forms into their existing applications.

This is just another example of Microsoft's support for "VB Fusion".

Check out Chris Birmele's MSDN article "Branching and Merging Primer" on MSDN.

The article is short and sweet, but states the case well for SCM and even includes a few branching patterns.

It's been a long time coming, and will address many common problems people have been running into. Get your hands on the beta and start giving feedback today!

Read Brian Hary's post for more details. You can find SP1 at the Microsoft Connect Site. (Remember that it is beta software)

Finally, my German last name on a book in German!

 

I picked this up when I was in Stuttgart last summer at the World Cup. This one now sits on my shelf next to the Russian version.

I met Chad Z. Hower at Tech-Ed 2006 in Malaysia a few weeks ago, and was very impressed with his knowledge and presentation skills. Mostly, I was impressed with his extensive travel (makes me seem aerophobic), living overseas, and jaw-dropping stories. I just learned that Chad has gone independent, leaving Microsoft recently. If you are looking for an energetic presenter on all topics Microsoft-developer related, check out his professional site and his fun site.

Woo Hoo!!!

Next week on Tuesday, September 26, Microsoft will be rolling into town for a day of learning at the Edwards Boise Stadium 21 theaters. The event runs from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM, so be there by 12:30 to get checked-in.

"Get Connected with the .NET Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio® 2005 - These days, it seems like everything’s talking. Smart Client applications are sending emails and uploading and downloading files from the Internet. Browsers are talking to Web servers asynchronously. And enterprise systems are using a myriad of Web Services, .NET Remoting, and other technologies to get the job done. Fortunately, it’s easy to keep the conversations flowing with the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, Visual Studio 2005."

Visit this link for more information.

Reporting in Team System is handled by SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services. As such, team members get to enjoy (and are restricted-by) the built-in report rendering extensions (CSV, Excel, HTML, Image, MHTML, PDF, and XML). What's missing from this list is the Microsoft Word DOC format and a richer Microsoft Excel XLS format.

This is where a product called OfficeWriter comes in. It enables you to use Excel or Word to create templates utilizing data markers and merge fields for databinding sections of the document to the various Team Foundation Server data items. After a quick configuration of Reporting Services, your reports can generate documents/spreadsheets based on these templates without the need for Microsoft Office on the server. There's also an integration with Reporting Services that will let you create these documents without any coding at all. Users will design their RDL reports using Excel or Word, without the need for Visual Studio or SQL Report Builder.

Check out their latest version of OfficeWrite (v3.6) at http://officewriter.softartisans.com

Microsoft works when they get feedback about their software and services. Their Connect site enables this and allows you to participate in several ways, such as downloading the latest software and written material, taking surveys, exchanging ideas in newsgroup forums, and, most importantly, providing and reviewing feedback about your experiences.

Here are the types of resources you will find at Connect:

• Announcements - New information for connection participants
• Articles - Articles that are related to the connection
• Surveys - Surveys can be used to collect information
• Events - Dates for upcoming events that are related to the connection
• Links - Web site links that relate to the connection
• FAQs - Frequently asked questions about the connection or program
• Downloads - Software, whitepapers, and other information
• Product Keys - The product keys that you need to run the downloaded software
• Newsgroups - Forums for discussing current connection issues
  

I can always spot the true geeks at the user group meetings and conferences, because not only do they know who Nancy Davolio is, they've seen her photo. My INETA presentation earlier this week for the Northern New Jersey .NET User Group at SetFocus in New Jersey include such wise souls as Al Smith, and together we explored the subject.

It seems that "Nancy's" photo changes with each version of Access (2003 version) ...

The Nancy that I grew up knowing


Nancy 2003

Who will we see in Office 2007?

Turns out this mystery has been blogged about before.

Here are my slides from yesterday's presentation at Tech-Ed 2006 SEA. Thank you to the many delegates who joined me for the session.

Visual Studio Team System Public MSDN Chat

Come and join members from the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Visual Studio Architect, Developer and Tester editions and Team Foundation Server. There will be experts on hand to answer your questions, so we hope to see you there!

Join the chat on Wednesday September 6th, 2006 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific time.

To add this to your calendar, click here.

To see your local time of when this chat is, click here.

Some students told me about this book, and I think I'll pick it up. Steven Borg just bought a copy as well.

The book is titled "Expert .NET Delivery Using NAnt and CruiseControl.NET (Expert's Voice in .Net)", a hardcover by Marc Holmes (APress) and has received good reviews.

If you are in the Seattle/Redmond area, join me tonight while we look at CTP 5 of the Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals.

I'll be starting at 7:15 pm tonight in building 40 at Microsoft. Click here for more details.

I was recently at a client site in Phoenix, teaching a VSTS/SCM course. They have integrated an Ambient Orb Device into their automated build process. If the build passes, it glows green. If it breaks, it glows red.

The orb is inside the developer manager's office, so the devs can peek inside. My understanding is that they have about 15 minutes after seeing red to fix the build and re-run it, before the manager gets an email message.

Peter DeBetta and I are going to have fun putting together a presentation on "worst practices", and by doing so we will be illustrating the "best practices".

Look for us to be onstage together at SQL Connections this Fall at the Mandalay Bay.

So, what are some of your "worst practices" that you'd like to share?

That's right. My friend, and fellow MVP and INETA guy, Carl Prothman has signed-on to Microsoft as a full time employee (sucker). Carl is the man when it comes to many things, especially the collecting of connection strings. I pitch his site wherever I travel.

He is going to be working in the Community group as a Software Developer Engineer (SDE). Rumor has it that he'll be working for Doug Seven (another community soul who went to the blue-side a few years ago).

It seems that Microsoft has been hiring a record number of folks over the last several weeks (as many as 150/week Carl said).

I think this is a perfect fit for Carl, as he is "Mr. Community" up in the Seattle area.

Be sure to pick this book up next month. It should be good, and was was written by some friends of mine (Wally and Scott).

Thanks to my colleague Kalen Delaney for letting us know that the BOL and Samples have been updated. Download your updates today!

Fawcette (FTPOnline) just published a smattering of new articles on Team System, including my new article on the forethcoming edition for Database Professionals.

Yep, these are the RDs and other MVPs that I hang out with on a regular basis.

Caution: Before clicking this link, let me warn you that you are going to see things that you can't un-see!

Hat-tip to Carl Franklin for his camera and assembly skills for this page.

A friend of mine, John Paul Cook, has tricked out SQL Server 2005 database diagrams to show more than just relationships between tables.

Read the DevX article and download the code.

Brian Harry discloses some of the expected features and fixes in TFS SP1 as well as features in the new version of the MSSCCI provider (GetLatest on Checkout being one of them).

Read more here.

Here are some of the useful resources on the Web for the Team System Edition for Database Professionals:

• MSDN Site
• PowerToys Site
• Team Blog
• Thomas Murphy's Blog
• Cameron Skinner's Blog
• Matt Nunn's Blog
• Gert Draper's Blog
• Richard Waymire's Blog
• Sachin Rekhi's Blog
• MSDN Forum

If nothing else, I now know how to spell my name in Russian!

Here's a link to view the back of the book as well.

Thanks to our friends at AVICode for sending me this copy. We enjoyed co-presenting with them at Tech-Ed in Boston.

Pascal Belaud, a .NET evangelist at Microsoft France, has started a beta plan for his popular OlyMars product. Version 1.5 will support .NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005.

So what exactly is OlyMars?

It is a SQL Server Centric .Net Code Generator and is a both flexible and powerful generator based on database modeling. It allows instant generation of both T-SQL and .Net code providing a complete library of stored procedures, .NET classes and ready-to-use custom web and form controls related to the database modeling, including associated documentation. These elements are illustrated in two default Windows and Web applications and can be used in custom applications. SQL Server centric .Net code generator is fully extensible to use custom templates and extended properties and consequently can be adjusted to generate any custom code respecting a homogeneous implementation scheme.

At Tech-Ed in Boston, we ran our first Regional Director Talent Show. John Alexander was courageous enough to warm up the crowd with a series of impressions. He did impressions of famous people such as US Presidents, film stars and…well, other Regional Directors! It was hilarious. Next, Ken Spencer sang and played guitar for the crowd. He performed his version of Margaretaville while everyone cheered and clapped to the beat. Next was Carl Franklin who started by impersonating Bruce Springsteen and then performed a spirited acoustical guitar instrumental. Michele Leroux Bustamante also played guitar and sang her amusing and unforgettable rendition of Smelly Cat which originates from a performance by Phoebe on the TV Show Friends. Each of these RDs did a phenomenal job and the judging was very close.

The winner was one of our new RDs, Alexander Wechsler from Germany. He sang his version of the Rolling Stone’s hit Honky-Tonk Women, breaking out in a harmonica solo to cinch the deal. He brought the house down.

He may be a new RD, but everyone knows his name now. He is the winner of the custom painted Fender Stratocaster guitar. Special thanks to Tim Heuer for donating the Fender Stratocaster guitar. He helped make this fun event possible. Thanks Tim!

... or at least obtain the ISV competency as a Microsoft certified partner or Microsoft certified gold partner. The full Team Foundation Server (not just the workgroup edition) will be made available as part of the ISV competency MSPP benefits. It should be in the July MSDN shipment.

Learn more about the ISV program here.

We just finished up a VSTS training class in Johannesburg, South Africa. Thank you to my students and the Netscope training center for making this a fun class.

From left to right: Oliver, Shereen, Robin, Richard, Esendal, and Anton.

Follow your favorite teams and players during the FIFA World Cup tournament with Microsoft Soccer Scoreboard. This fun program allows you to access all the latest tournament news and information with the click of a button! Live game data allow you to monitor your favorite teams progress in real-time. Want more? Check out your team’s fixture (schedule), standing, and news as they advance through the tournament. If you are a soccer fan, don’t miss a minute of the action. Download Microsoft Soccer Scoreboard today!

The Microsoft Soccer Scoreboard displays all dates and times according to your Windows XP’s time zone setting. No more calculating start times only to find out you are off by an hour or more. Microsoft Football Scoreboard is available in Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Spanish (Latin America), Swedish, and Ukrainian.

Microsoft recently announced Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007. I believe this product was a result of the acquisition of Proclarity (Boise, ID) and a combination SQL Server 2005 BI, and Microsoft Excel.

Read the announcement from InfoWorld (Yahoo).

Wow, I'm honored! One of my sharper students at a recent talk in Reston, VA was actually paying attention to my discussion of extensibility and customization and has built a VSTS Check-In Policy to help track time working on team projects.

It looks promising. You can read about it at the VSTS Forums, or go to the GotDotNet site. I'll have it available on the Widgets page soon, too.

The secret is out! I can finally breathe a sigh of relief and not have to look over both shoulders before saying the words "Data Dude" or "K2".

That's right, Database Professionals will soon get a chance to be part of the Team!

Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals delivers a market-shifting database development product designed to manage database change, improve software quality through database testing and bring the benefits of Visual Studio Team System and life cycle development to the database professional.

Read more here.

Besides giving a couple of talks on Team System and SQL Server 2005, I plan on hitting a few parties and other interesting sessions.

One such session is being hosted by the DataDirect team, who are assembling gathering of ADO.NET, and data connectivity lumaries for an informal gathering during TechEd 2006.This will be an opportunity for everyone who lives and breaths data connectivity, ADO.NET and who is looking to get a first hand feel of everything on the horizon for ADO.NET, LINQ and .NET and meet some of the key players involved.

When: June 13, 2006, between 4pm and 6.30pm, Where: Seaport Hotel in Boston

It's a bit of an older case study, but one I haven't seen before. It's a quick read, as it goes through the situation, solution, benefits, and conclusion.

Last week I mentioned to a group of Team System professionals that I thought MySpace was running Cold Fusion, because of the abundance of .CFM pages.

According to some of the comments from MySpace developers, on Scott Guthrie's article post-Mix, there are CFM files on MySpace.com, but they are not Cold Fusion ...

"To clarify, we wrote a custom configuration section that maps "fuseaction" URL parameters to ASPX extensions so that we'd maintain link integrity. The only place we aren't doing this is 'Browse' and certain other new features. Meanwhile, as Scott said the parts of the site that are running in ColdFusion are essentially doing so in ASP.NET 2.0 (via BlueDragon)."

No, not Windows DNA, but XNA. Yes, it's an exciting new enhancement to DCOM bringing XML manifests and BizTalk schemas! Kidding ...

Microsoft XNA is a tool and set of technologies which will help game studios manage the growing complexities of their game content builds. Basically, it is designed to help game studios and publishers develop better games, more effectively, on all platforms. Microsoft unveiled the XNA Framework at the Game Developers Conference 2006.

Best yet, XNA Studio is based on Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System. XNA Studio will extend and customize Visual Studio 2005 Team System to make it an ideal solution for game studios and publishers.

My inteview with Scott Swigart is out in the current Dr. Dobbs. You can read it online here.

Had I known that it was going to make the print version, I wouldn't have been so cheesy!

-Rich

Hat-Tip to Korby Parnell and James Newkirk, and the rest of the CodePlex crew. The beta is online, and you can read about it here and try it here.

What is it, you ask?

CodePlex is an online software development environment for open and shared source developers to create, host and manage projects throughout the project lifecycle. It has been written from the ground up in C# using .NET 2.0 technology with Team Foundation Server on the back end. CodePlex is open to the public free of charge.

Addison-Wesley has just released Sam Guckenheimer's book "Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System". Sam is a member of the Visual Studio Team System product team. I'm very interested in reading

Given Sam's extensive background in the industry, I'm really looking foward to reading this book!

Congratulations, Sam!

Check out this article on engadget. It looks like there are six editions: Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate.

Microsoft has published this known issues page pertaining to the TFS Release Candidate. It should be read by all who are installing/upgrading.

You can also refer to the readme online as well.

Check out Jonathan Goodyear's interview with Sean O'Driscoll, where the two discuss the inner workings of the MVP program.

 

I've spent some time this evening and put together, what I consider to be a fairly comprehensive list of Team System and Team Foundation Server add-ins, utilities, and full-on products.

www.accentient.com/widgets.aspx

Did I miss any? Let me know!

-Rich

The GISUG had its inaugural meeting last week. From what Pete Hohenhaus tells me, there was a lot of enthusiasm, participation, and interest. Not including the presenters, they had 35 attendees. All in all an excellent beginning for this promising group.

Owen Allen, Jason Mauer, and Chris Barnard presented on Office 2007/SharePoint 2007. Owen and Jason focused many of the new capabilities, as well as the overall look and feel. Chris did an overview of the product release. Pete presented on some perspectives of what SharePoint is, how it can be used, and how best it can assist with collaborative work.

Pete has setup a controlled access MSN Group and they will be adding content and sending out invitations to join very soon.

Like my good friends Scott Cate and Wallace B. McClure, I have also been accepted to the INETA speakers' bureau. As a former user group coordinator, I appreciate INETA's mission to help bridge the resource-gap with .NET focused user groups around the country. INETA is a group that I have long supported and I consider it an honor to represent them.

I'm looking forward to a new target audience for my continued evangelism in .NET, SQL Server 2005, and Team System!

Read more about INETA here and see the entire rogue's gallery of speakers here.

TeamPlain Web Access is a web interface for Team Foundation Server that allows you to manage work items, documents, reports and source control repositories.

These guys also make a Team System plug-in for Eclipse and Visual Studio 2003.

Hat-tip to Scott Hanselman for pointing out CarlosAg's Ajax-style snippet translator.

Give it a try!

MSDN subscription customers can download from the MSDN subscriber download site

Jeff Beehler posted these instructions to upgrade from Beta3/Refresh:

1. Backup your server and copy the data to a safe location
2. Download the Team Foundation Server RC
3. Download the Upgrade Utility
4. Uninstall Team Foundation Server Beta 3 Refresh
5. Follow the upgrade instructions, which are included with the Upgrade Utility
6. Install Team Foundation Server RC
7. Complete the post install upgrade instructions, which are included with the Upgrade Utility

For a reference to the major changes since Beta3 refresh, please see Jeff's posting.

Here is the link to the support site for my Team System book. It contains comments and corrections.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/905038

Also, I just found an error today, thanks to a reader:

"In your book on page 179 you put a reference to a figure 8-1 as the Team Model comparison, but the figure shows the Process Model comparison.
Have you ever seen this error ? Do you have the right figure ?"

This should refer to figure 8-4

A student pointed this out in class today. The free editions of Visual Studio 2005 Express won't be free forever - only until November 7th, 2006, which is one year from the launch. After that, it's assumed that the Express editions will be $49 each. You can find this information on the FAQ under pricing.

SQL Server 2005 Express edition, however, will remain free, as was promised during the launch events.

Why am I telling you this? So that you'll go download your free copies today!

Check out this article on CNNMoney. It lists the top 5 jobs in having the biggest demand for employees. .NET Developers made the list!

Here's an excerpt:

Developers who are expert users of Microsoft's software programming language .NET can make between $75,000 and $85,000 a year in major cities when they're starting out. If they pursue a job at a company that seeks someone with a background in a given field (say, a firm looking for a .NET developer experienced in using software related to derivatives) they might snag a salary hike of 15 percent or more when they switch jobs.

What:   Tech-Ed 2006
Where:  Boston, MA
When:   June 11-16, 2006
Why:     Dude, it's Tech-Ed!!!

Be sure to visit the site and get registered!

And, if you can make it, be sure to attend an awesome pre-conference seminar on customizing Team System.

Some changes this year from Microsoft. It seems that they are merging the usually separate and distinct Tech-Ed Europe (traditional audience of 50% devs/50% IT pros) and Microsoft IT Forum (100% IT pros) into just "Tech Ed Europe". They will be run in two consecutive weeks in November:

• Tech Ed: Developers (week November 6th, CCIB Barcelona, Spain)
• Tech Ed: IT Forum (week November 13th, CCIB Barcelona, Spain)

For more information, check out the Tech-Ed Europe site.

Bookmark this site if you are interested in what Microsoft Research is doing to improve the quality of software through analysis, program verification and software measurement techniques. I wonder how many of these tools might make it into VSTS in the future? MUTT might be interesting.

Here are a couple of interesting articles:

• Use of Relative Code Churn Measures to Predict System Defect Density
• Static Analysis Tools as Early Indicators of Pre-Release Defect Density

This question was recently asked on the VSTS forums.

As Rob Caron explains, the integration depends solely on Borland's ability to integrate TFS into Delphi's IDE. Until then options include using the standalone Team Explorer, command-line utilities, or possibly the newly available MSSCII Provider for Team Foundation Server.

Open the champagne, because on June 30, 2006 Microsoft will bring a close to Extended Support for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Me as part of the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy. Microsoft will retire public and technical support, including security updates, by this date.

Read more about this here.

According to Jeff Beehler's recent blog posting, we should see an RC by the end of February. We're getting closer folks!

A friend of mine, Peter Kellner, has a couple of articles online:

• Part 1: Security and Configuration Overview
• Part 2: Implementation

If you're working with ASP.NET 2.0 role-based security, give them a read!

I just received my letter from Microsoft welcoming me back to the Microsoft Regional Director program for the 2006-2007 period. Thought I'd share.

If your domain includes working with Microsoft connected systems (BizTalk, Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, SQL Server, Visual Studio, etc.) then you should be aware of this user group.

The UG covers the greater Seattle area, but you can stay engaged through their Website.

Yep, it's true.

Clemens Vasters, the .NET architect guru and co-founder of newtelligence AG from Germany is joining Microsoft.

Microsoft has published a Web page (actually a KB article) for any comments, corrections, or errata on my book. Nothing there yet!

Both sides have had sites like this over the years, but Microsoft finally put together a comprehensive site with research, case studies, code samples, and other resources.

As reported on Jochen Seemann's blog, these tools are now available for download. Now the world can get started creating Domain Specific Language Widgets!

Check out our article on Data Mining in the October issue of Business IQ Magazine. You'll need to download the October issue and read it for yourself! It's about 5mb.

I was asked this again last week, so it's time to blog!

When installing SQL Server 2005, you need to click the Advanced button to get to the screen below so that you can include the sample databases and project code. If you just check the boxes for the various database services, these won't get installed by default.

This is a pretty funny video. Enjoy!

(The servers have been pretty busy lately. Hopefully you can get through)

I'm proud to be one of the folks acknowledged for making Visual Studio 2005 the thing of beauty that it is.

Congratulations to all recipients!

Here's a good resource on MSDN for troubleshooting ClickOnce deployments.

I've been hearing that there's been some issues with ClickOnce and RTM.

Say it isn't so! According to this article in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, stock might be slim and lines might be long.

Ironically, one of the first questions I was asked in Dubai at the SQL Server 2005 launch event was "What day will the XBOX 360 launch in Dubai?".

Update 25 Nov - If the hyperlink above isn't working, try http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10092388

We've been getting some questions lately on this, and here are the answers:

• Partners at the Certified Partner level will receive the new Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition with MSDN Premium Subscription.  As before, this will include 5 MSDN licenses.

• Partners at the Gold Certified Partner level will receive the enhanced version of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers with MSDN Premium Subscription. As before, this will include 10 MSDN licenses.

Notice that neither level include Architect or Test editions, nor do they include Team Suite. Read Ajay's post for more information.

My apologies for being late on uploading these, but I had to spend an incredible weekend touring Jerusalem and Bethlahem. Then, I jumped on a flight to Dubai, and am currently in a hotel in downtown, preparing for the SQL Server Magazine Roadshow tomorrow.

My sample code from my Keynote, Asynchronicity, Security, SMO, and Mobile presentations, as well as the afternoon of the SQLCLR seminar is in the process of being uploaded. I should have a link in a day or two. Please email me if you need something before then!

Thanks again for attending my sessions. I really enjoyed visiting your country, meeting you, and helping launch SQL Server 2005!

Update (23 Nov) - I haven't found the official site for the slides and demo code, so I've uploaded them here.

In two recent articles, in eWeek and SearchVB.com, it seems that Ivar Jacobson (one of the fathers of UML and RUP) has recently joined the Microsoft VSIP program. He is working on the Essential Unified Process (Essential UP) that is going to be integrated into Visual Studio 2005. Essential UP will be a more agile and lightweight development process based on good practices and principles of both MSF and RUP.

Thanks to a student, Jim Munn, for originally asking the question "When adding a property to an object that uses System.Collections.Generic.List<> the designer doesn't show a relation to the class that the generic collection is typed to. Why not?"

So, let's assume you have two classes: Customer and Order

Notice how, by default, the association is not displayed between the Customer and Order class. By right-clicking either the mOrders field or Orders property and selecting Show as Collection Association, the association will be visualized:

Thanks to one of my favorite attendees, Oren Ellenbogen, who is a CodeSmith guru, for providing a CodeSmith solution to my SQL Server concordance generator that I demonstrated at SQL Week in Israel.

A "concordance generator" is something I came up with, which scans through all of the columns, in all of the tables, in a database, and looks for anomalies, such as two columns with the same name, but with different data types, sizes, nullability, etc. It's good for people who like their database structures just so -- like Monk!

Check out this guy's page. For a small fee, he'll "sell" you the information on how to get all of those benefits. What people don't realize is that this is just the ISV Empower program, and you can go directly to Microsoft for this, if you qualify.

For an additionaly laugh, check out his feedback comments - some suckers and some informed folks.

Hope I saved you the finder's fee!

Check out the ASP.NET Podcast site. This is a podcast geared towards the Microsoft .NET Framework and ASP.NET development. The blog is setup for new content and includes an image gallery which lists photos of the listeners.

My friend, Wallace McClure's book will be out soon (end of November). If you will be doing any ADO.NET 2.0 development, against SQL Server, Oracle, or MySQL, then I recommend you check out his book. Here's the page on Amazon.

My fellow Team System MVP, Willy-Peter Schaub from South Africa has been putting together many cool VSTS posters. These are print-ready JPG drawings, covering things like installation, security, and source control.

You can watch Steve Ballmer's keynote here. I've also uploaded a few photos from the event. My personal favorite was meeting Paul senior from Orange County Choppers (American Chopper).

Tip: To view my photos, select Conferences and Launch 2005 - San Francisco.

I you have a DNN site, and are wanting to run a knowledge base for you company or product, then look no further. The KBDnn module was built by the best guys in the business, and for the cheap price, you can't go wrong.

Now that VS/SQL/VSTS are available for download, I've been getting a lot of licensing questions, especially about MSDN/U subscriptions and the elusive Team Suite. Ajay Sudan put together a nice, consise FAQ at the VSTS forum.

Today is the day. Visual Studio 2005 (including all VSTS editions) and SQL Server 2005 are available to the public for download from MSDN.

Thank you for attending my talk this morning. Here is a text file with my sample code. Enjoy!

The Team Foundation Server setup experience has been evolving for over a year now in response to feedback Microsoft has received. While they’ve made significant progress since the first release last year as Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 Refresh with Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server, there’s still more that can be done. Microsoft has created a survey to ask some specific questions based on your experience with Team Foundation Server Beta 3. If you have attempted (successfully or otherwise) to install Team Foundation Server Beta 3, Microsoft invites you to participate in this brief online survey.

The survey can be taken anonymously, or you have the option of providing contact information should wish to be contacted about your setup experience. Partial surveys are not preserved, so please complete the survey before navigating away from the page.

Microsoft has listed the VSTS MVPs on their site. You can view their profiles here.

What is an MVP?
The MVP award is a one-year renewable reward given to just under 3,000 customers worldwide who are community leaders for their past year's accomplishments in a specific competency (ex: ASP.NET, C#, VSTS). A non-Microsoft employee is nominated by an employee or other MVP, their contributions to the community are evaluated, and they are voted on by an MVP Lead and PG Lead. Contributions can include answering MSDN Forum questions, writing articles & books, having an active & popular blog, working with the product teams, running a local user group, giving presentations, etc.   A quick intro to what an MVP is can be found on the MVP Website.

Team System MSDN Public Chat

Visual Studio Team System for Software Developer & Visual Studio Team System for Software Testers

When: Wednesday 10/19/05 @ 10am PST

What: The Profiler, Test Tools (Unit, Generic, Manual), Web & Load Testing, and Code Analysis (FxCop & PREFast).  We have questions for you, will answer questions from you, and will chat about the exciting new technology.

A bit belated in this posting, but Steven Borg and I are both Microsoft MVPs now! I attended the MVP summit a few weeks ago as an RD, and I've got to say that I am in some good company, and am really impressed at the level of support Microsoft gives to this program.

Seattle Code Camp is just around the corner - about 10 days away. Steven Borg and I are going to be presenting a couple of Team System and SQL Server 2005 topics at camp and we hope to see you there!

A friend of mine sent me this link. It's a pretty good refrence page on the core keyboard shortcuts.

Microsoft’s senior vice president, Steven Sinofsky, discusses support for the PDF Format in Office 12. It appears it will be as simple as "Save-as".

Read the Q&A here.

Microsoft and Plam announced today that an upcoming model of the Treo (early 2006) will run Windows Mobile 5.0. Verizon will provide the high-speed network.

I've been heads-down all week building content for the big launch on November 7, but I wanted to blog about Dave Bost being hired on by Microsoft. He'll be assuming the role of Developer Evangelist for the midwest district, and he's joining at a great time, what with Team System, Visual Studio, SQL Server, and BizTalk Server all launching soon!

In other words, he joined Microsoft. Yes, my fellow RD to the (great white) North, John Bristowe just hired-on as a new Developer Evangelist (DE) for the area.

Good luck John!

This was a last minute thing that came up, but yesterday morning I presented a 1-hour session on Team System to this virtual conference. I understand that they had 4500+ attendees signed-up. I know that my session had 100 people in it, which is great for a conference that was devoid of any specific tools (most topics were on management, theory, and best practice).

(Click to expand)

People ask why we arrived at the PDC on Friday, several days ahead of the first day. Well, it was so we could present Team System at the pre-conference, as well as go sailing all day Saturday. Here is a video (scroll down) that Lorin Thwaits and Scott Cate created to show at the PDC, and show-off Ajax and myKB.

My friend Scott Swigart got a chance to sit down with several Microsoft employees and chat about the planned features and changes. This is great, considering Visual Basic 8.0 isn't even out yet. One of the most anticipated features is Language INtegrated Query (LINQ).

Check out Scott's article on Dr. Dobb's.

Just down the road from the convention center is where you can find the coolest event going. PDC Underground! It's where we will have some food and drinks and hear from the best speakers in town for the PDC, all in one evening!

When: Tuesday September 13th 6:00pm to 9:00pm
Location: The Westin Bonaventure Hotel in the Catalina Ballroom

Food and drinks then at 6:30pm 2 hours of non stop geeky fun with all new GROK Talks and they will be LIVE! Presented by Regional Directors from around the world.

Check with your local .NET user group or contact us to get your "PDC Underground" button that will get you in the door or find someone at PDC with one and ask how they got it. Get a few extra to give to your cool hard core friends.

Register at www.pdcunderground.com

Just down the road from the convention center is where you can find the coolest event going. PDC Underground! It's where we will have some food and drinks and hear from the best speakers in town for the PDC, all in one evening!

When: Tuesday September 13th 6:00pm to 9:00pm
Location: The Westin Bonaventure Hotel in the Catalina Ballroom

Food and drinks then at 6:30pm 2 hours of non stop geeky fun with all new GROK Talks and they will be LIVE! Presented by Regional Directors from around the world.

Check with your local .NET user group or contact us to get your "PDC Underground" button that will get you in the door or find someone at PDC with one and ask how they got it. Get a few extra to give to your cool hard core friends.

Register at www.pdcunderground.com

I was just informed today that Microsoft has posted my revised chapter 3 (Team System Client Applications) on their Beta Experience Website.

I've done a lot of things from the SQLCLR thus far, except for consuming an ASP.NET Web Service. This morning, I ran into some difficulties. Here are some key points to remember:

• Remove any app.config from your SQLCLR project so that VS 2005 can properly deploy
• Refer to this posting if you get the "Cannot load dynamically generated serialization assembly ..." error message
• Refer to this posting on how to automate the fix above from within Visual Studio 2005

Many thanks to Vineet Rao (Microsoft) for these tips.

If you haven't played with the new Code Snippets features in Visual Studio 2005, you're missing out! It makes it easy to keep an entire library of useful code snippets within Visual Studio 2005, and at the ready to help with any programming assignment. Integrated Intellisense invokes them automatically.

In anticipation of this feature, my fellow RD J. Michael Palermo IV has created www.gotcodesnippets.net which will become the uber repository of such snippets. It will launch officially at PDC.

Why demo your cool application to a few friends, when you can show it off to thousands of your peers at the PDC? This year's PDC will be the first-ever Show Off event, which is an evening event held at the PDC where you can show off your application, tip, tool, technique, animation, or anything cool that can help or inspire other developers.

Read more about it at Channel 9 or Michael Swanson's blog post.

Plan now to attend this four day workshop covering Microsoft’s Business Process, Integration and Workflow to get up to speed on new and updated solutions for Business Process Automation, Integration Services and Workflow, including BizTalk Server 2006.

Click here for more information.

Focused primarily on the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) developer communities, the beta experience contains the latest news, free resources, training, and a free newsletter. Note: You won't find United States in the dropdown list, so try United Kingdom.

Here are some of the points from Soma's blog entry this morning ...

• We're 77 days out from launch
• In September, there will be a Release Candidate (RC1) of Visual Studio 2005
• This RC will be available to MSDN subscribers, early adopters, and beta customers
• Beta 3 of Team Foundation Server (TFS) will be released at the same time as the RC1
• TFS Beta 3 will including a "Go Live" license with technical support for Premier customers
• TFS Beta 3 will carry us through the launch of Visual Studio 2005
• TFS RTM will be in the first quarter of 2006

Please re-read that bottom bullet!

When
  09/08/2005 (8:30 AM - 5:00 PM)

Where
  Microsoft Boise, CW Moore Bldg, Basement Conference Room A, 250 S. 5th Street, Boise, ID 83702
  Click here for directions

Registration
  Registration is free; however, seating is limited. Click here to register and use code # 304061

Agenda and Session Details

Microsoft is entering into the software lifecycle tools market with the release of the new Visual Studio Team System product. Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) expands significantly on Microsoft's demonstrated successes in delivering highly productive tools, by offering businesses tightly integrated and extensible lifecycle tools to increase the predictability of their software development process. VSTS offers developers, architects, testers and project managers a seamless way to communicate and increase the effectiveness of software development and the successes of projects.

We have put together a free, day-long comprehensive technical training to help our customers understand the power and value of Visual Studio Team System. This session will cover the core features of the product and the details around Developer, Architect and the Test editions.

Some agenda topics:

• Designers – Class Designer, Logical Datacenter Designer, Application Designer
• Code Analysis, Methodologies and Source Control Management
• Unit Testing, Web Testing and Load Testing
• Build Server, Reporting, Work Item Management, Integration

Breakfast and Lunch will be provided. See you there!

For more information:
  Contact Jason Mauer (jmauer@microsoft.com)

It was a simple enough question that Ethan, my .NET remoting student, asked me yesterday. I did some research, and couldn't find anything official from Microsoft, just their human readable schema on MSDN. Then I found radsoftware's page, which offers a product providing Intellisense to your VS.NET 1.X config file editor. About half way down the page is a ZIP file containing an XSD schema that they built. It looks pretty thorough, but I sent off an email just to make sure.

Just "of the week"? I'm hurt.

My interview with Simple Talk is online now.

Thanks to Mike Gunderloy for creating this cool INF file. Even though it's been around for a couple of years, I just found out about it!

David Anderson of Microsoft will be hosting a Webcast and Chat on August 18th. The Webcast will run from 11 AM to 12 PM Pacific Time (GMT -8), with the chat starting at 12 PM and running to 1 PM Pacific Time. Bring your MSF/CMMI questions and be there.

Thanks to Rob Caron for the original posting ...

A week ago, I mentioned that Longhorn is now officially known as Windows Vista. Well, Indigo has also been renamed to Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Avalon renamed to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

Here's an eWeek article discussing it.
 

Since I have nothing else going on in my life (ya - right), I thought I would start installing the July CTP of TFS and VSTS. This CTP requires a dual-installation, because you have to use the June CTP of SQL Server 2005 which uses a different build of the .NET Framework than VSTS July CTP. Anyway, I've run into some problems, which I will share with you ...

• You can install SQL 2005 June CTP on the same VPC as the DC, because of this problem.
• So, I had to create a separate VPC for the DC (at least it runs with < 200mb of memory allocated).

More to come, I'm sure ...

If anyone is planning on attending the PDC, be sure to come a day early and check out the great pre-conferences. I'll be presenting a full day on Team System development, Sunday the 11th.

See you in LA!

Congratulations to my friends John Alexander (Microsoft RD from Kansas City) and Jeff Julian on their forthcoming book. I just saw it advertised on Amazon.

This new division will unify the Distributed Systems Group (DSG) and the Business Process/Integration Division (BPID), bringing these technologies together:

• Windows Communication Foundation ("Indigo")
• Web Services Enhancements (WSE)
• InfoCard
• MSMQ
• Active Directory
• Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS)
• BizTalk Server
• Host Integration Server
• Commerce Server
• RFID
• Industry Standard Accelerators
• Windows Workflow Services ("Windows OE").

Read the announcement here.

A few weeks ago I blogged the shirt sizing chart of Tech-Ed/Europe. The sizes only went up to 5X. Well, at this fall's MVP summit, the 6X folks are finally given a conference to attend ...

This tool analyzes your SQL 2000 applications for potential upgrade issues when migrating to SQL Server 2005. This new version is based on the June CTP and contains additional rules, support for scanning batch files, command line support and usability improvements.

The Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Upgrade Advisor is a tool used by Database developers and administrators to analyze SQL Server 7.0 and SQL Server 2000 database servers in preparation for upgrading to SQL Server 2005. The Upgrade Advisor will allow users to analyze the configuration of their existing database services and database applications. As a result of this analysis, Upgrade Advisor will provide reports that identify deprecated features and necessary configuration changes that will impact their Database upgrade process. Upgrade Advisor will also provide links to documentation that describe these changes and necessary steps to complete the process.

Download it here.

Yes, Microsoft and a certain MVP have gone to great lengths to provide you with this simple how-to.

Thanks for attending Steve and/or my talks (if you did). Here are links to the presentations on SQL Server 2005 and Team System.

• Introducing Visual Studio 2005 Team System
• SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence (BI)
• SQL Server 2005 for Developers
  

Yep, my session in Austin was canceled today, because someone left some suspicious backpacks downstairs at the Hyatt Regency in Austin, and they cleared the building for 3.5 hours. Methinks Oracle was behind it!

Read the article from News 8 Austin

(Update) Here's the letter from the hotel.

Microsoft announced the new, official name of the next version of Windows today. Beta 1 will launch on 3 August, too.

Seems Microsoft MapPoint thinks the shortest route between two Norwegian cities requires a flying car!

Thanks Ken, this made me laugh.

Looks like some changes are coming to the certification program, especially for SQL Server and Visual Studio. Read this article for all the details, but essentially they are planning three tiers:

• Tier 1: Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist will require simply passing one to three exams based on a Microsoft technology. As products meet the end of the support lifecycle, its related exam will be retired.
  
• Tier 2: Microsoft Certified IT Professional or Professional Developer require a Technology Specialist certification, plus one to three more exams, based on the requirement for a particular path. This tier is tied to job role at an organization, such as Database Developer or Business Intelligence. Recertification will be required to maintain status at this level.
  
• Tier 3: Microsoft Certified Architect is a rigorous, board-level certification that requires recertification. Achieving Technology Specialist or IT Professional or Professional Developer certification not a prerequisite to attaining this level of certification.
  

This was a short, 10-minute presentation that I recorded while at Tech-Ed in Orlando. Many of the Regional Directors gave a GrokTalk.

The registry really is an undiscovered country. I learned from Dave Herron that there is a specific registry entry that you can set that determines the delay between the appearance of a password-protected screen saver and the enforcement of the password requirement.

Learn more here.

Be sure to check out my live event on July 19 for SQL Server magazine. Here's where to register and here's an abstract:

SQL Server 2005 offers great features for every role: DBAs, Business Intelligence (BI) analysts, and developers. For developers, there are numerous features and productivity enhancements over SQL Server 2000. In this Web seminar, we will take a wide look at many of these interesting features. We will begin at the SQL Server engine, focusing on the new data types (XML and MAX keyword), PIVOT and UNPIVOT commands, Common Table Expressions (CTEs), ranking and partitioning options, exception handling, automatic output, and DDL triggers. Next, we'll drill down into the XML data type, and look at the new XML support, FOR XML improvements, and some XQUERY examples. Since developers should always be concerned with security, I’ll show a few options for encrypting and decrypting data, using T-SQL commands. Saving the best for last, we’ll finish up with SQL Server 2005’s hosting of .NET components. After a brief discussion of the architecture and process of building, deploying, securing, and executing SQLCLR components, we will look at the sample code for a user defined function, stored procedure, and user defined type – all built using Visual Studio 2005. 

For those who missed last week's "Learning Visual Studio Team System" chat, and can't wait for Microsoft to publish the transcript. Here it is, in its full and unedited form.

Had somebody show me this the other day. It's a collection of brilliant Windows backgrounds that look like "transparent screens". Here's an example ...

 

A few weeks ago I was working 18 hour days on a project in building 18 and, besides the free drinks, was enjoying the incredible bandwidth. Want to download something from MSDN subscribtion downloads?

If you are like me, then you are constantly copying and pasting from other documents, slides, or Web pages that you've created into Word 2003. It's a great repository for various content. The only problem is the formatting. Have you tried to paste HTML into Word lately? It will end up being pages and pages long. Try this.

• To remove all the formatting and related stuff like text boxes, select the text and hit Ctrl + Shift + N to remove all but the font formatting.
• To wipe out all formatting, select the text and hit Ctrl + Space.

I can't remember who told me about these shortcuts, but I'm much appreciative. I'm sure there's more in Word as well.

Our Train-The-Trainer (TTT) event has come to a close, and what a great class it was! We had 26 students, from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, Denmark, Italy, the Russian Federation, Finland, Belgium, Macedonia, Greece, Poland, Lithuania, and France.

Looks like 3 Leaf's Introducing Visual Basic 2005 for Developers is online, with chapters that can be downloaded.

I call it 3 Leaf's book, because of who contributed: Kris Horrocks, Sean Campbell, Derek Hatchard, Peter Bernhardt, Scott Swigart.

I was just informed that the extra appendix, the samples for the extra appendix and all the rest of the sample/exercise files for the Unleashed are now available for download on the SAMS site.  When you get to the page, click on the Download link in the More Information section.  Appendix C is cool because it covers most of the adapters.

Also, if you are searching for a good book on InfoPath, check out Thomas Robbins' book. Oh, and if you want to preview a cool technology, check out a few pages of this book using the Google/Print Beta.

Download it now and check it out!

Want to hire Don Box for an hour? He and a number of other developer rockstars are up for auction (or at least one hour of their time is).

If you are looking for a good resource for both SQL Server 2000 and 2005 resources, TechCenter is the place to visit.

My friend Ron Talmage's article was just published on Technet.

The Connected Systems 2005 Developer Competition, sponsored by Microsoft Corporation and MSDN Magazine is a skill based competition for professional developers intended to highlight and reward creativity and programming excellence using SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk 2004/2006. The competition is open to anyone who practices in the field of technology development, either individuals or organizations. Some eligibility restrictions apply; see Official Competition Rules for details.

Entries will be judged on creativity, innovation, design and technical excellence, usefulness, usability and value by a panel of industry experts selected from the Microsoft Regional Director program. All competition entrants must be registered and have submitted a description of the application they are entering into the competition by August 30, 2005. The official closing date for final competition entries is September 15, 2005.

All finalists will be invited to join the SQL Server, Visual Studio and BizTalk teams at the Joint SQL Server 2005/Visual Studio 2005/BizTalk 2006 launch event where the Winners will be announced at a dinner the evening before the launch. 

For more information or to enter the competition please visit the competition website.

Microsoft is working on a new Windows-based operating system designed to help companies make older machines run better. The software will look and feel like much like Windows XP and will be equipped with Service Pack 2. The idea behind Eiger came from businesses and school systems that said they couldn't afford to replace an old fleet of computers but wanted machines running Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows NT to be more secure and easier to manage.

Read the entire article here.

As we all know, SQL Server Reporting Services reports are saved as .RDL files. The files saved and consumed by the VS/Beta 2 Web-based report designer and viewer control, however, are .RDLC files. So, what are the differences?

• ReportViewer Control FAQ