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.

If you are running Vista and VS 2005, you need to install this SP1 update.

It's referenced by KB929470, and you can download it here.

If you are in the Boise area, be sure to attend Thursday's meeting of the Boise .NET User Group. I'll be delivering a talk on "SQL Server 2005 Worst Practices". If time permits, I'll also be diving into any other SQL Server/Visual Studio topics that are of interest, so bring your questions!

Please note that we will be meeting at the Microsoft building downtown (old ProClarity building).

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).

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!

This edition became available last Thursday on MSDN. Hazzah!

I've noticed when installing the edition, as well as the CTPs, that it also installs the "ProjectAggregator" ...

A quick search of the forums, finds a post by Robert Merriman (MS) explaining what the ProjectAggregator is ...

"We use the Visual Studio ProjectAggregator to integrate our package into Visual Studio. The ProjectAggregator is from the VSIP SDK and here is some information from the April 2006 readme file for the VSIP SDK:

There is a new ProjectAggregator2 MSI for project systems to leverage. A new aggregator (ProjectAggregator2) was added to the Visual Studio SDK to replace the following two aggregators:

• ProjectAggregator: included with Visual Studio 2005, used for project flavors (also known as project subtypes)
• NativeHierarchyWrapper: included in previous SDK CTPs, used by the MPF project samples

In addition to solving the problems the NativeHierarchyWrapper solved (source code control support for projects implemented in managed code), this new aggregator solve a limitation of the original ProjectAggregator (which did not allow for multiple levels of flavoring)."

 

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.

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!

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.

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!

Microsoft just announced this a few minutes ago, literally. It appears they are on track for a Calendar Q1 release of TFS!

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.

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

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'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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Besides the main launch event in San Francisco, on November 7, there are a few others in the West. Please feel free to register using code: LaunchTour2005.
  
Tuesday, December 6
  Colorado Convention Center
  700 14th Street
  Denver, CO.  80202
  303-228-8000
 
Tuesday, December 6
  Anaheim Convention Center
  800 W. Katella Ave.
  Anaheim, CA.  90802
  714-765-8950

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)

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

My interview with Simple Talk is online now.

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.

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.

Wanted to post a few photos of the book and my buddies.
  

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.

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
• Report Controls Forum
• Web Log Analyzer Starter Kit (uses the control)

Thanks to Scott Allen, a fellow VSLive! presenter for providing these valuable links to RDLC files.