Dave Bost

VSTS has always been about creating a tool to support the individual roles of a software development project. Today,VSTS supports features for Architects, Developers and Testers. Today, Microsoft announced the additon of another team role to the VSTS product lineup – Database Professional.

With the Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals, DBA’s and database developers can now enjoy the benfits of what Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server bring to Application Lifecycle Mangement. Attendees of this year’s TechEd conference in Boston will be able to get there hands on a copy of the CTP with download availability following shortly thereafter. Here’s a clipping of some of the features included:

• The new Visual Studio Database Project allows you to import your database schema and place it under source control. When the time comes to deploy schema changes the new project system allows you to quickly build update scripts or packages and then provides a mechanism to deploy them to the database of our choice
  
• Rename Refactoring allows you to easily rename any object in your database and be assured that all references to that object will be renamed to correspond to the change
  
• A New T-SQL editor allows you to be more productive when writing T-SQL code from within Visual Studio including support for parallel execution of queries and viewing of execution plans
  
• SchemaCompare allows you to quickly compare the schema of two databases (or your source controlled project and a database) and script updates to bring the database schemas into sync
  
• DataCompare allows you to quickly compare two databases and script updates to bring the data in these databases into sync
  
• The Database Unit Testing infrastructure allows you to create database unit tests using T-SQL or managed code
  
• DataGenerator lets you create data generation plans that produce repeatable sets of meaningful data based upon your existing production databases that can be deployed to a database prior to running unit tests thus ensuring consistent test results

Many customers ask me what’s a best practice for moving schemea changes through the application promotion model. I can’t wait to see how the Database Professional edition can help faciliate this complicated process. Sounds like a whitepaper in the making.

Team System

Back in March wethrew a little get together in Vegas called MIX’06. This wasn’t your typical Microsoft conference. This was about brining designers and developers together to discuss the next generation of applications. As a matter of fact, I saw more MacBook’s at this conference than any other conference I’ve attended before. Aside from the Orange Dragon episode, it was a fantastic time.

Although you won’t be able to experience the sites and sounds of Vegas, you can certainly relive the great content.

MIX06

The following is a series of “How to” videos the ASP.NET team put together a couple of months ago. As opposed to sending everyone to the Microsoft learning site, I figured it would be easier on them (and me) if I posted them to my blog. Enjoy…

ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Caching (Part 1)
This video is part one of a two-part series introducing the new caching features of ASP.NET 2.0. Start with a demonstration of Page Output Caching followed by an overview of the new ASP.NET 2.0 Database Caching support for SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005. Topics include using the aspnet_regsql.exe utility to add SQL caching support to a SQL Server database, creating a SQL cache dependency to eliminate unnecessary connections to the database, enabling table-level caching, and enabling enhanced caching support using SQL Server 2005 Change Notifications.

ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Caching (Part 2)
This video is part two of a two-part series introducing the new caching features of ASP.NET 2.0. Topics include the new Partial-Page Output Caching feature of ASP.NET 2.0 followed by an overview of the Cache API, which demonstrates how to efficiently bind a data control to an XML file.

ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Create a Full-Featured Customer Login Portal
Get an overview of the major features and improvements introduced with Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition and ASP.NET 2.0. Follow along through the creation of a fictitious customer portal to learn about topics including Master Pages, Themes, database access, Membership, Roles, the Web Site Administration Tool, site navigation, and user profiles.

ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Data
This video illustrates how simple it is to create data-driven web sites using Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition, ASP.NET 2.0, and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. See the integrated data editing support provided by Visual Web Developer that simplifies database creation and population using the Database Explorer and DataSet Designer. Explore how easy it is to create a master-details view with support for filtering, sorting, paging, and editing with no code using the DropDownList, GridView, DetailsView, and ObjectDataSource controls.

ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Form Building for a “Contact Us” Page
This video introduces a number of the new ASP.NET 2.0 controls for building forms to collect information from the user, validate that information, then send a confirmation e-mail message. Features covered include the Wizard control, Validation controls, and the System.Net.Mail classes for sending e-mail messages.

ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Localization
This video is a tour of the web site localization support in Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition. Learn how to create culture-aware and locale-specific web content with ASP.NET 2.0 with no additional code. Topics include the new declarative binding syntax, page-level vs. application-level resources, and using the rich resource editor.

ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Master Pages and Site Navigation
Create a Web site with a consistent layout and design across all its pages using ASP.NET 2.0 Master Pages. Become familiar with the enhanced designer support for creating and consuming Master Pages in Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition. See the improved Table Editor and Style Builder in action and learn how easy it is to add navigation to a Web site using the new TreeView and SiteMapPath controls.

ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Membership and Roles
Learn how to secure a Web site using the new Membership and Roles features of ASP.NET 2.0. Topics include user registration, password recovery, and restricting access to content with roles. Get a tour of how the Web Site Administration Tool simplifies user account administration and makes it easy to control content access permissions.

ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Profiles and Themes
Discover how to create a customizable Web site using Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition and ASP.NET 2.0. Learn how to use Profiles to collect per-user configuration information and apply Themes to extend a consistent look-and-feel throughout the Web site.

ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Tips and Tricks
This Tips & Tricks video covers many useful techniques for enhancing ASP.NET 2.0 web sites using Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition. Topics include encrypting sensitive information stored in web.config, maintaining the browser scroll position across postbacks, posting content to a different page, setting focus on a specific control when a page is loaded, creating a bulleted list of hyperlinks from an XML file, working with the file upload control, simplifying complex URLs using URL remapping, and using the MultiView control to switch between groups of content programmatically.

ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Web Parts and Personalization
This video shows how to use the new Web Parts and Personalization features of ASP.NET 2.0 and the designer support provided by Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition to build customizable web pages whose content and layout can be modified by the user. See how Web Parts enable the user to add new content to a page on-the-fly and restructure the page in the browser using drag-and-drop.

.NET Development

Due to a sudden surge of comment spam, comments have been disabled until I get around to upgrading my blogging software.

Uncategorized

We have an exciting event coming to the Chicago and Milwaukee user group communities. On May 17th (in Downers Grove, IL) and May 18th (in Milwaukee), Microsoft in conjunction with InnerWorkings will host a developer make-over event called “Hacked or Be Hacked”. Developer make-overs are all about “making-over” your skill set – increasing your knowledge base through fun and interactive exercises. This particular make-over event will detail some of the common security vulnerabilities found in today’s web applications followed by a hands-on coding challenge that will help you learn how to mitigate these security vulnerabilities.

To participate in the hands-on portion of this event, it is recommended that you bring your own machine with at least Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Editioninstalled. Visual Studio 2005 Standard edition, Professional edition and any Team System role editions will work as well. Once you have VS2005 up and running, we’ll be able to download the InnerWorkings Web Application Attacks module. The great thing about InnerWorkings training modules is that they integrate directly within the Visual Studio development environment.

The InnerWorkings training engine maintains a score level on how well you perform in the exercise. With this scoring ability, we will keep a running scoreboard to determine who is “Top Coder”. We will run the coding challenge for a week following the event. For those of you not able to make it to the meeting, you can still participate by still registering.

The stakes are high including a copy of Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition to the winner of the coding challenge. Also, just by registering for the coding challenge, you will be entered into a drawing for a $200 Amazon gift certificate courtesy of InnerWorkings.

The event dates are as follows:

May 17th, 2006
Microsoft Corporation
3025 Highland Parkway, Suite 300
Downers Grove, IL.
Click to Register

May 18th, 2006
Medical College of Wisconsin
10000 West Innovation Dr.
Milwaukee, WI.
Click to Register

.NET Development, Community, Illinois Events, Talks, Wisconsin Events