Visual Studio Team System

Minor "Gotcha!" TFS 2008 Workgroup Edition

Lou Vega — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 11:42:48 GMT

After getting used to the full blown version of TFS (first 2005, and then 2008) I ended up doing an install of TFS Workgroup Edition to play around with to see if it would work for some smaller home projects. After setting everything up, imagine my surprise when I went to access it using a named account rather that the "TFS Setup" account. I received an error:

TFS 3011: domain\user is not a licensed user

Doh! A quick check of the global group membership settings and I discovered a "licensed users" group. I put my named account in there (the TFS Setup account was already there) and my problem was solved.

Hopefully this will help someone out who's exploring the TFS 2008 workgroup edition!

Visual Studio 2008 Performance Analysis Tip...

Lou Vega — Tue, 06 May 2008 20:20:57 GMT

If you're used to working with the VS 2005 Performance Tool (Dynamic Code Analysis) and you're starting to work on projects in VS 2008, you may have been a little surprised as I was running the VS 2008 version on existing code and getting different results than you get in VS 2005.

By Default in a VS 2008 profiling session there is a check box called "Exclude Small Functions from Instrumentation" which is checked. You may need to uncheck it in order to get more complete results on your code. An example of this option is shown below (after I unchecked it):

Then again - maybe it's selected by default for a good reason...all I know is in the initial tests I ran I noticed quite a difference in the results until I unchecked this option.

Visual Studio 2008 Team System Seminar

Lou Vega — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:32:44 GMT

Just saw notice of some events in my area - one of which caught my attention since I'm just starting to experiment with VS 2008 Team System. There's a 1 day seminar going over it as noted below.

1 day seminar will be around Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team System. You will be provided with an overview of each role and the session will wrap up with a preview of the next version of Team System

DATES/LOCATIONS:

3/11 Ft Lauderdale, FL Event ID: 1032367780
3/13 Tampa, FL Event ID: 1032367779
3/18 Charlotte, NC Event ID: 1032367770
3/20 Raleigh/Durham, NC Event ID: 1032367772
3/24 Birmingham, AL Event ID: 1032368273
3/25 Atlanta, GA Event ID: 1032357769

REGISTRATION:

You may click on the Event ID link to register for the event. You can also register by phone by calling 1-877-673-8368 and reference your Event ID.

If your local area isn't listed, check on MSDN to see if there's one near you and sign up today!

I'm probably heading up to the Charlotte one. See you there!

Event ID: 3000 TFS Warehouse Error

Lou Vega — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:20:12 GMT

Disclaimer – this article describes a fix that worked for me – YMMV…proceed with caution.

I recently encountered a weird error with the TFSWarehouse data cube and reporting services for our site. It started out innocently enough with an error I hadn’t seen before in the event log (shown below)

Well that was odd enough because it suddenly appeared out of nowhere, but then I also noticed odd things going on with the reports that TFS generates. It was generating reports but it was all stale data…apparently stale from the date this error first occurred (late last week). Digging through the event logs I found these errors:

The error above occurred when I tried to initiate an update and then later a complete rebuild of the data warehouse. I noticed the timestamps on all the files in the TfsWarehouse.0.db directory were right before the error in the event log and started to wonder just what the heck had happened to cause the file corruption.

To complicate matters further when I tried to apply the hotfix that Microsoft had supplied (see MS KB Article 940229) the installation of the hotfix failed with the following error:

The log file for this error essentially chalked it up to permissions errors but I tried applying the hotfix as the TFS Service, The TFS Reporting Service, and then finally as a domain admin…all to no avail.

So now I had an error with a hotfix that wouldn’t apply because of corruption in a file…I was half tempted to just restore from backup because I wasn’t sure what else to do but then had another idea which actually turned out to work for me, but as I’ve said before, I don’t know if it’s an “approved” fix, but it worked.

Since I had a good backup but didn’t want to have to worry about re-importing all the work items added since that backup I decided to make a fresh backup at this point so I could do a bit of a “Stop->Rewind” if things got out of hand.

Once that was done I mounted the backup image from before the file corruption and copied out that directory to a temporary location. Then I started to replace the files which the error logs had indicated were corrupt. That in itself didn’t fix the problem – still got the same error in the event log when I went to run the hotfix but another error that popped up lead me to a newsgroup discussion about removing the version map file (master.mvp) to recover from a different analysis services error. I renamed the original master.mvp to OriginalMaster.mvp and then invoked the process to rebuild the TFSWarehouse – which it did. Sweet I thought now I can press on…but I still ran into other issues…so another far out thought had me replace all the files from the TfsWarehouse.0.db directory with the ones from my known good backup and that started showing improvement. After that I renamed the OriginalMaster.mvp back to master.mvp and was able to complete a successful rebuild of the data warehouse….and now I was able to successfully apply the hotfix.

This morning I was able to come in and pull up all the correct reports from the server…with all current data in them. So the problem was solved.

If anyone has any insight as to what might have caused those errors in the first place I’d be interested to know…also if anyone can chime in a more orthodox solution, please do!

I'm headed to Roanoke Code Camp in March!

Lou Vega — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 23:58:28 GMT

Wasn't sure if I was going to be able to make it but really wanted to after talking with Robin last October at Richmond Code Camp...but now I'm heading up to Roanoke for my first Code Camp of 2008!

Right now I'm planing for two presentations - one on code analysis and one on Windows Mobile 6.

For those interested in more info about the code camp in general see their site here: http://www.rvnug.org/CodeCamp.aspx

VS 2008 and VS 2005 side-by-side with Windows Mobile 6 SDK's

Lou Vega — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 18:16:43 GMT

~~Is this even a supported configuration? Right now mine's not working but I haven't given up yet.~~

I previously had Visual Studio 2005 installed with the Windows Mobile 6 SDK's (both professional and standard) and everything works fine there. Just yesterday installed Visual Studio 2008 and went to look at the Smart Device templates and only the Windows Mobile 5 stuff is there. No problem I figured - maybe just need to re-install the SDK's now that I have VS 2008 so they can be integrated. Did that but still just the Windows Mobile 5 and earlier stuff shows up.

~~While I'm continuing to research this - hopefully someone else can chime in who's got an answer...~~

Edit: Did an uninstall of both SDK's, rebooted and re-installed each SDK. Opened VS 2008 and there were my Windows Mobile 6 projects....closed it down and checked VS 2005 and they were there too...so:

1) If you have VS 2005 with the SDK's already installed then uninstall the SDK's, reboot and re-install..Voila - you can then access the Windows Mobile 6 stuff in each version.

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Team Suite - my first look...

Lou Vega — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:35:44 GMT

So I finally got the time to sit down with a copy of Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 and got it installed on my test rig. Here's how it all went down...

I did a custom install this first time around - no Visual C++, and none of the SQL Compact or Crystal Reports stuff. I was certain to include the new Code Analysis, Performance and Testing tools though. I've heard some interesting things about the way those tools have improved with VS 2008 and am anxious to try them out.

I'm also pretty anxious to try out .NET Compact Framework 3.5 development. I was so into .NET CF back in the 1.x days and then got so busy with other things I pretty much missed out on all the cool stuff with Windows Mobile 5 and .NET CF 2.0...and now Windows Mobile 6 and beyond. I guess it would also have helped if I had a newer device! If any manufacturers out there want a really thorough review of their device, send it to me and I'll gladly review it :)

So after the lengthy install process I got started right away with some old code snippets and running those through the new performance tools. I really like the idea of the Code Metrics tool and can't wait to try it on some production code from the shop. There was rather limited support for this type of information with Team Suite 2005, but it's improved quite a bit in Team Suite 2008.

There were some layout changes to the Code Profiler tool that took a moment to get used to. You can now access the sub-sections using a drop down list instead of a button/tab interface like in 2005.

Aside from the performance tools that I quickly tested out, another thing I thought was pretty neat was the visual XAML designer....that's right, drag and drop to build WPF apps instead of using XAMLpad. I'll have to check that out after I'm done with all the performance tool testing.

Next order of business is to find some suitable hardware to install Team Foundation Server 2008 so I can see what's changed there from TFS 2005.

I'll post a little more detail on the code profiler, code analysis and code metrics as I start to test them on real world app.

Some minor VSTS issues...

Lou Vega — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 03:42:00 GMT

OK let me preface this by saying by and large, I’m actually a pretty big fan of Visual Studio Team System. One of the things I don’t like is the breakdown of functionality between the different SKU’s of Team Edition. Case in point…

Our current environment has a separate build server. When we got to the point where we wanted to run unit tests as part of the built process, our QA guy had to install the Tester edition on the build server in order for it to run…that was a few weeks back and now we’re ready to implement static code analysis but he found out he needed the to install the assemblies for that on the same box or would have to install the Developer edition on that build server as well. Now if we had properly planned this little bit out, we could have gotten the unit testing and code analysis covered by installing just the Developer edition in the first place, but my question is why do we need to install these editions anyways? Couldn’t there have been a way to include those assemblies as part of the Team Build installation since that was a separate process/folder on the install media anyway? Then again, maybe we’re going about this all wrong…any tips from those who are out there in the field that have tackled these same problems are welcome J

GC.NUG January 2007 Meeting

Lou Vega — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 04:24:00 GMT

The Greater Charleston .NET User Group will have their first meeting of 2007 on January 11th. I'll be giving a presentation about dynamic code analysis using tools built into Visual Studio Team Edition (Developer). It's something I've been playing around with since last year after I was first introduced to it and it's been pretty cool to poke around with existing code and see what's really happening during execution.

Visit GCNUG.org for more information. See you there!

I won something pretty cool!

Lou Vega — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 20:07:00 GMT

I just found out the other day I won something that's pretty cool....gonna wait for the "official" announcement before I plug it in here, but I'm pretty excited :)

Those of you involved at all with Community-Credit will find out about the same time I do with the official announcement...probably when the January newsletter is released.