Theo Moore

Working With Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System

ISBN: 0-7356-2185-3

Author: Richard Hundhausen

Microsoft Press

 

I got this book at the Greenville Code Camp. I have been very curious about VSTS testing capabilities, which isn’t much of a surprise, I suppose. I read this book to get a feel for what it could do, and to prepare myself for potentially being a good advocate for its usage at my employer.

 

It turned out that my VP had also read it, and we had some very good conversation about the book and what it had to say about VSTS.

 

First off, there is one thing to remember when reading this book: it is a Microsoft Press book. Which means, in this case, that it reads something like a large sales pamphlet.

 

However, beyond that, it’s pretty good. It is structured well: it begins with the basic structure and theory behind the Team System. It does a very good job of getting one interested in what you can do with it. It breaks down the different install types one can perform with the client.

 

I focused my attention on the chapter relating to Testers, which was easy to do, since it breaks down the functionality down along these lines, referring to Project Managers, Architects, Developers, and Testers. I was rather pleased that real attention was placed on the Tester role both by the software and the book as well.

 

If I had any particular complaint with the book overall, it would have to be with the lack of follow-on references. It wasn’t terribly large, so I would have thought it would provide more information on other places one could look for more info.

 

One of the appendices was particular useful, because it took real life scenarios and used the roles and VSTS to solve them. Pretty handy to allow one to visualize how the pieces fit together.

 

Overall, this is a good read if one is learning about VSTS for the first time, however it will run a bit dry eventually and you’ll be looking for more information on specific topics later.

BeyondCompare is a file/folder comparing tool by Scooter Software. I've used quite a few file compare tools in the last few years in an automation capacity. Very handy to create a template file that contains what information you expect to be produced by code that will produce a file, then later repeat the process and make sure the file either doesn't change or changes as expected. Ultimately not the best approach sometimes, but often the most eloquent. So, I was interested in looking at this new tool.

I've run a few tests, and here are my thoughts:

1) Pricing: The pricing is pretty reasonable, especially for a site license.
2) Interface: The interface is pretty slick and intuitive. The toolbars put the most useful items in a logical way on interface. I thought some of the sub-forms like the Rules interface were clean, and work well. Easy to understand and follow. My only complaint is with the main window and files. You have two windows in the main window that show you the files you are comparing. When you want to use a tool on a file, or open a file in one of the viewer windows, etc, you must click on the window with which you want to interface. Now, this seems obvious, but it took a moment to figure that out. Some sort of clearer indication of this would be handy.
3) Rules: The file comparison rules are pretty good. Standard comparison tools, with multiple definitions for various file types...C++, VB, etc. Nice.
4) Version Control: It has an interface with version control software, but I didn't test this out. Seems like a potentially interesting feature, but most VC software comes with a comparison tool. Is this really necessary? I suppose it could be better than the default.
5) Settings: the functionality is quite customizable; lots of options to change the user experience. I thought of a couple of features that I liked especially: I can configure the "open with" menu to let me select several different programs with which I can open whatever file I am comparing. Nice! Also has user configurable hotkeys...for someone like myself who attempts to use my mouse as little as possible, this is a huge boon and will greatly improve my productivity. Another useful feature is that one can export/import settings to allow an easy way to ensure multiple machines are configured similarly.

I do have a real beef with this tool in one way, though: the automation is weak. They provide a scripting engine which uses a textfile to drive the process. This is handy, in some sense, but I'd really like to see an API. I use QTP (as you have no doubt noticed from my blog), and I can run the scripts for it. However, I'd much rather create an object instance and interact with it programmtically. Trying to really automate with script files allows for far too many problems and provides too many places where something good go wrong. If it's automation that I have run by hand, its usefulness is severly reduced. A real pity, that.

So, in summary, let me say this: the software has plenty of good features, is very configurable, and works well. Definitely worth the $30 price tag for a single seat, so long as you don't mind the text file based automation.