New tool was released on CodePlex called TFS Check-in Validation Tool.

This tool provides the ability to have a checkin validating by a build prior to being checked in.  This is similar to a feature in TFS 2010 called Gated Checkin, which is integrated into VS and TFS (more info in this video). With both of these the goal is to prevent build breaks from being checked in by validating them beforehand.

If you really like it and are interested in doing something similar with TFS 2008 (before TFS 2010) comes out, you can check out this new project on CodePlex: http://www.codeplex.com/BuddyBuild.

It is not a part of TFS and the implementation is unrelated to the TFS 2010 Gated checkin feature.

Buck Hodges has created a great post on this commonly issue here.

For a preview of the next TFS Power Tools release, please read Brian Harry’s blog.

The next version is really amazing!

From Brian’s post:

There are 3 major new components to the October Power Tools release and the usual incremental improvements.

• Team Members - We’ve added a new node to the Team Explorer called "Team Members".  It appears under each Team Project and is used to identify who are the people who work on the project.  It serves as a "pivot point" for information about and operations on people and teams.
• Windows Shell Extension - We’ve built a Windows shell extension that allows you to do the core version control operations directly inside the Windows Explorer without using the Team Explorer.
• PowerShell Support - We’ve started working on a PowerShell pipeline and commandlets for TFS.  Our initial set support basic version control operations but over time we plan to add work item tracking, administration, build and more.

This is one of the best Power Tools releases so far.

Read Brian’s post for full details.

A lot of users confused and don’t understand why the database does not appear on the target server when they do deploy.

The reason is that in CTP 16, the default deploy mechanism is to deploy to script. If you want to deploy to database you have to change the ‘Deploy action’ on the project properties, deploy tab to ‘Create a deployment script (.sql) and deploy to the database.’

The new <TestContainer> item in Team Build 2008 in a great way to run tests without test metadata file (*.vsmdi).

You can specify the following to run all unit tests found in assemblies matching the pattern *.Tests.dll and even specify .LoadTest and .WebTest files as well:

<ItemGroup>
  <TestContainer Include="$(Outdir)*.Tests.dll" />
  <TestContainer Include="$(Outdir)WebTest1.webtest" />
  <TestContainer Include="$(Outdir)LoadTest1.loadtest" />
</ItemGroup>

But if you try to run it in Team Build 2008, you will get an error like: Could not load file or assembly.

That’s because the task tries to do an Assembly.LoadFrom() on whatever files you include in the <TestContainer> item. This obviously fails because .LoadTest and .WebTest are XML files, not assemblies.

This problem has been solved in TFS 2008 SP1. All you need to do is to apply the TFS SP1 patch to the build machine (If you don’t want, it’s not necessary to install TFS SP1 on TF Server to get the fix).

The Team System Web Access team had released SP1 last week.

Some of the cool new features include:

• Ability to run multi-language in a single TSWA instance.
• 10 languages supported
• Work Item only view for users without a CAL!!
• more

Ed Hintz’s announcement to see what’s new in this release:http://blogs.msdn.com/edhintz/archive/2008/08/29/team-system-web-access-2008-sp1-power-tool.aspx

Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3ECD00BA-972B-4120-A8D5-3D38311893DE

Gert just posted about the release of CTP16 of the Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition GDR release.

From Gert’s post:

This release adds the following features:

• VSDBCMD.EXE
  • We added independent commandline deployment and reverse engineer, which can be used on machines that do not have Visual Studio installed, in order to deploy the results of a database project build (.dbschema file), or if you need to generate a .dbschema file so you can for example compare it, this commandline tool will let you do that as well.
• Database Project (.dbproj) Upgrades
  • CTP15 enabled upgrade of project files, but did not included updating Data Generation Plans (.DGEN files), which now be upgraded when they are opened the first time inside the DGEN designer.
• Schema Compare
  • You can now choose the SQL Command Variables (SQLCMD) to use during a Schema Compare session by clicking the “Specify SQLCMD variables” button on the Schema Compare toolbar. This will allow you to compare projects that are using SQLCMD variables and provide the contextual information via the variable values.
  • You can now set the Schema Compare options at the session level, in addition to Tools->Options, by clicking the Settings button on the Schema Compare toolbar.
  • And you can now save your Schema Compare session and reopen it again. We also added an item template for this, name “Schema Comparison”
• Extensibility
  • We finished the namespace and assembly naming cleanup. As a result all assembly names and namespaces have been changed. This means if you have code leveraging our extensibility mechanisms you need to update the assembly references and namespaces in your code.
  • We added the ability to add your own refactoring types! So now you can create your own refactoring command and have it change all the required references inside the schema. This is above and beyond the ability to create your own refactoring targets (the sources your want to change by an refactoring type), static code analysis rules, data generators, data distributions and test conditions.
  • We now also offer public access to our TSQL parsers for SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008, including the script generator functionality.
• And then there are many more enhancements in the parser, interpreter, validation, build and deploy.

Pre-requisites:

CTP16 requires the following components to be installed:

• Visual Studio 2008 SP1 RTM
• Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition 3.5 SP1

Download location:

You can download CTP16 from the following location:

• http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/a/e/0ae1153a-8798-474a-93e6-d19299f37c8b/setup.exe
• http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/a/e/0ae1153a-8798-474a-93e6-d19299f37c8b/Readme.mht
• http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/a/e/0ae1153a-8798-474a-93e6-d19299f37c8b/VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR Documentation.zip

NOTE: If you have a previous version of the GDR installed, you will have to first uninstall this and then install the latest CTP16 bits.

Introduction

Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 enable developers to rapidly create connected applications that deliver high quality and rich user experiences. Visual Studio 2008 enables organizations of every size to rapidly create secure, manageable, and reliable applications that are optimized for Windows Vista™, SQL Server, the Microsoft 2007 Office system and the Web.

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 continue Microsoft’s investment in market leading development tools and developer platform. SP1 addresses issues that were found through a combination of customer and partner feedback, as well as internal testing. These service packs offer customers improvements in responsiveness, stability and performance.

Overview

.NET-based Windows application development benefits from increased Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) designer performance and updated components for Visual Basic and Visual C++ (including a MFC-based Office 2007 Ribbon).  Web development improvements include enhanced the client-side script tooling (JavaScript IntelliSense). In addition to IDE performance improvements SP1 fully supports SQL Server 2008 and the ADO.NET Entity Framework.

The .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (SP1) delivers more controls, a streamlined setup, improved start-up performance, and powerful new graphics features for client development and rich data scaffolding, improved AJAX support, and other improvements for Web development. Additionally it introduces support for the ADO.NET Entity Framework and ADO.NET Data Services, which simplify data access code in applications by providing an extensible, conceptual model for data from any data source and enabling this model to closely reflect business requirements.

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 delivers:

• Improved WPF designers
• SQL Server 2008 support
• ADO.NET Entity Designer
• Visual Basic and Visual C++ components and tools (including an MFC-based Office 2007 style ‘Ribbon’)
• Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server (TFS) addresses customer feedback on version control usability and performance, email integration with work item tracking and full support for hosting on SQL Server 2008
• Richer JavaScript support, enhanced AJAX and data tools, and Web site deployment improvements

The .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 delivers:

• Performance increases between 20-45% for WPF-based applications – without having to change any code
• WCF improvements that give developers more control over the way they access data and services
• Streamlined installation experience for client applications
• Improvements in the area of data platform, such as the ADO.NET Entity Framework, ADO.NET Data Services and support for SQL Server 2008’s new features

Additional Details

WPF and visual designer improvements

Cold startup performance improvement ranging between 20-45% depending on application size without needing to modify any code.

Additional WPF support for text and graphics, and media to deliver better performance. For example, effects like DropShadow and Blur were implemented using software rendering; with SP1 these are now implemented using hardware acceleration. Other examples include:

• Text, especially when used in Visual and DrawingBrush, is substantially faster,
• Scrolling improvements with Container Recycling, improved working set with TreeView virtualization
• A much improved WriteableBitmap that enables real-time bitmap updates from a software surface,
• Designer support for the event tab within the property grid for control events,
• Toolbox support within source mode.

.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Optimized Client Runtime

SP1 provides a .NET Framework install version that is optimized for .NET-based client applications. The size of this optimized runtime is less than 28 MB.

New ADO.NET Data Features

ADO.NET Entity Framework

The ADO.NET Entity Framework is the next evolution of ADO.NET, raising the level of abstraction at which programmers work with data, and allowing the database structure or data source to evolve without significant impact to the application code.

Rather than coding against rows and columns, the ADO.NET Entity Framework allows the definition of a higher-level Entity Data Model over your relational data, and allows developers to then program in terms of this model. Developers get to deal with the data in the shapes that make sense for the application, and those shapes are expressed in a richer vocabulary that includes concepts like inheritance, complex types, and explicit relationships.

Use LINQ to Entities with the Entity Framework for queries that help create easy to maintain code that retrieves and works with strongly typed data objects or business entities.

ADO.NET Data Services

The Microsoft ADO.NET Data Services framework provides a first-class infrastructure for developing the next wave of dynamic internet applications by enabling data to be exposed as REST-based data services that can be consumed by client applications (ASP.NET, AJAX, Silverlight) in corporate networks and across the internet. Easily build applications using a comprehensive set of Microsoft .NET libraries and client components, accessing data through uniform URI syntax and using standard HTTP verbs to operate on the resource.

ADO.NET Data Services provides a framework to build data services for relational data sources, such as Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, DB2, and Oracle, using the built-in support for the ADO.NET Entity Framework, or for non-relational data sources using the pluggable provider model.

TFS improvements

A number of improvements have been made to Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation including:

Version Control

• Simplified the user experience through cleaner “Add to Source Control” dialogs, drag and drop support to the Source Control Explorer and a much easier to use “Workspace” dialog for working folder mappings.
• Version control now automatically supports non-solution controlled files.
• Various changes to the Source Control Explorer such as a new checkin date/time display column, local path hyperlink support and en editable source location field.

Work Item Tracking

• Microsoft Office 2007 integration is now done using the standard Office “Ribbon” delivering a cleaner and easier to use integration to the different Microsoft Office 2007 products.
• Email integration for work items and links for Team system Web Access to make it easier to use email as part of the development lifecycle.

Visual SourceSafe migration tool

• The migration tool has been dramatically improved through many performance and reliability improvements. SP1 provides support for the elimination of namespace conflicts, automatic solution rebinding, improves timestamp coherency and increases the amount of migration logging information available.

Additional Features

• Support for using SQL Server 2008 with Team Foundation Server.
• Team System Web Access provides “live” links to work items and checkin emails. This improves the customer experience for users who do not use Team Explorer.
• Scripting support for the creation of Team Projects.

Performance and scalability

• With SP1 a large part of the focus was to improve the performance and scalability of Team Foundation Server through changes such as faster synchronization with Active Directory, improved checkin concurrency, a faster way to create source tree branches, online index rebuilding for less maintenance downtime and better support for very large checkin sets.
• Improvements in the number of projects a server can support that make not only the scalability of the server better but also the client experience when connecting to a server with a large number of projects on it.

from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/products/cc533447.aspx

Gert just announced that they just released a new CTP of the upcoming 2008 update, Microsoft® Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition GDR.

You can download it from MSDN:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=bb3ad767-5f69-4db9-b1c9-8f55759846ed&displaylang=en

Most important changes:

• Project upgrade is now in place.
• Mixed projects are no longer supported, from now on server projects represent only server creatable objects and user objects that need to be deployed to “master”. Another change is that server options will not get deployed; we only validate the settings as pre-requisites for a deployment. As such server options (sp_configure) have been added to the project system.
• The interpreter now understands temporary tables, table variables and select into column sources.
• The Static Code Analysis MSBuild task was added
• XSD Reference user interface support is enable, but it does not yet create XML Schema Collections
• And lots of fixes since CTP14

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The Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools is a set of enhancements, tools and command line utilities that improve the Team Foundation Server user experience.

The latest power tools release can be found here: TFS July 2008 Power Tools.

See BHarry’s blog for an overview of all the great enhancements and make sure you download and install it.

The following tools are installed with the tfpt.msi package:

• Command line tool (TFPT.EXE)
• Team Explorer IDE menu additions
• Build Notification tool
• TFS Best Practices Analyzer
• Process Template Editor
• Work Item Templates
• Custom check-in policies
• TFS Server Manager
• TFS Users tool
• Alert Editor

Also available is the WssExt64Bit installer which provides the ability to install the Team Foundation Server WSS extensions into a 64-bit WSS instance. The RTM version of the WssExt installer that ships with Team Foundation Server 2008 does not support 64-bit WSS sites.

For more information, see Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools.

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