To coincide with the availability of Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2, the guys over at Radio TFS have released a new episode entitled The Ultimate Announcement Show.
The show features Doug Seven, Product Manager from the Visual Studio team discussing many of the new changes announced today.
Visit www.RadioTFS.com
In the early hours of this morning here in Australia, Soma announced the availability of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2.
With the release of Beta 2 comes some unexpected news that the various SKUs have been reduced from 7 to 4 and the “Team System” name has disappeared. There is even a new logo for Visual Studio to boot.
The new list of Visual Studio 2010 product SKU’s, excluding the Express edition, is as follows;
MSDN Subscribers can download the Beta 2 products immediately, while the public availability of the downloads is scheduled for tomorrow.
I just found out that there is an airport with the code TFS. Cool! So in my own nerdy sort of way I think it would be fun to have a boarding pass with a destination shown as TFS.
So let’s find out where exactly that is… Oh dear.
Microsoft’s Visual SourceSafe product has been around for ages. In fact its been 15 years since Microsoft acquired it from One Tree Software back in 1994. Since that time there have been several releases of what is one of the most commonly used source control products on the planet.
Over the years SourceSafe has had its fair share of detractors and I hear terms like “Visual SortaSafe” being bandied about from time to time. To be fair it couldn’t have gained the market share and popularity it has without reason. Sometimes the reasons for success can be outstanding innovation, price or just the fact it is the easiest to setup and use at the time.
In my day to day work I come across quite a few customers who still use SourceSafe as their source control product. Their rationale is that it is doing the job and the alternatives, at least from Microsoft, are too difficult to setup and too costly to get started with for small teams.
So why are you still using SourceSafe?
Microsoft’s source control tool of choice offers *a lot* more than just source control. Team Foundation Server is a market leading integrated Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) suite. So if this is so much better why aren’t all teams moving from SourceSafe to TFS? Let’s face it, The Chaos Report from the Standish Group shows that we have a terrible report card when it comes to delivering successful software development projects. Wouldn’t you want to give your projects the best chance of success by adopting a tool that provides so much more than just source control? Of course you would, but there seems to be two main issues.
Issue 1 – TFS is too hard to setup
For small teams with limited resources, it is often difficult to find the time to learn how to install and configure TFS correctly. From the outset, TFS has not been an easy product to install and get configured correctly. A quick search of the Internet reveals a long list of install issues which is certain to put teams off.
Issue 2 – Entry cost of small teams
There are two perceptions here that I need to dispel. Number 1, TFS Server is an expensive product and Number 2, SourceSafe is free so we’ll keep using it. Firstly, here in Australia the absolute worst price I can find is less than AUD$4,000 for TFS 2008. Remember that an organisation will likely only need one copy of this, it includes the license for SQL Server and you’re likely going to pay a lot less than this amount if you shop around. You’ll also need to buy a Client Access License (CAL) for each user, assuming you’re not planning on using one of the team specific versions of Visual Studio. Remember there is also a free* version of TFS called TFS Workgroup Edition. (* Limited to 5 users and free only with team editions that are licensed with MSDN Premium subscriptions)
SourceSafe is not free, again a quick search of an Australian software retailer lists SourceSafe 2005 as having a retail price of AUD$1041. Remember that is JUST for source control.
Some GREAT News!
So why am I bringing up this topic? (You know there’s a reason right)
Microsoft have announced the existence of a new installation option for the upcoming TFS2010 release. Microsoft Technical fellow, Brian Harry, has written a great blog post entitled “TFS 2010 for SourceSafe users” in which he describes a new “Basic” installation option for TFS 2010 which addresses issue 1 above. He even walks through the entire installation in screenshots to show just how easy the installation will be in this “Basic” configuration.
A couple of other key things he points out in his blog post include;
Unfortunately Microsoft are not ready to release pricing and packaging details for the TFS 2010 “Basic” version yet, but let’s hope it goes a long way to addressing issue 2 above.
If you’re heading along to TechEd Australia next week as an attendee, you’ll be getting a great new HP Netbook computer as part of your ticket.
Enhance ALM in conjunction with Wardy IT Solutions and Portal Synergy will be exhibiting in the Exhibitors hall on Tuesday evening during the welcome reception and all day Friday. As part of our TechEd activities we’ll be giving your to opportunity to Pimp Your Netbook with some great accessories.
Simply drop your business card into the fish bowl on our booth in the exhibitor hall on Tuesday night or Friday before 2pm. Keep your eyes open for our distinction poster shown on the right.
1st Prize – OCZ 60Gb 2.5” SATA II, Summit Series SSD drive
2nd Prize – Logitech diNovo Keyboard for Notebooks
3rd Price – Microsoft Arc Mouse
The prizes will be drawn during the closing stages of TechEd on Friday afternoon just prior to the exhibitors hall closing.
I have just noticed that my interview on RadioTFS has now gone live. A little while ago I had the pleasure of chatting to one of the RadioTFS hosts and fellow Team System MVP, Martin Woodward. The topic for the conversation was the new testing capabilities and features in VSTS2010. Unfortunately the audio quality on the Skype call from Ireland to Australia was very plain and despite Martin’s extraordinary efforts to cleanup the audio, my voice still sounds clipped and a little mumbled. Hopefully this won’t put you off and you’ll tune in to hear about some great new Team Test features.
Check out my interview on RadioTFS and be sure to have a look at some of the other great sessions they have available.
Over the past 2 months I have had the pleasure of visiting 8 Australian user groups as well as CodeCampSA down in Adelaide. I have chalked up around 12,137 kilometres (7,541mi) in flights and driven around 320 kilometres (198mi). While it’s been exhausting, it has also been very rewarding in terms of seeing the enthusiasm the community has for Microsoft’s next release of Visual Studio Team System. The primary focus of my user group presentations to date has been on the new testing tools in VSTS 2010. This includes the new Test Case Management, Data Collectors, Test Runner, Test and Lab Manager and Coded UI tests. In my next blog post (Part 2), I’ll recap some of the specific feedback from the user groups as well as a series of questions and answers that came up in the meetings.
And the winner is…
The main purpose of this first, short blog post is to announce the lucky winner of a full copy of Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite. As part of the series of presentations I have been collecting entries to go into the draw to win this great prize. The draw took place at the Victoria.NET user group meeting on Wednesday 12th August and the lucky winner is John McTainsh from the QLD MSDN User group. John will collect his prize on Tuesday 18th August at the next meeting of the QMSDNUG.
A big thank you to everyone that put an entry into the draw and came along to their local user group to hear my presentation.
For those of you that are curious, the user groups I have had the pleasure of presenting to on this round were as follows;
This year for TechEd Australia I am fortunate enough to have been given two sessions to present. Naturally the session are in the Developer Tools and Practices track which is where you’d expect to find Team System sessions. For the first session I get to team up again with good friend and fellow Team System MVP, William Bartholomew. In the second session I’ll be flying solo.
Here are the details of the two sessions.
In this session you will see Anthony and William provide an end to end walkthrough on how an integrated ALM product like Visual Studio Team System can greatly improve many aspects of your software development projects. Historically many teams gradually introduce different tools into their process that often require a significant effort to make them work together. Integrated ALM suites like Visual Studio Team System make this much easier resulting in more confident and successful teams. In this session you’ll watch the journey a feature takes from the initial requirement, through coding, unit testing, code analysis, performance analysis, build, packaging and deployment. Witness how the various members of your team can easily work together towards a common goal. During the journey, we’ll also see how all team members have full visibility of the work being done through Visual Studio Team System’s real time notification and reporting capabilities. This session is a fast paced, action packed walkthrough that offers value for every members of your software development team and it should not be missed.
Building software has become ever more complex and teams often struggle with poor or non-existent requirements and constantly shifting priorities. When software defects–bugs–are found they are often confusing and difficult to connect to the requirements of the product in the first place. Challenges like these can slow down delivery, impact quality, and frustrate everyone on the team. There is a new way. Come learn about new features of Microsoft Visual Studio Team System in test case management–from creating and managing Test Plans, Test Suites, and Test Cases to engaging in the whole end-to-end application cycle, to new features such as test case recording and playback, rich bug filing, and many more.
CodeCampSA is on again this year in Adelaide over the weekend of 18th & 19th July. The event is completely free and a fantastic way to catch up on some of the latest Microsoft Technologies.
I’ll be presenting a session or two on VSTS 2010 with a focus on the new testing and architect features. The full session abstracts should be available on the website shortly.
Here’s the preliminary list of speakers and topics. (Subject to change)
After an extended period of inactivity, the Gold Coast .NET Special Interest Group is up and running again and I’m their speaker for tomorrow night. I know it’s very short notice but for anyone on the Gold Coast interested in seeing what’s coming for testers in VSTS2010 this should be a great meeting.
| When |
Thursday 11th June 6:00pm Food 6:30pm Session |
| Where |
Griffith University G23 Multimedia Level 2, Room 2.07a (Map – pdf file) |
Session Abstract
This month’s Gold Coast .NET SIG meeting looks at the recently released Microsoft Visual Studio® Team Test 2010 Beta 1 product and how it can drastically reduce the “find and fix” time for bugs that are raised by your testers. Today, significant time is often wasted trying to reproduce bugs with limited success and labelling bugs as “No-repro” can be frustrating for both testers and developers.
Microsoft’s new Test and Lab Manager Application allows testers to create, manage and execute tests quickly and easily in a dedicated user interface. Using Test Cases, Test Suites and Test Plans, testers will find the new features allow them to better participate as a full team member in Visual Studio Team System.
The session will touch on the following features of the Visual Studio Team Test 2010 product.
Go into the draw to win
As an added benefit of attending this meeting, you go into the draw to win a full retail copy of Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite Edition with 12mth MSDN Premium Subscription.
