The official US launch of Microsoft’s new application platform (VS2005, SQL2005 & Biztalk 2006) is now a few days behind us. In case you haven’t already seen it, check out Steve Ballmer’s November 7 keynote on the Microsoft website here </img>

On a local front, the Ready Launch Tour is set to kick off in Adelaide on 22 November. Dates for the local events are as follows;

• 22 November, Adelaide
• 24 November, Melbourne
• 29 November, Sydney
• 1 December, Canberra
• 6 December, Perth
• 8 December, Brisbane

Andrew Coates has kindly offered me the opportunity to present and the Brisbane and Canberra events while my mate Joe Sango runs around the southern states. Andrew has asked me to co-present the first session with Chuck, Andrew and myself up on stage. I will then be delivering the next session entitled “Design and Development Tools for Building Mission-Critical Applications” before Chuck and Andrew backup for the two remaining sessions.

The launch Ready Launch events do a great job of showing what these tools can do so make sure you come along.

http://www.microsoft.com/australia/readylaunch/

One of the administrative tasks that annoys both me and a number of my clients using TFS, is the need to add user accounts in three locations – TFS, Sharepoint & SQL Reporting Services. The Developer Aftermarket Solution team at Microsoft is considering creating a tool to streamline this process but they need to hear from the community to learn if such a tool would be useful. If you are using TFS and think this would be a good idea, visit the DDCPX Blog and leave your comment for the team.

Via [Rob Caron]

I have just read a post from Scott Wiltamuth (C# Product Unit Manager) where he states the following;

We have plans for two service pack releases for the first part of 2006:

• VS 2003 SP1 is scheduled for April 2006.  We have done much of the work for this release already, and are anxious to get it to you.
  • VS 2005 SP1 is scheduled for the first half of 2006.  We will be more specific about the date in a few months, once we have more customer data.</ul> </blockquote> I think it is great to get advanced notice about the estimated release schedule for service packs as it helps us in our planning. Thanks for the notice Scott.

The Microsoft eLearning web site has a number of great courses available covering Visual Studio 2005 and Team System. While the courses are all available online, many can be taken offline if that is more convenient for you. You can view your progress through the training and print a transcript on the site as well.

Here are a few of the available eLearning titles

• Clinic 2551: Introduction to Visual Studio Team System
• Course 2927: Building Web Applications with ASP.NET 2.0
• Course 2924: Building Data Components in Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005
• Course 2926: Building Windows® Forms Applications with Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005

You must act quickly though as the free offer is only available until 17th November. You do not need to complete the courses in that time, just register for them on the web site and you will have 90 days to complete them.

 

I was just about to make some changes to a custom check-in policy I have written for the Beta 2 version of Visual Studio 2005. I checked a few days ago to see if the Visual Studio 2005 SDK had been updated for the RTM version of Visual Studio 2005 and it had not been. A check back today reveals the October RTM release of the Visual Studio 2005 SDK with support for the RTM version of Visual Studio 2005 and Beta 3 of Team Foundation Server. I am in the process of downloading it now so I can’t offer any news on any changes just yet.

If you are keen to download this yourself, you can get it from here   (84.6Mb – Sign up required)

One of the topics I have been increasingly asked about concerning VSTS & TFS is the subjsct of licensing these products in a variety of different scenerios. I noticed on Rob Caron’s blog this morning that the (previously internal only) Team System Licensing whitepaper is now publically available on the Microsoft Download site.

The document includes information on the following products.

• Team System Client products
• Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server
• Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Workgroup Edition
• Team Test Load Agent

Download the whitepaper from the Microsoft website here (2.2Mb)

With the Developer edition of SQL Server 2005 RTM being the first available on the MSDN Subscriber site, a number of people have installed Team Foundation Server with SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition. This configuration requires an additional step during the setup to enable remote TCP/IP connections. This is a known requirement but it seems people are still missing this.

To enable remote TCP connections in SQL Sever 2005 Developer edition (and express edition), follow these extra steps…

Step one. After installing SQL Server 2005 Developer edition, the final screen of the install wizard will look like the following image. Click on the “Surface Area Configuration tool” hyperlink.

Step two. When the SQL Server 2005 Surface Area Configuration screen appears, click on the “Surface Area Configuration and Connections” hyperlink

Step three. Select “Remote Connection” in the tree on the left of the dialog box then click Local and Remote connections on the right. The first option (Using TCP/IP only) will automatically be selected.

You should then click OK and restart the Database Engine. I usually reboot here just to “keep things clean” if that makes any sense.

I have been kept nice and busy rebuilding virtual machines with the RTM version of Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Developers and the Beta 3 Refresh of Team Foundation Server for the last couple of days and now its time to have a wander around the products and ponder what my next project will be.

In the meantime for anyone out there with data in TFS Beta 3, Rob Caron has delivered the instructions for migrating your data from TFS Beta 3 to TFS Beta 3 Refresh. These can be found at http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/teamsystem/b3rmigrate.aspx. Happy migration.

 

Rick LaPlante has announced this morning (Sat Australian time) that the Role based editions of VSTS have been released to MSDN Subscriber downloads and should be available any time now.

Read his blog entry here

Rob Caron’s definately busy today pushing out posts on TFS now the VSTS product has RTM’d with TFS Beta 3 Refresh. In this post he makes mention of a little issue that caught me when I installed TFS Beta 3. (Fortunately the System Check pointed out the problem immediately).

Installing SQL Server for Team Foundation Server Beta 3 Refresh
Just to be clear, you must install the final, released version of SQL Server 2005 to use Beta 3 Refresh. However, since it appears that only SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition is available for download from MSDN, you need to be aware of one extra step before you install Team Foundation Server. In Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, Developer Edition, and Evaluation Edition, remote connections are disabled by default. In other editions, remote connections are enabled by default. To use SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition with Team Foundation Server, you must first enable remote connections.