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VSLive Chicago 2013: TFS2012 Build Customization talk

By Ben Day On May 15, 2013 ·

Thanks to those of you who came to my TFS2012 Build customization talk at VSLive Chicago 2013 yesterday.  As promised, here are the slides and samples from the talk.

Team Foundation Server 2012 Builds: Understand, Configure, and Customize

The Build system in TFS2012 could be the best feature in the product. Actually, it’s almost definitely the best feature in the product. It’s got a slick Windows Workflow structure that has done away with the old-style, clunky text-based and XML-based scripts. It’s got a great integration with Source Control through Gated Check-ins that requires a build to pass before code can be checked in. (Buh-bye, broken builds.) There’s even integration with Virtual Lab Management to help with your QA process.

If [...]

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VSLive Chicago 2013: “Design for Testability” slides & code

By Ben Day On May 15, 2013 ·

I just wrapped up at VSLive Chicago 2013 and, as promised, here are my slides and code samples from the “Design for Testability: Mocks, Stubs, Refactoring, and User Interfaces” talk. 

Design for Testability: Mocks, Stubs, Refactoring, and User Interfaces

You’re sold on unit testing. You’re even doing “test first” development – but there are always those nagging questions. How do your user interfaces fit into your testing plan? Do I have to call my database in order to have a good, solid test? What about calls into separate sub-systems or calls out to web services? Do you really need to have all those pieces running in order to test your logic? Are my UI tests the same for WPF, [...]

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Problem moving virtual machines between Hyper-V 2012 hosts

On May 9, 2013 By Ben Day

(Huge thanks to Antone Heyward for the answer to this problem.)

One of the things I love about Hyper-V 2012 is that you can easily move Hyper-v virtual machines (guests) between Hyper-V hosts using the Hyper-V Manager app.  Sure, in previous versions of Hyper-V you could do an Export, Copy, and Import to move VMs between hosts but that’s a lot of manual steps.  Or, if you were feeling really motivated, you could set up System Center Virtual Machine Manager and have SCVMM handle moving your hosts around. 

I ran into a problem today moving some VMs between some new Hyper-V hosts.  I’d right-click on the machine, choose Move…, and then go through the migration wizard only get [...]

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VSLive Las Vegas 2013: TFS2012 Build Customization talk

On March 27, 2013 By Ben Day

Thanks to those of you who came to my TFS2012 Build customization talk at VSLive Vegas 2013 yesterday.  As promised, here are the slides and samples from the talk.

Team Foundation Server 2012 Builds: Understand, Configure, and Customize

The Build system in TFS2012 could be the best feature in the product. Actually, it’s almost definitely the best feature in the product. It’s got a slick Windows Workflow structure that has done away with the old-style, clunky text-based and XML-based scripts. It’s got a great integration with Source Control through Gated Check-ins that requires a build to pass before code can be checked in. (Buh-bye, broken builds.) There’s even integration with Virtual Lab Management to help with your QA process.

If [...]

Read Full Article →

VSLive Las Vegas 2013: “Design for Testability” slides & code

On March 27, 2013 By Ben Day

I just wrapped up at VSLive Las Vegas 2013 and, as promised, here are my slides and code samples from the “Design for Testability: Mocks, Stubs, Refactoring, and User Interfaces” talk. 

Design for Testability: Mocks, Stubs, Refactoring, and User Interfaces

You’re sold on unit testing. You’re even doing “test first” development – but there are always those nagging questions. How do your user interfaces fit into your testing plan? Do I have to call my database in order to have a good, solid test? What about calls into separate sub-systems or calls out to web services? Do you really need to have all those pieces running in order to test your logic? Are my UI tests the same for [...]

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Slides & Video from “Agile Under a Waterfall” talk at ALM Summit 2013

On January 30, 2013 By Ben Day

I finished up presenting at the 2013 ALM Summit a little while ago where I presented “Agile Under a Waterfall.” 

Agile Under a Waterfall

It would be so easy if everyone at our companies just used Scrum — or at least Agile. No one would lean on the team for dates and deadlines, and everyone would know that change is a good thing. It’d be one great big happy project management family. But let’s face it — an all-Agile organization isn’t always possible. Maybe you have a Project Management Office (PMO). Maybe you work for a government contractor. Maybe you have regulatory requirements. Maybe you’re the first Scrum/Agile project at your company. Maybe your company simply *likes* [...]

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Strategies for Sharing Code between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 Applications

On January 24, 2013 By Ben Day

(NOTE: A PDF version of this article is available for download.)

Visual Studio 2012 is out and we can write apps for Windows Store and now (finally) we have access to the Windows Phone 8 SDK and Windows Phone 8 devices. We’ve been hearing and reading for a while that the platforms are very similar to code for and after doing some coding for both platforms I only kind of agree. Windows Store applications for Windows 8 are written using C#, XAML, and WinRT. Windows Phone 8 is still basically Silverlight.

The real big question on everyone’s mind is just how much code you can actually share between your Windows Store apps and your Windows Phone apps. The [...]

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Unit Testing & Test-Driven Development Courseware for Visual Studio 2010

On January 20, 2013 By Ben Day

Well, like I mentioned in my last post, I’m planning to publish a lot of the old courseware that I’ve developed over time.  The idea is to share the materials that I’m no longer using with the good folks on the internet rather than to have it all sitting around collecting virtual dust on my laptop.

This time, I’m pushing out the labs and slides for my 2-day unit testing & test-driven development (TDD) course for Visual Studio 2010.  A few months ago, I started looking at upgrading the VS2010 course to Visual Studio 2012 and decided that it was actually time for a re-write because I don’t really write tests the same way anymore.   

[...]
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Lab: Refactor for testability using the Repository pattern

On December 19, 2012 By Ben Day

I had a long drive yesterday to go visit a customer and while I was driving it occurred to me that I have LOTS of courseware that I’ve written that is just sitting around gathering virtual dust.  Whether they’re parts of classes that never fully came together or they’re for courses that target old versions of Visual Studio, the ideas are still useful and I’d rather share them out than have them just sit around. 

A couple of years ago I started working on a software architecture skills course and wrote a lab that walks you through how to refactor an application with tightly coupled data access logic to use the Repository pattern so that the code is more [...]

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Deploy a SQL Server Database project’s *.dacpac with SqlPackage.exe

On December 18, 2012 By Ben Day

Are you a big user of the SQL Server database projects?  You know…what used to be known as ”data dude”?  Did you get way into doing command line deployments of your databases using vsdbcmd.exe?  Well, if you are one of those developers and you’ve upgraded to the latest version of the SQL Server Database Projects, then you might be wondering just where vsdbcmd.exe went. 

Answer: vsdbcmd.exe has been replaced with SqlPackage.exe. 

There were a lot of updates for the VS2012 version of the SQL Server Database Projects so it makes sense that vsdbcmd would get tweeked, too.  Especially, since the outputs of database projects have completely changed.  (Goodbye, *.dbschema files.  Hello, *.dacpac.)

For this [...]

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    • VSLive Chicago 2013: TFS2012 Build Customization talk
    • VSLive Chicago 2013: “Design for Testability” slides & code
    • Problem moving virtual machines between Hyper-V 2012 hosts
    • VSLive Las Vegas 2013: TFS2012 Build Customization talk
    • VSLive Las Vegas 2013: “Design for Testability” slides & code
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    © 2012 Benjamin Day Consulting, Inc.
617-645-0188 | info@benday.com | Cambridge, MA
© 2012 Benjamin Day Consulting, Inc.