VS2012 Update 1 ALM VM and HOL / Demo Scripts now available

Visual Studio ALM + Team Foundation Server Blog - Visual Studio 2012 ALM Virtual Machine with Update 1 and hands-on-labs / demo scripts now available

For anybody looking for training on the Microsoft Application Lifecycle tools one of the absolute best resources is Brian Keller’s ALM virtual machine.  Full details about the virtual machine can be found here:

http://aka.ms/vs11almvm

The Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 ALM virtual machine and 21 hands-on-labs / demo scripts are now available for download.

All of the existing hands-on-labs / demo scripts were updated to reflect UI and workflow changes included in Update 1.

One entirely new lab / demo script was created focusing on new ALM tooling for SharePoint 2010 developers and testers.

Finally, two existing labs / demo scripts were enhanced to include exercises based on new capabilities included with Update 1.

The new and updated labs / demo scripts are referenced in the table of scenarios listed on the download page.

The entire list of labs below:

Brian Keller - Visual Studio 2012 Application Lifecycle Management Virtual Machine and Hands-on-Labs / Demo Scripts

December 6, 2012 Update: This virtual machine and corresponding hands-on-labs / demo scripts have been upgraded to use Visual Studio 2012 Update 1. One new lab was added, focusing on diagnosing and testing SharePoint 2010 applications with the new ALM tools available in Visual Studio 2012 Update 1. All other labs were revised slightly based on Update 1, with two labs gaining new exercises which demonstrate Update 1 capabilities. New and updated labs are listed in the table below.

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So get those downloads downloading... :)

 

Related Past Post XRef:
The VS 2012 ALM Virtual Machine and VS 2012 Update 1 (In short, there's an updated VM coming, don't install it on this VM if you don't have too)
The big BK has updated the Visual Studio 2012 RC ALM Virtual Machine and Hands-on-Labs

VS 11 ALM DemoMates updated for the Beta
Visual Studio/TFS11 ALM Demo's... Mate! See the VS/TFS 11 ALM's hands-on-labs in DemoMate form
Visual Studio 11 ALM VHD's, VirtualBoxed (and even on x86 hosts too)
Want to play with Visual Studio 11 & TFS 11 Dev Preview but don't want to install it (and have access to a Hyper-V server)? Here's a VHD just for

[Pending Book Review] "Windows Server 2012 Hyper- V Cookbook"

Disclosure: The team at Packt have provided me a free ebook version of this book for this review...

My friends at Packt (anyone who gives you free stuff is a friend... right?) have provided me another book to review. I've been following virtual machine tech for about a decade now, and while I've used them as a consumer, I've never gotten to deep into them. You know how it is, doing just enough to get the job done, get the game running, get the test environment spinning, just barely enough to make today's problem go away.

So when the chance to get a litter deeper into the tech, let alone the shiny new stuff in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, well I had to jump on that.

"Okay, okay Greg, enough tease, what fricken book are you talking about" you ask?

Windows Server 2012 Hyper- V Cookbook

• Take advantage of numerous Hyper-V best practices for administrators
• Get to grips with migrating virtual machines between servers and old Hyper-V versions, automating tasks with PowerShell, providing a High Availability and Disaster Recovery environment, and much more
• A practical Cookbook bursting with essential recipes

As soon as I get this read, I'll post my usual book review, giving my thoughts and impressions...

Providing data to your Windows 8 App? See Den's Data Services Series...

Devhammer's Den - Building Back-end Data and Services for Windows 8 Apps: ASP.NET Web API

In this series, I'm exploring a variety of ways to build back-end data storage and services for Windows 8 apps (many of which, BTW, can also be used for other mobile and web apps as well). Here are the posts so far:

• Overview – High-level view of some of the available platform technologies, and a discussion of the game leaderboard scenario I'm using to demonstrate them, as well as the games I'm using for my demos.
• Building Back-end Data and Services for Windows 8 Apps: OData – Part 1 – Creating the database and schema, using Entity Framework to model the data store, and using WCF Data Services to expose the model via as a RESTful service with rich queryability.
• Building Back-end Data and Services for Windows 8 Apps: OData – Part 2 – Deploying the service to Windows Azure, and wiring up the leaderboard service to the games, using a custom JavaScript library with a well-defined API.

Overview

In this post, I'm going to show you how I can implement the same leaderboard service using a relatively new member of the ASP.NET stack, Web API. Web API is designed specifically for building services that are accessed via HTTP, and is a lightweight, yet highly customizable way of building RESTful services, and even supports OData as well. I'll also show you how easy it is to host services built using ASP.NET Web API using the new Windows Azure Web Sites feature.

For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to leverage the same database schema that I created in part 1 of the WCF Data Services-based solution, and will also leverage Entity Framework for modeling the data. If you have not already, you should read through the sections entitled "Creating the Database" and "Creating the Schema" in that post, before moving on. I'll wait.

...

This is a series I've been following for a while and thought it was about time I blog about it. So here I am, blogging about it... ;)

SQL Server System Views Mapped (i.e. see the differences in a given view between 2005, 2008, 2008 R2, 2012)

C# and I - Microsoft SQL System View Version Map

Transaction Related Dynamic Management Views and Functions

The amount of work in this wow's me. This looks like an awesome resource if you're looking for information on the differences in SQL Server's system views in the different versions. Or just information about the views themselves.

(via CodeProject - Microsoft SQL System View Version Map)

"SQL Server Data Type Conversion Chart" - Think "Matrix of What SQL Type Converts to What SQL Type"

Microsoft Downloads - SQL Server Data Type Conversion Chart

Illustrates all explicit and implicit data type conversions that are allowed for SQL Server system-supplied data types.

Version: 1.0
Date published: 12/5/2012

Language: English

SQL Server Data Type Conversion Chart.pdf, 1.7 MB

SQL Server Data Type Conversion Chart_grayscale.pdf, 1.6 MB

Illustrates all explicit and implicit data type conversions that are allowed for SQL Server system-supplied data types. Implicit conversions are those conversions that occur without specifying either the CAST or CONVERT function. Explicit conversions are those conversions that require the CAST or CONVERT function to be specified. The chart is available in both color and grayscale. The chart is intended to be printed and measures 11 x 17, but may also be printed in 8.5 x 11 format.

..."

While useful, I also find this kind of pretty... Is that weird?

Telerik talks wireframes and app design...

The Telerik Blogs - The Importance of Wireframes in Application Design

Recently, I joined efforts with two of my good friends and fellow Telerik Evangelists Michael Crump and Jesse Liberty to jointly build an application that would run on Windows 8 and Windows Phone.  Michael will do the Windows Phone development, Jesse Windows 8 with C# and XAML, and I will tackle the WinJS version.

Jesse did a great job of outlining the goals of the application and the initial wireframes of the application in his post on the project kick off.  I want to focus on the value of using Wireframes in application design.

“It Must Be Done, Right?”

A friend of mine, Mike, spent a great deal of time putting together a PowerPoint presentation that represented what the application they were building was going to look like.  Not a single line of code had been written yet – in fact, they didn’t even have funding for the project. 

The slides looked amazingly realistic.  The transitions were built so that when Mike  “clicked” on an image of a button, the slide transitions looked like there really was a program responding to his input.

The presentation went great, and all of the senior management who had to decide on funding were very impressed.  The project was a go!  The executive vice president who chaired the committee pulled Mike aside as the others were leaving, and asked him to stay behind.  When everyone else had left, the EVP asked Mike to install the software on his computer so he could play with it.  Without flinching, Mike responded the only way he knew how – “Sir, I can’t because my PowerPoint compiler isn’t working right now.  This only works on my machine.”

That is a perfect illustration of one of the dangers of making awesome looking graphics to demonstrate what you are going to be building.  People will assume that it’s done.  And then they can’t figure out why it’s taking so long to get it deployed!

“It’s too late to change anything now”

..."

Again I have to say I dig seeing this kind of blog post from a company/ISV blog site. All to often company blogs are thinly veiled marketing posts or just bla, bla, bla. Not so in this case. Telerik seems to really embrace giving their people a voice, their own personal voice. You want to read their posts because you feel you are connecting with a person, you are creating something of a relationship.  And that good feeling translates into a good feeling about Telerik... I know, imagine that! :)

Shedding a little light in helping Silverlight Dev's move to Windows RT. "10 Things Silverlight Devs Need to Know about..."

Visual Studio Magazine - 10 Things Silverlight Devs Need to Know About the Windows Runtime

Now that the final versions of Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012 have shipped, most Silverlight developers are looking at ways to translate their existing skill set to Windows Runtime (WinRT) apps built with XAML. Because you're already familiar with XAML, you need to understand what the Windows Runtime consists of, and how it's different than what you're used to. In this article, I document 10 things I've found while building my first WinRT app using XAML/C#; I hope they'll save you time and energy getting used to this new platform.

1. Fundamental Differences
It's important that you first understand the fundamental differences between Silverlight and WinRT apps. Take a look at Table 1 for a quick comparison of each platform's technology.

...

2. Application Lifecycle

3. XML and Code Namespaces

4. WebRequest

5. Storage: Files and Isolated Storage

6. Navigation: No More URI

7. Controls

8. Animations

9. Charms

10. Monetization

...."

This is a great article by the one and only Michael Crump. It does an outstanding job of help all you Silverlight dev's make the move to Windows RT.

Delivery and Deployment is a feature... "Agile Program Management: How Will You Deliver?"

Managing Product Development - Agile Program Management: How Will You Deliver?

One of my program management clients is organizing a program and is having trouble thinking about a delivery model that fits their program. They are transitioning to agile and are accustomed to traditional releases. When I suggested they have someone representing deployment on their core team, that was an initial shock to their system, and now they see that it was a good idea. They don’t have a hardware person on their core team, but otherwise they look a lot this this picture.

Core Program Team

With agile, they have options they didn’t have before. Because they are a software-only product, they have the option to release as mandated release as before. They can rollout as before, with IT scheduling the release and mandating when people upgrade. I asked how well that worked before. You should have seen people’s eyes roll when I asked that question!

I suggested there might be other options: continuous deployment and phased deployment. ...

What clear to me, is that if you want to be agile in your program, you need to think about delivery and deployment as soon as you start your program management work. How you deliver and release is critical. Once you know your release criteria, you need to know how you will release. There is no right or wrong decision. It’s a decision for your program.

I've seen this as well, where there's little thought in the "Agile" project development about delivery and deployment. "It's not our problem once we deliver it to IT. 'They' will deployment whenever..." (No kidding). Deployment is a feature and those involved in it need to be part of the team. We're all one happy company, right? :/

"Testing for Continuous Delivery with Visual Studio 2012" eBook (Think Story based approach to presenting "Testing for Continuous Delivery")

Microsoft Downloads - Testing for Continuous Delivery with Visual Studio 2012

Testing is potentially an obstacle to agile software deployment. The smallest change in your code could require the whole application to be retested. This book shows you how to minimize these costs by using the testing infrastructure of Visual Studio 2012. The code samples gives you a starting point to test your infrastructure.

Version:1.0
Date published:10/26/2012

Language:English

TestingforContinuousDeliverywithVisualStudio2012.pdf, 14.2 MB
TIG.EXE, 1.7 MB

This book is aimed at test engineers, managers, developers, and folks interested in understanding the changing world of test. Over the last several years, software testing has changed a great deal. In the past, test plans were on paper, filed away and out of sight. Today they are—or can be with Visual Studio—living documents, as manual and automated tests are integrating into the test workflow supported by the test infrastructure.

Today you no longer have to set up physical boxes; instead you can set up and automate virtual environments composed of virtual machines to meet your testing environment needs. With Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server, the pain of dealing with a heterogeneous test infrastructure is reduced, the cost and effectiveness of testing a product is improved, and regression testing becomes cost effective instead of a nightmare.

Knowing how to test is important, but understanding how this new infrastructure is changing the business of testing and software delivery is critical. Today's businesses require nimble teams that can support continuous delivery and deal with updates and bugs in an agile fashion. It's what your customers have come to expect.

In this guide, we follow a team as they move from a conventional approach to testing towards one more suited to the needs of present-day development. We see how they address the costs and the pain of their old methods by adopting the testing infrastructure of Visual Studio 2012.

From the Forward:

This book tells the story of two companies, Contoso and Fabrikam. Over my thirty years in the software industry, I’ve seen lots of companies that work like Contoso. Fortunately, over the last decade, I’ve also seen more and more like Fabrikam.

There never has been a better time for software. We can now produce a better flow of value for our customers, with less waste and more transparency than we ever could before. This revolution has been driven largely from the bottom, by small, agile, fast-moving development teams at places like Fabrikam. It’s a global revolution, visible in places as unlike one another as Silicon Valley, Estonia, China, Brazil, and India.

Those of us in mature economies need to keep pace. Our supply chains are morphing into supply ecosystems. Software is no longer about designing everything to build; it’s about finding parts to reuse and rapidly experimenting with innovation—the one thing you can’t reuse or outsource. Every time you pick up your smartphone, you experience the benefits of this cycle.

Software testing needs to keep pace too. In the days of Contoso, we thought about minimizing “scrap and rework.” Now at Fabrikam, we think of rapid experimentation and a continuous cycle of buildmeasurelearn. Testers are no longer the guys who catch stuff over the wall, but are full members of a multidisciplinary, self-organizing team. While their role at Contoso was defensive—do no harm to the customer, at Fabrikam it is offensive—anticipate the customer’s behavior and wishes and be the first and best advocates.

Welcome to testing at Fabrikam. It’s a lot more hectic around here, but it’s also a lot more fun and rewarding

(via News from the South Africa Developer and Platform Group - Visual Studio Update 1 Videos and Testing for Continuous Delivery Book)

 

Related Past Post XRef:
"Testing for Continuous Delivery with Visual Studio 2012 RC" Free eBook (PDF) and code samples from Microsoft Patterns & Practices