Brian Harry's Blog

Away for a week

September 25, 2006 Sep 25, 2006 09/25/06

Brian Harry

Sorry you haven't heard from me for a while.  It's been busy.  I just got back from Redmond (spent all last week there).  I was wrapping up a "special project".  Given my background both in CLR and in databases, I was asked to spend a few weeks looking at Linq, Linq to SQL and Linq to Entities and give some feedback.  ...

The Next TFS Power Toy Release

September 13, 2006 Sep 13, 2006 09/13/06

Brian Harry

We are in the (very early) planning process for the next TFS Power Toy release.  You can read my earlier posts to see what constraints we currently put on Power Toys.  Some key constraints are things like "Pure add-on" and "Delivers real value". How do we tell what is delivering real value?  Some of the Power Toy ideas come from...

High Availability TFS

September 9, 2006 Sep 9, 2006 09/9/06

Brian Harry

Team Foundation Server is a critical component of any company's assets.  It protects the very valuable IP that development teams create.  As such it's important that it be reliable and secure.  Building TFS on SQL Server went a long way toward accomplishing these goals.  SQL provides a robust data platform that includes ...

Configuring the new TreeDiff Power Toy

September 8, 2006 Sep 8, 2006 09/8/06

Brian Harry

Someone asked me in a comment on my post announcing the new TFS Power Toys if there was any way to make it ignore certain files (like .obj files).  The answer is yes.  Rather than respond directly in a comment I decided to write a new post about it because there's more you can configure. If you run regedit.exe and look in: [...

New TFS Power Toys Available!

September 7, 2006 Sep 7, 2006 09/7/06

Brian Harry

We've been working hard over the past several months and today we are releasing some of the fruits of that labor.  There's a lot of news in this post so I'll try to organize it well.   Official support for the TFS MSSCCI provider! The TFS MSSCCI provider allows VS2003, VB6, SQL Server Management Studio and other IDEs to connect to ...

Some guidelines for building TFS tools

September 7, 2006 Sep 7, 2006 09/7/06

Brian Harry

Our MS IT group pulled together some "best practice" guidelines for building applications against TFS.  We did this because we've started to see people build some internally that put a lot more load on the server than they really should.  They just sent me a final draft to review and it looks pretty good, so I thought I'd share it.&...

A Bit on Power Toy Philosophy

September 4, 2006 Sep 4, 2006 09/4/06

Brian Harry

We're getting ready to release a ton of new TFS Power Toy news in the next few days and as I've been preparing for it, I've found myself reflecting on what Power Toys are about.  I don't pretend to be pontificating any official Microsoft policy here but I wanted to share a few thoughts. Some Background (skip if you don't care) We (the TFS...

(Nearly) Last VSTS Training update

September 1, 2006 Sep 1, 2006 09/1/06

Brian Harry

Last week I told you about the great success we had with the Beta teach of our 300 level training.  Well today I got what I believe is the final schedule for content delivery - And I'm pleased to say that it's sooner than I led you to believe.  Our current delivery expectations are as follows: Now for the caveats...  Of ...

Chat with the VSTS Product group!

September 1, 2006 Sep 1, 2006 09/1/06

Brian Harry

Next Wed 9/6 at 10:00am PDT we are holding an MSDN chat with members of the VSTS product group.  Come join us and bring your favorite questions.  Get the inside scoop on current (and maybe even some future) features.  There should be good representations of all of the VSTS teams. I'm planning to be there are would love to hear ...

Another TFS success story

August 31, 2006 Aug 31, 2006 08/31/06

Brian Harry

Here's a great post from someone who had some success with TFS and advocates using a team development system no matter what kind of project you are doing... http://asterland.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!34D9D1C17F9DBFD8!209.entry Brian...