VSALM Library Updates on MSDN for July 2010
The Visual Studio Application Lifecycle Management Developer Content team, aka the doc writers, prowl the blogs and forums looking for ideas that we can use to clarify our explanations of VS ALM. We also respond to community comments from the MSDN Library wiki and feedback. Once a month, we publish new and updated topics to the MSDN Library. Then we come to this blog and talk about them.
Here’s our list of the most interesting information we found this month.
Quick Links
- Installing Team Foundation
- Administering Team Foundation
- Planning & Tracking Projects
- Developing the Application
- Modeling the Application
- Testing the Application
- Building the Application
- Extending Visual Studio Application Lifecycle Management
Installing Team Foundation
One of the most frequently-requested additions to the MSDN library is here! You can now access the installation guide as part of the MSDN library. This content was previously available only as a downloadable .chm file (and is still available in that format for those who want to download it). Over the next few months, we plan to add many more links between the online installation content and the administration content, to help simplify the overall guidance between installing, configuring, and managing Team Foundation Server and its components. In addition to this change, we’ve added numerous small improvements and clarifications to topics throughout the installation guide.
Administering Team Foundation
Updating your deployment has been a frequent question out on the forums. We’ve added a new topic that helps you determine what updates have been installed for your deployment. We’ve also added information about when and how to install an important QFE before upgrading your deployment from a previous version of Team Foundation Server. In addition to these changes, we’ve added numerous small improvements and clarifications to topics throughout the administration content.
Planning & Tracking Projects
The first official Scrum template is here! We’ve also made several changes to the docs that are intended to make permission management simpler.
| Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 | Learn how to use the artifacts in the first official version of Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0. These artifacts include work items, reports, and team queries, and your team can use them to track information, analyze progress, and make decisions. |
| Create and Modify Areas and Iterations | Use the new guidelines, examples, and procedures to create and manage areas, iterations, and permissions more effectively. |
| Assigning Permissions to View and Manage Reports for Visual Studio ALM | Use new information about permissions to more easily assign permissions to manage reports, to perform specific activities, and to access specific data stores, such as the different options for authenticating viewers of enterprise dashboards. |
| Grant access to reports by using the clarified and corrected the information about permissions required to view, refresh, and create Excel reports. | |
| Designing the Workflow | Design your work item workflow more effectively using this completely revised topic which provides more information, examples, and a summary of all WORKFLOW elements and attributes. |
| Enabling Interfacing with Microsoft Test Manager for Upgraded Team Projects | Use the new and corrected information about potential conflicts that occur in test case work item definitions to manage those conflicts. |
| Defining Link Controls to Restrict Link Relationships | Reference a complete list of names that are available for use with the ExternalLinkFilters element when you define your link controls. |
Modeling the Application
In addition to the highlighted topics below, corrections and improvements have been included in many topics from your input in the Community Content section at the bottom of each topic. Please keep them coming!
UML
How do you organize your modeling projects? New material this month:
| Structuring Modeling Solutions | Suggests how you can divide the project into separate solutions that correspond to the components on layer diagrams. |
| Visual Studio Architecture Tooling Guidance | Provides practical guidance about how to use the modeling features in Visual Studio Ultimate by addressing various scenarios and including a list of frequently asked questions. |
Visualization and Modeling SDK – Domain-Specific Languages
Integrating domain-specific languages with each other and with UML models is on the menu this month. These new and revised topics show how to link models using ModelBus. They include examples and new walkthroughs.
| Accessing Models from Text Templates | Explains how to access a model by using the DSL directive processor. |
| Integrating Models by using Visual Studio Modelbus | Explains how to make links between models, and how to navigate the links in program code. |
| Using Visual Studio Modelbus in a Text Template | Describes how to handle interlinked models in a text template. This topic includes a walkthrough in which you set up a DSL that is accessed in both a text template and in other code. |
| How to: Add a Drag and Drop Handler | Let your users drag elements from one diagram to another. Shows how to include objects in the dragged prototype, and how to drag to or from a UML model. Shows how to define your handler as a MEF component. Includes brief discussion of ElementGroupPrototypes. |
Developing the Application
Database projects are center-stage this month’s updates.
Database Projects
Workflows: what are they and why you might use them in database projects. Also, comparing database schemas.
|
Walkthrough: Define a Custom Workflow to Deploy a Database from Team Foundation Build |
Now you can deploy your database by using Team Foundation Build and a custom Workflow. Previously, you could only use Team Foundation Build to deploy when you ran automated database unit tests. Now you can define a custom Windows Workflow that can deploy to a target database by using VSDBCMD.EXE. You then use that custom workflow as part of your build definition. This enables you to create continuous integration builds for your database project, just as you can do for your application code. |
| How to: Compare Database Schemas | Now you can use the VSDBCMD.EXE command-line tool to compare .dbschema files. You can either create a script from the compared schemas, or you can deploy the differences directly to a target server that corresponds to the target .dbschema file. |
Testing the Application
It’s all about web and load tests.
| How to: Specify the Maximum Size for the Log File | Edit the XML configuration file for the test controller to configure the size limit for the load test logging file. |
| Troubleshooting Network Emulation in Load Tests | Verify if network emulation is working correctly in your load tests. |
| Walkthrough: Adding a Loop to a Web Performance Test | Loop a web request multiple times in a Web performance test. |
| How to: Run a Load Test Containing Web Performance Tests that Collects ASP.NET Profiler Data | Describes the procedures and configuration settings required to use the ASP.NET diagnostic data adapter. Covers editing the test settings, installing a test agent on the IIS machine, and running the load test to collect ASP.NET performance data. |
| How to: Manually Create a Load Test Performance Report Using Microsoft Word | In addition to automatically generating Microsoft Excel load test reports, you can also manually create Microsoft Word reports. This topic explains the procedures to manually create a load test report in Microsoft Word. |
Building the Application
New information about drop folders and private builds.
| Set Up Drop Folders | Team Foundation Build provides most of its value to your team in the form of outputs, such as binaries, test results, and log files. You must designate and prepare one or more drop folders so that your build system can deliver these outputs to your team. This topic provides both a functional overview along with detailed steps; information which was lacking in the last release of this topic. |
| Queue a Build | You can use a private build (also known as a “buddy build”) to validate changes to your code before you check them in. Added detailed background and procedures to support customers who need to use this capability. |
Extending Visual Studio Application Lifecycle Management
Need something that is not in the UI? Use the Team Foundation SDK to write your own app.
| Connecting to Team Foundation from a Console Application | Write code that acts on behalf of another user by using the new information about impersonation. |
– Patrick Sheahan
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