DevBlog

Speaking at Desert Code Camp

2008-05-14T14:48:00.002-06:00

I will be speaking at Desert Code Camp in Tempe, Arizona on Saturday, May 31. Topics are "Continuous Integration in .NET" and "Introduction to LINQ". I hope to see you there.

Continuous Integration in .Net

2008-05-12T18:33:00.001-06:00

I've posted a new article on my web site, "Continuous Integration in .NET". Continuous Integration is a method where source code is continually built and tested, resulting in better quality applications in less time. While Visual Studio Team System gives you the tools you need to do continuous integration, the cost is prohibitive to most shops. This whitepaper discusses free tools that allow you to integrate continuous integration into your .Net development.

Questioning Steve Ballmer

2008-04-27T21:08:00.002-06:00

While at the MVP Summit in Seattle, I was able to ask Steve Ballmer a question about better support and interaction between MVPs and local Microsoft offices. I didn't blog about this before because much of the Summit was under Non-Disclosure Agreement, but a friend pointed me to a
transcript on the Microsoft web site. Here's the transcript of our exchange (Toby Richards is the General Manager of the MVP program).

QUESTION: More and more often we're being encouraged to engage with the
local offices, but I've identified four things internal at Microsoft that makes
this very difficult to do. The first one is, and before I get to I've
talked to other people around the country, and they seem to have similar issues.
The first is, we have not had MSDN events in Salt Lake for two years. We're told
there's not enough numbers of attendees there. We sold out our Visual Studio
2008 launch faster than most other cities within a thousand mile radius that are
having events. That tells me the numbers exist.

Second of all, I was told by one of our local developer evangelists,
his budget is 25 percent of what it was two years ago. This makes it very
difficult for him to engage with us.

Third is that it seems that the evangelists turnover about every two years,
and this one is going to be more of a thing for Toby. I found out this week,
they do not have access to our MVP profiles, even if we check Microsoft visible,
and I understand that it's a security thing, put another checkbox on there that
it's visible for local offices.

And, finally, when we do find out who these evangelists are, oftentimes
it's like going to an e-mail black hole, we hear nothing back from them.
(Applause.)

STEVE BALLMER: Okay, a couple of reactions. If you'd like, I've made notes.
Mostly I think that wasn't a question. That was very good input. I do want to
pushback a little bit just so you understand where we're coming from, and then
I'll tell you what I'm going to do. We did make a conscious choice a couple
three years ago, maybe three or four years ago, to move more of our evangelism,
and more of our MSDN event style activity online, to do more things through kind
of online events, and presentations, and the like. We've gotten a lot more
people to attend net, but it doesn't surprise me that we have I don't
know, a 25 percent budget, no MSDN events in Salt Lake, that strikes me as odd,
too. But we did make the conscious choice. Bad choice in your opinion to move
more online?

QUESTION: No, I think it's good to move more online, but let's keep an eye
on what's happening locally still. That's vitally important.

STEVE BALLMER: Okay. So what I will do, one other comment, if you send
e-mail to somebody who works at Microsoft, and they don't return it, I'm angry.
Feel free any time you're not getting an e-mail response from one of our people,
just forward it to me. (Cheers and applause.) It will help, believe me. You will
help me improve Microsoft, and I bet we can improve the response rates awfully
quickly. I give out my e-mail address often, SteveB, SteveB, SteveB, okay. I do
it all the time. And the truth is, I don't get that much e-mail from customers.
The customers don't waste your time. MVPs don't waste my time. People send
legitimate questions, concerns, ideas. Computers send spam, not human beings, by
and large. And if you're not getting a response, seriously, send me one or two,
I guarantee you things will clear up pretty darned quick.
On your other
comment, what I will do is, I'll step back and kind of take an all up look with
our folks on what we've done in terms of physical evangelism versus virtual
evangelism, and I'll take your input, I'll hear what we're doing, and if I agree
with you I'll give them a little bit of a push, and hopefully we'll get it into
a little bit better place.

QUESTION: Thank you.

STEVE BALLMER: Thank you. (Applause.)

TOBY RICHARDS: I would just add, in terms of the engagement with our sales
crew, that's a huge responsibility of my team, our profiling system has outgrown
its capability, and I told the team, hey, we have a product called MSCRM, maybe
we could start using that. Anyway, we'll take actions. By the way, my e-mail is TobyR@Microsoft.com.

STEVE BALLMER: Say it loudly, Toby. TobyR@Microsoft.com.

You can find the complete transcript of Steve's hour with the MVPs here. We also heard from Ray Ozzie (transcript here).

New VFP Help File Available

2008-04-26T11:32:00.004-06:00

A new VFP 9.0 SP2 help file is now available for download from the VFP home page. One issue that people are running into is that pages don't display or links aren't available in the file. If this happens to you, open Windows Explorer, right-click on the file and select Properties. Then click on Unblock.

VFP Boot Camp

2008-04-21T13:02:00.001-06:00

I got this email today from Vision Pace. While I haven't attended the Boot Camp, I've heard really great things about it.

The next VFP Boot Camp will be in Kansas City, Missouri, May 12-14, 2008 Registration ends on April 24, 2008 for the highly-acclaimed VFP Boot Camp. This event delivers three jam-packed days of solid, hands-on learning. From the fundamentals of VFP development through the very latest VFP 9.0 features, this boot camp is designed to quickly get your VFP skills up to speed. Attendees will receive a 500 page manual in both print and electronic format. For more information visit http://visionpace.com/developereducation.html or email info@visionpace.com. To register call 888-904-7900.

What's Happening at the MVP Summit

2008-04-16T11:14:00.002-06:00

MVPs from all over the world are meeting today in Remond at the annual MVP Summit. Several Fox MVPs are here and attending several different sessions, not just talking about VFP. Much of what we're told is under Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) and can't be discussed here.

However, last night we had the FoxPro Product Team dinner. We were able to meet with Alan Griver, Ken Levy, Calvin Hsia, Richard, Aleksy, and others that have been on the team over the years. It was a great meal and really good to see old Microsoft friends again.

After all the the technical sessions today, we're heading over to the Experience Music Project (EMP) for the MVP party. Tomorrow is the last day of the Summit. It will be executive day and we'll hear from Ray Ozzie and Steve Ballmer before a farewell lunch.

Fox News from the MVP Summit!

2008-04-15T17:20:00.005-06:00

New updates for VFP are coming from Microsoft. There are not specific dates, because these things are still working their way through the large Microsoft ecosystem, but yag reported today the following two updates:

- Help file has been updated to fix the index problem with the SP help file.

- There was a bug reported that the report toolbar becomes unusable in the new style report preview.

So, what about the other SP2 bugs that have been reported? We discussed some of the more critical bugs in the core with yag, Milind, and Richard. yag could not guarantee that the high priority bugs will be fixed, but he will see what he can do.

Fixed broken links

2008-04-15T11:31:00.002-06:00

I was informed there were some broken links on my updated web site. The Crystal Reports documents were pointing to files on my drive instead of the web site. I've fixed the links and checked they're working.

Web Site Update

2008-04-02T20:54:00.002-06:00

I've made a facelift to my web site. Some older articles have been removed and all current articles are now in PDF format with new file names. If there is an older article that I removed but you think should be online, let me know.

Utah VS2008 Community Launch

2008-04-02T20:39:00.002-06:00

The Utah .Net User Group will be spending the next four months on community launch events, the Hero's Happen HereThis month's meeting will be an overview of Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008, and SQL Server 2008. Then the May meeting will be dedicated to Visual Studio 2008, June to Windows Server 2008, and July to SQL Server 2008. I will be presenting the Visual Studio sessions.

Code Trip Boise Code Camp Video

2008-03-18T08:22:00.005-06:00

The Code Trip guys shot some video at the Boise Code Camp and it's now online. They talked to me about being a roadie and the MVP program. You'll see that at about 2:27 into the video. For you old Fox guys (aren't us all old?), you may recognize Richard Hundhausen, who is now big into Visual Studio Team System. Anthony Testi, a Fox dev from Oregon was also a speaker there and several Boise Fox devs were in attendance.

FoxRockx Ordering Now Available

2008-03-13T09:38:00.002-06:00

If you been waiting to get your hands on FoxRockx, you now can. Single issue and yearly subscriptions are available. If you're in the US, Hentzenwerke is handling subscriptions. If you're not in the US, head over to the German FoxPro User Group.

NUnit: Utah DNUG

2008-03-12T10:33:00.002-06:00

The topic at last night's meeting of the Utah .Net User Group was NUnit. Kelly Anderson did a fantastic job of explaining the basics, then did a couple of deep dives that didn't get NUnit neophites like me lost in details. I should tell you that Kelly is one of the volunteers working on NUnit 3.0, so he has great passion and knowledge on the topic. Here are things I noted, some of them I already knew, but it's good to review:

- Remember the process of Red, Green, Refactor

- You can run NUnit tests inside the Visual Studio IDE using either TestDriven.Net or Resharper. However, Resharper does not support NUnit addins.

- Everytime you get green, check in

- When you do test driven development (test first development), you naturally get low cohesion between your classes, so they're more loosely coupled. When you develop the standard way, you write the code first and tend to get more tightly coupled classes.

- Kelly recommended using nCover to check your testing coverage.

- I asked Kelly about how to add unit tests to code that you inherit and he recommend the book Working Efficiently with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers. The author defines legacy code as anything that doesn't have unit tests.

If you weren't there, you missed a great presentation. I've tried to use NUnit, but have not had good success in setting up the tests and getting everything working. After last night's meeting, I feel better prepared to try it again.

Boise Code Camp Wrap Up

2008-03-12T10:23:00.003-06:00

Boise Code Camp was fantastic. It was held this past Saturday on the Boise State University campus. They had 500 people register and about 375 showed up. Amazing! I think we had about 100 at the last Utah Code Camp.

My favorite session was "Architecture Fish Bowl". Think of it as a panel discussion where any audience member can get up and join the panel. When someone does that, a current panel member has to sit in the audience. Microsoft's Scott Hanselman moderated. Some things I picked up from the session:

- Architecture does not equal design. Architecture is far more reaching than a single application. The design fits into the architecture.

- One way you can tell you're doing architecture is if there is governance around it.

- The roll of the architect is to provide direction
- I learned a new term, "Refactorbation". It refers to people who just sit around and tidy code.

- Architects aren't the founatain of all knowledge. They should hold "town meetings" to get the input from other members of their teams.

Richard Hundhausen did a great session on Visual Team System Database Edition. I had never seen this part of Team Suite before, but I'm now convinced it's the only way to do SQL Server database maintenance. You can run tests on your TSQL code, store stored procedures in source control, run code analysis on the TSQL and more.

My third favorite session was one on "Prism", a new package coming out of Microsoft's Patterns and Practices group. Glenn Block, who is on the P&P team was there to show it off and this was the first time Prism had been shown outside of Microsoft. Prism is not a new CAB or part of the Enterprise Library. Prism is designed to manage composite WPF applications. This is where you have a form with a menu, toolbar, and maybe some kind of links on the left-hand side. The main part of the form hosts different plugins that are the main UI. The first public test release is available here.

Other sessions I attended include Service Oriented Architecture and NHibernate. My session on Continuous Integration went very well. I heard great feedback on it after.

The Code Trip crew was there too, shooting video for their site and Channel 9. They asked me about being a Roadie on the bus and about the MVP Program. I'm still waiting for the video to be posted.

Saturday evening, The Code Trip crew sponsored a party at the BSU Hall of Fame. Great food and lots of fun. There were three XBox 360s set up. I tried my hand as a drummer in Rock Band and failed miserably. Not surprising since I'm musically declined.

All in all, Boise Code Camp was fantastic. I'm hoping to make it again next year.

Live from The Code Trip

2008-03-07T19:52:00.002-07:00

As I write and post this, The Code Trip bus is rolling north on I-15, heading out from Salt Lake City to Boise. This is the same bus that Styx used for their tour.

The guys did a great presentation in SLC on some great new technologies that Microsoft announced at Mix earlier this week in Las Vegas. We saw demos of IE 8, Silverlight 2.0, and Deep Zoom. You can check them out on the Mix site.

After their presentation, we had a geek dinner at Greek Souvlaki (Geek Souvlaki).

We should roll into Boise somewhere between 1 and 2 am, then Code Camp starts promptly at 8:00.

I'll post pictures shortly after I get home Sunday afternoon.

The Code Trip is Coming!

2008-02-27T23:03:00.002-07:00

Plan now to attend The Code Trip activities in Salt Lake City. Fresh from MIX, The Code Trip will make its first stop on Friday, March 7 at 3:00 at Franklin Covey. Then join us for dinner at Greek Souvlaki. Perhaps it should be Geek Souvlaki on Friday evening.

Utah Spring Code Camp

2008-02-26T22:21:00.002-07:00

Mark your calendars now for the Utah Spring Code Camp. It's set for Saturday, April 26 at Neumont University. Registration is now open at www.utcodecamp.com. I'll be presenting on an as yet, undetermined topic.

Using Windows Communication Foundation with Visual FoxPro

2008-02-22T13:57:00.003-07:00

Need to support web services and find the VFP doesn't handle WS* extensions, complex types, security and more? Do you need to develop an application that can access the same business logic from the web or the local network? Do you need to support message queuing? How about COM+? Maybe you need to create a loosely-coupled Service-Oriented Architecture but find it can't be done in VFP.

Windows Communication Foundation maybe your answer. It is a .Net technology the intended to replace a slew of technologies with a single, easy-to-use API, that allow much of the configuration to be changed at runtime by editing an XML file.

I've posted a new article, Using Windows Communication Foundation with Visual FoxPro on my web site. The article shows how to get started with WCF and then how to COM-enable the .Net code and use it from VFP. Enjoy!

Speaking at Boise Code Camp

2008-02-20T14:18:00.002-07:00

I will be speaking at the Boise Code Camp on Saturday, March 8. My topic is "Continuous Integration". I'll show how to work with free tools to get CI working in your shop.

The Code Trip is coming

2008-02-12T14:06:00.000-07:00

I just got this email from Tim Heuer:

“The Code Trip is a 22-city tour being done by the evangelism team at Microsoft. Salt Lake City is one of our first stops immediately following the MIX08 conference in Las Vegas. Come join the greater Utah user groups for a discussion on some of the newest Microsoft technologies. Learn what is powering some of the Code Trip systems with WPF and Silverlight. We’ll bring stuff to give away and we’ll find some place to have a geek dinner afterwards for those who would like to join us. If you are doing something great with .NET technologies, we want to hear from you as well! We’re video logging the entire trip and want to give developers a chance to share their story. Come join the groups at Franklin Covey on March 7 from 3-5pm.”

Watch here for more info.

Need Code? Look at Code Gallery

2008-01-30T09:22:00.001-07:00

Developers love to steal other people's code. After all, the problem I'm trying to solve right now has probably already been solved by someone else. Why can't I just get their code and plug it in, maybe with some minor changes? If that code has a copyright on it, I can't do that. There are many web sites where people post sample code that you can use. Microsoft has just opened theirs. It's called Code Gallery. I browsed through the gallery. There's already quite a bit there and you can add to it.

Sedna has been released

2008-01-26T13:14:00.000-07:00

After a long wait, Microsoft has released the Sedna components for Visual FoxPro. Sedna is a collection of libraries, samples and add-ons to Visual FoxPro 9.0 SP2. It contains six components: VistaDialogs4COM, Upsizing Wizard, Data Explorer, NET4COM and MY for VFP and DDEX for VFP. Full source code is also included.

You can download Sedna here.

The release of Sedna completes announced work on VFP from Microsoft. However, there are a number of issues with SP2 and lots of requests from the community for an SP3. Hopefully Microsoft will listen.

VFP Boot Camp

2008-01-21T12:29:00.000-07:00

VisionPace is holding another VFP Boot Camp! If you're just getting into VFP, this is a great place to get going quickly. While I've never attended one, I've heard good things about it.

The next VFP Boot Camp will be in Kansas City, Missouri, February
25-27, 2008

Registration ends on February 6, 2008 for the highly-acclaimed VFP
Boot Camp. This event delivers three jam-packed days of solid,
hands-on learning. From the fundamentals of VFP development through
the very latest VFP 9.0 features, this boot camp is designed to
quickly get your VFP skills up to speed. Attendees will receive a 500
page manual in both print and electronic format.

For more information visit
http://visionpace.com/developereducation.html or email
info@visionpace.com. To register call 888-904-7900.

FoxRockx: What's in a name

2008-01-16T12:44:00.000-07:00

Last month, Rich Schummer blogged about a new FoxPro magazine called FoxRockx that will begin publishing this quarter. I thought I'd add a bit of trivia about where the name came from.

As you may know, FoxPro history has several tools that were enhancements to existing ones, and each tool added an X to the name, Genscrn became GenscrnX, GenMenu became GenMenuX, Builder became BuilderX. Even the community run VFPX on CodePlex uses this name ends in X concept.

But that's not where FoxRockx came from. It was a typo, an accident. While at the German DevCon in November, Rainer approached several speakers to discuss the idea of starting a new magazine. We were sitting in the lobby of the conference hotel, brainstorming names and I was typing them into a search engine to see what URLs were available. I meant to type FoxRocks, but hit the X by accident. Just about all of us agreed that it was the perfect name, considering the history of ending things in X.

Voila...a magazine title is born.

Microsoft 2008 Launch

2008-01-15T16:03:00.000-07:00

Microsoft is gearing up to launch Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008. The official world wide launch is February 27 in Los Angeles, but local launch events will be happening through May. For Salt Lake City, the launch event will be May 20 at the downtown Radisson. Register here.