Entries for Brian Keller

Visual Studio Team System 2005 saw the introduction of the Team Edition for Database Professionals product, which allows database developers to perform such functions as version control, unit testing, test data generation, refactoring and more against SQL Server databases. In Visual Studio Team System 2010, Microsoft made this area of the product extensible in order to support 3rd party databases. Quest Software is hard at work on a database schema provider to support Oracle database development from within Visual Studio Team System 2010.

In this 10-4 episode I sat down with Daniel Norwood of Quest Software to get an early look at "Project Fuze."

To access more information about Project Fuze, visit:
http://www.teamfuze.net

For more 10-4 episodes, be sure to visit:
http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/10-4

Visual Studio Topic Area on Channel 9:
http://channel9.msdn.com/VisualStudio

Visual Studio 2010 Beta:
http://tinyurl.com/VS2010Beta1

10-4! Over and out!

This Week C9: Win7 on MSDN, PDC 2009, Drunktender [This Week C9: Win7 on MSDN, PDC 2009, Drunktender]

Brian Keller — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:08:00 GMT

This week on C9, Brian and Christian "Littleguru" Liensberger review the week's top developer stories including:

- Dan on paternity leave – welcome to Gavin Xavier Fernandez!
- MSDN & Technet availability of Windows 7 (Correction to the video: Windows Server 2008 R2 not available just yet... team says "available in the coming weeks")
- Windows 7 on 9 and Windows 7 on Edge
- Windows 7 Physical and Virtual Deployment Options
- Windows 7 Remote Desktop with multi-mon
- Windows 7 Bing Desktop Wallpaper
- PDC 2009 Registration Launched
- Silverlight SDK for Bing
- Customizing TFS Process Guidance
- Team Review for Team System
- Using VSTS 2010 to catch string formatting bugs
- 31 Days of Refactoring
- Clint Rutkas’s Drunktender 1.0 Demo
- AI in C# and LINQ

Picks of the week:
- Christian’s pick-of-the-week, RoombaSCI
- Brian’s pick-of-the-week, Russ’s Toolshed on Channel 9

in reply to This Week C9: Win7 on MSDN, PDC 2009, Drunktender

10-4 Episode 28: An Introduction to the Historical Debugger

Brian Keller — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:54:00 GMT

The new Historical Debugger coming in Visual Studio Team System 2010 promises to revolutionize the way you debug managed applications. You can think of it as something of a VCR for your debugger; "rewind" the debugging trace to examine the state of your application at various points in time so you can all-but-eliminate the guesswork about where to place your breakpoints prior to pressing F5.

This quick overview screencast will give you just a taste of the capabilities offered by the Historical Debugger. For more information check out:
http://www.tinyurl.com/ProteusBehindTheScenes
http://blogs.msdn.com/HabibH

For more 10-4 episodes, be sure to visit:
http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/10-4

Visual Studio Topic Area on Channel 9:
http://channel9.msdn.com/VisualStudio

Visual Studio 2010 Beta:
http://tinyurl.com/VS2010Beta1

10-4! Over and out!

10-4 Episode 23: An Introduction to Manual Testing

Brian Keller — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:20:00 GMT

Despite all of the advances in automated testing tools and frameworks over the last decade, manual testing still constitutes the lion's share of testing effort within most software development organizations.

This episode of 10-4 will introduce the new capabilities in Visual Studio Team System 2010 for supporting manual testing. You will see how these capabilities will not only help manual testers do their jobs more effectively, but this approach also helps developers by providing detailed diagnostics information about tests when they fail.

Over and out!

New Web Test Debugging Features in Visual Studio Team System 2010

Brian Keller — Tue, 26 May 2009 17:59:00 GMT

In this video Ed Glas shows off new Web test debugging features in Visual Studio Team System 2010, including Search in playback, view recording log, jump to Web test, and Add Extraction Rule from Playback.

10-4 Episode 20: Downloading and Installing Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1

Brian Keller — Wed, 20 May 2009 16:49:00 GMT

Update: Beta 2 is here! Check out 10-4 Episode 33: Downloading and Installing Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 is here! In this episode of 10-4, Brian Keller takes us through downloading and installing Visual Studio 2010 Team Suite Beta 1 and Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server Beta 1. This time-compressed video will take you through all of the key things you need to know to get up and running quickly with beta 1.

This video references several important URL's. Those URL's, as well as some other handy links for beta 1, are as follows:
- Download instructions for all files in this video
- More information about the Windows Server 2008 VHD
- Beta 1 home on MSDN
- Beta 1 forums
- Visual Studio Connect site (report bugs / suggestions)
- Common TFS 2010 Beta 1 Installation Problems
- Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit

Special thanks to Charles Sterling, program manager for Visual Studio Team System, for his tireless efforts behind the scenes to help make this video happen.

This week on C9: Windows 7, WPF futures, and use UI testing to automate your job [This week on C9: Windows 7, WPF futures, and use UI testing to automate your job]

Brian Keller — Sat, 09 May 2009 09:25:00 GMT

This week on Channel 9, Brian and Dan discuss the top developer news, including:

- Windows 7 RC is available to download now
- Yochay Kiriaty Windows 7 videos
- Windows 7 Taskbar: Changes from Beta to RC
- Windows 7 Taskbar: Advanced Features
- Windows 7 Multi Touch: Overview
- Windows 7 Multi-Touch: Part 1
- Windows 7 Multi-Touch: Part 2

- Windows SDK and Windows API Code Pack for the .NET Framework available, via Tim Sneath's Developers Guide to Preparing for Windows 7
- Michael Scherotter - New York Times Silverlight SDK
- Bill Buxton - On Engineering and Design - an Open Letter
- Silverlight blog: Expression Gallery to share images, WPF themes, CSS templates, XAML behaviors, and more
- Frank La Vigne - Star Wars Scroller in Silverlight 3, via Alvin Ashcraft
- WPF Futures released on Codeplex, includes Shader Effects, Splash Screen, Client Profile Configuration Designer, WPF Themes, M-V-VM Toolkit, via Lester Lobo
- Ayende Rahien - Are Util & Common libraries evil?
- Brian Peek: How to configure your device emulator to work after adding Windows Virtual PC to Windows 7 RC
- VS Gesture project, via Greg Duncan, and discussion on how you could Multi Touch enable Visual Studio
- Code Project: Improve performance of calculating image sizes using a binary reader
- Silverlight Blog - NBC Olympics wins an Emmy with Silverlight for Outstanding New Approaches Sports Event Coverage.
- Christian "Littleguru" Liensberger becomes a Microsoft employee!
- Brian's pick of the week - 10-4 episode on Functional UI Testing and discussion how you can use it to fake working
- Dan's pick of the week: Coding4Fun: Dan Waters article on Building Multiplayer Texas Hold 'Em Poker for the Zune

in reply to This week on C9: Windows 7, WPF futures, and use UI testing to automate your job

10-4 Episode 18: Functional UI Testing

Brian Keller — Wed, 06 May 2009 13:57:00 GMT

In this episode of 10-4 we look at a new type of test coming in Visual Studio Team System 2010 known as the coded UI test. Coded UI tests can be created to automatically navigate through your application's UI, which in turn can be used to verify that the paths your users might take through your application are working properly. You can also add validation logic along the way to verify the properties of objects within the UI. Much like unit tests can quickly surface regressions on a method or function level, coded UI tests can bring the same level of rapid automated testing capabilities to the UI layer.

This demo is based on an early build of Visual Studio Team System 2010 Beta 1.

For some relevant team blogs check out:

Amit Chatterjee's Blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/amit_chatterjee/

Mathew Aniyan's Blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/mathew_aniyan/

10-4! Over and out!

This Week on C9: Office 2010, PowerShell for OpenXML, and would you help a robot [This Week on C9: Office 2010, PowerShell for OpenXML, and would you help a robot]

Brian Keller — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 23:21:00 GMT

This week on Channel 9, Dan and Brian discuss the week's top developer news including:

- Office 14 is now Office 2010, Exchange 2010 beta is now available, and SharePoint will be SharePoint 2010. Office 2010 includes cool features like
- Excel Web Access
- Editing a PowerPoint presentation on the Web
- Outlook's Ignore Conversation to stop receiving email on a particular topic
- Outlook's Enhanced Conversation view
- Outlook's MailTips feature that will let you know if you are spamming an email alias or emailing someone out of the office
- J.D. Meier - Performance Hot Spots, via Alvin Ashcraft
- Arian Kulp - Coding4Fun Extensible System Tray Framework
- Larry Larsen - Meet the Industrial Design Team video
- Windows 7 Software Logo Program, via Emil Protalinski
- Create Word documents using PowerShell with Power Tools for Open XML, via Greg Duncan
- Kirill Osenkov - Command line switches to control multiple monitors using Remote Desktop
- Common Compiler Infrastructure (used in ILMerge, FXCop, Spec#) goes open source
- Brian's pick of the week - VSTS Free Online Workshops
- Dan's pick of the week - Tweenbots - Human dependent robots, via Steve Clayton

in reply to This Week on C9: Office 2010, PowerShell for OpenXML, and would you help a robot

10-4 Episode 13: No More Late Surprises

Brian Keller — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:02:00 GMT

One of the core capabilities of Team Foundation Server is that of reporting - being able to correlate your source control with work items (bugs, requirements, etc.), builds, and people in a meaningful way can really help a development team steer a project towards a successful trajectory. But one of the challenges with Team Foundation Server today is that generating new reports, or even customizing existing reports, isn't as easy as it needs to be for most teams.

In this episode of 10-4, we will take a look at how Team Foundation Server 2010 will enable you to more easily generate dynamic reports that can give you quick insights into how your project is running. In just a few minutes you can create your query and use Microsoft Excel to quickly create a set of graphical reports based on your query. You can even save these reports and publish them to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server for easy access by the rest of the team.

This video is based on the September 2008 CTP, and there will be even more reporting features coming in the upcoming beta release of Visual Studio Team System 2010.

For more 10-4 episodes, be sure to visit:
http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/10-4

10-4! Over and out!

10-4 Episode 7: No More Planning Black Box [10-4 Episode 7: No More Planning Black Box]

Brian Keller — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:44:00 GMT

In this episode of 10-4, we look at how Team Foundation Server 2010 will help you more easily plan the work and iterations which make up your project. We'll first examine the new work item hierarchy which supports such relationships as parent/child and successor/predecessor. Then we'll look at how Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Project can interact with Team Foundation Server 2010. Finally we'll plan an iteration using the new iteration planning workbook.

For more 10-4 episodes, be sure to visit:
http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/10-4

Visual Studio Topic Area on Channel 9:
http://channel9.msdn.com/VisualStudio

Visual Studio 2010 CTP VPC:
http://tinyurl.com/GetCTP

10-4! Over and out!

in reply to 10-4 Episode 7: No More Planning Black Box

10-4 Episode 4: No More Parallel Development Pain [10-4 Episode 4: No More Parallel Development Pain]

Brian Keller — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:34:00 GMT

In this episode of 10-4, we'll examine how the improvements to branching and merging in Team Foundation Server 2010 will help eliminate the pain associated with parallel development. Brian Keller demonstrates the new "first class branches," branch visualizations, and the improved conflict resolution experience.

For more 10-4 episodes, be sure to visit:
http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/10-4

Visual Studio Topic Area on Channel 9:
http://channel9.msdn.com/VisualStudio

Visual Studio 2010 CTP VPC:
http://tinyurl.com/GetCTP

Branching and Merging Guidance:
http://tinyurl.com/BranchAndMerge
http://tinyurl.com/BranchAndMerge2

Visualization Interview with Matthew Mitrik:
http://tinyurl.com/C9BranchingVisualization

Over and out!

in reply to 10-4 Episode 4: No More Parallel Development Pain

10-4 Episode 3: ASP.NET WebForms 4.0 [10-4 Episode 3: ASP.NET WebForms 4.0]

Brian Keller — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:26:00 GMT

Happy New Year everyone! In this episode of 10-4 we’ll begin seeing how Visual Studio 10 and the .NET Framework 4.0 offer compelling new functionality for web developers. In this episode we’ll be specifically focusing on ASP.NET WebForms 4.0, and what enhancements it offers. We’ll be diving into the new client ID feature being introduced and see how it can be leveraged in web applications that have a high-reliance on client-centric development.

In future episodes we’ll take a deeper look at the remaining features of WebForms 4.0 including: viewstate control, data control enhancements, and routing integration. If you’d like to see something particularly emphasized, let us know, and we’ll take it into account for upcoming shows.

For more 10-4 episodes, be sure to visit:

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/10-4

Over and out!

in reply to 10-4 Episode 3: ASP.NET WebForms 4.0

10-4 Episode 1: Working with the Visual Studio 2010 CTP VPC [10-4 Episode 1: Working with the Visual Studio 2010 CTP VPC]

Brian Keller — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:58:00 GMT

Update: Please see 10-4 Episode 20 for a tutorial on downloading and installing beta 1 of Visual Studio 2010. It's much newer than the CTP described in this video and contains several new features and fixes.

For this first episode of 10-4, we’ll look at how to download and use the Virtual PC image of the Visual Studio 2010 September CTP. We’ll give you tips on how to download this massive (7GB+ compressed) VPC, show you how to get past some pesky expiration issues, and get you started with the CTP walkthroughs. Lastly we’ll cover where to get assistance and provide your feedback about this release.

In future episodes we’ll dive more deeply into the technical underpinnings of Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0, but for this first episode we wanted to make sure everybody could get the CTP and follow along at home as we explore new features.

URL's referenced in this episode:
http://tinyurl.com/GetCTP
http://tinyurl.com/VSFeedback
http://tinyurl.com/CTPActivation

For more 10-4 episodes, be sure to visit:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/10-4/

Over and out!

in reply to 10-4 Episode 1: Working with the Visual Studio 2010 CTP VPC

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Training Kit - November Preview

Brian Keller — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:35:00 GMT

The Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Training Kit - November Preview includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos. This content is designed to help you learn how to utilize the Visual Studio 2010 features and a variety of framework technologies including: C# 4.0, Visual Basic 10, F#, Parallel Computing Platform, WCF, WF, WPF, ASP.NET AJAX 4.0, ASP.NET MVC Dynamic Data.

Lab Management coming to Visual Studio Team System 2010

Brian Keller — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:47:00 GMT

Today at TechEd Barcelona, Jason Zander announced that Visual Studio Team System 2010 will feature a brand new Lab Management capability to help organizations raise the bar on software quality. Lab Management will integrate with the rest of the Visual Studio to help testers more easily test a variety of configurations in a virtual lab environment, and help developers more easily repro bugs by delivering snapshots of those virtualized environments after bugs are discovered. I had a chance to sit down with Ram Cherala and Vinod Malhotra to get an in-depth look at how this will work.

This "Humanized Screencast" is best viewed at fullscreen using the high-quality WMV download.

PDC2008 ShowOff Entry: Clipboard History for Visual Studio

Brian Keller — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:52:00 GMT

This video is a sample of one of the entries from Microsoft PDC 2008 ShowOff.

Title
Clipboard History for Visual Studio

Author:
Mark Miller, DevExpress

Short 2-3 sentence description of your video
This video demonstrates the Clipboard History feature for Visual Studio. The video also briefly references a 12-part blog series containing complete step-by-step instructions showing how to build this feature for Visual Studio 2008.

I would like to emphasize that this submission is a two-part submission – part one is the feature itself – it’s a powerful and easy to use clipboard history. Part two is the actual series of blog posts, which show developers how to create this really cool feature for their Visual Studio 2008 environment. The code and design choices behind all the features you see demonstrated in the video are explained in great detail in the blog posts. By teaching developers how to build the feature, more Visual Studio customers can learn how to extend visual studio, and that’s a good thing for the VS 2008 ecosystem.

PDC2008 ShowOff Entry: Brian the Build Bunny

Brian Keller — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 03:00:00 GMT

This video is a sample of one of the entries from Microsoft PDC 2008 ShowOff.

Title of the video

Brian the Build Bunny

The developer and designer tools you used (both Microsoft and non-Microsoft)

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server

• Expression Media Encoder

• Windows Movie Maker

• Techsmith Camtasia

• Windows Vista

• Adobe Photoshop

• Eclipse

• Windows Live Skydrive

Short 2-3 sentence description of your video

A talking, robotic, wifi fuelled rabbit - just what every office needs to keep those pesky developers in check to make sure the Continuous Integration build is working. In this video we introduce you to Brian the Build bunny, and explain how he is connected to Team Foundation Server to notify you of developer check-ins and changes in the condition of your builds. Remember, keep those builds working. You don’t want a hot cross bunny.

For more information and the code to run your own build bunny see http://www.woodwardweb.com/vsts/behind_brian_th.html

To download hi-res images of Brian see http://www.woodwardweb.com/gadgets/brian_the_build.html

PDC2008 ShowOff Entry: Silverlight 2 Spectrum Emulator

Brian Keller — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 03:00:00 GMT

This video is a sample of one of the entries from Microsoft PDC 2008 ShowOff.

Title of the video
Silverlight 2 Spectrum Emulator.

Short 2-3 sentence description of your video
A quick demonstration of my Silverlight 2 Spectrum Emulator, playing a game, writing some Spectrum BASIC, looking at the code quickly.

Silverlight 2 Version Developed By: Chris Hay (me)
Original XNA version By: Jan Jones (http://www.codeplex.com/zx360)
Original Z80 ported from Jasper by Adam Davidson and Andrew Pollard.
PNG Encoder: Joe Stegman

Chris Hay
http://silverlightuk.blogspot.com/

The developer and designer tools you used (both Microsoft and non-Microsoft)
Visual Studio 2008, Silverlight 2, C#

PDC2008 ShowOff Entry: Multi-channel Virtual Earth

Brian Keller — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 03:00:00 GMT

This video is a sample of one of the entries from Microsoft PDC 2008 ShowOff. We recommend downloading the high-quality WMV of this video for the best experience.

Title of the video
Multi-channel Virtual Earth

Description
This video shows a multi-channel version of the Virtual Earth control running on a custom curved screen that provides a 180 degree horizontal field of view. The screen is created using eight high-end full 1080p projectors with a professional warping and blending system. The code is a modified version of a sample project with a custom camera class to properly adjust the FOV and camera offset for each projector and some code to synchronize the camera position across the network. The system is being controlled with a wireless Xbox 360 controller.

Names of people who should receive credit
Jon Wade

Name of your organization (if any)
ACE Lab, Carleton University

The developer and designer tools you used (both Microsoft and non-Microsoft)
Visual Studio 2008 Express
Virtual Earth Control/SDK
.NET Framework 3.5

Microsoft Regional Directors make PDC Predictions [Microsoft Regional Directors make PDC Predictions]

Brian Keller — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 23:35:00 GMT

The Microsoft Regional Directors are fired up for another great PDC! Tim Huckaby threw a rockin' RD party at his house on Saturday and Scott Stanfield was there with his camera to capture some predictions from some of your favorite Regional Directors.

in reply to Microsoft Regional Directors make PDC Predictions

Brian Harry: Team Foundation Server 2010

Brian Keller — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:47:00 GMT

Brian Harry, technical fellow at Microsoft, has pretty much become synonymous with Team Foundation Server. He not only leads the Team Foundation Server team in Raleigh, North Carolina, he also has the most widely read blog about what's going on with Team Foundation Server. But even Brian hasn't been saying much about Team Foundation Server 2010 until this week. I sat down with Brian and let him finally spill the beans on what his team has been working on.

Brian remains fairly high-level for this interview because there's a lot to cover, but we have six other interviews going live today featuring his program management team going deep on everything he talks about.

I even got Brian to talk a bit about his farm which has been keeping him busy outside of work. :-)