Visual Studio 2010 resources

VS2010 Evaluations

Visual Studio 2010 is here!

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 mark the next generation of developer tools from Microsoft. Be sure to download the trial for Visual Studio 2010.

Trials:

· Visual Studio 2010 Downloads

· VS Team Explorer Everywhere 2010 [Eclipse plug-in and cross-platform command-line client for Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server]

Virtual Machines:

Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate Virtual Machines with Sample Data and Hands-on-Labs:

· Visual Studio 2010 RC (Hyper-V)

· Visual Studio 2010 RC (Windows [7] Virtual PC)

· Visual Studio 2010 RC (Virtual PC 2007 SP1)

· Please see the blog post from Brian Keller for instructions for additional details.

Documentation

MSDN Product Documentation:

· Visual Studio Application Lifecycle Management

· Visual Studio

Team Foundation Server 2010:

· Team Foundation Installation Guide for Visual Studio 2010

· Administration Guide for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server

Videos

VS2010 Launch:

This video series provides an overview of the key features of Visual Studio 2010, including new IDE features for modeling and understanding code, developer and test collaboration, team collaboration with Team Foundation Server, Project Management, and application development for Windows, Web, and SharePoint 2010.

· Improving Developer-Tester Collaboration with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

· Team Foundation Server for Everyone

· Project Management with Visual Studio 2010

· Windows Development with Visual Studio 2010

· SharePoint and Office Development with Visual Studio 2010

The following are the videos from PDC 2009:

• Advanced Diagnostics, IntelliTrace™ and Test Automation
• Code Visualization, UML, and DSLs
• A Lap Around Microsoft Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2010
• Automating "Done Done" in the Team Workflows with Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate and Team Foundation Server 2010
• Microsoft Visual Studio Lab Management to the Build Setup Rescue

ALM & TechDays:

· TechDays 2010: A Lap Around Visual Studio 2010 Application Lifecycle Management

· ALMday session 1 – New Application Lifecycle Management features of Visual Studio 2010

· ALMday session 2 – Software Testing with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010: Part 1, an Introduction

· ALMday session 4 – Software Testing with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010: Part 2, Making It Real

VS2010 demos for testing tools

Visual Studio Lab Management videos

Guidance/Whitepapers

· Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance

· Visual Studio TFS Branching Guide 2010

· TFS 2010 Upgrade Guidance

· TFS 2010 Requirements Management

· Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 Virtualization Guidance

Learning Resources

· Learning Visual Studio

· How Do I Videos 2010

· Hands-on-Labs

· Training Kit

MSDN Magazine Articles

· Debugging Applications with IntelliTrace

· Performance Tuning with the Concurrency Visualizer in Visual Studio 2010

· Better Coding with Visual Studio 2010

· Entity Framework 4.0 and WCF Data Services 4.0 in Visual Studio 2010

· Developing and Deploying Windows Azure Apps in Visual Studio 2010

· Exploring New C++ and MFC Features in Visual Studio 2010

What edition of Visual Studio 2010 do I need ?

If you look at what a project looks like

here is a quick presentation of the Visual Studio 2010 editions per role

J.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 – 4 major announcements today (what you need to know)

Here we go; we have 4 key announcements today to the developer community

 

Information #1: Visual Studio 2010 (and .NET Framework 4) will be officially launched  on March 22^nd, 2010.

Microsoft has also simplified the product lineup, customers will be able to choose from three main versions of Visual Studio 2010:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN. The comprehensive suite of application life-cycle management tools for software teams to help ensure quality results from design to deployment
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN. A complete toolset to help developers deliver scalable, high-quality applications
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN. The essential tool for basic development tasks to assist developers in implementing their ideas easily

Information #2: from now to March 22^nd, you can benefit from massive saving  with the Visual Studio 2010 transition benefits (called “Ultimate Offer”).

The “Ultimate Offer” is a current promotion to help customers upgrade to Visual Studio 2010 while getting the most value possible. The promotion is available to all MSDN Premium customers who purchase Visual Studio 2010 on or before launch on March 22, 2010. Eligible customers at the time of the launch will receive a product upgrade, as outlined in the Ultimate Offer chart below. This applies to current customers, as well as customers who upgrade to a Visual Studio 2008 product with a Premium MSDN subscription before the launch of Visual Studio 2010.

  

To maximize the benefits of the “Ultimate offer”, you should think about 2 scenarios before March 22^nd 2010

• Scenario 1: do I need more Visual Studio licenses for my team in the next 12 to 24 months?
• Scenario 2: do I need to “step up” some of my current licenses to a higher edition and benefits from the “free” product upgrade in March 22^nd 2010?

You can save a equivalent of 50% during the next months.
Example:

• With an active Visual Studio 2008 Team Developer w/ MSDN (at the time of the launch) you will receive Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate. Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate includes the capabilities of Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite (and more). That means, you have Team Suite (and more) for the price of Team Developer
• With an active Visual Studio 2008 Professional w/ MSDN (in march 22^nd 2010), you will receive  Visual Studio 2010 Premium. Visual Studio 2010 Premium includes the capabilities of Visual Studio 2008 Team Developer. That means, you have Team Developer for the price of VS Professional with MSDN Premium

Call to action: think about your current and future needs before March 22^nd 2010

 

 please review the Fact Sheet for more information

  Information #3: Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 will be available to MSDN subscribers on Monday, October 19th, with general availability on October 21st.

 how to download the beta: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/vstudio/dd582936.aspx 

  Information #4: new benefits for MSDN subscribers, including these:

• Unlimited access to Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 (upon release), a server product that drives down the risks and costs of developing software by enhancing team collaboration
• Azure Development, which enables MSDN Premium subscribers to develop on the Windows Azure platform (Microsoft’s cloud services platform) with compute hours, storage, data transfers, SQL Azure databases and .NET Services.
• Complimentary e-learning, up to 40 hours per year, per subscriber

 

You can found the official Press release here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/oct09/10-19vsfinalstretchpr.mspx

Please contact me for any additional detail

Microsoft Courier: not a new tablet … a Booklet :)

What a good suprise with this Microsoft Courier (still not officially confirmed)

I’m happy to see Microsoft moving forward on the Tablet concept with not only a technological platform but an end-user solution with the final experience “built right” (that means Microsoft don’t rely 100% on partners to move the solution to the final stage and the consumer space).

Watch this video of a late prototype” stage of development.

Why building software solution during this (soon over) Global Financial Crisis (GFC) is a key priority?

Any enterprise, during a downturn or a slowdown, will focus on 2 priorities

• Growing the share
• Reducing the operational cost

Why growing the share?
          If you can’t increase your revenue with your customers as they are asking you to cost less, then you need to take on your competitor in order to maintain the same level of activity. This fiscal year, the market share will be a metric as important as the revenue growth.

Why reducing cost?
        Very obvious but you can’t cut in the muscle, you have to cut the fat.  That means turning off only any non-priority project and optimise the productivity by reducing the operation work force.
Ok, so how about the “custom development”? Where do/should I need some dev ?
Let think about why an enterprise needs to build a customer software solution and you will found 2 main reasons

• You need a competitive advantage.
        You can’t buy a COST (Commercial of the shelf) solution as you need one to fit and support your new business advantage. So if a software solution is needed as part of your business activity, you will have to do a custom development.
• You want to replace human activity/interaction with a software solution
        at least half of the value of any software solution is to replace human activity. You can call that evolution, complexity reduction … it’s about replacing people by software. As any company has his own process, you need a custom development to adapt a commercial software solution.

So you can see my point now:

What a company is looking at	Why  you need to build a software solution
Growing the share	Support Competitive advantage with a software solution
Reducing the operational cost	Replace human activity/interaction with a software solution

 

So now is the right time to engage your customers (or internal customers) around building custom development solutions to help them growing their share and reducing their cost.

 

Cheers,

Check the URL – “Wehatemanualtesting”

Funny URL but a good reference page
http://wehatemanualtesting.spaces.live.com

 J.

Visual Studio 2010 – Oracle database development support

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 Brian Keller sat down with Daniel Norwood of Quest Software to get an early look at “Project Fuze.”

  http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/10-4/10-4-Episode-30-Database-Schema-Extensibility/

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

August 6th: Windows 7 RTM bits on MSDN

from the Windows team blog
“ Here is a good news, who are eagerly waiting for Windows 7 RTM. Today Microsoft stated, Windows 7 RTM will be available on Microsoft Connect, MSDN and TechNet  on August 6th.
Windows 7 RTM will be available to download from Microsoft Connect, MSDN and TechNet on August 6th in English only. By October 1st, the remaining languages will become available to download.

Here is the time-line for Windows 7 RTM availability:

• For Partners & OEMs: ISV (Independent software vendor) and IHV (Independent hardware vendor) Partners will be able to download Windows 7 RTM from Microsoft Connect or MSDN on August 6th.
• For Business Customers: August 16th. By October 1st, the remaining languages will become available to download.
• For Developers and IT Professionals: August 6th and remaining languages by October 1st.
• For Beta Testers: Beta testers will not automatically receive a free copy of Windows 7.
• For Consumers: Windows 7 will be in retail stores and shipping on new PCs starting October 22nd. If you pre-ordered Windows 7, it should be delivered sometime around the October 22nd.’

“
so, once again, the MSDN subscribers will be the first to have access to the new Windows 7 RTM (Released To Market)

J.

Windows Azure: Pricing and licensing

Pricing and licensing overview:
http://www.microsoft.com/azure/pricing.mspx

ex:
Windows Azure: 

• Compute = $0.12 / hour
• Storage = $0.15 / GB stored / month
• Storage Transactions = $0.01 / 10K
• Bandwidth = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB

 SQL Azure: 

• Web Edition – Up to 1 GB relational database = $9.99
• Business Edition – Up to 10 GB relational database = $99.99
• Bandwidth = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB

 …

Sketch flow … the missing link?

How are you capturing the business needs when building a software application? Data diagram, requirements? Can your business contacts (the one requesting a new solution through a software application) understand and read these “pre-technical” documents? Can you capture properly their demands and visions?

We know the answer … the standard process is to capture the business requirements in some kind of Word document, to let them sign off and then handover to the developers … crossing the fingers that the result is align with the business needs and expectations

Is there another way to capture or “visualise” the business needs prior to any technical activity? … What about sketchflow?

 Instead of building documents, can you draw some quick and dirty (sketch) screen and ask the business to validate them?

(Can be done with some sketch controls or by drawing on a tablet)

 Then you could wire-frame these screens and build a first level of navigation

And send the “draft” for feedback as a running workflow to your stakeholders or users (Draft actually behaves like an application)

(Feedback gadget included – left hand toolbar)

And then only start to capture requirements starting with what the business signed off

Looking for more info about SketchFlow? you’ll have to wait for Expression Blend 3!
                  I recommend the session with Matt Morphett at Remix Australia

cheers,
J.