Applied Visual Studio Team System : Team Edition for Database Professionals

Attending the PASS Summit

andy — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 08:33:00 GMT

Steve Jones makes some good points in his blog post Training. I find it difficult to believe the short-sightedness of some organizations when it comes to training events like the PASS Summit.

This year's Summit - like all previous years to date - had enough top notch presentations and labs to make it worth the cost of admission, travel and expenses, and the cost of allowing a database professional to leave work for three days combined. More than enough.

Like Steve, I don't get it.

Also like Steve, I bet we'll see these DBAs at the 2008 PASS Summit in Seattle - and working for another company.

I wonder if those responsible for denying database professionals opportunities for training factor in the cost of hiring and training a new DBA every six to eighteen months?

:{> Andy

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Thanks to PASS Attendees!

andy — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 02:19:00 GMT

I'd like to thank the people that attended my sessions at the 2007 PASS Summit in Denver this week! I had a blast and hope you all did as well.

The code will be available from the PASS website and on a DVD. For those in my sessions, I promised I would post the code here for my custom Counts test condition for Team Edition for Database Professionals. Free registration to VSTeamSystemCentral.com is required. The site has been live more than two years. I've sent a total of two emails to registered users during that time. And I never share email addresses - ever.

Extending Team Edition for Database Professionals with custom test conditions is fairly straightforward once you understand it. (Like everything else in life, Mr. Obvious...)

If you are completely new to coding and would like to build a custom test condition for database testing, fear not! The last part of Chapter 4 (entitled Testing the Database) of the Wrox book Professional Software Testing with Visual Studio 2005 Team System: Tools for Software Developers and Test Engineers is dedicated to a beginner's walk-through of building your first custom test condition.

Yes I am promoting my new book. There's a reason: it's a good book.

:{> Andy

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SQLServerCentral.com and Solid Quality Socials at the PASS Summit

andy — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:46:00 GMT

I just returned from a night on the town here in Denver! First, I mosied over to the SQL Server Central bash and got to meet lots of interesting people including Steve Jones and Andy Warren - how cool was that!

Steve was busy administering the event but we finally got to meet and talk for a few minutes face to face - well, I had to look up to Steve... he's a tall guy! But I've been looking up to Steve for a while now anyway.

Andy's a wealth of developer community knowledge and it was great to hang out with him and discuss User Group, Code Camp, and SQLSaturday stuff.

Then it was time to saunter to the Solid Quality Mentors party. It was great to finally meet the people who have been writing the books I've been reading all these years! Solid Quality has the most awesome support folks on the planet - it was great to finally meet them face to face! I still can't believe I'm part of this cool organization.

It's now time for another run through the material for tomorrow's presentation entitled Applied Team Edition for Database Professionals.

:{> Andy

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At the 2007 PASS Summit!

andy — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 05:19:00 GMT

I'm at the 2007 PASS Summit!

I was wandering around the Colorado Convention Center earlier today in shorts, unshaven, tired... looking like I'd been rode hard and put up wet. But I caught the last half of Gert Draper's excellent presentation on Team Edition for Database Professionals! Gert is the man.

I'm presenting on the same topic tomorrow (yeah, I know - great move there, Andy...) and then on SSIS Development practices Thursday. This promises to be the geekiest week I've had in a long time!

:{> Andy

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Getting Ready For The PASS Summit!

andy — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 21:31:00 GMT

The PASS Summit is less than two weeks away!

I'm getting ready for my presentations. I need a couple laptops to host virtual servers for the demos, so I bought some new gear to take with me.

Check out my Network-In-A-Bag!

It's a power strip, a couple CAT6 cables, power supply, and a NetGear 1G 5-port switch - all in a 1 gallon Ziploc bag.

:{> Andy

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Testing With VSTS Sample Chapter Available

andy — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 22:29:00 GMT

The cool people at Wiley (Wrox) allowed the cool people at Solid Quality Mentors to post my chapter, Testing The Database, from the upcoming Wrox release Professional Software Testing with Visual Studio 2005 Team System: Tools for Software Developers and Test Engineers!

:{> Andy

Technorati Tags: Team Edition for Database Professionals Database Testing Unit Testing Wrox Solid Quality Mentors Wiley

New Book! Professional Software Testing with Visual Studio 2005 Team System: Tools for Software Developers and Test Engineers

andy — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 23:18:00 GMT

Professional Software Testing with Visual Studio 2005 Team System: Tools for Software Developers and Test Engineers is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com!

I was honored to work on this book with three testing gurus: Tom Arnold, Mike Frost, and Dominic Hopton.

The book covers many aspects of testing. More than just what to test, why to test is also covered. Although the book covers testing with Visual Studio, non-Microsoft technologies are referenced.

The book is written for developers practicing test-driven and test-first methodologies, and for test engineers. It provides great insight into the Visual Studio testing framework.

I got to write a chapter on Testing the Database. I use Team Edition for Database Professionals in the chapter to build a database project, then test it. I'm really happy with the chapter. The last section contains a detailed, step-by-step walk-through of building a custom test condition in C#, then integrating it into the TEDP test conditions. I wrote it assuming no experience with the Visual Studio 2005 IDE and little or no experience with software application development. I wrote it so database professionals with no exposure to application development could write their own custom test condition.

The book should be available in September!

:{> Andy

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Raleigh Code Camp - tomorrow!

andy — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 05:14:00 GMT

I'm looking forward to speaking at the Raleigh Code Camp tomorrow!

I'll be presenting on Team Edition for Database Professionals and Incremental Loads with SSIS. It going to be fun!

If you're atending tomorrow and read this blog, please introduce yourself!

:{> Andy

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Testing With Powershell

andy — Tue, 29 May 2007 07:01:00 GMT

I caught this article on Testing with Powershell by Dr. James McCaffrey in MSDN Magazine this month.

The article, combined with Kevin Hazzard's recent presentations at Richmond Code Camp and the Richmond .Net Users Group, piqued my interest in Windows Powershell.

Unlike other scripting shells, Powershell works with .Net objects. It exposes all parts of the .Net framework, but truly exercises reflection.

This makes Powershell ideal for quick, interface-free testing.

:{> Andy

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Managing The Thing You Cannot Touch

andy — Sun, 27 May 2007 07:01:00 GMT

Yesterday I wrote about The Thing You Cannot Touch. Today I'm going to tell you some ways to manage the situation.

First, try to determine why You Cannot Touch The Thing. This is invaluable information in charting the waters ahead - especially if you're consulting.

Second, accept the fact that there's better than a 90% chance that you will not, in fact, be allowed to Touch The Thing. In my experience, three things must be true for you to overcome the business friction imposed by The Thing:

You have to try everything else first.
Everything else must fail to sufficiently address the issue.
The source of the issue must be mission-critical.

Regardless, your best knee-jerk reaction is acceptance. This is tough for a professional. In your heart of hearts you know what it takes to solve the real issue. And yet, you've been told You Cannot Touch It.

The good news? There's also a better than 90% chance you can find a way to solve the issue - or at least alleviate the client's pain - without Touching The Thing.

Modern enterprise applications are comprised of lots of moving parts. The Thing is probably not the sole source of pain. Addressing other bottlenecks may do the trick - at least for now.

And, if you're the person they called last time they had an issue and you solved it (and weren't "difficult" to work with), you'll likely get the call next time.

How cool is that?

:{> Andy

Technorati Tags: Consulting Software Development Satisfying The Customer Leveraging New Business

The Thing You Cannot Touch

andy — Sat, 26 May 2007 07:01:00 GMT

I have this theory about consulting. I call it The Thing You Cannot Touch. Since a few friends have found it amusing I thought I'd share. It goes like this:

A potential client contacts your firm. A conference call is arranged to discuss the issue. During the call, the issue is defined. Resolution theories and attempts to date are shared, along with their results. The current status is explained - along with

The Thing You Cannot Touch.

Sometimes an attempt at justification accompanies the announcement: "We know it can't possibly be _______ so we're not going to waste any time looking at it."

Other times, it's just put out there for what it is: "You can't touch _______."

My experience has shown the heart of the issue almost always lies with The Thing You Cannot Touch. It needs to be fixed but someone, somewhere, for some reason does not believe it to be so - and so it Cannot Be Touched.

Sometimes it's political - It's someone's "baby". They built this application just ten short years ago - worked nights and weekends and toiled and sweated and bled to make it work - and rode it all the way to CIO, after all. Who are you, lowly consultant, to tell them VB 6 code should be re-written in this new fad known as .Net? Doesn't Vista support VB 6 until the mid-20-teens?

Sometimes the decision-maker doesn't understand the differences in the technologies.

Sometimes it's a purely market-driven business decision - and the decision-maker is right and justified in choosing to keep hands off The Thing. It's not all about technology folks... it's sometimes about what I like to describe as the (little "s") software (big "B") Business.

If you find yourself on a consulting conference call and The Thing You Cannot Touch comes up, pay attention. Tomorrow I tell you how to Manage The Thing You Cannot Touch.

:{> Andy

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It's MVP Day

andy — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 22:25:00 GMT

So far as I know, MVPs are annouced the first day of each quarter.

Congratulations to Frank La Vigne who was re-awarded Tablet PC MVP for another year!

Update! Darrell Norton was renewed as an ASP.Net MVP!

Congrats also to David Silverlight, the brains behind Community Credit, XML PitStop, NonProfitWays, Code Camp Evals, and many other cool websites - at least one of which he's asked me not to talk about yet! David was also re-awarded as an XML MVP.

I was nominated for Q3 / 2006 but not awarded. I was disappointed but understood: the process looks at your community involvement over the past year, and I sort of "came out of nowhere" a few months earlier.

I was fortunate enough to be nominated again earlier this year. And today I received the news I was awarded SQL Server MVP! The email arrived around 4:30 AM EDT. I was up until 3:45 AM EDT polishing off my Testing The Database chapter for the upcoming Wrox book: Professional Software Testing with Visual Studio 2005 Team System: Tools for Software Developers and Test Engineers - so I almost knew about it real-time!

It's a huge honor and I am humbled and overwhelmed all at the same time.

:{> Andy

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It's called "Iterative" for a reason...

andy — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 21:32:00 GMT

Iterative development has many strengths and a few weaknesses. But one thing is not in dispute: iterative means you make more than one pass through the code.

The major weakness of iterative development is its unpredictability. It's definitely time and material project work. This can be very frustrating to the folks trying to budget the project.

One strength of iterative development is the quality of the code and final product. Combined with test-driven development practices like Test-First Development, iterative development completes a project and leaves a suite of regression tests in place. This increases the development cycle for version 1.0, but pays for itself many times over with each subsequent iteration.

I was asked for an estimated delivery time once by a project manager. I'd been given time to do a thorough analysis (sometimes I miss those days) and had an answer: "6 months."

"Unacceptable, you have three months." the PM responded.

Undaunted I replied "Ok. You can have the application in six months, or you can have a three-month project - three months late."

They didn't like either option so they moved me off the project and hired new people. Last I heard, they're still working on it...

:{> Andy

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When to Test

andy — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 21:24:00 GMT

All software is tested. Some of it is tested before it's deployed, some immediately thereafter.

;)

It's always good to test before deployment. It's even better to test deployment itself.

I'm honored to be part of a really cool team of Test Engineers / Authors writing Professional Software Testing with Visual Studio 2005 Team System: Tools for Software Developers and Test Engineers (Wrox). I'm not sure about similar books in the marketplace (one bad thing about writing is it consumes all my reading time!). This book is written for individuals and teams developing software using Visual Studio Team System. And it will help you understand when and why to test (before deploying, even!).

I know this is a great book - I've been reading the chapters as they're turned in! The other three authors are testing gurus. Not only are these guys very good Test Engineers, they're also cool people. It's been an honor to work with Tom, Dominic, and Mike.

This has been a fun writing project!

:{> Andy

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I will present SQL Server Tips and Tricks 8 Feb 2007

andy — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 07:11:00 GMT

After the Freezing Redneck Tour 2007 wraps up this week, I'm looking forward to the next meeting of the Richmond SQL Server Users Group.

I've decided to present on SQL Server Tips and Tricks. I have three topics in mind:

SqlClr
An Introduction to Incremental Data Warehouse ETL with SSIS
A surprise topic!

Trust me, if you work with SQL Server data warehouse ETL you will like the surprise. ;)

Hope to see you there!

:{> Andy

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