May 2010 - Posts

Speaking at the West Yorkshire BCS meeting on Agile Methods
Sat, May 29 2010 4:56

After my comments on the QDD session at a past BCS meeting I have been asked to return and speak at the West Yorkshire BCS meeting on the 30th of June to give an overview about Agile methods.

This will be very much a management overview for people who are unaware of Agile methods, hence I will touch on XP, Scrum, Crystal Clear and Kanban and try to compare and contrast.

But, If you can’t wait to find out about Agile, why not come to the next Agile Yorkshire meeting on the 8th?

by But it works on my PC!
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Great book on Kanban
Sat, May 29 2010 4:45

I won’t bother to repeat what Gojko has said on David J, Anderson’s book on Kanban, other than to say I agree wholeheartedly.

I too have been looking for a good introduction book on Kanban as applied to software development (so Kanban as opposed to kanban, not the capital K). This is exactly what with book does. OK I know that this information is out there on the web (http://www.limitedwipsociety.org/); but there times, especially for introducing potentially non technical people to development methodologies, where you want to point people at an easily accessible introduction they can dip into. This is that book, have a look it is worth it

by But it works on my PC!
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Upgrading from Office 2010 RC to RTM
Wed, May 19 2010 4:25

I got this commonly seen version error when I tried to upgrade my RC version of Office 2010 to RTM

Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s):
Microsoft Office 2010 does not support upgrading from a prerelease version of Microsoft Office 2010. You must first install any prerelease versions of Microsoft Office 2010 products and associated technologies. Correct the issue(s) listed above and re-run setup.

I had already removed by RC Office and Visio. Turns out the problem was I had the Outlook Hotmail Connector (Beta) installed too. Once this was removed the install worked fine.

by But it works on my PC!
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Looking for a good overview of Visual Studio 2010 and ALM?
Mon, May 17 2010 14:09

Visual Studio 2010 provides many new features to aid Application Lifecycle Management. Learning its capabilities can be a bit daunting, especially if you are new to Team Foundation Server.

So enter the new book ‘Professional Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2010: with Team Foundation Server 2010’ by Mickey Gousset, Brian Keller, Ajoy Krishnamoorthy and Martin Woodward. This provides a great overview of all the the key features of Visual Studio and TFS 2010, presented with a view as to how TFS gives an end to end delivery of an ALM process.

Don’t go expecting this book will tell you everything about TFS, even at 600 pages it cannot be that detailed, it is a huge product, you think SharePoint is big, well it is just a subset of TFS! To address this potential problem the book contains many links of to relevant sources both on MSDN and blogs to fill in the extra detail you are bound to need concerning TFS and general development processes. Think of it as a “get you started” book, or a “what’s new in this release”, not a day to day administrators guide.

My one complaint, and it is very minor, is that it does read a bit like a collection articles as opposed to a single book. However, given it has four authors and the scope of the subject it covers this is forgivable.

So if you are are considering TFS 2010, whether as a developer, a sys-admin or manager this book will give you a good introduction into that you can achieve in your ALM process. Well worth a read.

 

51GBrWYIk1L__BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU02_

by But it works on my PC!
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Stupid support suggestions from Vodafone about 403 server proxy errors
Thu, May 13 2010 14:45

A while ago I blogged about the problems I was having with 403 error when trying to use my HTC phone as a 3G modem or using Opera or IE on the phone itself. When I initially complained Vodafone refunded my data fee for the month and said engineers were onto this known intermittent issue. No grief, Ok I did not want to see 403 errors but I was happy with the customer service, fast and no quibble.

But the 403 errors have not gone way, in fact I am seeing them more often and not just when in the square mile in London. When I complained again I got a different level of service, I got the ‘it is your handset’ response. This was even though I had clearly said FTP and HTTPS (to an Exchange server) were fine it was only HTTP again via the phones two browsers and from a PC using the phone as a 3G modem i.e. traffic that they proxy.

They outdid themselves today with this suggestion

1. Switch off your phone
2. Remove battery and SIM
3. Clean it with clean cotton cloth
4. Insert battery and SIM after 15 to 20 minutes

How this is meant to help a server side error how? 

by But it works on my PC!
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TF237195 error when creating a new team project
Thu, May 13 2010 14:14

After upgrade TFS 2010 RC to RTM you might see a problem when you try to create a new team project. The creation fails with error:

Module: Engine
Event Description: TF30162: Task "Queries" from Group "WorkItemTracking" failed
Exception Type: Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.PcwException
Exception Message: TF237195: The following user name is not supported: [SERVER]\$$PROJECTCOLLECTIONADMINGROUP$$

The answer is simple, but I had missed it!

Make sure that you are creating your new team project from a copy of the 2010 RTM version of Tem Explorer. If you use the RC version you will see the error.

by But it works on my PC!
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My article on Typemock Insider Blog
Tue, May 11 2010 4:32

I have an article posted on the Typemock Insider blog about the Typemock Academy I attended.

by But it works on my PC!
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TFS 2010 RC –> RTM upgrade problem with the warehouse
Mon, May 10 2010 7:46

I recently did an in-place upgrade of a TFS 2010 RC  to RTM box. All appeared to be going fine, all the verification in the upgrade wizard passed, but when I hit configure the first step failed. It said there was a missing  dbo.sysobjects in the warehouse DB. I then had to resort the configuration DB as it was partly upgraded to try again as the DB was left partially upgraded.

I got round this problem by telling the upgrade to ignore the reporting side of TFS. The upgrade completed without issue. I was then able to re-add the reporting via the TFS administration console (optional configuration of features in 2010 is really useful!). I actually chose to recreate the warehouse DBs anew to make sure I was bringing over no corruption. Once TFS had rebuild all the DBs and cubes all was working fine.

So the technical tip: if upgrading TFS 2010 and you are getting a problem with the reporting sub system, consider bypassing the upgraded and just rebuilding that system when you are finished

by But it works on my PC!
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TF246064 upgrading TFS 2010RC to RTM
Tue, May 4 2010 5:53

I have a basic installation of TFS 2010 running on my Windows 7 laptop. This is really useful for testing build customisation and the like, a great new feature for 2010. Today I got around to trying to upgrade it from RC to RTM, but on the verification test I got the error

[ Configuration Database ] TF255407: An error occurred while attempting to validate the configuration database. Error message: TF246064: No database could be found for the following host: TestCollection. The host has the following ID: eaf3c572-8657-4268-9852-3d73a799cdf5. To fix this problem, use the TFSConfig RemapDBs command-line tool and make sure that you specify the SQL Server instance that contains this database.

Turns out I had been a bit stupid. I had created a couple of test team project collections (TPC) whilst testing some attach/detach scenarios for a client. I deleted the underlying SQL DBs, but not deleted the TCP in TFS, I guess as part of some test, but for the life of me I cannot remember why.

So as the error message suggested I tried to run the TFSConfig command

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Tools>tfsconfig remapdbs /sqlinstances:Typhoon\sqlexpress /databaseName:typhoon\sqlexpress;TFs_configuration
Logging sent to file C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Team Foundation\Server Configuration\Logs\CFG_CFG_AT_0504_090019.log
Command: remapDBs
TfsConfig - Team Foundation Server Configuration Tool
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
The Team Foundation Server configuration could not be reconfigured. The following errors were encountered:

TF246064: No database could be found for the following host: test1. The host has the following ID: 4e9b737a-b666-48f4-9411-20249aed7ae0. To fix this problem, use the TFSConfig RemapDBs command-line tool and make sure that you specify the SQL Server instance that contains this database.
TF246064: No database could be found for the following host: TestCollection. The host has the following ID: eaf3c572-8657-4268-9852-3d73a799cdf5. To fix this problem, use the TFSConfig RemapDBs command-line tool and make sure that you specify the SQL Server instance that contains this database.

So the same error as the upgrade wizard. I also tried detaching and deleting the TCP, but got:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Tools>tfsconfig collection /delete /collectionName:TestCollection
Logging sent to file C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Team Foundation\Server Configuration\Logs\CFG_TPC_AT_0504_090828.log
Command: collection
TfsConfig - Team Foundation Server Configuration Tool
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Could not find file 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Application Tier\Web Services\web.config'.

But this failed as I had already removed the 2010RC instance, so there was no web.config to read.

So what to do?

I opened SQL Management Studio and connected to my local SQL instance, open the Tfs_Configuration DB and found the tbl_ServiceHost table. I then removed the rows that referenced the TPC that had I deleted the DB for. Of course I had made sure I had a backup of the DB before I started.

Once this was done the upgrade wizard passed verification and completed without error.

Now I would not recommend this as a good way to work, but it did get me out of a hole. In my case it was only a test system so if I lost it, it was not that important. However it is good to know there is a reasonably simple solution address problems with missing TPC DBs

Technical Tip: Make sure all your TPCs are valid before you start the upgrade process, so you don’t see this issue in the first place!

by But it works on my PC!
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