At last, my creature it lives……..

I have at last worked all the way through setting up my portable end to end demo of  testing using Windows Test and Lab Manager. The last error I had to resolve was the tests not running in the lab environment (though working locally on the development PC). My the Lab Workflow build was recorded as a partial success i.e. it built, it deployed but all the tests failed.

I have not found a way to see the detail of why the tests failed in VS2010 Build Explorer. However, if you:

1. Go into MTLM,
2. Pick Testing Center
3. Select the Test Tab
4. Pick the Analyze Test Results link
5. Pick the test run you want view
6. The last item in the summary is the error message , as you can see in my case it was that the whole run failed not any of the individual tests themselves

So my error was “Build directory of the test run is not specified or does not exist”. This was caused because the Test Controller (for me running as Network Service) could not see the contents of the drop directory. The drop directory is where the test automation assemblies are published as part of the build. Once I gave Network Service read rights to access the \\TFS2010\Drops share my tests, and hence my build, ran to completion.

It has been a interesting journey to get this system up and running. MTLM when you initially look at it is very daunting, you have to get a lot of ducks in a row and there are many pitfalls on the way. If any part fails then nothing works, it feels like a bit of a house of cards. However if you work though it step by step I think you will come to see that the underlying architecture of how it hangs together is not as hard to understand as it initially seems. It is complex and has to be done right, but you can at least see why things need to be done. Much of this perceived complexity for me a developer is that I had to setup a number of ITPro products I am just not that familiar with such as SCOM and Hyper-V Manager. Maybe the answer is to make your evaluation of this product a joint Dev/ITPro project so you both learn.

I would say that getting the first build going (and hence the underlying infrastructure) seems to be the worst part. I feel that now I have a platform I understand reasonably, that producing different builds will not be too bad. I suspect the next raft of complexity will appear when I need a radically different test VM (or worse still a networks of VMs) to deploy and test against.

So my recommendation to anyone who is interest in this product is to get your hands dirty, you are not going to understand it by reading or watching videos, you need to build one. So find some hardware, lots of hardware!

Problem creating workitems on TFS2010 in the morning

I recently been working with a client who has been seeing strange problems when they try to create new workitems via a SharePoint portal site on a TFS2010 Beta2 installation. They appeared to have a fully working TFS2010 installation, but when they came in on a morning they found that even though they could login to the TFS created SharePoint team site they could not create a new workitems, they got an “Error 403 Access Forbidden”.

If they logged into SharePoint as a user with system administration rights it all worked fine. Now here is the strange bit, if they then logged in the user who got the 403 error it all worked fine, but when they came in the next morning it all happened again.

Turned out the issue was due to underling file access rights, once these were fixed all was OK. basically only the admin user had enough rights to populate a cache. Why this had occurred was still a bit of a mystery, but it is something you might see on any SharePoint installation. If you see a issue similar to this, the best option is to use Process Monitor to see if there are any file IO problems. This should point you in the right direction

A call for speaker at next month Agile Yorkshire meeting

Next months Agile Yorkshire meeting (10th Feb) is an open floor meeting - any subject, any format, 10 minute maximum.

If you fancy doing something in one of the 10 minute slots - whether it is a presentation, a demonstration, a discussion around a problem area - then visit

http://www.agileyorkshire.org/event-announcements/10Feb2010 to register your idea.

Presentations can be marked as provisional if you like the idea but are unsure until later whether you will be ready, available, etc.

Empty page being show for Silverlight application running out of browser

Whilst preparing demo’s for our design event next week I hit a problem with the out of browser experience in Silverlight 3. I had decided to add the out of browser settings to our 2009 Christmas Card Silverlight application. To do this all you need to do is check a box on the project settings

I ran the application in the browser and all was OK, I right clicked to installed it to the desktop and it ran OK but I got an empty white screen

Turns out the problem was due to a trick we had pulled in the page load. The comic page is a bit long, we had found that of we set the SIlverlight control in the browser page to the comic height the loading spinner could often appear off the bottom of the browser window (especially if the window was not maximised). To address this we set the height of the Silverlight Control small in the containing web page, then at the end of the loading reset it the required height. The fact we were trying to access an HTML Control was the problem, when you are out of the browser there is no HTML page to access.

The solution was single, wrapper the call in conditional test

 if (Application.Current.IsRunningOutOfBrowser == false)
 {
      // resize to the correct size, we keep the height small during the load so the loading spinner is easy to see
      // remember this only works if in a browser
      HtmlPage.Document.GetElementById("silverlightControlHost").SetStyleAttribute("height", "930px");
 }

.csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }

One this change was made the application worked fine both inside and outside the browser

Giving Twitter Notify a try

After attending Eileen Brown’s session on Social networking last night, I though I should make more of an effort. So I am giving Twitter Notify a try, so at least there is some activity on my Twitter account when I blog.

So you want to demo VS2010 Lab Manager…….

I recently decided to build a demo system for VS2010 Lab Manager. This was for a number of reasons, not least I just wanted to have a proper play with it, but also that I was hoping to do a session on Microsoft Test and Lab Manager at DDD8 (as it turns out my session did not get voted for, maybe better luck for DDS, you can still vote for that conference’s sessions).

Anyway if any of you have looked at the Lab Manager side of MTLM you will know that getting it going is no quick task. Firstly I cannot recommend highly enough the Lab Management Teams’ blog posts ‘Getting started with Lab Management’ Parts 1, 2 ,3 and 4. This type of walkthrough post is a great way to move into a new complex product such as this. It provides the framework to get you going, it doesn’t fix all your problems but gives you a map to follow into the main documentation or other blog posts.

The architecture I was trying to build was as below. My hardware was a Shuttle PC as this was all I could find in the office that could take 8Gb of memory, the bare minimum for this setup. Not as convenient as a laptop for demos, but I was not going to bankrupt myself getting an 8Gb laptop!

As I wanted my system to be mobile, it needed to be it’s own domain (demo.com). This was my main problem during the install. MTLM assumes the host server and all the VMs are in the same domain, but that the domain controller (DC) is on some other device on the domain. I installed the DC on the host server; this meant I had to do the following to get it all to work (I should say I did all of these to get my system running, but they may not all be essential, but they are all sensible practice so probably worth doing)

• Run the VMM Host as a user other than the default of Local System (this is an option set during the installation). The default Local System user has reduced rights on a domain controller, and so is not able to do all that it needs to. I create a new domain account (demo\VMMserver) and used this as the service account for the VMM.
• The ‘Getting Started’ blog posts suggest a basic install of TFS, this just installs source control, work item tracking and build services using a SQL Express instance. This is fine, but this mode defaults to using the Network Service account to run the TFS web services. This has the same potential issues as the Local System account on the DC, so I swapped this to use a domain account (demo\TFSservice) using the TFS Administration console. 
• AND THIS IS THE WIERD ONE AND I SUSPECT THE MOST IMPORTANT. As I was using the host system as a DNS and DHCP the VMs needed to be connected to the physical LAN of the host machine to make use of these services. However as I did not want them to pickup my office’s DHCP service I left the physical server’s Ethernet port unplugged. This meant that when I tried to create a new lab environment I got a TF259115 error. Plugging in a standalone Ethernet hub (connected to nothing else) fixed this problem. I am told this is because part of the LAN stack on the physical host is disabled due to the lack of a physical Ethernet link, even though the DNS and DHCP services were unaffected. The other option would have been to run the DNS, DHCP etc on Hyper-V VM(s).
• When configuring the virtual lab in TFS Administration console the ‘Network Location’ was blank. If you ignore this missing Network location or manually enter it you get a TF259210 error when you verify the settings in TFS Administration. This is a known problem in SCVMM and was fixed by overriding the discovered network and entering demo.com.

So I now had a working configuration, but when I try to import my prepared test VM into Lab Center, I got an “Import failed, the specified owner is not a valid Active Directory Domain Services account, Specify a valid  Active Directory Domain Services account and try again” error. If I check the SCVMM jobs logs (in SCVMM Admin console) I saw this was an Error 813 in the ‘create hardware setup’ step. However, the account the job was running as was a domain user, as was the service account the host was running on (after I had made the changes detailed above) as I was confused.

This turns out to be a user too stupid error; I was logged in as the TFS servers local administrator (tfs2010\administrator) not the domain one (demo\administrator), or actually any domain account with VMM administrator rights. Once I logged in on the TFS server (where I was running MTLM) as a domain account all was OK. Actually I suspect moving to the VMMService and TFSService accounts was not vital, but did not harm.

I could now create my virtual test environment and actually start to create Team Builds that make use of my test lab environment. Also I think having worked though these problems I have a better understanding of how all the various parts underpinning MTLM hang together, a vital piece of knowledge if you intend to make real use of these tools.

 

Needed to add a BVT property in

 

 

Thanks to everyone he help me when I got stuck

so

The uptake of Agile and Alt.Net practices in places a bit away from the major development hotspots

Last week I got into an interesting discussion via email with Nieve a developer from Lille, France.The chat was on the uptake of Agile and Alt.Net practices in places a bit away from the major development hotspots. We both thought it could make an interesting post so, here goes, starting with Nieve’s first post…..

Hello there,I've stumbled upon your blog while googling for the terms alt.net yorkshire.I'm a .NET developer working in Paris and living in the north of France (Lille area). Now, the reason I'm writing is that we're having an alt.net lunch next month, and I would like to talk a bit about the differences between the (alt).net communities in france and england. Now since I did my studies in Leeds, the fact that yorkshire and la région du nord are (surprise surprise) in the north (plus a shared history of mines) brought me to google for alt.net and yorkshire.Over here in Lille/the north of France the situation is rather grim. job offers that entail agile practices and or tools in .NET environment are as rare as an eclipse, managers and developers alike are literally afraid of any framework/tool that isn't microsoft yet somehow miraculously written in a .net language. I suppose you get the picture. I was wondering if you would mind sharing with me (and/or others, on your blog) your thoughts on the situation in yorkshire.

My reply

I don't know if you have heard of Ian Cooper, he was one of the organisers of the ALT.NET events in the UK. Well he just posted on his blog on a subject very close to your question http://codebetter.com/blogs/ian_cooper/archive/2010/01/19/whither-alt-net.aspx

In my opinion there has not been a drop of in interest over the tools and practices of ALT.NET but it has lost it’s label a bit. Ian is right the main people pushing it have moved more towards Twitter etc. which has reduced visibility if you don't follow them.

Local groups are still on the go. I myself attend Agile Yorkshire http://www.agileyorkshire.org/ which is a group driven by development process (being JAVA and .NET) but did help organise the ALT.NET in the North event last year. We hope to run something this year, but we doubt it will be under the ALT.NET banner as it was felt this alienated JAVA members

As to who is using the tools, no as many as I would hope. But you find them in surprising places. I found out that a dev teams in the NHS (usually known to be very bureaucratic and fixed management process) are using Kanban, nHibernate etc. and finding them useful. Getting adoption is all down to someone showing there is an advantage, the problem is so few people in our industry care about improving their skills, it all comes back as Ian said to the software craftsmanship movement

Nieve again

First of all let me begin by saying I only wish I could tell you how much I am thankful. Reading Ian's post was a something of an epiphany moment :) At some points he brought it so close to home that I had to stop and think 'hold on, is he just talking about software development or is there a hidden message about the state of France..?' Over here it's not only the IT industry that breeds this sort of position holders that are fine where they are and just won't bother changing anything. I always think of it as 'with all that revolution going on, you don't get any evolution'; the idea is that everyone here are jumping to their feet and straight to the street to cry against whatever change that is offered, that nothing ever gets to change hence no evolution...

To get back to the issue in question, I think one of the things Ian, and for that matter many of the ALT.NET people, tend to forget or simply overlook is the fact that while at some parts of the world people may think the battle was won, or that it's about time to wake up from our comfortable twitter hibernation, in some other parts the battle hasn't even began, which brings me back to my original question. See, you guys up the in England and esp. in the north can be very proud of your community, and not only the alt.net/agile/software development/IT one, but also the local-geographical community. I had to go and look for a job in Paris, which entails a couple of hours on the train each and every day and which is bound to end by leaving Lille (and no wonder I'm considering moving back to yorkshire); Not only developers and managers are afraid of anything that is not microsoft, the actual idea of software craftsmanship is an abnormality in our region. There is a Nord-agile group that works here and have meetings every couple of months and consists of 5 to 7 people, none of them a .net person. And we're talking about a huge region and one of france's 5 biggest cities.

With that in mind, there's also the fact that roughly each and every year a new generation of developers is arriving to the market which makes it even more difficult to those (esp the beginners to senior-juniors) who wants to learn and work on their coding craftsmanship. (I remember I discovered the alt.net manifest only a couple of years ago or so, and soon after I remember reading a post of Ayende saying he's going to give Twitter a shot. Thank god, he's one of those who never stopped blogging.)

As for Paris, things seem to be closer to what Ian said; there are a lot more job offers that ask for a working experience in NH, MVC, NUnit etc', however this feels like the new orthodoxy.

… and me again

So to me this shows that the problem we both see are not just down to us at our company/technology/region/country. Craftsman Developers everywhere tend to sit in small isolated pockets, even in large conurbations, and there is nothing to go but to organise locally where you can, go on go for a beer you know you want to, and to join in the virtual communities to get a bigger world view.

Wow, that sounds like a call to revolution, better go into hiding in case the thought people come round, I know I will just have to think I am not in!

Running Typemock Isolator based tests in TFS 2010 Team Build

I have been looking at getting automated builds running on TFS2010 that make use of Typemock Isolator. This is not as straight forward as you would expect.

The issue is that you have start Isolator’s mocking interceptor before you run any tests that use Typemock (and stop it afterwards). If you are running in the VS IDE this is all done automatically, but is not done as part of an MSBuild Team Build Process by default.

In prior versions of TFS a solution was provide by Typemock in the form a pair of MSBUILD Tasks to start and stop the mocking process which you wired into your team build definition file, something like the example below

<Import Project="C:\Program Files\Typemock\Isolator\4.3\TypeMock.MSBuild.Tasks" />
<Target Name="BeforeTest">
<TypeMockStart LogPath="C:\TypeMockLogs" LogLevel="9" Target="3.5" />
</Target>
<Target Name="AfterTest">
<TypeMockStop />
</Target>

The problem with 2010 is that you no longer get this single MSBUILD file to manage the Team Build, it is now a XAML workflow. I know I could use the model for legacy support of the older build process, but where is the fun in that?

Attempt 1 – Adding more MSBuild projects

My first idea was to add a MSBUILD activity just before the MSTEST activity block (and another after to stop the mocking interceptor) and pointed it at a Typemock.Proj file (placed in in a suitable location) and calling the correct target. The proj file is shown below

<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <TypeMockLocation> C:\Program Files (x86)\Typemock\Isolator\6.0</TypeMockLocation>
  </PropertyGroup>

  <Import Project ="$(TypeMockLocation)\TypeMock.MSBuild.Tasks"/>
  <Target Name="StartTypeMock">
    <Message Text="StartTypeMock"/>
    <TypeMockStart/>
  </Target>
  <Target Name="StopTypeMock">
    <Message Text="StopTypeMock"/>
    <TypeMockStop/> 
</Target>
</Project>

In the build logs I could see the activities ran, and a typemock.log file is created for the MSBuilds (note a problem here that as I use the same proj for both the start and stop build target the log file gets over written, so a good idea is to pass in explicit log file names for each call to MSBUILD). However, even though everything seemed to run OK the test that need Typemock fail with the error

Test method CallTracker.BusinessLogic.Tests.PrintTests.PrintAllCalls_TypeMockedPrinter_2CallsPrinted threw exception:
TypeMock.TypeMockException:
*** Typemock Isolator is not currently enabled.
To enable do one of the following:
* To run Typemock Isolator as part of an automated process you can:
   - run tests via TMockRunner.exe command line tool
   - use 'TypeMockStart' tasks for MSBuild or NAnt
* To work with Typemock Isolator inside Visual Studio.NET:
        set Tools->Enable Typemock Isolator from within Visual Studio
For more information consult the documentation (see 'Running' topic)

This is exactly the error you expect if you have not started the mocking interceptor.

After a chat with Typemock support I understood the problem. In the TFS 2005/8 model we had a single MSBUILD process running. It compiled the code, ran the tests, it did everything. So if we started mocking interception in this process everything was good and it all worked. Under the 2010 model we have the new XAML based process, this starts a MSBUILD process to do the compile, and in our case another to start mocking, then MSTest to run and finally another MSBUILD to stop mocking. So we have at least four process within the build and the reality is we have only switched on mocking for the duration of the MSBUILD task calling the StartTypemock task.

Attempt 2 – Other task types

I did also look at starting mocking using the INVOKEMETHOD task and by calling the Typemock provided batch files. These all resulted in the same basic problem, mocking was not switched on when MSTest ran.

A solution

The solution is to use the TMockRunner.EXE that is shipped with TypeMock Isolator. This is a wrapper EXE that runs a command line tools passing in the required set of parameters. All the TMockRunner does is, as the name suggests, start and stop the mocking as needed.

To get this to work I removed the MSTest task in the build workflow and replaced it will a InvokeProcess one with the following parameters

FileName: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Typemock\Isolator\6.0\TMockRunner.exe"
Arguments: """C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\MSTest.exe""  /nologo /testcontainer:""" + String.Format("{0}\Binaries\Testproject.dll", BuildDirectory) + """ /publish:""http://typhoon:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection"" /publishbuild:""" + BuildDetail.Uri.ToString() + """ /teamproject:""" + BuildDetail.TeamProject + """ /platform:""Any CPU"" /flavor:""Debug"" /resultsfile:""" + String.Format("{0}\Binaries\Test.Trx", BuildDirectory) + """  "

A few things to note on the arguments and settings

1. The arguments have to appear as a single string, so this is why you have all the double quotes escaping
2. The Resultsfile is dumped into the binaries directory as this is cleaned out on each build. It has to go in an existing directory (we have no TestResults by default, of course we could create one, but why go to the effort?). This is a simple solution as the MSTest still seems to fail if the Test.TRX file already exists, Note I did try to use the /resultsfileroot parameter (which is used by default by the 2010 MSTest task) but this is not support via the command line.
3. I would like to pickup the publish URL, platform and flavor automatically, I need to dig port into the TFS API to find these values at build time.
4. I have not wired the MSTest output back into the main log, so it is hard to see what has happened without just looking for the creation of the TRX file.
5. Watch out for DCOM activation errors. There is a good chance the user you are running the build process as does not have the right to run anything else. If your InvokeProcess seems to do nothing check the build PCs error log for DCOM activation errors and either give the build user the correct rights or swap to a user that already has the rights.

Once this was all done I could do my build and the test ran and passed.

The one remaining issues was to set the Test status for the build base done these results, I have no solution to that as yet, but I am still looking

DDD8 is full

I have been on a customer site today, locked in a machine room, and so have managed to miss the opening and closing of registration for DDD8. So, as neither of my session’s got enough votes (too test based I guess for the developer mainstream) to be on the schedule I guess I will not be attending.

Maybe I will have more luck on both the vote and registration fronts and see some of you a DDS

TFS 2010 Build Service Configuration Wizard fails with TF255425 error

I have at last got round to setting up a full installation VS 2010 Test and Lab Manager using the excellent notes from the Lab Management Team. Whist installing the build server portion I got a strange set of errors.

TF255425: An error occurred while installing the following Windows service: TFSBuildServiceHost.exe. For more information, open Event Viewer and review the application log.

Error

TF255070: Configuring services for Team Foundation Build failed with the following exception: TF255425: An error occurred while installing the following Windows service: TFSBuildServiceHost.exe. For more information, open Event Viewer and review the application log..

Further investigation found the installer was claiming it could not find required files and so could not complete the install.

After a good deal of ineffective fiddling I cam to the conclusion the issue must be user access. I was using the trial Windows Server 2008 R2 vhds as the basis of my TFS server and test VMs, now these default to US region and keyboard. This had gotten on my nerves and I thought I had changed it to UK settings. However, I must have done it wrong as I had a UK keyboard in WinForm application but not in a Command Prompt. Once I made sure that my region, keyboard (and associated defaults) were all set to UK (and were working as expected in all locations) I tried the wizard again and it worked.

So it seems the issue was an incorrect password being passed to the installer. Some how the @ in Pass@word1 was being translated behind the scenes I guess to “ and causing the wizard to fail, though it always passed the verify stage of the wizard.

So the technical tip is to make sure the keyboard and region are right before you start, bit of a newbie error there!

New UK ALM User Group Formed

Stuart Preston has just started an new UK ALM User Group, to quotes its blurb…

The UK ALM User Group is for practitioners of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) in the UK to get together and discuss and share ideas tools and techniques, as well as to socialise somewhere other than Agile and Software Development conferences!

Practitioners and enthusiasts from all disciplines are welcome. Membership is free. Please feel free to invite your UK based ALM network.

Looks very interesting, I hope there is enough critical mass of attendees to make it thrive. Why not join up and have your say?

Voting has opened for DDD8

You can now vote for the proposed sessions at the upcoming DDD8 conference, and what a good selection there is to choose from this time.

Why don’t I love my phone?

There seams to be loads of coverage at present over mobile platforms. Maybe I am just noticing it due to coverage of the CES show and the launch of the Nexus One, but the more mainstream media does seems to be taking a good deal of interest in the future of smartphones (or superphone as Google are calling their new one).

All the articles seems to Apple Vs. Android (and moving rapidly towards Apple Vs. Google). There is also usually a passing mention of Blackberry, then a ‘wonder where Nokia are?’ but usually very little on Microsoft. The article in this months UK edition of Wired is a classic example.

As a reasonably happy Windows Mobile 6.5 user (I have an HTC Diamond 2) I find this all very interesting. My phone works most of the time, does most of what I need and certainly does not need to be rebooted as much previous smartphones I have had. However, I have to say, it does not engender me with the missionary zeal iPhone (and I suspect future Nexus One) user have. They all seem to have a pure pleasure in the ownership and use of their device. My phone is a bit of kit that does the job most of time, I don’t love it or hate, it is what it is.

I do wonder if I moved to an iPhone would I be the convert so many others seem to be; or is it just my nature to not be such a devotee of any phone/car/coffee machines etc. or in fact objects and brands in general?

This all said, it is very noticeable that the Microsoft mobile platform (and actually the supporting eco-system e.g. the iPhone App Store) is lagging behind, the silence of Windows Mobile 7 just seems to drag on and on. Whatever comes out is going to have to make a big leap to catch up (let alone overtake) other vendors offerings.

Anyway whilst I was writing this post I see that Robert Scoble has posted probably a more consider review of the current state of the mobile space. Great minds think a like?

The Agile Yorkshire AGM is this week

The AGM is on the 14th Jan at the Victoria Hotel, 28 Great George St, Leeds. See here for directions. Come along and let us know the direction you would like the user group to follow.

A new user group - North East Bytes

There is a new user group starting up in the North East. It is taking an interestingly route of having meetings with two one hour sessions, one targeted at developers and the other for IT pros. The user group is free and there will be food and giveaways,

I like this idea, the danger with too many user groups is that they focus too much on their own little area; getting in some cross fertilisation between people with different views on problems is a great way to learn more.

NE Byres launch event is on the 20th of January in Room G11 of the Percy Building at Newcastle University. It will have sessions on Silverlight and SharePoint 2010.

For more details check out http://www.nebytes.net/

 

Upcoming Community Conferences

I am a bit behind the curve here but if you have not noticed DDD8 is planed for January in Reading and DDD Scotland in Glasgow for May.

Both conferences have open calls for speakers, so get your sessions in quick.

A busy week of presenting

The interest in Visual Studio 2010 is growing, I am presenting at two events this week and have another day of less formal meetings on the subject.

The event on Thursday is the Architecture Forum in the North we are hosting with Microsoft, there are still a few spaces available is if you are interested in the learning more about new techniques and tools why not come along. You even get to hear me talking about using TFS as a Java developers via Teamprise.

Hope to see you there.

Post PDC Thoughts

I realised I never did another post after my first at the PDC, now what does that tell you?

One thing it tells me is that blogs are not they primary news form for events now, it has moved onto Twitter. Though as yet I am still lagging behind on this one, I have an account but no tweets as yet. I find there is too much noise most of the on Twitter, it is useful when at an event like PDC to get the buzz, but for me not day to day (though I know I am missing stuff because of this view)

For me the key story a the PDC as a whole was that the Azure fabric can extend into your IT systems using AppFabric. This means I can easily see a day where you write an application for an internal IT system that can dynamically grow to an Azure data centre when needed for load or disaster recover, all without any special coding model because the Azure/AppFabic is ubiquitous.

So a light PDC from the blogging front, but one for of future architectural promise

Oh one last thought, on past trips to the USA I have been to the Baseball, which I like, not that dissimilar a night out to one at the Twenty20 cricket. This time we tried Basketball, less to my taste. When watched live it seem the game play just gets in the way of the adverts and the other various audience participation entertainment. I have never seen a sport with so many ways to stop and clock (and for so long!). Looks like I need to stay with bat and ball games.

PDC Keynote Day 1 thoughts

So the PDC2009 day 1 keynote is over and what was the story? Well it is more of a vision thing, but then again this is a PDC not a TechEd so what do you expect. For me the two major themes were

• Dallas – a centralised data service that allows unified access to both public and private via subscriptions. Thus allowing core data being used for any purpose the user requires within the EULA of the data in question. It will be interesting what will be published in this manner, is there a market for a centralised data clearing house? only time will tell.
• AppFabric – Basically taking the operating model for the Azure services and allow a company to have a similar model in their own IT system. Thus allowing code to be written that can work on the corporate system or Azure cloud without alteration. This I see as being big.,

So what was not mentioned, well it was mobile. The only comment was a ‘come to Mix in the spring for stuff about the next mobile offering. Whatever is shown there is going to have to very good to address the momentum of the iPhone. I think a good bet is that leveraging the Azure fabric might be important for the mobile offering

TF53010 error and no TFS Warehouse updates after a SQL migrate

We recently moved our central SQL server to new SAN hardware and at the same time upgraded from SQL2005 to SQL2008. Once this was done we noticed that our TFS Reports were running against old Warehouse data.

Checking the TFS Application Tier event log we saw:

TF53010: The following error has occurred in a Team Foundation component or extension:
Date (UTC): 21/10/2009 10:27:25
Machine: TFSAT
Application Domain: /LM/W3SVC/287244640/Root/Warehouse-2-129005451884971104
Assembly: Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Warehouse, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a; v2.0.50727
Process Details:
Process Name: w3wp
Process Id: 2716
Thread Id: 2848
Account name: MYDOMAIN\TFSSERVICE

Detailed Message: Cube processing runtime error: \r\nMicrosoft.TeamFoundation.Warehouse.WarehouseException: The following database is not accessible in the Analysis Server: TfsWarehouse at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Warehouse.OlapCreator.ProcessOlapNoTransaction(Boolean  schemaUpdated, UpdateStatusStore updateStatus, Server server, SqlTransaction transaction)
   at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Warehouse.OlapCreator.ProcessOlap(Boolean schemaUpdated, UpdateStatusStore updateStatus)
   at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Warehouse.AdapterScheduler.RunCubeProcess()

The problem was missing rights on the new 2008 Analysis Service instance. The quick fix was to give the MYDOMAIN\TFSSERVICE account administrator rights on the instance (SQL Management Studio, Connect to Analysis Service Instance, right click on instance, properties, security, add the user). Once this was done I could force a reprocess and all was OK