Fred Mastropasqua

This weekend I attended the Orlando .Net Code Camp, 2010.  It was really good and I’m glad I went.  I even won a book, Professional ASP.NET 4 in C# and VB in a raffle drawing; I never win stuff :) I want to say thanks Microsoft!

Silverlight Animations 101

by Henry Lee from www.newagesolution.net

My first class of the day. This was a good class for me, because I wanted to know more about Silverlight animation. Granted some of it I already knew from using Blend and recently developing a business tool in SL, such as the VisualStateManager, but other little things I picked up were nice to knows and stuff I would like to dive into more later when I have time.

Behavior Driven Development (BDD)

by Sean Chambers, files at http://github.com/schambers/orlandocodecamp2010
http://www.lostechies.com/blogs/sean_chambers/

This was a great class in learning a new way of thinking and testing.  Developing test cases and application requirements from the outside in. Similar to GWT (Given When Then). I got a lot of good info from this on BDD vs TDD.  A neat tool that was mentioned was SpecUnit which reads your BDD and generates a cool Html document from it.  Also, due to the nature of Ruby on Rails, there is a good book on BDD for Ruby. Though it’s for Ruby, the theory is the same. It was recommended. The RSpec Book.  The method was developed by Dan North.

Some tools mentioned were CruiseControl.Net, Resharper or Coderush templates and Autokey Bdd.

Successfully Running Your Own Business

by Paul Swengler

Good class for someone that’s never run or had a business before. I thought I’d get something out of it, but unfortunately I already knew all the info. Went over a lot of basics and obvious that people overlook.

WCF RIA Services

by John McFetridge http://jmcfetridge.blogspot.com/

I’m sorry John, but I had to walk out of the class. I just couldn’t sit in there anymore.  I’ve already developed SL apps talking with WCF but not with RIA or Entities or Domain Service. However, this class was way to fast and just all over the place that it hurt my head and I had to leave. Best thing I got out of it was Saurabh Pant’s weblog.

From there I went into a jQuery class halfway in, but already knew the material.

Introduction to Azure and SQL Azure

by Joe Healy http://dfwiki.devfish.net

Now, this was a great class. Great and better understanding of Azure since the first time I sat in on it, when it was still fresh out the womb at Microsoft.  Makes so much sense for small companies or even large ones to have tools developed that can be scaled to fit sudden bursts and spikes in traffic for a fraction of the cost if you were to house your own sever farm. SQL for Azure has come a long way as well and it was exciting to see it in action.  There’s also the free pricing model for small apps and testing.

I got a lot of information out of this class. Some things I want to look up for later is Jeff Bernes’ case study as he in Tampa like myself.   Jim Zimmermon and the Tampbay.net group.  Using Bizspark or Website Spark to get access to the MSDN and 8 months of Azure for free.

Note, need to use SQL Manager R2 with Azure and also I want to look more into SQL 2008 Geospacing. 

Local SQL to SQL Azure and SQL Azure to local SQL tool, SQLAzureMW at codeplex.

Understanding Lambda’s in .Net

by Scott Dorman at http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/

This was about Lambda expressions in C#. Was good but since I mainly develop in VB.Net, just made me a little jealous :p

Design for Developers

by Diane Leeper at http://www.dianeleeper.com/ and blog at http://www.42stars.com/blog/

This was another great class where I walked away with a lot of information on design. She gave out 5 rules.

#1 – Alignment & Grid
#2 – Focus
#3 – Art
#4 – Pictionary
#5 – Community

I won’t dive into those and take away her thunder but it will help me remember. Some books that were recommended.  Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, also The Back of the Napkin, which is more up my alley.

Some community links she gave out..

http://abduzeedo.com/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/
http://www.visitmix.com/
http://2009.max.adobe.com/online/
http://videos.visitmix.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/design/toolbox

The End

And that about wraps it up.  Also, came across Russ there who does Silverlight training. http://www.russtoolshed.net/

They say it will all be on Channel9 soon at msdn.

Developer Tools, Education, Travel, Web Tools, Training & Learning CodeCamp

I’ve put together, from the Microsoft Site a Step-By-Step plan for getting certifications by Microsoft in the areas of .Net 3.5 Development, Team Foundation Server, Sharepoint and SQL 2008.

I’ve listed in order that you need to study and take exams that makes the most sense. The links go back to the Microsoft site Training/Certification pages.  This list is to make it easy.  Just follow it down and you study the book or e-learning class, then you take the listed exam and you get the listed certification.

.Net Framework, Developer Tools, ASP.NET, Programming, Microsoft, Visual Studio, Education microsoft certifications, education

Ok who at Microsoft can I go hug and bow down too for creating Test and Lab and Test Runner and the CodedUI Recorder script generator.  Client of mine wanted to do more automated and better testing of their web apps. I knew VS 2010 had new testing tools but didn’t know to what extent. So I did some quick research and installed it on my own and tried it out against a business application I develop.  Wow.

I still have a lot to learn on it’s use but in 5min I created a script that I could automate and test the UI functionality of the business web app.

Applications to look at:

• Visual Studio 2010
• Microsoft Test and Lab Management 2010 (Yes this only works with Team Foundation Server 2010. If you have TFS 2008, you’re out of luck.
• Microsoft Test Runner 2010 (Comes as part of Test and Lab I believe)

Some quick overview features

1. You can record your testing and play it back later to automate it
2. It’s designed for non-developers but not end-users, for someone in QA
3. With this tool you can have “Shared” scripts, so say you create 100 scripts and we change the login functionality. You would only need to edit that one shared script and all the other 100 are changed.
4. Manual Testing can be turned into automated testing
5. You can setup test environments for local, QA and Prod
6. You can do full screen capture when manual testing and it will create Bug item in Team Foundation System with your screen shots and all the steps you performed and what data was used when you were developing.
7. You can use datasource for username’s and passwords and addresses to test with etc.
8. You can perform Coded UI Automated Scripts without coding anything, a recorder records and generates it for you.

You can view the Test and Lab Management Video here, skip ahead to 13:10 into video to see it in action. http://mschnlnine.vo.llnwd.net/d1/ch9/2/8/2/3/7/4/104Episode23AnIntroductionToManualTesting_ch9.wmv

CodedUI Functionality in VS 2010 Video. Fast forward to 2:20 to 7:10:  (You can do this on any VS 2008 project you have, using VS 2010 only) http://mschnlnine.vo.llnwd.net/d1/ch9/5/4/1/8/6/4/104Episode18FunctionalUITesting_2MB_ch9.wmv

Good Post on some of the Lab stuff: The Microsoft Test Runner – innovation for the Generalist Tester

Visual Studio, Troubleshooting, Developer Tools, Microsoft automated testing, software testing, software, microsoft, visual studio 2010

As a developer I always have to write code to send emails, here's a quick way as a developer to make sure the SMTP Server is working properly.

Telnet to Port 25 to Test SMTP Communication

1. Telnet into Exchange or SMTP Server using port 25.
Command is telnet <servername> 25

c:\>telnet 192.168.0.5 25
220 fredmastro.com Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 6.0.3790.1830 ready at  Sun, 29 Nov 2009 10:22:22 -0400

2.Start by typing the following:
helo <your domain name><enter>                 
response should be as follows
250 OK

c:\>helo
250 fredmastro.com Hello [10.x.x.x]

3. Type the following command to tell the receiving SMTP server who the message is from:

mail from: <your Email Address><enter>
response should be as follows
250 OK - mail from <your Email address>

For example,

c:\>mail from: fredmastro@fredmastro.com
250 2.1.0 fredmastro@fredmastro.com....Sender OK

4.Type the following command to tell the receiving SMTP server whom the message is to. Use a valid recipient SMTP address in the domain that you are sending to.

For example, if you are sending to someguy@gmail.com, you must be certain that someguy@gmail.com exists in your domain. Otherwise, you will receive an NDR.

rcpt to: <recipient address><enter>
response should be as follows
250 OK - Recipient <recipient address>

For example, 
c:\>rcpt to: someguy@gmail.com
250 2.1.5 someguy@gmail.com

5.Type the following command to tell the SMTP server that you are ready to send data:

data<enter>
response should be as follows
354 Send data.  End with CRLF.CRLF

c:\>data
354 Start mail input; end with <CRLF>.<CRLF>
Test Message
.

250 2.6.0 <someguy@gmail.com>
 Queued mail for delivery

6. Close the connection by typing the following command:
c:\>QUIT

Another good reference: http://www.messagingtalk.org/content/470.html

Developer Tools, Troubleshooting exchange, smtp, email

So I am now using Windows Live Writer for my blog posts. This, I think, is a must have for blogging. It can connect to different blog systems like Community Server, which is what I use, and you get the benefit of using a client base application like word, for posting up your posts.  Now I can spell check! Hooray!  Many cool add-ons you can install with it, like code snippets, insert videos, Amazon links etc..

Anyway, just wanted to write my first post using Live Writer.

Update: I've since moved off of Community Server, which was just a bit to slow for me, and have now moved on to BlogEngine.Net. It's much better and I can still use Windows Live Writer!

Gadgets & Cool Stuff, Developer Tools blogging, software, windows live writer, blogengine.net

So you're setting up a new Workspace for Team Foundation and you get an error when you try and point a Source Control Project to a local folder that someone else was using as well..... Then you get the error message....

Error: "The working folder ... is already in use by another workspace on this computer"

I ran into this problem setting up a contractor's PC after the previous contractor using that PC had left.

The problem is you can't just go load up and delete workspaces unless your the owner. So in order to solve the problem I had to run a command line command for Team Foundation. Open Visual Studio 200x Command Prompt.

Tf workspace /delete developer05;<domain>\jsmith

To get that info I needed the owner name of the workspace and the workspace name. You can do

tf workspaces

You can find a list of Team Foundation (tf) commands here:

tf workspaces [/owner:ownername] [/computer:computername]
[/server:servername] [/format:(brief|detailed)] 

tf workspace /delete [/server:servername] workspacename[;workspaceowner]

Note: Common mistake is to forget the domain name of the owner if you are on a domain. <domain>\UserName

Troubleshooting, Visual Studio, Developer Tools team foundation, tfs, visual studio, troubleshooting