I was complaining to my co-worker the other day that my output window in Visual Studio 2010 was not showing during a build.  I usually hit Ctrl+Shift+B, and while I appreciate the minimalist UI, I like to see what it’s doing.  All I would see was the status bar text saying, “build started…” followed by, “build succeeded”, or in same cases, “build failed”.

When I was watching my co-worker, the output window popped up showing a log of the progress.  I think this is the default but I don’t recall changing my configuration.  I do normally take the output window and unpin it so it stays out of the way and off my screen while I’m coding.  Perhaps the act of doing this flips the option.  I don’t know.  What I’m after is when compiling, slide the window up from the bottom and show a log of what is compiling.

I poked around and found the option to turn this on or off and here it is for future reference.

Tools –> Options –> Projects and Solutions –> General –> Show Output window when build starts

I’m posting this in case someone else comes across this strange bug.

I recently had a Silverlight project start displaying a vertical scrollbar in the window in IE8.

It turns out I had ‘formatted’ the page that hosts the Silverlight object control and that since the div element was on a separate line from the iframe element, it was causing the scrollbar to appear.

I tried playing around with the CSS since I don’t think it should matter how I have the angle brackets in the page but I finally gave up and just put it back the way it was.  This still feels dirty to me.

So if you are having similar issues.  Here’s at least one solution.

One of the helpful features of Team Foundation Server (TFS) is the ability to associate work items with the code that was changed or created for them during the check in process.  In the event that you forget to make this association during code check in, TFS allows you to link a code changeset to a work item after the fact.

After opening the work item you want to associate with a changeset, select the Links tab and click on the Add button.

Changeset is one of the options you can select in the Link type drop down box.

After you select Changeset, click on the Browse button to the right of Changeset text box inside Link details.  

TFS gives you a few different ways to locate the changeset you want to associate with a work item, including a specific file contained within the changeset, the user who checked the code in, the changeset number, and a date/time range.  

After you click Find, TFS presents you with a list of changesets meeting your criteria.  If you would like to review the files in a changeset before clicking OK, there is a Details button at the bottom left of the dialog box that will retrieve a list of the files in the changeset.

We do quite abit of .NET Development here at Perkins Consulting and like to stay on top of current technology, software architecture, and new technology.  I was lucky enough to be able to attend the Microsoft PDC 2009 Conference in Los Angeles, CA.  Below are some notes and details.

Recap

These are notes condensed from 4 days of note taking in OneNote.

Stuff that got announced

• Microsoft Pinpoint - greater assistance in lead generation - http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-US/ – I didn’t know this existed but it looks like it’s been around awhile
• Microsoft Codename "Dallas" - find, purchase and manage datasets - http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-US/Dallas - I think this is deployed via Sql Azure Services
• Azure - going live Jan start billing Feb
• IE9 in development
• Silverlight 4 Beta available now
• Office, SharePoint and Visio 2010 Public Beta as of now
• OData - official name for protocol for WCF Data Services (formerly ADO.NET Data Services or codename Astoria or AtomPub) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/ee844254.aspx
• SQL Server Modeling Services - Olso, M (textual modeling language), and Quadrant (data-driven applications) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/default.aspx, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/ee477952.aspx
• Duet Enterprise for SharePoint and SAP - consume and extend SAP from SharePoint 2010
• Outlook Social Connector - general SDK
• MIX10 - Conference in March in Vegas

Main Theme

3 screens and a cloud  (next 'wave' is Cloud computing [Mainframe (1970's) --> client-server (1980's) --> web (1990's) --> soa (2000's) --> cloud (2010's)]

• Phone, TV, PC
• Silverlight being the client mechanism (they are really pushing this to be the main UI mechanism)

Data playing increasingly larger role - Vivek Kundra - Chief Information Officer for the USA live via video feed

• make information public - for public consumption and transparency of data
• data.gov - searchable data catalogs

Conference Sessions Attended (11) + 1 pre-conference workshop

Workshop

1. Developing Microsoft BI Applications - The How and the Why
   1. Note that I struggled with this decision.  I signed up for Getting the Most out of Microsoft Silverlight 3 but having spent the last 9 months on a Silverlight project for one of our clients, I did not think it was going to be that beneficial.  There’s a ton of info on the web for Silverlight.  However, there’s not much for BI.  The Silverlight application I worked on sits on top of a Analysis Services Cube – the API is completely different than just throwing down a Entity Framework model on top of a relational database (which I did as well for some parts of it).  This app has an AdoMdDataReader, CellSet and MDX statements.  I was curious how others approached this area.

Sessions

1. Data Programming and Modeling for the .NET Developer - SQL Server Modeling Services
2. Overview of SharePoint 2010 Programmability
3. Evolving ADO.NET Entity Framework in Microsoft.NET Framework 4 and Beyond
4. SketchFlow: Prototyping to the Rescue
5. Microsoft Perspectives on the Future of Programming
6. Should I Use Silverlight, MVC, or Web Forms for Web User Interface Development?
7. Networking and Web Services in Silverlight
8. Advanced Topics for Building Large-Scale Applications with Microsoft Silverlight
9. Automating the App Lifecycle with Windows Azure
10. SQL Server Modeling Services: Using Metadata to Drive Application Design, Development and Management
11. Mastering Microsoft WCF RIA Services

Conference Sessions I wanted to attend, 44.

There was alot of concurrent session angst for me.  At any given time slot, there were 11 sessions and many of those I wanted to attend more than one in that time slot.  Luckily it was all being recorded and available at PDC, http://microsoftpdc.com/.  It will be interesting to see how making this all available online affects conference attendance in the future.

I might add that one of my favorite sessions, ‘Should I Use Silverlight, MVC, or Web Forms for Web User Interface Development?’, was an audience participation session where I got to talk quite alot because out of the mass of people in the session, I was one of the few using Silverlight in a LOB application for one of our clients.  However since it was audience participation, there is no video or audio available – an experience you can only get by being there.

Conclusion

Overall I thought this conference extremely worthwhile.  To be able to see the direction of the software industry and to see how much data is going to play a part in the future.  I think Perkins, having years of experience with Data Warehouse projects, is sitting in a perfect position to take advantage.