Visual Studio ALM Rangers – Visual Studio Database Guide “ships” … Cowabunga!

  • Article

Today we have just published a new Visual Studio ALM Rangers solution,another one in the series of the Visual Studio 2010 focused projects.

The exciting new family member includes …

Visual Studio Database Guide 

Practical guidance for Visual Studio 2010 Database projects, which is focused on 5 areas:

    • Solution and Project Management
    • Source Code Control and Configuration Management
    • Integrating External Changes with the Project System
    • Build and Deployment Automation with Visual Studio Database Projects
    • Database Testing and Deployment Verification

This release includes common guidance, usage scenarios, hands on labs, and lessons learned from real world engagements and the community discussions.

The goal is to deliver examples that can support you in real world scenarios, instead of an in-depth tour of the product features.

Rangers involved in this project are: Shishir Abhyanker (MSFT), Chris Burrows (MSFT), David V Corbin (MVP), Ryan Frazier (MSFT), Larry Guger (MVP), Barclay Hill (MSFT), Bob Leithiser (MSFT), Pablo Rincon (MSFT), Scott Sharpe (MSFT), Jens K. Süßmeyer (MSFT), LeRoy Tuttle (MSFT), Christian Bitter (MSFT), Regis Gimenis (MSFT), Rob Jarrat (MSFT), Bijan Javidi (MSFT), Mathias Olausson (MVP) and Willy-Peter Schaub (MSFT)

Jens and his team have delivered phenomenal work and you “must” download and appreciate the content!

 

Guidance Stats

For those that appreciate a more humorous approach to guidance … if printed (sorry trees), the Database Guide adds 24 mm of information in the form of guidance and hands-on-lab documentation to the bulk of Rangers content, which has grown to 92 mm for the Visual Studio 2010 related content.

 

What else is happening?

We are in the planning process for the new projects and will be sharing the details shortly. The two projects that have been given the green light are:

  • Lab Management Guide
  • Word plug-in for TFS 2010.

Details to follow …

Other shipped nuggets …

The other solutions can be found on our Rangers MSDN solutions page, but for the sake of quick access, here is a list:

  • Dev10, Visual Studio 2010 focused
    • Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance
      • Compact guidance for the field to cover Team System and TFS capabilities. The Rangers from the community involved with this project are Clementino Mendonca, Francisco Xavier Fagas Albarracín , Hassan Fadili , Jeff Bramwell , Robert MacLean , and Zayd Kara.
        • News: We are on a collection planning quick reference poster to complement the capacity planning poster. Watch this space for news.
    • TFS 2010 Upgrade Guidance
      • This project addresses the broad topic of migration and focuses especially on process template, reports, and Enhanced TFS Management. The Rangers from the community involved with this project are Anthony Borton and Neno Loje .
    • Visual Studio TFS Branching Guide 2010
      • This Ranger solution focuses on applied and practical examples of branching that you can use right now. The 2010 release includes discussions around branching concepts and strategies but also focuses on practical hands-on labs. The Rangers from the community involved with this project are Sin Min Lee , Neno Loje , and Mathias Olausson .
    • TFS 2010 Requirements Management
      • The 2008 version was about general requirements management best practices and the best you can do with our current tooling to support these best practices. The 2010 is part 2 of this Ranger guidance focusing on new features of 2010 and how these features deliver better support for our RM best practices. The Rangers from the community involved with this project are Francisco Xavier Fagas Albarracín , Hassan Fadili , Larry Guger , Sven Hubert , Ted Malone , Thomas Schissler, and Tiago Pascoal .
    • Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 Virtualization
      • Guidance for best recommendations for deployment of VSTS and TFS in virtual environments. The Rangers from the community involved with this project are Brian Randell, Corey Hynes, David Corbin, Etienne Tremblay, John Robbins, Robert MacLean , Ted Malone , Willie Roberts , and Zayd Kara .
        • News: We are planning new task sequences and support for latest server products. Watch this space for news.
    • Visual Studio 2010 Testing Guidance
      • This project’s goal is helping the Rangers to deliver version 2 of the already released VSTT 2008 Quick Reference Guide on Codeplex. This guide has been extremely well received by our customers and partners with almost 4K downloads and top feedback and rating. Version 2 will make the guide even more valuable by adding information about cool new 2010 features like web test recorder plug-in to make record playback work across a variety of applications, new logging and analysis features, and reporting results in Excel. See more details on Ed Glas’s blog. The 2010 release is also about converting the guide to an interactive help system format for easier use.
    • Visual Studio 2010 Architecture Tooling Guidance
      • Practical guidance for Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, focused on modelling tools. These release includes common usage scenarios, hands on labs and lessons learnt from the community discussions. The scenarios include understanding and reverse engineering an existing solution or starting a new solution from scratch. These are both common challenges that any dev lead or architect faces. The intent is not to give you an in-depth tour of the product features, but to present you with examples that show how these tools can support you in real world scenarios, and to provide you with practical guidance and checklists. This guidance is focused on practical ways of effectively using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and other tools to create a new or revised design as part of application lifecycle management.
        The Rangers involved with this project are: Alan Wills (MSFT), Bijan Javidi (MSFT), Christof Sprenger (MSFT), Clemens Reijnen (MVP), Clementino de Mendonca (MVP), Edward Bakker (MVP), Francisco Xavier Fagas Albarracín (MVP), Marcel de Vries (MVP), Michael Lehman (MSFT), Randy Miller (MSFT), Tiago Pascoal (MVP), Willy-Peter Schaub (MSFT), Suhail Dutta (MSFT), David Trowbridge (MSFT), Hassan Fadili (MVP), Mathias Olausson (MVP), Rob Steel (MSFT) and Shawn Cicoria (MSFT).
  • Other
    • Operations Guidance for Team Foundation Server
      • You can manage your deployment of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server more effectively if you create your own operations plan. As you create your plan, you should understand key elements of the architecture of Team Foundation Server and how your deployment topology affects operations. This white paper explains those elements in detail, so that you can avoid common problems with your deployment.
    • Project Server 2007 VSTS Connector
      • The Visual Studio Team System Project Server 2007 Connector is designed to integrate the project management capabilities of VSTS with Project Server 2007. It's been developed by the Visual Studio Team System Rangers in response to significant customer demand for a connector solution.
    • Sharepoint Server Custom Application Development: Document Workflow Management Project
      • Read about the real-world design, construction, and deployment of a custom SharePoint Server 2007 application to a mid-market enterprise customer using Team Foundation Server as an ALM platform.
    • Solution and Authored Artifact Development Models for SharePoint Products and Technologies
      • Learn to reconcile differences between artifact development and assembly development by combining components into a single version control repository, such as Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server.
    • SQL Load Test
      • This tool takes a SQL Profiler trace file and generates a unit test that replays the same sequence of database calls found in the trace file. The unit test is designed to be used in a Visual Studio Load Test. The code generated is easily modifiable so that data variation can be introduced for the purpose of doing performance testing.
    • Team Foundation Server 2008 Branching Guide 2.0
      • Practical guidance around branching and merging with Team Foundation Server 2008. The package includes guidance, scenarios, Q&A's, drawings, labs and lab files. You can also download guidance for Team Foundation Server 2005.
    • TFS Integration Platform
    • Team Test Quick Reference Guide
      • Practical guidance for Visual Studio Team Test. One single PDF file that includes topic areas such as setup considerations, load test results store information, test customization, and more.
    • Using TFS to Develop Custom Sharepoint Products and Technologies Applications
      • Use Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server to support SharePoint application development, and provide an integrated development environment and single source code repository for process activities, integrated progress reporting, and team roles.
    • WCF Load Test
      • This tool takes a WCF trace file and a WCF client proxy, or a WCF interface contract, and generates a unit test that replays the same sequence of calls found in the trace file. The code generated is easily modifiable so that data variation can be introduced for the purpose of doing performance testing.