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.

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

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

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!

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