A Geek's Musings

Deleting Projects from TFS

Roland — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:32:34 +0000

MSDN article about TFSDeleteProject. Has usage and troubleshooting.

Just wanted to create a quick reference for myself for future use.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd206696.aspx

Use:
TFSDeleteproject [/q] [/force] [/server:servername] team project name

Argument	Description
Team project name	The name of the project. Use quotation marks if there are spaces in the name.
servername	The server name. Use quotation marks if there are spaces in the name.

Option	Description
/q	Use the quiet mode. Do not prompt the user for confirmation.
/server:servername	The name of the application-tier Team Foundation Server where the team project is located. This is required in multi-server environments.
/force	The program should continue even if some parts cannot be deleted.

*NOTE: TFSDeleteProject.exe is located in {Drive}\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE

TFS Power Tools Collaboration Error

Roland — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:13:44 +0000

A few days after installing the TFS Power Tools, I started getting error messages whenever I opened up the Team Explorer pane in Visual Studio. The exact error was:

Creating an instance of the COM component with CLSID {B69003B3-C55E-4B48-836C-BC5946FC3B28} from the IClassFactory failed due to the following error: 8007000e.

The problem was related to the collaboration piece of the tool. My installation had Widows Live Messenger as the selected provider. I don’t know if this is the default selection or if somehow the installation detected what was running. Either way, the fix to stopping the error messages was to disable the collaboration piece.

Right click on the Team Members node of the project.
Select Personal Settings… from the context menu.
In the Collaboration grouping, click on the Change button.
In the window to choose a collaboration provider, select
Click OK twice.

As a side note, other than the message box showing the error, I didn’t really encounter any problems with the operation of TFS. The other option available, aside from Messenger, was to use Communicator as the collaboration medium.

TF30177: Team Project Creation Failed

Roland — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:12:42 +0000

I encountered the error below when trying to create a new project under TFS. TFS was a brand new install and I was making sure the installation didn’t have any problems.

TF30177: Team Project Creation Failed


Error

TF30004: The New Team Project Wizard encountered an unexpected error while initializing the Microsoft.ProjectCreationWizard.Reporting plug-in.  
Explanation

TF30171: The Microsoft.ProjectCreationWizard.Reporting plug-in used to create the new team project could not be initialized and returned the following error: TF30224: Failed to retrieve projects from the report server. Please check that the SQL Server Reporting Services Web and Windows services are running and you have sufficient privileges for creating a project..

User Action Contact your Team Foundation Server administrator.

After experimenting with permissions for the TFS service and TFS reporting accounts for the local machine, reporting services and WSS, to no avail, I finally came accross Jason Barile’s blog about installing VS 2008 SP1 AFTER installing Team Explorer.

Blog post by email

Roland — Wed, 27 May 2009 17:50:09 +0000

I just found the option to post blogs via email; and, this is my “Hello World” email blog post

Visual Studio (2005, 2008) Keyboard Shortucts

Roland — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:51:05 +0000

Thought I’d put up my personal reference for Visual Studio’s keyboard shortcuts and update on a periodic basis. Not sure how to organize this so expect this to change/evolve. For now it is somewhat based on the ones I use most often, since those will be the easiest to remember .

Insert empty line above cursor
Ctrl + Enter

Insert empty line below cursor
Ctrl + Shift + Enter

Comment/Uncomment
Ctrl + K, C / Ctrl + K, U
Highlight the lines you want to comment/uncomment

Delete an entire line
Ctrl + L

Toggle Set/Unset Bookmarks
Ctrl + K, K

Go to Next Bookmark
Ctrl + K, N

Format the entire document
Ctrl + K, D

Format the entrie selection
Ctrl + K, F
Highlight/select entire text to be formatted.

Update reference (add a using statment for C#)
Ctrl + .
Have the cursor on the text that is missing the reference.

Quick watch (Debugging)
Ctrl + Alt + Q
Highlight the code you want to watch and hit the sequence to add it to the quick watch dialog.

Collapse document block
Ctrl + M, O
I can’t seem to recall how to uncollapse the entire document.

Toggle collapse/uncollapse current block
Ctrl + M, M

Moving on…

Roland — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:04:21 +0000

May 1st, I start a new venture with Arch Bay Capital. Still in a developer role with lead responsibilities, although their titles are “different”. The organization isn’t a development shop and is more akin to a financial or Wall Street organization and thier titles lean more towards that industry.

I had a great run at Exsilio and very much appreciate the experience gained and knowledge learned. I’m just at a point in my life where I seek an even work-life balance as one of my top priorities.

SQL 2008 T-SQL MERGE Operator

Roland — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:58:14 +0000

I’ve had some opportunity to play around with a few of SQL 2008′s new features and I really like the new MERGE operator and wrote my own code sample.
-- create the source and target tables declare @sourceTable table ( id int primary key identity(1,1) not null, firstName nvarchar(255) not null, lastName nvarchar(255) not null )


declare @targetTable table

(

	id int primary key not null,

	firstName nvarchar(255) not null,

	lastName nvarchar(255) not null

)
-- populate the source

insert @sourceTable

select 'John', 'Doe' union

select 'Jane', 'Doe' union

select 'Adam', 'Smith' union

select 'Alex', 'Smith'
-- view the contents of both tables

select * from @sourceTable

select * from @targetTable
-- use the MERGE statement to populate the target from the source

merge @targetTable t											-- target

	using (select id, firstName, lastName from @sourceTable) s	-- source

		on t.id = s.id

	when matched then update set t.firstName = s.firstName, t.lastName = s.lastName

	when not matched by target then insert values (id, firstName, lastName)

	when not matched by source then delete;
select * from @sourceTable

select * from @targetTable
-- Jane Doe and Alex Smith got married and Jane decided to hyphenate her last name to Doe-Smith

update @sourceTable set lastName = N'Doe-Smith'

where firstName = N'Jane' and lastName = N'Doe'
select * from @sourceTable

select * from @targetTable
-- source and target now have different values for the 3rd record

-- we can use the same code to match up target and source

merge @targetTable t											-- target

	using (select id, firstName, lastName from @sourceTable) s	-- source

		on t.id = s.id

	when matched then update set t.firstName = s.firstName, t.lastName = s.lastName

	when not matched by target then insert values (id, firstName, lastName)

	when not matched by source then delete;
select * from @sourceTable

select * from @targetTable
-- remove Adam Smith from the source table

delete from @sourceTable where id = 1
select * from @sourceTable

select * from @targetTable
-- once again we'll use the same merge statment to match up our temporary source and target

merge @targetTable t											-- target

	using (select id, firstName, lastName from @sourceTable) s	-- source

		on t.id = s.id

	when matched then update set t.firstName = s.firstName, t.lastName = s.lastName

	when not matched by target then insert values (id, firstName, lastName)

	when not matched by source then delete;

select * from @sourceTable select * from @targetTable

C# 3.0 – Part II :: Object & Collection Initializers

Roland — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:19:47 +0000

In part I, the feature discussed was auto-implemented properties. Here we’ll make use of the classes defined in part I to demonstrate object initializers.

Notice that no constructor was declared in the classes defined. The compiler creates a default constructor (empty constructor), but this isn’t new in 3.0. What is new, is a way to set the properties of the object as it is initialized.

// declare and initialize an instance of the Address class Address homeAddress = new Address() { // set the properties using C# 3.0 object initializer feature Street = "123 Some Street", City = "Newport Beach", State = "CA", PostalCode = "92626", AddressType = AddressType.Home };

We can then use the homeAddress instance to instantiate a Person object, also defined in part I.

Person person = new Person() { ID = 1, FirstName = "John", LastName = "Doe", Addresses = new List

(){ homeAddress }

};

Notice that we’ve initialized the collection of addresses of the person instance, as the object itself is initialized. Collection Initializers is also a new feature of C# 3.0. Instead of calling the Add method of a collection, we can simply list the objects, similar to that of arrays.

We can even combine the initialization of objects and collections into one big block of code.

Person person = new Person() { ID = 1, FirstName = "John", LastName = "Doe", Addresses = new List

()

{

new Address()

{

Street = "123 Some Street",

City = "Newport Beach",

State = "CA",

PostalCode = "92626",

AddressType = AddressType.Home

}}};

Probably the most interesting to me are the collection initializers. I’ve often have had to create lookup dictionaries for one reason or another. Typically the process is declare and instantiate the dictionary and then populate with lookup values.

Dictionary numberLookup = new Dictionary()(); numberLookup.Add(1, "one"); numberLookup.Add(2, "two");

Instead, we can instantiate like so:

Dictionary numberLookup = new Dictionary()() { { 1, "one" }, { 2, "two" }};

C# 3.0 – Part I :: Auto-Implemented Properties

Roland — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:22:24 +0000

I’ve been playing around with VS 2008 and looking at some of the new features implemented for the next version of C#. Here’s some features that I found to be time saving.

Auto-Implemented Properties
Encapsulating properties has always been a pain, even with code snippets. C# 3.0 allows the declaration of backing fields with auto implemented properties, as shown below.

using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;


namespace Sample

{

    public class Person

    {

        public int ID { get; set; }

        public string FirstName { get; set; }

        public string LastName { get; set; }

        public List

 Addresses { get; set; }

    }
    public class Address

    {

        public string Street { get; set; }

        public string City { get; set; }

        public string State { get; set; }

        public string PostalCode { get; set; }

        public AddressType AddressType { get; set; }

    }
    public enum PhoneType

    {

        Home,

        Work,

        Fax,

        Mobile

    }

public enum AddressType { Home, Work } }

I added a an enumeration and List of addresses to play with collections later. A caveat to the auto-implemented properties is that you can’t have complex get or set accessors and mutators. You’re probably thinking what’s the point? You can get the same thing with making the backing fields themselves public. I agree that the use is limited; however, there is that option to make the mutator private in order to make the property read only. The feature isn’t ground breaking but it does save some time when you’re making some simple container class.

Special Folders

Roland — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:53:49 +0000

Ever wonder where certain special folders map to? There’s the enumeration System.Environment.SpecialFolder and the special folders in a Visual Studio setup project to name a couple. When you’re using them in your code or setting up a deployment project, how do you know that the special folder you’re using is actually what you want?

Well I got tired of running the app to see if it will break or making a small application to test what folder does it actually map to. Hence I wrote a small app and iterateded through the enumeration to get the folder paths using
Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder)
Environment.SpecialFolder

Enumeration Value	Vista (32 bit)
Desktop	C:\Users\{username}\Desktop
Programs	C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
Personal	C:\Users\{username}\Documents
Favorites	C:\Users\{username}\Favorites
Startup	C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
Recent	C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent
SendTo	C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo
StartMenu	C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu
MyMusic	C:\Users\{username}\Music
DesktopDirectory	C:\Users\{username}\Desktop
Templates	C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Templates
ApplicationData	C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming
LocalApplicationData	C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local
InternetCache	C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files
Cookies	C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies
History	C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\History
CommonApplicationData	C:\ProgramData
System	C:\Windows\system32
ProgramFiles	C:\Program Files
MyPictures	C:\Users\{username}\Pictures
CommonProgramFiles	C:\Program Files\Common Files

The following are mappings of special folders in an installer project

Installer	Vista (32 bit)
CommonAppDataFolder	C:\ProgramData
Common Files Folder	C:\Program Files\Common Files
User’s Application Data Folder	C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming
User’s Personal Data Folder	: C:\Users\{username}\Documents