Microsoft Test Manager–control recognition, plus supported configurations & platforms.

Some controls are not recognized without added help. You need to make sure that the controls being added to the solution by development are first compatible and second have be referenced so that they are recognizable by MTM.

Silverlight Control recognition:

How to setup up your Silverlight Application for Testing instructions.

Set a Unique Automation Property for Silverlight Controls for Testing

Testing WPF application check this out.

Supported configurations and platforms for Action Recordings and Coded UI Tests check this out.

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The Layer Diagram

The layer Diagram in VS2010 Ultimate is a great tool for validating your applications architecture. If you already have an application and you would like to see how your team has done following your prescribed architecture. Check this out.

Open your application in Visual Studio.

Then create a new Layer Diagram using the Architecture – New Diagram menu in Visual Studio Ultimate.

By dragging over layers from the tool box create a Layer Diagram that represents the architecture of your application.

Then Drag the components from your application in the solution explorer to the appropriate layer in the diagram. You can then open the Layer Explorer to see what layer everything is assigned to. (You can drag anything from a project to a single file.) Notice the numbers in the Layer diagram representing the number of items in that layer.

 

You could have created dependencies in the diagram to show which layer can call which layer. Since we are pulling in an existing app we want to see if it was written following our architecture. Therefore Right click on the diagram and select Generate Dependencies.

So here is how our application came out.

Most of the dependencies are fine. However there seems to be a lot of calls directly to the Data Layer. That is not good, but happens when the architecture is not validated periodically. click on the dependencies that are incorrect and press delete to remove them. Here is the Layer diagram as we intended it.

Now right click on the diagram and select Validate Dependencies.

This will generate errors and warnings where the application does not follow the architecture. So the Dependencies generated in the previous step now generate errors in the application.

From the error list you can generate work items in TFS to get these discrepancies fixed.

The bug will contain layer diagram that generated this error and the details of the invalid dependency.

The Next Version of VS and TFS

While we have been enjoying the fantastic features made available in VS and TFS 2010, Microsoft has been busy working on the next version. The ALM story just keeps getting better and better.

Last week at Teched MS showed off a lot of the new features we can expect to see in the next release. Below is a SpeakFlow presentation with demos to help tell the story.

A SpeakFlow is a Silverlight-powered way of delivering rich, interactive content. This SpeakFlow allows you to follow the lifecycle – from development to operations and back again – and view short demonstrations of how Visual Studio vNext will help you embrace better application lifecycle management. start at the top with the  “STORYBOARDING” video and then following the circle counter-clockwise.
Tip: To go up a level after drilling in, use your mouse wheel or the UP key on your keyboard.

Click on the image below to take a look.

PowerBuilder and TFS Source Control

I have been helping customers who are implementing Team Foundation Server (TFS) and would like to put PowerBuilder Code into TFS source control. I’m not sure how different this would be in the newest versions of PowerBuilder that support xaml and where powerscript is a .net language. However for the older versions where the customer is still using native PB there are a couple of things you might want to do to make the experience better for all involved.

First let me explain one problem with PowerBuilder and TFS: If you just add the PBL’s in your target to TFS all the exported objects end up in one folder and it’s hard to tell where everything comes from. This may not be a big deal if you never look at the source explorer in Team Explorer, but why wouldn’t you?

So here are my suggestions:

1. First set up a folder structure that will become your local working copy of the PB code. I recommend putting each PBL into it’s own folder. This might seem odd at first but once TFS gets a hold of it and all your objects are in each folder along with the .PBG file it will be a lot easier to work with. So lets say your folder structure looks something like this:

MyPBApp  
Logistics
Order
Shipping
Warehouse

2. Now put your target file in the MyPBApp  folder. In .net speak the PBL is the project and the target is like the solution. There is one more level above that (the workspace) but I’m going to ignore that in source control and just keep it local. You will have to fix the target in PowerBuilder so that it can find the PBL’s in their new locations.

3. Make sure PowerBuilder is connected to TFS via the MSSCCI provider. You can set up the connection by right clicking on the PowerBuilder workspace, select properties and go to the Source Control tab. I would also install Team Explorer so you have access to the full feature set of TFS.

4. From PowerBuilder pick your target and select Add To Source Control. This will export all the objects out of their PBL’s and create a PBG file which is a manifest of the objects inside that PBL. Now anyone on the team can get latest and open the Target in their local workspace.

5. Make sure to tell everyone to make the local copies of their PBL’s writable. Or they will have to check them out when they check out an object. Trust me it’s easier to make them writable locally.

Shelve Sets

I think Shelve Sets are one of the nicest features of TFS source control.

They are great for:

  • Storing code safely on the server each night before you go home
  • Storing code you are working on to fix a bug in another branch or older code base
  • Sharing a code example
  • Code Reviews
  • Prototyping
  • Passing something incomplete off before a vacation or long weekend

That reminds me of the one thing I don’t like about Shelve Sets. When you want to unshelve something that belongs to another developer you have to know their user id. There is no  drop down with a distinct list of users that have something shelved. To get my code you would have to know dlloyd or lloyddave or lloydd or whatever my network id happenes to be.

All is not lost, if you install the TFS Power Tools  one of the tools it comes with is called Team Members which is an add-in to Team Explorer, that allows you to organize users into sub-teams and access a number of collaborative tools, such as IM and email, sharing of queries and links, and downloading and installation of custom Team Foundation components.

Check out the context menu when you right click on a team member in this tool you can show their check in history, pending changes, and of course shelvesets.

Sweet!

Microsoft Test Manager - Feature Pack 2 is available

Feature Pack 2 is now available and includes the following: Click to Download 

  • Codes UI Test [CUIT] Editor

      • new CUIT Editor, opens by selecting the UIMap.uitest in Solution Explorer

      • click here to see Editor

  • LightSwitch applications [Microsoft]

        • tested and works well with LightSwitch applications

    • Microsoft VS 2010 Test Package for Silverlight 4
        • test Silverlight apps and other desktop applications

        • enables testing with Coded UI tests and record, playback in Microsoft Test Runner

        • data and diagnostics can be collected during runtime however, Intellitrace logs are not as of yet

        • tested to work with Silverlight 4.0 apps hosted in IE (adding Silverlight apps in future)

        • Note: read the “about” for restrictions

    • Microsoft VS2010 Test Package for Mozilla FireFox

        • enables playback and UI actions for Firefox 3.5 and above
        • enables testing with Coded UI tests (CUIT), automated Web Performance and Manual fast-forward tools
        • you can create a set of tests once and execute on both IE and Firefox from Microsoft Test Runner

    You need to download KB2403277 which can be done before installing or during the installation process of Service Pack 2.

    image

    Click to Download 

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