SharePoint 2010 Performance Testing Tips and Tricks

On Wednesday, January 25th I will be doing a session on Performance Testing SharePoint 2010.  This free session is online with a 20 minute presentation and demo and then Q & A starting at 12:25pm. Join us if you are available and can attend. Contact Denise Faustino for information on how to log into the session.

Denise's contact info.

Email dfaustino@objectsharp.com

Toll Free: 1-877-So-Sharp

Local: 416-649-3690

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Test Scribe for Test Manager–how to change template

Shai Raiten has posted a blog on how to change the Test Scribe template. Test Scribe is a tool for turning your Test Plan in to a document. The default template can be changed to include or exclude information that meets your needs.

Check out Shai’s blog for instructions – How to change the Test Scribe template.

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Microsoft TFS, Test Manager & Visual Studio–Why use it?

At Tech Days in Montreal a gentleman and I were chatting about Test Manager. He made a statement that I thought was well worth sharing.

It goes something like this:

“With Test Manager we no longer have to try and figure out when a tester leaves the company what all the excel spreadsheets on their desktop are all about. We know where the test cases are and what they test. It is great.”

I for one have been an advocate of reducing the paperwork tester’s have been required to generate. I know there were times we spent more time documenting what we were going to do then actually doing it. Including testing!

The comment was well stated and I agree Microsoft has created a great tool.

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Microsoft Test Manager– Test Case export to excel tool

Free tool available for exporting your test cases to excel in a nicely formatted fashion.

Click to download here

You  connect to Team Foundation Server by clicking the Connect TFS button.

Pick the Team Project you want to work with as shown below.

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The test plans and test suites associated to the team project you selected display.

Pick a test plan and test suite then specify where you want to save the excel file to on your system and a name for the excel file.

Click Export.

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Here is an example of test cases export to excel. The Actual Results, Pass/Fail and Comments are not populated from Test Manager. These would be fields your tester’s would enter as they are testing! Or you could remove them and add your own columns using this for test case reviews or any other type of reporting required.

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Microsoft Impact award given to ObjectSharp

It was a great evening for ObjectSharp Consulting last night. At the Microsoft Impact awards ObjectSharp partners Dave Lloyd, Barry Gervin and Mike Green accepted the

 Partner of the Year award for Application Lifecycle Management.

Congratulations to Objectsharp and the Sharpe's.

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Microsoft TFS and QTP integration

If you do not have a profile on LinkedIn it is time to join. There are amazing groups that are sharing information, posting questions & getting answers for a lot of different topics.

On the Visual Studio ALM User Group Anna shared a blog she posted  “How to integration TFS and QTP

Other LinkedIn groups related to TFS are:

  • Visual Studi0 2010 Testing
  • Microsoft Visual Studio ALM + Team Foundation Server (Team System)
  • Microsoft TFS/VST Customization Experts
  • Microsoft Testing Visual Studio 2010
  • Microsoft Coded UI

There are also Agile groups:

  • Agile Testing
  • Agile Toronto

This in no way is a compete list.

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Microsoft Test Manager– test plan confirgurations

If your looking for a way to create test configurations that can be used in all your team projects check out Dave Lloyds blog. Dave explains how to edit the process template to add or change test configurations.

Testa  :-)

Agile with Microsoft Visual Studio

Sam Guckenheimer is the Product Owner of Microsoft Visual Studio product line. He has 30 years' experience as architect, developer, tester, product manager, project manager and general manager in the software industry worldwide.

Sam’s new book “Agile Software Engineering with Visual Studio: From Concept to Continuous Feedback” is a must for all to read. Available in paperback and kindle from Amazon.

Sam recently did a webcast for TesTrek 2011 in Toronto which is also well worth watching. Sam talks about Getting Agile with Testing.

“Testing is central to the success or failure of any organization adopting the Agile Consensus. A modern testing approach can be a great enabler of value flow, transparency and the reduction of waste. An outmoded testing approach can be a huge impediment and source of unending conflict. As testers, it's important that we be on the right side of the consensus and be the enablers. The alternative is untenable. In this session, we will explore fundamental principles of agile project delivery and discuss the impact on the QA lifecycle. “

If your in Toronto the week of November 7th sign up for TesTrek 2011 Conference where Sam is the keynote speaker. Dave Lloyd and I will be doing a hands on workshop on Exploratory Testing. There is lots happening this year at TesTrek check it out.

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Missing Drive Space? Check IntelliTrace Files

My laptop has a relatively old SSD, so it only has about 128 GB of space.  This works out nicely because I like to keep projects and extraneous files on an external drive.  However, when you’ve got Visual Studio 2005-2010 installed, 2 instances of SQL Server installed, and god knows what else installed, space gets a little tight with 128 GB.  As a result I tend to keep an eye on space.  It came as a surprise to find out I lost 20 GB over the course of a week or two without downloading or installing anything substantial.

To find out where my space went, I turned to a simple little tool called Disk Space Finder by IntelliConcepts.  There are probably a million applications like this, but this is the one I always seems to remember.  It scans through your hard drive checking file sizes and breaks down usage as necessary.

I was able to dig into the ProgramData folder, and then further into the data folder for Visual Studio IntelliTrace:

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If you leave IntelliTrace enabled for all debugging you could potentially end up with a couple hundred *.itrace files like I did (not actually pictured).  It looks like an itrace file is created every time the debugger is attached to a process, so effectively every time you hit F5 a file is created.  Doubly so if you are debugging multiple launchable projects at once.

You can find the folder containing these files at C:\ProgramData\Microsoft Visual Studio\10.0\TraceDebugging.

The quick fix is to just delete the files and/or stop using IntelliTrace.  I recommend just deleting the files because I think IntelliTrace is an amazing—if not a little undercooked – tool.  It’s a v1 product.  Considering what it’s capable of, this is a minor blemish.

The long term fix is to install Visual Studio 2010 SP1, as there is apparently a fix for this issue.  The downside of course is that SP1 is still in beta.  Hence long term.

Visual Studio 2010 Desktop Background Images

Last night a couple people asked where I got all the neat VS2010 desktop backgrounds.  I couldn’t remember the URL off the top of my head last night, but the website is http://vs2010wallpapers.com/.  There are a lot of great backgrounds.  My favorite though is the ducky. Smile

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