Visual Studio, like any Integrated Development Environment, can host extensions for more specialist languages or development tasks. This sort of work is reasonably straightforward most of the time but occasionally you need functionality that isn't available in the APIs. Michal takes two examples, printing code in an editing window, and gaining access to the Visual Studio Notifications, and explains how to hack Visual Studio to get to the functionality.… Read more
The latest versions of Team Foundation Server are not only sophisticated, but extensible. Continue their course of openness, Microsoft have opened up TFS, and are making it possible to build custom systems on top of it. Karsten Kempe points out three new features that make it possible to build an ALM system to exactly suit you needs, using TFS as the underlying platform, and demonstrates what's possible with an open source dashboard and work-tracking system.… Read more
Subversion provides a good way of source-controlling a database, but many operations are best done from within your database-development environmant. Fortunately, several products provide this integration … Read more
Although CSS editing tools exist that give you a measure of WYSIWYG, it is often more convenient to make small adjustments using the browser's built-in inspection tool and then repeating the changes back in your source. Now, there is a way to update the source automatically, faster and more reliably… Read more
Some types of development work are much more effectively accomplished if the developer can work directly on SQL Server Databases from Visual Studio, alongside the application code, rather than constantly switching applications to SSMS. Until SQL Connect was created, there was no easy way to do this. Nate Suver had just this requirement, and explains why SQL Connect is so important to him. … Read more
There are already third-party applications that help you to debug .NET applications remotely, or at least get enough information to diagnose the fault successfully. However, VS2010 allows you to debug remote applications. Is this the ideal way of doing it? How do you set it up? What are the pitfalls? Clive Tong explains.… Read more
The co-evolution of Visual Basic and C# is increasingly going to bring the feature-set of those languages closer together. So, having walked us through the new language enhancements available in VB 2010, Hima Vejella now completes the picture by walking us through the new features in C#4.0.… Read more
The latest evolution of VB in Visual Studio will bring with it a bundle of C# functionality, nudging the two languages even closer together. To ensure we're ready to make the most of these enhancements, Hima Vejella takes us through each new feature.… Read more
Phil Wilson demonstrates how to build and deploy a .NET COM assembly using best practices, and how to access it from early and late binding clients.… Read more
Debugging is an important process for any level of programming to ensure programs function as expected. Most productive developer environments provide tools and utilities to assist with the debugging process. Visual Studio.NET 2005 is equipped with a number of debugger visualizers, but users can also create their own based on an individual project.… Read more
This article describes the basics of Visual Studio setup and deployment projects. Subsequent articles will cover more on custom actions, .NET installer classes, and an upgrade for the product.… Read more
Compliant Database DevOps
Standardize team-based development
Automate database deployments
Monitor performance and availability
Protect and preserve data
