irasmith

Howdy once again one and all, It's been awhile since I have posted to the forums here and I had a general question to ask so thought I would seek the information for all of you good folks. While my MSDN Professional subscription still has some time before it expires, I wanted to find out from those who have a subscription exactly how the renewal process works. I was not sure if Microsoft would have a renewal option within your MSDN account so that when you logged into it you could renew it or if you needed to purchase a renewal from a third party and then update your MSDN account with a new license number or exactly what happens toward the end of the subscription time. I have the MSDN Professional subscription, don't think I'll have the spare bucks to upgrade to a higher level so I'm content to renew at the same level as the benefits I am getting from it are adequate for the development work that I am doing at this time Anyone have any thoughts or advice on this?

I have a professional level MSDN subscription. In the product key area I have a product key for Windows 2000 Server however I do not have a cd of it from my MSDN subscription and I do not see it in the downloads area anywhere on line when I log into access my subscription. Does anyone know if an msdn subscriber can still acquire a copy of Windows 2000 Server? I had a need come up that would call for me to load something on it to do some programming work. I had planned to load it as a virtual server here at my home so I could access it that way for the programming work. Certainly not looking for anything long term or heavy use, after all its just little ole me banging on it.

Very good thoughts indeed and I will certainly keep them in mind. Nerseus, you mentioned a new book by MS about Frameworks. Would that new book be the one titled Framework Design Guidelines?

I am currently reading Developing Application Frameworks in .NET by Xin Chen. Even though I am not finished with the book yet, I am finding it very interesting and can see how an application framework would make application development somewhat easier and faster if the nature of the application lent itself to be used within the framework. Just curious if any/many of you were doing development by creating frameworks to build related applications upon or if due to budget/time constraints folks were not putting the effort into framework development and instead focusing in on the specific application development. So what is everyones take on the development and use of frameworks?

There has been a similar type of conversation on the GotDotNet forums, folks have noticed a decline in the posts there as well. Some have felt it was due to the MSDN forums opening up and taking traffic away.

First off, congrads on the good fortune of being in a growth mode, my hat off to you on that one :) You do ask a good question and you do have some good thoughts. After reading your post and giving some thought to it, here are my comments. As far as TDD, as I understand it, the primary focus is to provide a way to constantly test the system under development so that you know when something is broken. True, in working with it throughout all of the building revisions you do get an idea of how something works by virute of trying to figure out why your code changes broke it. I have never attempted it but I guess if you read through and studied the tests themselves then you would learn a lot about how the program was supposed to work. That all being said, I am not an all traditional or all full blown agile guy. I see benefits of both methods and in a way can see many benefits of combining techniques from both. I like use cases very much. If they are done correctly, they can be lightweight documents that will become the hub of your knowledge base. Personally, I like the natural style of reading that they lend themselves to. If you don't go overboard in detail in them then they will allow you to get a very good general idea of what the system should do. From there you can branch out into a combination of other forms of documentation focused on a specific area such as UI as well as using some TDD tools as well. I believe in adapting to the situation and so I never feel one way will fit every situation. I recently had great success on a project where I needed to get several people up to speed quickly on a product. I was very familiar with the product and so I wrote a lot of test cases. I designed each test case to be a lesson in a specific aspect of the product, keeping in mind to focus in on the most common aspects that would come up not the extreme rare exceptions. I designed the test data that each case used to help prove the point trying to be conveyed. By the time the folks who needed to learn the system worked their way through the test cases, they had a really good level of confidence in themselves that they knew a lot about the system and were not frightened off by it. Sure, there were still things that had to be learned, but the bulk of knowledge was transferred by walking through the test cases step by step paying attention to what I had outlined as the expected outcome for each step and comparing that to their actual results. Hence the goal was not to run through the cases as quickly as possible like an automated test. This was a process of reading the goal of each case, the overall expected result that would be the intended outcome, and then walking through it step by step to achieve that goal.

Well, I'm the type that will post a question when I'm stuck or when I am researching something and seek input from a variety of perspectives. Once I get the answers then I am usually set for awhile as I have gotten over my sticking point and and work right along after that. At the moment I'm not really in a stuck point so I'm just plowing right along with my projects. With summer being here I am also spending some time away from the computer.

I am working on a web based project, and one of the areas that I will soon be getting to is the on-line help area. I have acutal user focused documentation that I and others have been writing within MS Word. In looking around at options for creating help file systems, there are several products that have options for taking MS Word files as input and creating web based help systems as output. But I am curious as to what benefit that would serve over simply opening the document up in MS Word and using the option to save as html? The options that I have looked at are RoboHelp and Doc-To-Help. I have not been able to find any Open Source type help file creation systems that generate web based help files, so if anyone knows of any I would appreciate knowing about them as well.

I was rambling through the Internet one rainy day and happened upon this site. Most of my postings are in this particular branch of the forum. Usually in terms of syntax and the like I can work with something and figure it out pretty well. What stumps me a lot are the larger overall issues and so this section is where I come to ask those questions. A great bunch of people and a good community area to be involved with for sure. Keep up the great work :)

Thanks for the insight into the two products. I'm not fully sure yet which I'll start with, and I may end up trying them both in order to find the one that suits me the best.

What you may want to do is check out this site relating to preparing for Vista I have not gone through it as I just discovered it this evening, but hopefully it will help.

A short bit ago I read about MSBuild in the June MSDN magazine article. I was wondering if anyone out there could provide some insight into NAnt and MSBuild having used both of them? Not looking to start a debate or anything of that nature. What I am after is just some insight into what others think that have used both of them. I personally have not used either before but I am possibly looking to utilize one of these tools in the near future and have begun my information hunt about them.

Thanks for the link and I had kind of guessed that is what that particular release would be suited for. I am looking at something a little less 'intense' from the perspective of a fellow like myself using just the normal VS.NET 2005 Professional edition which has no source control system. I have been doing a lot of looking and I will most likely go the subversion route as my source code control solution. I really don't have the spare funds to purchase the VSS product at this time and my MSDN subscription is at the Professional level which does not include a source control product either.

I have been doing some research on the matter and I think it is safe to say that no matter what source code control system you may be using, the one thing that doesn't fit in it directly is the actual database. I have read some suggestions that you put the scripts that it takes to create the database, tables, view, stored procedures, etc. under source control instead. This does make sense to me and it is something that I am very willing to do. My question on the matter is one of seeking the best approach to do it. By that I mean, would I have one large document file with all the t-sql commands for creating tables, a second document for stored procedures, etc. or would it be better to have a separate document for each table, stored prcedure, etc. treating them more like independent source files?

Mskeel, Very good words of wisdome well worded. I personally have had some folks comment to me, keep in mind they are individual developers like myself and so are the only coders where they are located, that they didn't need a source code control system since they were the only programmer. The thought expressed was that since they were the only programmer there was no worry about conflicts and multiple person updates to keep squared away. My comment to them, which tended to leave them speechless, was how they went about handling new development on a project while the current released version was maintained and bug fixed? When I purchased my VS.NET 2005 Professional MSDN subscription at the beginning of the year, I had hoped that VSS would be included as it had been in past Professional level subscriptions. That was not to be the case as with the 2005 product line the inclusion of VSS was placed only in the highest levels of the subscriptions. I have read through some postings ont he MSDN forums where others who were actively using VSS with versions of VS.NET prior to 2005 were surprised and saddened at the removal of the product from the professional level product line. While I too was a bit saddened over the way it turned out, I began looking for alternatives since I am just entering the MSDN subscription and can't afford the premium level packages. I have worked with SourceGear Vault some and found it to be a very good solution which is available at no charge for a single user license. What sparked my interest to look at further alternatives was that my own curosity about Subversion got the better of me. I am just starting to work with it but at this time feel it will certainly meet my needs. I tend to agree that even if you are a single developer, you still should use a source code control system of some kind. It makes your life so much better in dealing with on-going development while maintaining current released products.